Near the end of the warm season, the property offered one more small test. Nora had brought the goats into the last unopened browse lane on their current plan, a stretch that curved beyond the repaired access route and along the edge of the next suspected orchard row. The vegetation was dense but no longer frightening in the way it had been on the day of the purchase. She knew how to check the ground before the netting went up, how to move the herd before the soft leaves vanished, and how to protect any trunk that appeared through the canes.
Tess arrived with a fresh set of numbered tags. She had made them from durable material after discovering that rain had faded some of their earlier pencil marks. The tags lay in a small box beside the ledger, ready for trees that might or might not exist. She did not assign them numbers until there was something to record.
The goats entered the lane just after sunrise. Hazel moved toward the lower blackberry leaves. Mercy, now completely recovered from the wire cut that had nearly ended Nora's first grazing attempt, worked along the fence with careful appetite. Clover and two younger goats went straight to a mass of vines rising above the surrounding brush.
They stood upright, stretched their necks, and pulled at the green growth. The scene was so familiar that Nora felt a small tightening in her chest before she could name why. It reminded her of the fourth section of that first red-ribbon lane, the day she noticed the animals reaching toward a shape she had mistaken for an overgrown privet.
"Look at them," Tess said. "Same thing again."
"Don't decide what it is yet," Nora replied.
"I wasn't going to."
But they both stepped closer.
Clover caught a vine and drew backward. A layer of dead rose cane shifted against the weight of her pull, revealing a narrow strip of gray bark beneath it. Nora called the goats away before they could reach the exposed trunk, then checked the fence line and moved the herd into the adjoining section where safe browse remained. Rook followed at her heel, pausing long enough to sniff the base of the hidden tree before turning toward Nora again.
There would be work to do before they could identify the trunk properly. The vines would have to be cut in stages, the bark protected, and the position measured against the unfinished row. Wade might recognize the species and graft union at once, or he might need to return after more of the tree was visible. Tess would mark the location, and Nora would build another guard if the trunk proved worth protecting.
Beyond the new opening, the rest of the lane remained hidden. No one could say whether it held more grafted pecans, dead stumps, buried pipe, or nothing but thorny brush. The uncertainty no longer felt like an insult. It was the condition under which Nora had learned to work.
Later that morning, while Tess measured the exposed patch of bark, Rook stopped at another older tree in a row they had already opened. The dog circled once and sat. Nora approached with the notebook but did not kneel immediately. She let Tess read the number, recorded the time, and checked that Mira's sampling guidelines were in the field bag.