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the midpoint of their flight always centering on the remains of the tractor, but, as the water rose higher, the extent of their flight increased. Twice Kimble ducked down into the water and once he flicked a bug out of Ruth’s hair.
    They smeared the last of the mud over the grass mat and hurried down the wash, then south along the bluff’s edge. The bug activity was so great that even at their campsite, near the southern border of the homestead, the bugs buzzed angrily through the brush, clipping off leaves and branches.
    â€œFishing,” said Ruth, and pulled out her package of Kevlar fishing hooks and nylon line. They moved down to the bosque and cut willow branches for poles and dug grubs. When they returned with their brown trout, the water was flowing over the lowest part of the dam and the tractor site was under two feet of water. Though a few bugs had settled to the ground on the banks of the new pond, the majority had settled back by the road, where there was still metal left to work.
    *   *   *
    THERE was no dojo by the first snowfall, but Ruth and Kimble had achieved a thick-walled, rammed-earth, adobe-plastered cottage, with three rooms and a bucket toilet in its own well-vented closet. A plastic water barrel perched on the live grass roof and a clay-lined, vertical-feed woodstove was built into the north wall. Its clay flue ran horizontally through the rammed earth before venting up and out, using the mass of the wall to store and release heat through the day.
    They did practice, though, twice a day, over by the spring on a spot of grass where the dojo would eventually be. It was Kimble’s responsibility to keep it watered and to find every sharp stick, hard rock, and goat-head sticker in the area. Most of these he found by looking and that was far better than the ones he discovered with his back, his knees, or his feet. He found out early, though, that if he pulled a rock from the earth, it was far better to replace it with well packed dirt, than to leave the hole to catch his feet.
    And he pulled so many goat-heads that he found himself spotting the tiny yellow flowers of the puncture vine in his dreams.
    A great deal of Ruth’s luggage had been freeze-dried foods, though she had a small set of territory-safe tools. She also had a great deal of cash, now stored in a hidden wall hollow of the new cottage. “Divorce—we split the dojo, we split the house.” She shrugged. “There’s much more in the bank, but the nearest branch is Nuevo Santa Fe.”
    She bought vegetables and eggs at the market. Cash was hard to come by so she was always welcome. Most locals had to barter with each other. She was one of a small group of customers who, in the dead of winter, bought fresh greens from Covas, a farmer with a greenhouse. One day in March, Kimble and Ruth had just turned away from Covas’ market stall when Sandy Williams staggered into their path and stopped. “Business must be good. What are your rates?”
    Williams was a giant of a man with a full-beard and long, greasy hair that hung down his sheepskin coat in a thick braid.
    Kimble had heard he was a spectacularly bad farmer whose wife had left him in the late fall. “He didn’t get one single crop in,” Masey Garcia, daughter of the district agricultural agent, told Kimble the month before. “He had some good tomatoes but he borrowed money on the strength of the crop and then drank it away when he should’ve been pickin’ and dryin’ them. Most rotted on the vine and that hailstorm in mid-September did for the rest.”
    Ruth frowned at Williams. “Excuse me? What do you mean?”
    â€œFine-lookin’ woman like you, kept her figure, always has cash. I wonder how much you charge.”
    Kimble didn’t understand but he saw Ruth blush and her jaw set. “Let’s be very clear about what you are implying. Are you saying I’m a