She built up the fire first, low and steady, with mesquite.
She found a clean pint jar in the chuck box and crumbled the dry flakes into it. A spoonful of flour. A spoonful of warm water from the kettle. She stirred it with a wooden spoon and set it close to the fire, but not too close, and wrapped a dish towel around it.
Then she sat down on the bucket beside it and waited.
It was the longest night of her life.
At one o'clock, she fed it. A spoonful of flour. A spoonful of water.
Nothing. It sat in the jar like gray wallpaper paste.
At three o'clock, she fed it again.
Nothing.
The fire burned down. The camp was asleep. The stars were enormous over the plains. A coyote yipped somewhere off in the dark. Lolo was cold to her bones, and her back hurt, and she was seventy-five years old.
At three-thirty, she heard footsteps.
She looked up.
Ike Bramlett was standing at the edge of her firelight in a sheepskin coat with a coffeepot in one hand and two tin cups in the other.
"Saw your fire," he said. "Figured you weren't sleeping."
Lolo did not answer.
Ike came over slowly and sat down on the other bucket, across the fire from her. He poured two cups of coffee and handed her one. He looked at the pint jar wrapped in the towel.
"Dried starter," he said.
"From 1982," Lolo said.
Ike let out a low whistle. "Will it come back?"
"I don't know," Lolo said. "It's always come back before. But I never needed it in twelve hours."
Ike looked at the jar for a long time.
"My granddaddy used to tell about the cooks on the drives," he said. "How on cold nights, they'd sleep with the starter crock inside their bedroll. Against their belly. To keep it warm."
"I know it," Lolo said.
"Fire's too hot or too cold," Ike said. "Belly's just right." He nodded at the jar. "Give it here."
Lolo stared at him.
"Ike."
"I didn't salt your starter, Lolo," he said quietly. "I've wanted to beat you for forty years. But not like that. Never like that." He held out his big hand. "Give it here. You get some sleep. I'll feed it at five."
She did not sleep. But she let him take it.
Ike Bramlett, seventy-nine years old, with cancer, sat up the rest of the night on an overturned bucket by Lolo Garza's fire, with a pint jar of her great-grandmother's starter buttoned inside his sheepskin coat, against his belly.
At five o'clock, he fed it. A spoonful of flour, a spoonful of water. He buttoned it back in.
At seven o'clock, when the sky was going pink in the east, he unbuttoned his coat and held the jar up to the light.
There were bubbles.
Tiny ones. A few. Rising slowly through the gray paste.
Lolo, on the other bucket, put her hand over her mouth.
"Well," Ike said. "Look who woke up."
She fed it twice more, at seven and at nine, and it doubled in the jar, and smelled sour and alive.
At ten-thirty, she mixed her biscuit dough. At eleven-fifteen, she put the biscuits in the Dutch oven, with coals underneath and coals on the lid.
At noon, she carried them to the judges' table.
They were not her best biscuits. She knew that. The starter was young, and tired, and so was she. They were a little flat. A little pale on top.
But they tasted like a hundred and forty years.
The awards were at three o'clock, in the shade of the old ranch barn.
Lolo won the bread category. Her tenth.
When they called her name, she did not go up right away. She looked across the crowd to the Bramlett wagon, where Ike was sitting in a folding chair in his sheepskin coat, too tired to stand, with his grandson beside him.
His grandson was sixteen. A tall, skinny, quiet boy named Garrett, who had helped Ike on the wagon all summer.
When Lolo's name was called, Garrett Bramlett got up out of his chair and walked away from the crowd. Fast. Toward the parking area.
Lolo watched him go.
Then she understood.
She found him behind the barn, sitting on the bumper of his grandfather's pickup, with his face in his hands.
She sat down beside him. It took her a while. Her knees had not forgiven her for the night on the bucket.
"Garrett," she said.
He did not look up.
"It was me," he said. His voice was cracking. "I did it. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Mrs. Garza."
"I know, mijo."
"Grandpa's dying," Garrett said. "He's wanted to beat you in bread his whole life. Forty years. He talks about it every night on the drive home. He said this was his last chance." He wiped his face with his sleeve. "I thought if you didn't have your starter, he'd finally win. Just once. Before he..." He could not finish. "And then he sat up all night with it in his coat. To save it. For you."
He looked up at her for the first time. His eyes were red.
"He doesn't know," he said. "Please don't tell him."
Lolo looked at the boy for a long time.
Then she looked out across the plains at the enormous sky.
"Garrett," she said. "Years ago, I burned a whole batch of beans at my first cook-off and blamed it on my brother. My mother made me wash every pot on the wagon for a year." She paused. "You know what that taught me?"
He shook his head.
"How to wash a pot," she said. "And how to say I'm sorry."
She stood up, slowly, with one hand on the truck.
"You're going to tell him," she said. "Tonight. On the drive home. He deserves to hear it from you. Not from me." She looked at the boy. "And next September, you're going to wash every pot on my wagon at Cimarron Crossing."
Garrett stared at her.
"That's all?" he said.
"That's plenty," Lolo said. "My pots are very dirty."
Before the Bramletts left that evening, Lolo walked over to their wagon.
Ike was loading his Dutch ovens into the pickup, slowly. He saw her coming and straightened up.
"Congratulations, Lolo," he said. "Ten. They ought to name the ribbon after you."
Lolo did not say anything. She took the small dented tobacco tin out of her apron pocket and held it out to him.
Inside, on a square of cheesecloth, were a few pale, brittle flakes.
"I dried it this afternoon," she said. "From this morning's starter. The one you kept warm all night."
Ike looked at the tin in his big hand.
"Lolo," he said. "That's your family's starter. A hundred and forty years."
"It's yours too now," Lolo said. "You saved it." She closed his fingers around the tin. "Now you've got something to pass down."
Ike Bramlett looked at the tin for a long time. Then he looked over at his grandson, standing by the truck, very pale, waiting to tell him something on the long drive home.
He put the tin in his shirt pocket and buttoned it.