Halden was the first to speak, and he spoke the way he always spoke when he wanted a matter closed without appearing to close it: warmly, and with a compliment that left no room for argument.
"That is very thorough, Miss Ivers," he said. "Very thorough indeed. You have kept a careful record, and the valley is fortunate to have a schoolteacher who takes such an interest in our affairs. But water is not arithmetic, Miss Ivers. Water is a thing a man learns by working it, year after year, with his hands in the ditch. The schedule we use is the schedule that has fed this valley for twenty years. It is not perfect — no schedule made by men is perfect — but it is proven, and I do not think this association is prepared to set aside twenty years of proven practice on the strength of figures in a school notebook, however carefully they are kept."
There was a murmur in the room then, not a laugh — Selma would remember that afterward, and be grateful for it, because it was not mockery, only agreement, the sound of men settling back into a decision they had already made. One rancher from the upper valley said that his father had flooded and his grandfather had flooded, and the valley had not starved yet. Another said that measuring every turn would take time the valley did not have in planting season. A third, a smallholder from the middle ditch, said nothing at all, but he looked at his boots, and Selma understood that he agreed with her and would not say so in front of Halden.
Halden rapped the table again, gently, and said, "We thank Miss Ivers for her figures. The schedule stands as announced. Upper turns begin Monday. We will meet again at midsummer to review, as always."
And that was that. The men rose, and put on their hats, and talked about the weather and the price of seed as they filed out, and the meeting was over, and the schedule that had favored the upper ranches for twenty years would favor them for another season, and Selma stood beside the teacher's table with her notebooks in her arms, feeling the peculiar hollow disappointment of a person who has said a true thing clearly and watched it be set aside, politely, like a dish no one wanted at a table full of food.
She did not cry. She had not cried in front of anyone since she was a girl, and she was not about to begin in a schoolhouse full of departing ranchers. She stacked her notebooks, tied them with the string she kept for that purpose, and began to wipe the slates, because there was always work to be done, and work was a better answer to disappointment than anything else she knew.
It was Eben Yates who stayed behind. He had waited until the room was empty, until the last boot had sounded on the step outside, and then he came forward, his hat in his hands, and stood before her desk the way a man stands before a person he respects and does not quite know how to address.
"Miss Ivers," he said, and then he stopped, and looked at the notebooks, and started again. "Miss Ivers, I keep a journal of my orchard. Ten years of it. Which trees bore, and which ones failed, and how much water each row got, as near as I could judge it. I never showed it to anyone, because a journal is a private thing, and I did not think anyone would care to see it."
He paused, and she waited, because she had learned, teaching children, that silence is often the best encouragement.
"Your figures for 1882," he said, "about the lower ditch waiting eleven days, and the blossom lost — my journal says the same thing. Not near the same thing. The same thing. My trees on the lower rows lost a third of their blossom that spring, and I wrote it down, and I never knew why, except that the water came late. And your figures for 1884, about the ditch running dry in May — my journal says I watered by hand for six days, carrying buckets from the creek, and my back still remembers it."
He looked at her then, directly, and his face was plain and serious, the face of a man who does not give praise lightly.