The late afternoon sun cast long, golden shafts of light across the upper limestone terrace of Split-Stone, lighting up the three valleys that stretched into the southern haze like an open emerald fan.
Where forty thousand acres of winter wheat had lay withered and gray that morning, the land was now traced with twenty glittering silver ribbons of running mountain snowmelt. The Grand Feeder Canal and its hundred lateral ditches ran bank-full, singing a musical, rushing rhythm as four feet of living alpine water soaked deep into the fertile loam. From every farmstead, village green, and orchard terrace rose the sounds of human laughter, barking dogs. The rhythmic ringing of blacksmiths’ hammers straightening ditch-gates that had stood dry for three years.
Tomas Reed stood upon the western stone low roof wall of the town pool, his ash-wood pack frame resting against an ancient Roman milepost.
He unbuckled the calfskin brace from his left forearm, peeling back the sweat-dampened leather to let the cool mountain air soothe the swollen skin. Along the forearm bone, the jagged white scar from the rusted blade cut pulled taut. It was surrounded by the hard, stringy knots of scar tissue that marked his permanent thirty-five percent loss of grip strength. His left fingers were stiff from the twenty-mile trek and the brutal labor at the bronze winch wheels. But as he bent his hand, the knuckles responded with steady, unrushed discipline.
