1·01Which One Do You BelieveChapter I · The LandingVal had her hood back despite the weather, which she did when she wanted to see, and the rain had got into the pale of her hair and darkened it at the temples where it was always darker anyway.A1MarthaChapter I · The LandingVal has counted a county marriage register and come back with two names. Kyra objects on principle and is told the objection is the point.B1Nobody Had a Second to Spend on ThemChapter I · The LandingThe first town in two hundred and forty-one years whose indifference is structural rather than temporary. A freighter’s team is in the mud to the hocks and the man is standing in it with his hand flat on the ox’s neck, saying something low and continuous.B2You Keep the Two Fingers or You Keep the HandChapter I · The LandingShe asks the man and not the owner, and the owner does not notice. Everything she does for the rest of the book runs on that.2·01A Place Whose Entire Purpose is to Be LeftChapter I · The LandingHalfway up there is a place where the mud has beaten the road entirely and a freighter's team has gone in to the hocks.
A2Eleven MinutesChapter II · OxenVal came down to watch Kyra judge mules exactly once and then did not come again, because it turned out to be difficult to watch.2·02Of Such Extraordinary CharacterChapter II · OxenShe had understood it on the step. What she did in the two days was the arithmetic, four times, in four different ways, because the first three came out the same and she did not want them.2·03A Mule Worth Twenty DollarsChapter II · OxenThey were not emigrants in the way the people going to Oregon had been emigrants, because emigrants brought their mothers. These men brought pistols and pans and a great deal of confidence.
1·02Her Back Against the DoorChapter III · The WellNo body in the frame, and there will not be one anywhere in this file.A3The Tar SmokeChapter III · The WellFour out of forty-one. Val has told Kyra the number and asked her not to make her feel better about it tonight.B3Nineteen of Twenty-TwoChapter III · The WellTwenty-two houses, nine of them have lost somebody, thirteen have not, and the thing they have in common is a well. Five years before Broad Street, and nobody believes her.2·04It Came with ThemChapter III · The WellThere was a great deal of tar burned. There was a great deal of talk about the camps. And both of them went on drinking out of the same creek.
1·03A Room That RunsChapter IV · Nothing Says ItThe first object either of them has owned outright since a house in Trieste with a walnut table in it.1·04Shes Got Him Round Her NeckChapter IV · Nothing Says ItThe whole of the marks begins here, with a brooch made of a dead husband's hair.A4A Little WindowChapter IV · Nothing Says ItA widow on the lower cross street wears her husband’s hair woven flat under glass. Kyra cannot leave it alone for a week, and what she finally says is that they have four hundred years of it and not one object on this planet that says so.A5A WantChapter IV · Nothing Says ItVal brings up the sailors two days later, out of nowhere, in the middle of doing something else — which is how she introduces subjects she has been carrying around. I do not have a reason. I have a want.A6Forty Dollars of New CanvasChapter IV · Nothing Says ItShe decided at four in the afternoon with a flour sack in her hands and said nothing for five hours. Kyra knew by about seven and never says so.v2A6Forty Dollars of New CanvasChapter IV · Nothing Says ItShe decided at four in the afternoon with a flour sack in her hands and said nothing for five hours. Kyra knew by about seven and never says so.
B4The ArticlesChapter V · ArticlesFourteen articles read out in the wind, and then the ledger goes round the circle. Val signs both names herself so that they match, which is a security decision and the smallest tender thing in the chapter.2·05Wheres Your ManChapter V · ArticlesI'll tell you what I'm weighing, and then you can tell me I'm wrong.
B5The Order of MarchChapter VI · The RutsA town that takes itself apart every morning and builds itself again every night. The wagon at the tail spends the whole day inside a moving wall of grit, which is why the order is drawn by lot and is the most sacred of the fourteen articles.B6Eleven Pages in the Back of the BookChapter VI · The RutsChilton counts the graves because he is a clerk and cannot help it, in the back of the same ledger that has the articles in the front. He reads the total out at the fire, pleased with himself, and stops halfway through when he sees Rachel Vance’s face.2·06A Town That Took Itself ApartChapter VI · The RutsVal liked it. She was extremely careful not to say so.2·07FeetChapter VI · The RutsSunburn on the backs of hands and the tops of ears. Teeth. Backache. Rash from the wool.
