Hot Foam at the Horse's Nostrils

Hot foam ran from the horse's nostrils.

Jo Dokgu pressed down on the neck of the yellow horse whose front legs had folded under it. Each breath drawn in laid its ribs bare. Behind it three carts stood in a row, halted, and the feed sack held only half a day's worth of bran left. Even with a road on the map, if the horse would not rise, the wheels would not move an inch.

"The wheels know first."

Yun Haejun approached, shaking water from his wet boots.

"The next meal for the relief station and the garrison is riding on this. We need a road that can move now."

"Who pays for the road."

"The fare will be paid."

Jo Dokgu did not smile. "Not the fare. The price of a dead horse, the cost of treating a sick one, the feed the government offices seized. And if the driver doesn't come back, that family's spring planting too."

"Right now the nation is..."

"When the nation goes hungry, do the horses eat less?"

Haejun's words trailed off. Jo Dokgu lifted the yellow horse's gum to check its color and pressed the back of his hand behind its ear to measure the heat. The driver beside him, Go Samdori, brought a water trough, but the horse would not touch it.

"This one can't go. The black mare's started coughing too, and both grays have cracked hooves. Four we can use. Only one cart moves."

"Please send even one."

"The contract first."

Jo Dokgu unwound the thick cord. The knots did not only mark road names. One large knot meant the ferry crossing, two small knots meant a place to find horse feed, a knot wound the opposite way meant no village consent, and the loosened knot at the very end marked a road closed after the last search.

Haejun looked at the cord and asked.

"Which road is it."

"That's not even the guild's to decide yet."

"Didn't you make this chart yourself?"

"Even if I tied it, every horse pulls together."

Jo Dokgu called the twelve drivers around the carts. Seven horse owners, three cart owners, two hired drivers. Some people held two roles, but the vote was one person, one ballot.

"The government office wants the road. Anyone willing to give it with no conditions?"

Not a single hand rose.

"Anyone willing to go for the fare alone?"

Go Samdori started to raise his hand, then looked at the yellow horse and lowered it. Only the young driver Bae Chunsik raised his.

"Our house's rice runs out today."

Jo Dokgu did not scold him for it. If the right to refuse transport only meant the right to starve, then the contract was a privilege for rich drivers alone.

"There has to be a deposit before it's a real vote."

Haejun took out his money pouch. It held only eight nyang in silver.

"This is all there is."

"That's not even enough to treat one horse."

"The rest, once the treasury audit is finished..."

"An audit doesn't fill a horse's belly."

Han Seorin arrived late at the gathering point. Without looking at Haejun's pouch, she opened the bran sack first.

"Is this really half a day's worth?"

Go Samdori reached his hand all the way to the bottom.

"Two bundles of hay, one and a half doe of beans. Even leaving out the sick horses, it runs out before evening."

Seorin opened her ledger.

"I'll cut one nyang from the fare already offered."

Jo Dokgu wound the cord back up.

"Then the road only goes as far as one nyang's worth."

"Instead, feed costs and death compensation will be kept separate from the fare, not deducted from it. Raise the fare and the money only goes to the driver who comes back alive. The owner of a dead horse is left holding an empty cart."

Jo Dokgu's hand stopped.

"How much."

"Feed, by actual receipt. If feed is seized by force, record two witnesses and the quantity, and half the market price is paid up front. If a horse dies, a third of the value jointly confirmed before departure is paid in advance, the rest settled against the cause after return."

"You think a third buys a new horse?"

"It can't. That's exactly why I won't mix it with the fare. Promise the full amount all at once and the silver we have now can't even send the first cart."

"When does payment come?"

"The advance, today at noon. The rest goes onto the audit ledger three days from now. If I can't pay, take it from my trading house's bonds first."

"So you're the one paying. I expected to have to ask, and you said it before I could."

Seorin did not smile. She wrote her own bonds down as collateral.

Jo Dokgu read the conditions back to the guild members. For the drivers who could not read, he pointed to each knot as he explained. The large knot was the fare, the two small knots were feed and death compensation, and the reverse knot was the right to refuse forced seizure.

Bae Chunsik asked.

"If soldiers seize the feed, are you telling us to fight them?"

"I'm not telling you to die fighting. Stop the cart and write down the witnesses' names. If you don't know the unit or the time of the ones who took it, leave it blank. Your share won't be cut just because you couldn't stop them."

The old horse owner Song Eokman objected.

"If we tie even the road knots to the ledger, next time the office will use the road without us."

"The road names don't go on it," Jo Dokgu said. "Only whether there's feed, whether the village consented, whether the wheel width fits, split three ways among three people."

"Put the three together and you get the road anyway."

"That's why after one run we swap the knots. Even I can't hold it alone."

Jo Dokgu offered a condition that cut into his own monopoly on the routes. It wasn't because he trusted the government office. It was so the guild could still close the road even if he himself was arrested or bought off.

The second vote began. Seven conditional yes, three no, two abstain. One of those who voted no owned a sick horse, and the other two feared having the route exposed.

"The no votes go into the contract too," Seorin said.

Beneath the ledger entry she wrote: "three opposed to route disclosure, two demanding full death compensation." Keep only the yes count, and the guild would split apart at the next loss.

