After a breathless and dangerous dash down the embankment, the three girls stood in the bed of the Santa Cruz River. Their frightening experiences that night had convinced them not to linger in any more dark places. They set the pails on the sand. Quickly slipping on gloves, they lifted the remaining toads out of their pails and left them in a low spot under a bush.
“Listen, it’s the end of the road; we’ve got to dump you here,” said Stacie, talking to the toads for the first time.
“I agree,” said Tiffany.
“Goodbye, guys,” said Yadira, crying a little. She used the pail edge to scoop some of the sand near them until it felt moist. “I guess they’ll dig in there somehow,” she added lamely.
The desert’s benign stars twinkled down on them. A thin slice of moon had appeared in the eastern sky. In the slight moonlight, the barest suggestion of the mountains formed dark triangles in the sky and the sand of the river bed showed shadowy dimples out ahead. It was almost like a rippling sea, a sea of destiny.
“I almost hate to get rid of them,” said Stacie.
“Yeah, poor guys, and girls,” added Tiffany.
“We saved these dudes. We have to be proud of ourselves. We saved these little guys from imprisonment and death,” said Yadira.
“It was horrible doing all this,” Tiffany said.
“That caca boy,” said Stacie.
“Wasn’t he horrible?” said Yadira.
“These toads will come out again with the rains,” said Stacie.
“And we’ll be gone. We’ll never be here again. Until the rains, guys,” said Yadira sadly to the toads.
“Just hang out where you want to,” said Tiffany, talking to the toads too. “Man, those were some ugly toads,” she said to her friends.
They hugged each other and called Itzel who said the wall holes were finished, but something was terribly wrong with the shed in the backyard.
Yadira and Stacie pretended not to know anything about it having a lean.