Simple Truth
The Sequences
Three sheep to the wolves in three weeks. I’d started losing sleep over it, lying awake and trying to hold the count in my head. Forty-three. Forty-three. But by midday the number would slip away like water through my fingers, and by dusk I’d be guessing.
The pebbles were Autrey’s idea, actually. “My mother keeps beans in a jar,” he’d said, shifting his weight on the stool beside me. “One bean out for every egg the chickens lay. She knows if my sister’s been sneaking them.”
So I filled a bucket with river stones, smooth ones that wouldn’t catch on each other. Autrey watched the first morning as I dropped them in, one by one, counting under my breath while the flock shambled past. The bucket made a satisfying weight by the time the last ewe wandered through.
Sheriff Mark showed up on the fourth day, though I didn’t see him coming until his gelding was already snorting at the fence post. He sat the horse like a man with a sore back, one hand pressed to his spine as he dismounted.
“Need a word,” he said.
I was pulling a pebble from the bucket as a sheep trotted back through the gate. Didn’t look up. “About?”
“Martha Henderson came by the office yesterday. Said you’re doing something ungodly out here.”
That made me pause. I dropped the stone back in the bucket and stood, brushing dust from my trousers. “Ungodly.”
“Her word, not mine.” Mark jerked his chin at the bucket. “What are those for?”
“Counting.”
His face did something complicated. “Martha says they’re cursed. Says you’re binding the animals with spells.”
Autrey had been leaning against the fence, picking at a splinter in the wood. Now he straightened up. “They’re just rocks, Sheriff.”
“I can see they’re rocks, boy.” Mark’s voice carried an edge. “Question is what he’s doing with them.”
The flock was still drifting back from the hills, their bells clanking in that half-musical way that meant evening. I sat back down on my stool. “I put one in when a sheep goes out. Take one out when it comes back. If there’s stones left at the end of the day, something’s still out there.”
“And that’s not witchcraft?”
“That’s arithmetic.”
Mark made a sound in his throat. “Martha says—”
“Martha Henderson thinks the crows are spying on her.” I pulled another pebble as a ram nosed through the gate. “Last month she told you the moon was following her home.”
That got a twitch at the corner of his mouth, quickly suppressed. He squatted beside the bucket and peered inside like it might bite him. “So you just... drop them in?”
“And take them out again. Matching.” I demonstrated with the next sheep, stone clinking against stone. “Morning count, evening count. Difference tells me what I need to know.”
Mark straightened, pressing his hand to his back again. “How many should there be?”
“Forty-three total. Been forty-three since spring.”
“And how many came back?”
I shook the bucket gently. The rattle sounded wrong, too light. “Forty-two.”
Autrey pushed off the fence and walked over, frowning. “You sure?”
“Count them yourself if you want.”
The boy turned to face the pasture, pointing at clusters of sheep and mouthing numbers. Mark watched him, then turned back to me. “One missing doesn’t mean your system works. Could mean you dropped an extra stone this morning. Could mean you miscounted.”
“Could mean that.”
“Could mean you’re full of hogwash and I should confiscate these before Martha gets the whole town worked up.”
I shrugged. “Stone’s either in the bucket or it isn’t. Sheep’s either in the field or it isn’t. You’re welcome to check.”
“Check where?”
“North ridge, probably. Creek up there’s got good grass. They wander that direction when I’m not watching close.”
Mark looked at the ridge, then at the bucket, then at me. His jaw worked like he was chewing something tough. “You’re telling me to ride up there based on a pebble in a bucket.”
“I’m telling you there’s a sheep up there. Bucket’s just how I know.”
“This is foolish.”
“Might be.”
He stared at me for a long moment. Then he swung back onto his horse with a grunt and held a hand down to Autrey. “Come on, boy. Let’s see if this snake oil has any bite to it.”
They rode out, Mark’s gelding picking its way through the scrub brush toward the hills. I watched until they disappeared over the first rise, then went back to counting. The flock kept returning in twos and threes, ambling through the gate with their heads down, grass still stuck to their muzzles.
The sun had dropped another hand’s width by the time I heard the hoofbeats coming back. Mark appeared first, Autrey behind him, and between them a single sheep that looked irritated at being driven anywhere it hadn’t decided to go. The animal bleated and tried to veer off toward the flock, but Autrey kept it moving toward the gate.
I pulled the last pebble from the bucket and set it on the ground beside my stool. The bucket sat empty.
Mark dismounted slower this time, like his back had gotten worse on the ride. He stood there holding his reins, looking at the bucket, looking at the sheep now rejoining the flock.
“You saw it leave,” he said finally. “That’s how you knew.”
“Didn’t see it leave. I was watching the gate.”
“Someone told you.”
“Nobody told me anything.”
His hand moved toward the bucket, stopped, moved again. He crouched and picked up the pebble I’d set aside, turning it over in his palm. “This some kind of trick?”
“No trick. Just correspondence.”
“Correspondence.”
“One thing matches another thing. Sheep to stone. If the counts don’t match, something’s wrong.”
Autrey slid down from the horse, wincing as his boots hit the ground. “It’s like at the mercantile. Three coins for three candles. You hand over three coins, you better get three candles back. If the man only gives you two, you’ve still got a coin and he owes you.”
Mark kept turning the pebble in his fingers. “But this isn’t money.”
“Same principle,” I said. “Something stands in for something else. Makes it easier to keep track.”
“And you didn’t... do anything to them? These stones?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Pray over them? Moon water? Whatever it is people do.”
“I picked them out of the creek. That’s all.”
He was quiet for a while, watching the flock settle in for the night. The bells had gone silent. A few sheep were already lying down, their breath making small clouds in the cooling air.
“How’d you know it would work?” Mark asked.
“Tried it. Kept trying it. Worked every time.”
“But how do you know?”
I looked at him. “Same way you know your horse is going to take you home. You get on, you ride, it works. Do it enough times, you stop wondering.”
Mark closed his fist around the pebble. Opened it. Closed it again. Then he slipped it into his vest pocket and picked up the bucket, examining the bottom like there might be holes he’d missed. “No magic,” he said quietly, more to himself than to us.
“No magic.”
He set the bucket down and took his reins. Mounted up without a word. Turned his horse toward town.
That’s when one of the sheep near the fence lifted its head. It was a young ewe, white-faced, with a torn ear from some old injury. She watched Mark for a moment, chewing slowly. Then she stopped chewing and started walking, breaking away from the flock, her hooves clopping on the hard-packed road behind the gelding.
Autrey took a step forward. “Should I—”
I put a hand on his shoulder. Shook my head.
Mark was thirty yards down the road before he noticed. He turned in his saddle, saw the sheep, and reined up. The ewe stopped too, maybe ten feet behind him, and stood there with that blank sheep expression, waiting.
Mark’s hand went to his vest pocket. Stayed there.
After a moment, he turned back around and kept riding.
The sheep followed.