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Writing the letter to my mother wasn’t enough; I understood that. I had to raise money for the train trip. I had to find a way to take care of the livestock while we were gone. My hands gripped the sanded wood of the rake’s pole as I followed behind Mary, the sickle swinging, cutting down the grass. The rake’s prongs caught in the tough, long roots that held fast to the soil. I yanked; one of the prongs twisted. Roots had nearly worn me and Isaac raw when fourteen years ago we chopped sod bricks for the dugout and barn. I had cursed those roots—Isaac had too—but we kept on. I was younger then, I thought to myself as I bent over and worked the prong free. Fresher to it all.

I needed money. And a plan.

Nothing came to me as I kept at the raking, Emma behind me sitting on a pile of grass. I couldn’t see myself past the November day when I’d hitch the horses to the wagon, load the children, and head to town and the train depot. What was I going to do if John ran off? Panic tightened my chest. Scared, I whispered to myself. I was scared. I had to have a plan, but I couldn’t think. Let it come to you, I told myself, as the rake caught again in the roots. There was time. Just let your mind circle around it; a plan is sure to come.

Later that day, after supper, things went as always. The little girls played with their rag dolls until bedtime. Mary and John checked John’s rabbit traps—still empty—and then wandered off to the wash to throw pebbles into the running water. I sat on the porch doing my mending, trying to come up with a plan.

I put my hand down and rubbed Rounder’s ears. He looked up at me and I could hardly bear it. I’d be leaving him too.

All at once, I felt sick. I had never kept anything so big from Isaac. I had never wanted to or had a need to. But I was doing right. I was doing it for our children.

We’d only be gone a few months, I told myself. If the winter was mild, we’d be back by the end of March. Not that it would matter. Isaac was going to turn against me for leaving. He’d never forgive me; it’d never be the same between us. But if me and the children stayed the winter and things went bad, I’d have hard feelings of my own. I looked off toward Grindstone Butte, its sharp edges fading some in the twilight. There’d be hard feelings all the way around. There was no middle road on this one.

It was when I got up to call Mary and John in from evening chores that the sick feeling in my belly turned into a cramp, its sudden hardness making me suck in my breath.

I sat back down. Nerves, I told myself. Or maybe something I ate. I rocked slowly in my chair, cold and clammy with fear. I waited for the next cramp, and when nothing else happened, I got up again and called for Mary and John. They came on the first call, and it was later, while Mary was reading Swiss Family Robinson to John in the kitchen, that another cramp pulled me. This time it wasn’t nerves or something I’d eaten.

My fingers drummed the rocker’s armrests. The front door stood open. The lantern sitting on the kitchen table cast a small patch of wavering light on the wood-planked porch floor. I listened to Mary read but the words meant nothing to me.

It was too late to send John to get Isaac. He might get lost in the dark. The McKees didn’t live on the road like we did. The last mile to their place was nothing more than two narrow grooves in the ground. And the coyotes—a ten-year-old boy on foot wouldn’t stand a chance against a hungry pack. It’d be the same for Mary and anyway, I needed her with me.

Rounder nuzzled my knee with his cold, wet nose. The Milky Way, high above me, arced with the curve of the earth. It was bright with hundreds of stars.

I wasn’t one for asking for Jesus’ help if I could figure out a way on my own. It wasn’t my place to bother Him, especially now that He’d sent rain. He was plenty busy with the war over in France and all those soldiers in trenches shooting at each other. But tonight I looked up at the