"So there is. I didn't see any water running under the road, did you?"

Kimble frowned for a second. "Or through any of the cuts. No."

"If that ground is soaking wet, it would slow them down, wouldn't it?"

"It might," agreed Kimble.

They walked into the shallow wash closer to the bluff, where there were no bugs. Ruth dropped to her knees and dug her hand into the sand. The top four inches was dry, the next four inches was damp, and below that water seeped into the hole.

"That's a lot of water, for here, this high above the river."

They walked the perimeter again. The water didn't flow over the homestead boundaries but came out of a rock formation about fifty feet from the road. It flowed five feet down the limestone face and then into the shallow wash, which, without discussing it, they started calling the "wet" wash.

They made a fire back by the bluff and put water in the ceramic pot for tea.

"It would be easy to clear out the junk by the road," Ruth said as they waited for the water to boil. "The best thing would be to snag it with a rope and drag it out of the dirt and up onto the asphalt where the bugs can eat it proper."

"A very long rope," said Kimble.

"Why long?"

"You could catch a bug between something hard and the metal-accidentally pop it."

Ruth exhaled. "And they'd swarm, right?" She swallowed and Kimble knew she was remembering that moment on the road again.

Kimble pulled up his right sleeve and showed her three scars striping his upper arm. "It's not always fatal. But I wasn't that close."

"Okay. A very long rope," she conceded. "But what about the tractor? From the number of bugs there seems to be a lot more metal there. Maybe the engine block is sunk into the wash or the chassis or axles."

"Or all of those," agreed Kimble.

"There could even be a disc-harrow or a plow behind. I doubt we can pull it up with rope. I mean, not without a team of horses or oxen. If it weren't in the wash, we might try burying it, until it had enough dirt over it the bugs stopped sensing it. Maybe if we diverted the stream to keep the water away, we could bury it then without having it wash away."

"I don't think you need to keep water away from it," said Kimble. "Just the opposite."

Ruth looked at him with her head cocked to one side.

"What we need, Sensei, is a dam."

ONE of the reasons the wash was so shallow was because the same layer of volcanic tuff that floored the southern dry wash tilted up at an angle across the property. When they'd dug two feet down, twenty feet downstream from the tractor, they hit the rock layer.

"Good," said Ruth. "We'll have a solid base."

Her first inclination had been to buy some cement in the village. But Kimble, doing their laundry in the river, turned up deep red clay in the bank and, while it resulted in a badly stained shirt, it saved them the cost of the cement. They used the travois to drag damp clay from the bank to the foot of the bluff where they lifted it up the cliff by rope a bucket at a time.

They trenched down to the bedrock and made the dam, bowed upstream, out of large rocks set in the clay. Though they'd left the stream edge of the wash unobstructed while building the remaining part, the subsurface water, now obstructed, increased the surface water from a slow trickle to a gushing flow. The sand was wet everywhere in the wash and puddles were forming in the low bits.

The bugs, almost as if irritated, lifted off frequently into the air, buzzing on their crystalline wings, as the water touched their six, eight, ten or, if it was right before budding off, twelve legs. They flew farther and farther from the buried tractor as the water crept higher, and more than once Ruth and Kimble had to retreat down the wash to avoid them.

Ruth and Kimble prepped carefully for the final bit of work. The dam or "Damn dam" as Kimble called it, was three feet high, a full two feet higher than the spot where the tractor block emerged from the wet sand. They had a stack of large rocks and a pile of clay set on the bank, and hollow reeds stuck in their belts in case they needed to retreat under the water.

"Ready?"

"Yes, Sensei."

They stuck clay on the rocks before shoving them down into the gap, knowing that a large portion of it would be washed away, but they pushed more handfuls of clay into the gaps as they built. The water stopped dead and then perceptibly began to rise. They built above it, overbuilding, really, putting a thick layer of clay on the upstream side and then sticking a woven grass mat onto that, to reinforce it.

As the water rose, the buzzing from flying bugs increased, neared. The bugs were zooming back and forth, 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.

"Fishing," 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?"

"Fine-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 prostitute?"

Williams took a step forward and Kimble smelled alcohol on his breath. "That's sure a fancy way of sayin' it. I'd of said, 'whore.'" He leered at her. "With that cute tush of yours, I see why you're rakin' in the cash." Williams jerked his thumb at Kimble. "And I see you're a full-service establishment-sodomites, too?"

As his voice rose, conversations in the marketplace died and people froze, watching, mid-transaction, like some painted tableau: Loudmouth in the market.

Kimble's eyes narrowed and his stomach hurt. This was a little too familiar. He was shifting his weight, getting ready to move when Ruth shoved the shopping basket into his hands.

She drew herself up very straight, very still. "You have ten seconds to apologize," she said. Her voice, slightly raised, carried easily across the now quiet market.

Williams laughed. "Or what?" He gestured around. "There ain't a man around here that can take me, nor any group of th-"

Her slap turned his head around and he took a short step back to gain his balance.

"You little whore!" Williams drew one fist back and reached forward with the other, as if to clutch Ruth's jacket, but Ruth wasn't there.

