The vote was taken the way the association had always taken its votes: by name, aloud, each man standing to say his word, so that no one could hide behind a show of hands. Alder called the roll from the association book, and one by one the men of Cedar Valley stood.
Eben Yates stood first, because he was nearest the front, and he said, "Aye," in a voice that did not waver, and he sat down with his hands folded again, and Selma thought she had never heard a single word carry so much weight.
The names went on. Some men said aye quickly, the way men do when they have already decided and are only waiting for permission to have decided. Some said nay slowly, looking at Halden as they said it, the way men do when they are loyal to a man even when they are not sure he is right. Some hesitated, and looked at the floor, and looked at Ketchum's report lying on the table, and then said their word, and sat down quickly, as if the saying of it had cost them something.
Rolf Halden's name was called near the end. He stood, and the room went very still, because everyone in it knew what it cost a son to stand against his father in public, and everyone in it knew that Rolf had already paid that price once, at the meeting where he had told the association that he had watered his own rows by Selma's rotation and watched them thrive. He did not look at his father. He looked at Selma, and then at the floor, and he said, "Aye," clearly, and sat down, and Lars Halden did not turn his head, but Selma saw his jaw tighten, and she thought that there are some kinds of courage that do not look like courage at all, but like a young man sitting down again with his hat in his hands and his eyes on the floor.
When the last name was called, Alder counted in silence, his pencil moving down the page, and then he looked up and said, in his thin, sewing voice, "Twenty-one ayes. Nineteen nays. The motion carries."
For a moment, nobody moved. Twenty-one to nineteen. Two votes. Selma felt the numbers settle in her chest like stones dropped into still water, and she thought of all the mornings she had stood at the gauge stake with her notebook, and all the evenings she had written the creek's level by lamplight while the valley went about its business, and she thought that two votes was a very small margin for so large a change, and also that two votes was enough, because the association's way had always been that enough was enough.
Then the room broke into sound — not cheering, exactly, because Cedar Valley men did not cheer over water the way other men cheered over races, but a low, relieved murmur, and the scraping of benches, and Eben's hand finding her shoulder for a moment, heavy and warm, and Ketchum nodding at her from across the room, and Rolf Halden standing and walking out into the light without looking back, and Lars Halden still sitting at the front, his hands flat on the table, looking at nothing.
Selma went to him, because it seemed to her that someone should, and because she had learned, over a summer of fighting him, that a man who loses fairly deserves to be looked in the eye by the person who beat him.
"Mr. Halden," she said quietly, so that only he could hear, "the schedule still needs a commissioner to keep it honest. I don't know how to run a ditch association. I only know how to measure one."
He looked up at her, and his eyes were tired, and for a moment she saw not the commissioner but the man who had dug ditches with his father and who believed, honestly, that he had been protecting the valley by holding to the old way.
"You'll have your schedule, Miss Ivers," he said. "The association voted it. I'll see it kept. That's my office, and I won't break my office over a lost vote." He paused, and then he added, in a lower voice, "But if it fails in the dry weeks, you'll hear from me. And if it holds —" He stopped, and he did not finish, and Selma did not press him, because an unfinished sentence from Lars Halden was worth more than a finished promise from most men.