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John grumbled something under his breath. I frowned at him. He frowned back. “Mind yourself,” I said, my voice low. John’s eyes darted to Isaac, and Isaac gave him a hard, steadying look. John ducked his head but he was angry. His fists were knotted up. A chill walked up my backbone.

“How was town?” I said, not knowing what to make of any of this.

“Like usual,” Isaac said. “For the most part.” He and John locked eyes for a moment before John turned away and went over by the hitched horses. Isaac said, “Folks aren’t themselves right now. This drought’s bringing out the worst in some.”

Behind Isaac, Mary lifted Alise to the top of one of the wagon wheels. “Careful now,” I called out. Alise’s feet slipped. Mary caught her and pushed her up and over and into the wagon bed. At my side, Emma had a fistful of Liz’s skirt balled up in her hand as she tottered on the rocky ground.

I turned back to Isaac. “What do you mean? Was it John? Did he misbehave?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“I told you. People aren’t themselves,” he said, his voice as low as mine.

“Something happened. I can tell.”

“Nothing did.” Then he said, “Mrs. Svenson.”

“You had business at the post office?”

“No.”

Mrs. Svenson was the postmistress, and her husband was the ticket agent for the railroad. He wasn’t so bad, but Mrs. Svenson didn’t like us, and because we had never given her cause, I always figured it was because we were Negroes. When I used to go to Scenic with Isaac and needed postage to send a letter home, Mrs. Svenson sold it to me without speaking. Instead she stared at me, her blue eyes narrowed as if she expected me to try to steal the stamp. She had a way of curling her lips that showed her yellow teeth. I’d never seen her clean. The front of her dress was always soiled with spots of food. Mrs. DuPree, Isaac’s mother, would have called her poor white trash. My mother would have gone along with that.

“What’d she do?” I said to Isaac.

“Doesn’t matter. We got the water.”

I glanced at John. He had his left hand up on Bucky’s withers, but his eyes were fixed on Mary and Alise what were in the wagon bed. He made like he was listening to all their chatter about the food supplies but I knew different. John was listening to me and Isaac.

I lowered my voice even more. “Did she say something to John?”

“No.” The muscles around his mouth were tight. “It was me, if you have to know. She and I had a few words. At the depot. That’s where they’re keeping the water brought by the train. It’s being rationed. You buy it from Anderson at his store, pick it up at the depot.”

I waited.

“She claimed all the water was spoken for.”

My eyes flickered to the wagon’s bed. “But—”

John said, “She called Daddy ‘boy.’”

“Lord,” I said, putting my hand out toward Isaac.

“Forget it,” he said. “I got the water.”

I pictured the train depot, seeing in my mind a handful of townsmen and a few ranchers too, all there to get water. I imagined Isaac and John standing with them near the water tower, the tracks to their backs. The men talked about the drought, shaking their heads over all the families what had been driven out by the hard times. Isaac was a man with twenty-five hundred acres, and so far he had managed to hang on to every bit of it. In the Badlands—even in the best of times—that earned respect. I imagined how his easy manner with the other men riled Mrs. Svenson.

“Trash,” I said. “She’s nothing but trash.”

“I said forget it. I have.” Isaac turned around to the wagon. His back stiffened. Mary and Alise stood in the bed, quiet, their eyes wide, staring at us. They had heard, and I saw that they were puzzled, they didn’t understand. Isaac was a grown man, not a boy.

“Move,” Isaac said to Mary and Alise. The harshness in his voice made them jump away and they stumbled as the wagon rocked. He reached over the side of the wagon and pulled a box to him. All at once, John looked ready to cry. He rubbed at his mouth, tugging at the corners. I wanted to spit out more ugly words about Mrs. Svenson but before I could, Isaac whistled out some