1·05Take the Small KettleChapter VII · SaltShe does not argue. She hands her a kettle. Nothing kept, working in a wagon camp at dusk.1·06Eleven HoursChapter VII · SaltNo contact, no body, and the whole weight of it is a woman walking along a road carrying a kettle.B7Three OrdersChapter VII · SaltI want three orders from you. I do not want them from me. Nobody in this company is going to do a hard thing every day for six weeks because a woman in the fourth wagon asked them to.
A7Two Hours on a BoxChapter VIII · What It TakesFourteen names in a ruled ledger in her own hand, seventy-four years after promising herself she would never keep such a list again. Kyra comes in, does not touch her, and sits down on a box opposite, close enough to be reached.B8A Spoon and a Mouthful and a WaitChapter VIII · What It TakesNot the horror of it — the flat unglamorous labor. A spoon, and a mouthful, and a wait, hour after hour, with her hand under a boy’s head and her face doing nothing at all, and every twenty minutes the two fingers at the wrist.2·08Four at OnceChapter VIII · What It TakesNo body in the frame. Four wagons with lamps lit in them, and one woman standing in the middle of a corral choosing.2·09Fourteen Graves Behind ThemChapter VIII · What It TakesRendered as ground. Fourteen in Val's own hand in a ledger four hundred miles back.
B9What They Could Not CarryChapter IX · The FortFour hundred miles had taught everybody. Horace Deem has the walnut press carried out and set down in the sage with its brasses still bright, and Sophia says they will write and tell them it is on the Laramie River, and that it will be a better story than the house was.B10The Court of the Old AdobeChapter IX · The FortKyra cannot follow a word of it. What she can read is the shape: the trader talking fast and the captain talking over him, and four men getting steadily less angry while the trader gets steadily less comfortable, and none of the three white men in that court having the first idea they are being handled.2·10Square and YellowChapter IX · The FortA lieutenant of twenty-four sent out here from a place with trees in it, with the expression of a man doing arithmetic about how long four years is.2·11Six CookstovesChapter IX · The FortFour hundred miles had taught everybody what they could not carry.
2·13This is MaudChapter X · Three NamesShe is not a guide and will not be called one. She is an interpreter, hired for twelve dollars, half in advance, with her own animal and her own food.
2·17Sixty Lodges BeforeChapter XI · The CampsIt was six miles, and it was the last hour of that whole summer in which Kyra did not know something.2·18Six MinutesChapter XI · The CampsKyra had watched Val Sorin talk her way through a blood court in Trieste and had never seen her do anything as good as that. Render the waiting, not the sickness. No bodies, no lodge interiors, nobody visibly ill.2·20It Got Here on WheelsChapter XI · The CampsPryce let the silence sit for a moment and then said that the company would be laying over a day at the crossing regardless, on account of the stock, and that what any person did with that day was that person's business and no one else's, and would somebody put the coffee on.
1·07Theyre Saying I Came Past HereChapter XII · The MarksThey had discussed it that morning in about six words, and the six words had been Kyra saying no and Val saying no.1·08An Hour on Her Own ForearmChapter XII · The MarksNo contact. Three needles bound to a splinter of bone, soot from the underside of a kettle, and a woman practicing on herself until the line is right.A8Three Needles and a Splinter of BoneChapter XII · The MarksVal practices on rawhide for two hours after the teaching is done, and then on the back of her own left forearm, low down, until the little line comes out even. Kyra sits and watches her do it and does not say the obvious thing.1·09A RingChapter XII · The MarksShe had put her hands inside people for two and a half centuries in order to keep them alive, and this was the first time in her life she had made a wound in someone on purpose and for no reason at all except that both of them wanted it there.1·10Soot Along Her CheekboneChapter XII · The MarksThe best face in the book. Hers took longer, because Kyra was not steady and knew it, and stopped twice, and swore in Sethal, which she had not done in about sixty years.1·11A Ring with a Flat BitChapter XII · The MarksAfterward they lay in the wagon in the dark and did not touch either of the marks and were entirely aware of both of them.1·12A Small Pale CountryChapter XII · The MarksHaving to be silent made her say more rather than less , close in, into the hair behind Kyra's ear, every plain thing she had been carrying since a room above a harness maker's in March.B11Four Thousand NamesChapter XII · The MarksThey came past here. Val and Kyra do not write anything, and Kyra stands at the bottom of it and finds out that she minds.2·15Three NeedlesChapter XII · The MarksYou do not stab; you dip and tap, and the tapping is a rhythm, and the rhythm is the skill. I will show you how. I will not do it. It is not mine to put on you.2·16So That I Am KnownChapter XII · The MarksShe says it the way a person says a thing that is simply true and is not being offered as a curiosity. Behind them the rock stands black against a sky with the great pale road running across the top of it.
