Rhett knelt next. For several seconds, he stayed perfectly still. When he stood again, something in his expression had changed. If we're wrong, we lose two days of work and tear apart a fence that still does its job. Yes.
And if you're right, Nia held his gaze. Then Holt Ranch starts breathing again. Rhett turned to Clay. Bring the pry bars. They began work at dawn the following morning.
The fence posts were buried like old bones. Clay and Rhett drove iron bars into the packed earth while Dusty and Luke pulled against ropes. Nia watched the soil around every hole. The first post came out dry. So did the second.
The third gave them nothing but dust. By the sixth, Dusty had stopped looking in Nia's direction. Luke's jaw was tight. Rhett kept working without showing disappointment. Nia walked toward the seventh post.
The ground around it was different. It did not crack in the same pattern as the rest. One side had sunk slightly inward as though something beneath it had been pressing upward for years. This one, she said. Rhett drove the bar deep.
Clay leaned in beside him. Dusty and Luke tightened the rope. The timber groaned. Then the post tore free and slammed onto its side. For one breath, nothing happened.
Luke leaned over the hole. Clay. He dropped to his knees, reached inside, and pulled his hand back, covered in dark mud. No one spoke. At the bottom of the hole, water gleamed.
It was not rainwater. They had gone months without a storm heavy enough to leave anything behind. This was clean water, cold water, water pushing up from deep beneath the earth. Rhett lifted his eyes toward Nia. She fought back the smile trying to break across her face.
"Pull three more posts to the east," she said, "and three to the west. Give the channel room to move. This time, no one asked why. By noon, a dark line was creeping slowly down the slope. At first, it was only a thread.
Then it widened, following a path the land still remembered, even if the men had forgotten it. A cow lifted her head from the pasture, caught the scent of water, and started toward it. The rest followed. Luke let out a laugh. Dusty grinned like a boy.
Even Clay shook his head in disbelief. Rhett stood beside the newborn stream. Elias always said this was the best ground in Redstone County, he murmured. You can start believing him again, Nia said. Rhett looked at her for a long moment.