The yard was fenced with crooked cottonwood poles and served as a corral. The freight horses wandered loose inside it, stripped of harness and rolling in the dust where the ground was soft. A woman stood beside the big wheel horse tugging impatiently at a check rein that had jammed itself stubbornly in the iron ring. "Good Lord, Kate," she snapped when it finally came free. "How many times must I tell you? Unhook the traces before you tie up the lines. One of these days you'll start a runaway that won't stop till it hits the Dakota line."
