What had been a trusty sluff job was now as onerous as swinging a Kaiser blade or shoveling out ditches. As soon as he’d hauled the buckets back to the cage truck it was time to go again. He asked Vickery if someone could spell him and the bull guard smiled and said that Sinkler could always strap on a pair of leg irons and grab a handle. “Bolick just killed a rattlesnake in them weeds yonder,” the bull guard said. “I bet he’d square a trade with you.” When Sinkler asked if come morning he could walk ahead to search for another well, Vickery’s lips tightened, but he nodded. The next day, Sinkler took the metal buckets and walked until he found a farmhouse. It was no closer than the other, even a bit farther, but worth padding the hoof a few extra steps. The well he’d been using belonged to a hunchbacked widow. The woman who appeared in this doorway wore her hair in a similar tight bun and draped herself in the same sort of flour-cloth dress, but she looked to be in her midtwenties, like Sinkler.