Jo Dokgu laid out two candidate lines of knots on the ground. The first was the short road crossing the western ferry. One si to the ferry, one feed stop, village consent secured as of the day before. But if night rain raised the water past half the wheel, they would have to turn back. The second was the southern levee road. It took two sikgyeong longer and had no feed stop, but it crossed no water.

"Let's take the short road first," Bae Chunsik said. "The rice runs out today, after all."

Song Eokman pushed back.

"Who's seen the ferry water? Does yesterday's consent still hold today?"

Jo Dokgu handed a knot to each of them.

"Chunsik measures the wheel width, Eokman asks the village again. If I decide the answer myself, the vote's just decoration."

An empty test cart went out first. Only one horse was harnessed, and two drivers walked alongside. Even carrying no grain, the round trip cost half a gak and one doe of feed. Haejun pressed for speed, but Jo Dokgu would not allow loading until the test cart returned.

Half a gak later, Bae Chunsik came back soaked to the knees of his trousers.

"The ferry water's a handspan below the axle. We can cross."

Song Eokman arrived late. In his hand was a blue thread the village representative had tied.

"The village allows one grain cart only. If soldiers come along or seize feed by force, they'll close it after that."

Jo Dokgu did not attach the blue thread to the knot chart. Today's consent was not tomorrow's ownership of the road. On the contract copy he wrote: "one cart, no armed escort, feed purchase only, thread returned upon return."

Haejun said.

"Send it without an escort and it could be seized."

"Send soldiers and we lose the road first. There are two choices. Send one cart into danger, or keep all three safely parked."

"Let the drivers decide."

For the first time, Jo Dokgu looked Haejun straight in the eye. Words from a government office giving up its own power of choice were not easy to trust. He asked the three drivers separately. Go Samdori said yes, Bae Chunsik said yes, and the third driver, Im Boksun, said no.

"This cart is all I have. If it's seized, my household is finished too."

"You get the advance even if you refuse," Seorin said. "You already did the work of testing and repair."

Im Boksun stayed out of running the cart but still received the test wages. Instead the cart was switched to an old one jointly owned by the guild. Its axle was in poor shape, so the load had to be cut further.

Jo Dokgu loaded sandbags onto it. Two sacks held, and at three the wheel groaned. The left wooden peg was loose. He did not speak of a big number like sixty sacks. How many sacks the cart could bear today was something to decide by weighing the actual load at the warehouse.

"This road isn't the road that moves all the army provisions," Jo Dokgu said. "It's the road to see whether one cart comes back alive."

In the second vote, the western ferry condition passed with six votes. The southern levee road was voted down for lack of a feed stop. That a road existed on the knot chart and that it could be used today were two different facts.

Haejun did not bring up the word patriotism again.

"How much do we load onto one cart."

"The horses' condition first," Jo Dokgu cut in. "Of the four, only two can be properly paired. One cart, sixty sacks all at once, that won't happen."

"I never said we'd load sixty sacks."

"People from the government office look at a number in a ledger and think the wheel grows to match."

The drivers whittled a new peg and fit it, then tested again. Three sacks held, and at the fourth the axle groaned. Even with the contract settled, departure took another half a gak.

Seorin wrote the time down in the ledger. Half a gak of cart repair, four drivers, one wooden peg. She did not erase it as unpaid prep labor.

The first cart carried dried grain for the relief station together with horse feed. Load only rice and leave out the feed, and the cart would stop on the way back. Jo Dokgu drove a partition between the people's share and the horses' share.

"Don't turn the feed into army provisions."

Haejun asked.

"And if it's urgent?"

"If it's urgent, the guild representative and two drivers vote again. If you tear open a sack on your own, the cart turns back right there."

"Who are the signers?"

"I sign the route conditions, Samdori the horses' condition, Chunsik the right to halt forced seizure. Seorin the payment date and her own collateral."

The four of them signed in their separate boxes. There was no approval box for Haejun. All that was left to him was confirming he'd read it.

Jo Dokgu split the knot chart into three pieces. He kept the ferry and road width, Go Samdori kept the feed, and Song Eokman kept whether the village had consented. It meant handing the key to Song Eokman, the very man who had voted no.

"Why give it to me?"

"Someone has to be able to close the road too."

Song Eokman reluctantly tucked the knot into his coat.

As the cart moved, the yellow horse coughed again. Jo Dokgu counted the departures. One cart, two horses, three drivers. The two remaining carts stayed exactly where they were. A small success had not cleared the bottleneck.

Seorin did not fold the original contract but pinned it to a board. One copy for the guild, one for the labor corps, one to be sent to the telegraph bureau. On all three copies she drew lines so that a different person would sign each blank correction box.

"With only one original, people fight later over who changed it first."

Jo Dokgu said, watching the wheel ruts.

"With three copies, there are three lies too."

"Which is why we only make a correction when all three say the same thing."

The first cart turned the muddy corner and passed out of sight. Behind it remained the two halted carts and half a sack of feed. Jo Dokgu tied one empty knot to the end of the contract. A place to record the horses and drivers who did not make it back.