Marcus stopped several yards away.
The old gray buck, The General, placed himself between Marcus and the opening as if he had been appointed guard.
Marcus glared at the animal.
“That hole may not be on the county map.”
“Neither are most holes,” Elspeth said.
“You know what I mean.”
She did not, but his nervousness told her something his words did not.
He knew more about this hill than he wanted to admit.
Elspeth lowered a bucket that evening.
She had no proper windlass, so Finn helped her knot together enough rope to reach the bottom.
They weighted the bucket with a clean stone and fed the rope into the darkness foot by foot.
When it finally struck water, the sound rose from the shaft clear enough to hear.
Elspeth lowered more rope.
Then she pulled.
The work was slow.
The rope cut into her palms.
Finn braced his heels against the stone rim and hauled beside her.
At last the bucket emerged.
Water trembled inside it.
Not mud.
Not a spoonful of trapped rain.
A bucket nearly half full of cold, clear water.
Elspeth dipped two fingers into it.
She had expected the water to be warm after sitting beneath a hill baked all day by summer sun.
It was cold enough to ache against her skin.
Finn laughed aloud.
“Miss Finch, you’ve got a well.”
Elspeth sat down on the ground.
She didn’t cheer.
She didn’t cry.
She simply stared at the bucket while every miserable trip she had made into town passed through her mind.
At the foot of the hill, Marcus mounted his horse without saying goodbye.
By the following morning, Redemption knew.
News traveled faster than rain in a dry country.
The same men who had ridden past Elspeth’s fence to see whether she had surrendered now found reasons to slow down again.
But their expressions had changed.
Some asked whether the water was sweet.
Some asked how deep the well was.
One man who had previously advised her to abandon the place offered to buy ten acres before breakfast.
Elspeth refused.
By noon Marcus came back.
This time he brought no jokes.
He stood beside the fence while Elspeth and Finn worked on a simple wooden frame over the shaft.
“I’ll give you what you paid,” Marcus said.
Elspeth kept tying rope around a crosspiece.
“For what?”
“The land.”
Finn stopped hammering.
Elspeth did not.
“Yesterday it was rocks and thorns.”
“It still is.”
“Then you don’t want it.”
Marcus’s face hardened.
“I’m trying to help you out before you find out what sixty acres costs to keep.”
Elspeth tested the knot.
“I already know what it costs.”
