Fabricated a new crank grip.
The cable itself was too corroded to trust, so she bought fifty feet of used logging cable from a neighbor.
That cost more than the winch.
Fifteen dollars.
The first loaded test happened in April.
Adah chained the winch frame to two buried timbers behind the shed.
Then she attached the cable to the front axle of an abandoned hay wagon.
She turned the crank.
Slow.
Painfully slow.
One revolution.
Two.
Three.
The cable tightened.
The wagon moved.
Adah continued.
The old machine pulled steadily.
No jerking.
No slipping.
No noise except the clicking of dry cable strands settling under tension.
She stopped cranking.
Then she released the handle.
The handle remained exactly where she left it.
The drum did not move.
Adah stared.
She put one boot against the wagon wheel and shoved backward.
Nothing.
She added weight.
Two concrete blocks.
Then four.
The winch held.
She removed the blocks and attached the cable to the International tractor.
She left the tractor in neutral.
Cranked.
The winch pulled the tractor across the dirt.
Slowly.
Adah stopped.
Released the handle.
Again, nothing moved.
She stood there with both hands on her hips.
No brake.
No pawl.
No lock.
Yet the machine held.
She returned to the workbench and sketched the gear geometry.
The worm thread angle was shallow.
Very shallow.
Maybe that was enough.
The load on the wheel could not easily rotate the worm because friction between the gear surfaces resisted reverse movement.
Self-locking.
Harold had mentioned that phrase once.
Adah searched his old manuals.
Nothing.
She drove to the town library.
Nothing useful.
Then she visited Ferd Aldis.
Ferd had repaired canal equipment for forty years before retiring.
He lived alone in a small house near the railroad tracks.
When Adah showed him a sketch of the winch, his eyebrows rose.
“Where’d you get this?”
“District yard.”
“They still had one?”
“They had one.”
“Which?”
“North Canal.”
Ferd leaned back.
“You bought Walt’s winch?”
“Walt?”
“Walt Sedge.”
“Who’s that?”
Ferd stared at her.
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
Ferd slowly smiled.
“Well.”
He poured coffee into two chipped mugs.
“Walt Sedge was the best gate tender the district ever had.”
“What happened to him?”
“Left.”
“Why?”
Ferd shrugged.
“Depends who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
“He hated the electric conversions.”
Adah frowned.
“Why?”
“Didn’t trust them.”
“Because they were electric?”
“No.”
Ferd tapped the sketch.
“Because they were fast.”
“That sounds backwards.”
“Maybe.”
He drank coffee.