ON A WINDY MORNING, RAM WATCHED AS A LARGE WAGON PULLED BY A team of four mules stopped at the Eggenberger house. Two men knocked on the door; four more waited near the wagon. He had seen Karak leave the house after breakfast and knew Rosa was inside with the children. He walked toward it, feeling protective. As the men stood at the door, she opened it a crack and peeked out. Ram watched as the men entered. Surely she would not have let them in willingly.

“Hello! Hello!” Ram yelled, running toward the house. By the time he had reached the walk, the men had lumbered back outside, two of them hoisting between them the refrigerator, four others rolling the piano along.

“What are you doing here?” Ram asked.

The men barely looked up as he approached. “You Karak Singh?” the largest of them asked. He spat a stream of tobacco into the dirt.

“No.” Ram hesitated. Perhaps he should have said yes.

“Don’t know why it’s your business.”

Ram sped through the open door and found Rosa collapsed in a chair. “What happened?” he asked.

Tears streamed silently down her face. She held a handkerchief in both hands, wringing it, pulling it apart with trembling fingers.

“¿Qué pasó?” he asked more gently, kneeling so he could face her. From the bedroom doorway, Federico stared at them with unblinking eyes. In the back, one of the twins was wailing.

“Karak couldn’t pay back the loan.”

“What loan? He bought from Sears with cash,” he said.

“I do not know! I do not know!” she said in Spanish. “There is something he could not pay back. I don’t know!”

The statement was a jolt, a jumble of information. Then Karak’s recent behavior suddenly fell into place. He had sold farm implements back to Hanson’s. He had wanted to hire a family of workers that included eight adults and seven children, but Ram had refused. They may have had children working for them in Punjab, Ram said, but he would not do it here. And what if the sheriff discovered them?

“What if?! What if?!” Karak had yelled, his eyes bulging. “You are talking what-if and we are facing disaster!” He had sped off in his car, leaving Ram to negotiate with the workers alone.

Ram looked now at Rosa, holding her son tightly against her. “Where is Karak?” he asked in Spanish. Federico had started to cry too, and Rosa let his tears fall; the handkerchief remained wrapped around her hand.

She shook her head, her features contorted. “He left early this morning. He never tells me where he is going.”

Might he be at the bank, Ram wondered, asking Jasper Davis for help? But he could be anywhere . . . at the ginners, at the Consolidated Fruit offices . . . even Mexicali. His marriage had not stopped him from going there. Had he known these men were coming today? Had he told Rosa?