Jim Horner pushed the book toward her. “They want money for those things.”

“Well, that’s the beauty of it, Jim. No money, no signing up, no nothing. Library just exists so people can try a bit of reading. Maybe learn a little if they find they have a liking for it.”

Jim Horner stared at the cover of the book. Alice had never heard Margery talk so much in one sitting.

“I tell you what? How about I leave these here, just for the week? You don’t have to read ’em, but you can take a look if you like. We’ll come by next Monday and pick them up again. If you like them, you get the kids to tell me and I’ll bring you some more. You don’t like ’em, just leave them on a crate by the fence post there and we’ll say no more. How does that sound?”

Alice glanced behind her. A second small face vanished immediately into the gloom of the building.

“I don’t think so.”

“Tell you the truth, you’d do me a favor. Would mean I don’t have to carry the darn things all the way back down the mountain. Boy, our bags are heavy today! Alice, you finished your water, there? We don’t want to take up any more of this gentleman’s time. Good to see you, Jim. And thank you, Mae. Haven’t you grown like a string bean since I last saw you!”

As they reached the gate Jim Horner’s voice lifted and hardened. “I don’t want nobody else comin’ up here botherin’ us. I don’t want to be bothered and I don’t want my children bothered. They got enough to deal with.”

Margery didn’t even turn around. She lifted a hand. “I hear you, Jim.”

“And we don’t need no charity. I don’t want anyone from town just coming by. I don’t know why you even came here.”

“Headed to all the houses between here and Berea. But I hear you.” Margery’s voice carried across the hillside as they reached the horses.

Alice glanced behind her to see that he had raised his gun to his shoulder again. Her heart thumped in her ears as she picked up her pace. She was afraid to look back again. As Margery swung herself onto the mule, she took the reins, mounted Spirit with trembling legs, and it was only when she calculated that they were too far away for Jim Horner to take a shot at them that she allowed herself to exhale. She kicked the mare forward so that she was level with Margery.

“Oh, my goodness. Are they all that awful?” Her legs, she realized, were now entirely liquid.

“Awful? Alice, that went great.”

Alice wasn’t sure she’d heard her correctly.

“Last time I rode up to Red Creek Jim Horner shot my hat clean off.” Margery turned toward her and tilted her hat so that Alice could see the tiny hole that scorched straight through the top of it. She rammed it back onto her head. “Come on, let’s kick on a little. I want to take you to meet Nancy before we break for lunch.”

THREE

    . . . and best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander, where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her.

• LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, Little Women

Two purple bruises on her knees, one on her left ankle and blisters in places she didn’t know blisters could exist, a cluster of infected bites behind her right ear, four broken nails (slightly grubby, she had to admit) and sunburn on her neck and nose. A two-inch-long graze on her right shoulder from being scraped against a tree, and a mark on her left elbow where Spirit had bitten her when she’d tried to slap a horsefly. Alice peered at her grimy face in the mirror, wondering what people back in England would make of the scabby cowgirl staring back at her.

It had been more than a fortnight and nobody had mentioned that Isabelle Brady had still not arrived to join the little team of packhorse librarians, so Alice didn’t feel able to ask. Frederick didn’t say much other than to offer her coffee and help her with Spirit, Beth—the middle child of eight brothers—would march in and out with a brisk boyish energy, nodding a cheerful hello, dumping her saddle on the floor, exclaiming when she couldn’t find her goddamn saddlebags, and Isabelle’s name simply failed to appear on the little cards on the wall with which they signed themselves in and out of shifts. Occasionally a large dark green motor-car would sweep by with Mrs. Brady in the front, and Margery would nod, but no words passed between them. Alice began to think that putting her daughter’s name out there had been a way for Mrs. Brady to encourage other young women to come forward.

So, it was something of a surprise when the motor-car pulled up on Thursday afternoon, its huge wheels sending a spray of sand and grit up the steps as it stopped. Mrs. Brady was an enthusiastic, if easily distracted driver, prone to sending locals scattering as she turned her head to wave at some passerby, or swerved extravagantly to avoid a cat in the road.

“Who is that?” Margery didn’t look up. She was working her way through two piles of returned books, trying to decide which were too damaged to go out again. There was little point sending out a book in which the last page was missing, as had already happened once. Waste of my time, had been the response from the sharecropper who had been given The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I won’t be reading a book again.

“Think it might be Mrs. Brady.” Alice, who had been treating a blister on her heel, peered out of the window, trying to remain inconspicuous. She watched as Mrs. Brady closed the driver’s door and paused to wave at somebody across the street. And then she saw a younger woman emerge from the passenger side, red hair pulled back and pinned into neat curls. Isabelle Brady.

“It’s both of them,” Alice said quietly. She tugged her sock back on, wincing.

“I’m surprised.”

“Why?” said Alice.

Isabelle made her way around the side of the car until she was level with her mother. It was then that Alice saw she walked with a pronounced limp, and that her lower left leg was encased in a leather and metal brace, the shoe at the end built up so that it resembled a small black brick. She didn’t use a stick, but rolled slightly as she moved, and concentration—or possibly discomfort—was writ large on her freckled features.

Alice pulled back, not wanting to be seen to be watching as they made their way slowly up the steps. She heard a murmured conversation and then the door opened.

“Miss O’Hare!”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Brady, Isabelle.”

“I’m so sorry for the delay in getting Izzy started. She had . . . some things to attend to first.”

“Just glad to have you. We’re about ready to send Mrs. Van Cleve out on her own, so the more the merrier. I’ll have to get you sorted out with a horse, though, Miss Brady. I wasn’t sure when you were coming.”

“I’m no good at riding,” said Izzy, quietly.