He felt a hand take his collar from behind and another push down into the crook of his elbow, then he was spinning around and on his knees, facing the other direction, the hand on the collar shoving him down into the dirt. A voice whispered near his ear, "You should've apologized." With a roar, he surged back to his feet, shoving upward, but he encountered no resistance, just a smooth pull backward on his braided hair, and then an arm swept upward lifting his chin and arcing his body farther back. There was a twist, and his entire lower body was neatly blocked out as he flew backward. He landed on the back of his head and shoulders in the packed dirt of the marketplace, his arms and legs folded awkwardly over, like a child's botched backward somersault.

Kimble felt the impact through the ground.

Williams fell sideways and thrashed his way onto all fours. He was shouting short forceful obscenities with great feeling. He jerked his way to his feet and staggered sideways into Covas' stall, knocking bushels of lettuce over. He clutched at the side of the stall for balance, as the obscenities continued like a fountain, becoming more complex and inventive as he regained his footing.

"You whoring bitch!" was the last and politest thing he said before he launched himself at Ruth, arms outstretched, trying to take her down by momentum alone.

Ruth feinted toward his face and dropped to her hands and knees, pivoting her hip into his knees. As he flew over her he got his hands out in front of him, but his face still smashed into the ground. When he rolled over, his nose was flowing like a bloody brook.

This time Ruth didn't wait for him to get up. She took one arm and used the elbow and shoulder like a crank, forcing him back onto his belly. Pinning his shoulder between her knees she took his pinky finger and cranked it (and the arm) toward the back of his head.

His response was less articulate than before, an animal grunt followed by a shriek.

"This," Ruth said, "is where you apologize."

"Sorry? You'll be sorry, you bitch-"

He shrieked again. Kimble, watching, saw that she was mostly extending the arm and putting pressure on the shoulder socket. The finger was just an extra.

"When I'm done with your arm I'm pretty sure you won't able to whip every man in this town. It's already clear you can't whip every woman." She applied a bit more pressure.

"Jesus Christ, I'm sorry I fucking talked to you!"

Covas, the greengrocer, nodded and said, "Well, that, at least, sounded sincere."

Ruth said quietly, "I'll start with the finger. Then the elbow. Then the shoulder." She gave him a sample.

"Ow! What do you want me to say?"

"Take back everything you said." Ruth twisted slightly at the waist.

"I take it back! I take it back! I didn't mean no harm!"

Ruth pinned his hand up between his shoulder blades and pushed on it while she stood. Before she let go, she said, "I'd just stay there for a while, if I were you." She released him and said, "Let's go home, Kimble."

When Kimble answered, he made sure it was loud enough to reach all the way across the marketplace.

"Yes, Sensei!"

4.

Rotten Eggs.

Sandy Williams' homestead was decent-not on the river, but on a major tributary creek-and he had a decent well, dug by him and lined with stone by his ex-wife. For all that he was a "farmer," his wife had done most of the agriculture-planting, weeding, and gathering. She had called on her husband only for the most arduous work-turning the soil in the spring and hauling water.

One of their neighbors, Ron Tingly, a shepherd with sheep and goats, said, "Most farms keep a dumb beast of burden-in their case, it's Sandy." But he did not say this where Williams could hear.

Now that Williams' wife was gone, there were only the chickens, three dozen, kept behind a coyote fence behind the house. There were only hens. One hungover morning the last rooster had crowed one too many times. That night he'd had coq au beer, but it was badly burned. He was a lousy cook.

Now he ate eggs and bartered eggs in the market. He wouldn't be able to start a garden until mid-April. The village was at 7,000 feet and the heavy frosts could run into May. There'd been snow in June, once.

When the chickens laid well, he bought liquor, but this usually resulted in him forgetting to barter for feed. Underfed hens do not lay well.

When he was sitting at home, he spent a lot of time thinking about Ruth's money.

"SENSEI."

It was a bit after midday and Kimble had just returned from the village. He'd found, to his chagrin, that Ruth expected him to get an education, so he was spending his mornings at the half-day village school.

"There's soup."

"I saw Sandy Williams again."

Ruth had been cutting reeds, for basket making. Now she put down her flint knife and looked at Kimble. "On our land?"

"No, still that place on the other side of the road. He thinks he's hiding, but he really needs to wear something less bright or hide behind something that doesn't lose its leaves in the winter."

"Hmmm." She coiled the reeds she'd cut and put them in the sink to soak.

The sink was new, just a ceramic basin with a rubber plug set in a rough wooden shelf. A plastic bucket stood on the floor below to catch the runoff. Ruth had plans to pipe water from the spring but, for now, and "in the best martial arts tradition," Kimble was hauling the water and gathering the wood.

Ruth dried her hands and reached over the window to where several wooden weapons lay across two dowels. She took down a jyo, a white-oak staff an inch in diameter and reaching from the ground to her armpit.

"Eat your soup!" she said, and left the cottage.

Kimble quickly filled his bowl, but instead of sitting by the coals of the stove, he went outside and climbed the ladder to the roof. Seated beside the gravity-feed water barrel, he ate as he watched Ruth make her way up to the road.

She came back fairly quickly.

"He was gone," she said. "I think he saw me coming."

They practiced jyo that afternoon, tskui-thrusting-and the appropriate blocks and counterstrikes. After an hour of this, she put aside her jyo and had him attack her with his staff, a process that always ended with her in possession of the jyo and him flying through the air. Fortunately, his ability to safely fall was far superior to that of Mr. Williams.

They switched and he practiced the same jyo-dori (staff taking) techniques with far less definite results.

"Never mind," said Ruth. "It will come."