As the grumbling chug of the old flatbed truck died away, Mari hurried to finish the most essential of her morning chores. It would take at least four hours for Berne to get the truck loaded with hay and return from Cottonwood Crossing, a farming community about twenty miles west of Red Rock Canyon. This meant she had four hours to get out to the construction site to return the borrowed rope and then back to the stable.
Six days had passed since her accident. Each day she had fretted more over the lack of an opportunity to slip away and accomplish the small task. With the passage of each day, it seemed more urgent that she do it. Impatiently, she kicked off the old rubber boots and oversized coveralls she wore to clean stalls. The latest of the itinerant hands had quit yesterday. He left
