The light of dawn across the bitter salt flats was not pink or gold. It was a cold, glaring silver that scoured the eyes and cast long, ink-black shadows behind every wagon wheel and thorn bush.
Tomas Reed and Nessa Vale walked three miles east of the tent city, with Sile Rook and young Jory Brant, Kaelen’s grandson. Jory carried a heavy wooden crate filled with twelve clean heavy clay jars. Meanwhile, Tomas carried his three-inch iron core auger. A heavy steel metal tube slotted with a t-handle of turned ash wood.
They stopped at the corner of Survey Plot 042. They were marked by a dry tamarisk stake driven into the crust fifteen years ago, its wood bleached white as cattle bone.
“Sample point four,” Tomas said, dropping his pack.
He centered the hollow auger over the white crust, set his boots wide for leverage. Then he leaned his chest against the crossbar. With a steady, grinding rotation of his shoulders, he drove the cutting head down through the hard stone crust into the subsoil.
The iron bit shrieked against compacted crystals of white chalk-and stone salt. It took five minutes of heavy, rhythmic downward pressure to sink the auger eighteen inches into the earth.