1·13It is Snow That Has Made a DecisionChapter XIII · The SweetwaterNo contact. A marshy channel four feet wide running west, and a woman looking at the back of somebody's head instead.B12The Little SandyChapter XIII · The SweetwaterShe gives them the third name once, at the speed she would have said it to her own people, and does not repeat it or slow it down. Then she turns the mule and says, over her shoulder, without any particular emphasis, the thing nobody has ever said to them in any language.
A9Palm Up on the GrassChapter XV · Ground Nobody WantsVal lays out everything it costs and then refuses to decide, because Kyra is the one who walks into a place and knows what it is. I can tell you what everything costs. I cannot tell you what it is worth.1·14Ridge After RidgeChapter XV · Ground Nobody WantsVal stood on the burn with her hand up against the light and did not say anything for about a minute and a half.2·25It Dont Look itChapter XV · Ground Nobody WantsHe was right and the map was wrong and everything anybody had told them was wrong in the same direction.2·26World with a CeilingChapter XV · Ground Nobody WantsThere was no horizon. A green half-light and a great deal of water in the air that was not rain, and moss hanging off everything in sheets.
B13The Barn on the FourthChapter XVII · Both of ThemGettysburg in a two-day-old paper, and the room sorting itself into halves in ten minutes while the women in the middle keep anything from happening. Val has been watching the door for some time before Kyra gets there.
A10A Different OceanChapter XVIII · A Different OceanA hundred and eighty years after Val said a thing on a hill above Trieste that she had no information for. They are looking at it out of a different ocean entirely and it is somewhere else in the sky.1·16Say the Actual SentenceChapter XVIII · A Different OceanSix months and eleven days of failing to say so.
B14A Hundred and Ten Feet of ItChapter XX · The SlopeIt knew her. Warm under her palms in about four seconds, and then the whole swell going transparent in a single slow stroke from the top down, like frost going off a window.2·28Theres a TariffChapter XX · The SlopeThey went up at four the next morning, in the dark, to avoid exactly that.
A11One BenchChapter XXI · The HookVal moves the bench a foot and a half out from the wall, to where it must have stood when the room was smaller, and Kyra has worked out why before her hands are on it. Two hundred and sixty-three years after four nights back to back because there was one bench.1·17The HookChapter XXI · The HookNo contact. The hut has been rebuilt at least twice and is unmistakably and in every particular the same building.B15Four Words in the AshChapter XXI · The HookIn 1608 Kyra scuffed the ash flat until Val’s columns of figures were gone, so that nothing of theirs stayed in the room. Two hundred and sixty-three years later Val writes four words in it with one finger and does not scuff them out. The next fire will take them.
A12The PorchChapter XXIII · The RoofKyra has just said why she has been asking for a hundred and eighty-one years, and Val has answered it with a promise about a room with the door open on a world four hundred years away. Then Kyra asks her to say it here instead, on a porch, to her.1·18Whoevers HereChapter XXIII · The RoofThe best image in the book, and it is two women on a roof. Kyra's hair up off her neck and pinned anyhow and losing the argument, and where the July sun got into the loose of it at the temple it went the color of wet copper against the cedar.
1·19Both Hands on the Edge of itChapter XXIV · A Name in the PaperNo contact. The dullest thing imaginable: a reprinted extract listing persons employed at a Dakota agency with their positions and their pay. Farmer. Blacksmith. Clerk. Physician. Two laborers. Interpreter.1·20And Then We Go and Read the PaperChapter XXIV · A Name in the PaperThe closing image. A smudge the size of a thumbprint at arm's length, and a woman who wants, out of the whole world, to read a thing in the week it was printed.2·29The BlazesChapter XXIV · A Name in the PaperNinety-four. Four more summers.2·30InterpreterChapter XXIV · A Name in the PaperForty years, and she is in a four-day-old Portland paper at the bottom of a column. The name is never legible.
THE MARKSStudies & Variants
Alternates, studies and loose plates.
2·12Printing Press2·14All of it Not Useful2·19Take the SaltAlt2·21Nothing Whatever Happened2·22Shortening for Two Days2·23Kantawin2·24Hat in His Hand2·27Only Sailors
