It took him an hour to walk to the ranch from his house. If that’s what you could call it; no more than a large room really, scavenged wood fixed to sawn-up telegraph posts with stolen nails for walls, holey tarpaulin for a roof. They had slept in the dirt until Mum had woven together rudimentary hammocks from scraps of rope and rags which they took down every morning. Clint’s dad set off with the other men at dawn. Sometimes a truck came and picked them up, sometimes they hopped on a train to the towns where the white folks lived, the ones with money and work they weren’t too afraid to give to coloured people to do. Five miles was nothing really. He’d got the water for his family from the pump first. Now he was gonna see the horses.
He could see them from a distance when he was climbing
