Dust girl

14

It probably took more than two minutes to get me completely turned around, but not much. Shadows, rail lines, and looming train cars knotted up my sense of direction. Then the fear carried it so far off, I couldn’t have told you which way was up if you’d pointed at the sky. The moon hung overhead, bloated and bloody red from the dust, with a white ring round it. A dog barked somewhere behind the train cars.

I had to calm down and get my bearings. I made myself stop and turn in a slow circle, looking at the telegraph poles, the darkened signal lights, the sheds, anything that I might be able to use as a landmark.

As I turned past the nearest shack, movement caught my eye. A thin man’s shape ducked farther into the shadows. I hurried toward it. Maybe it was Jack, or the hawk-nosed man. It didn’t matter as long as they knew where they were going…

Hands yanked me backward. I started to scream, but a hat was stuffed into my mouth.

“Shhhhhh!” ordered Jack.

“What’s going on?” I demanded against his cap, which, I’ve got to say, tasted awful. Jack pointed into the shed.

It wasn’t just one man moving in there. It was a whole crowd of them. I shook myself free from Jack and his hat and crept up to the shed door, crouching low. Jack was right at my shoulder.

Bull Morgan stood in front of maybe two dozen men. Every last one of them carried some kind of weapon. Some had clubs made of shovel ends or ax handles. Many had shotguns.

This wasn’t just a crowd. Bull Morgan had put together a vigilance committee.

One man, the one I’d seen moving, slipped up to the front right next to Morgan and took the ax handle a neighbor passed him.

“Are we in place?” growled Bull Morgan.

“Just about, Mr. Morgan.” I heard the snappy salute in the smaller man’s voice.

“And the bums?”

“Some of them’s slipped out. Charlie’ll round ’em up.”

Morgan grunted. “As long as they don’t get back to warn the others.”

“Hadn’t we better move out now?” asked somebody from the middle of the crowd. “Them bums might be gettin’ antsy.”

Morgan calmly pulled a toothpick out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “They’ll stay put. After all, Mr. Stationmaster Reynolds told ’em they could stay. He’d just look the other way while they broke the law. Ain’t that right, Mr. Reynolds?” Morgan grinned toward the shadows deeper in the shed. I squinted through the shifting thicket of pant legs and work boots and saw a huddle of other men. These men wore dark coats and peaked caps, and all of them had rags stuffed in their mouths and their hands tied together in front of them. I’d’ve bet any money one of them was the stationmaster.

Bull Morgan had told me he didn’t allow hobos on his trains. And he’d taken over the rail yard to keep his promise. These weren’t lawmen. They were going to go into that crowd of kids and families and… and…

They were going to do whatever they felt like with those ax handles and those shotguns, and there wasn’t anybody within hollering distance to stop them. Except us.

“So we’re just gonna stand here all night, then?” grumbled a man.

“Shut yer gob, Grady.” Morgan chewed lazily on his toothpick and pulled out his club as a reminder that he was armed too. “I told you, we go when I say.”

Some other man snickered. “In a hurry to get home, Grady? I hear that wife of yours isn’t the patient type.”

“Come over here and say that, you…”

Morgan smacked his club into his big, hard palm. “Save it for the bums, you two!”

Jack and I didn’t have to say anything to each other. We were both thinking the same thing. We had to warn the others. The fastest way would be to make some noise. It would also be the surest way to get caught.

Jack eased backward, and I went with him. There was a pyramid-shaped pile of oil drums against the side of the shed. He pointed to it, and we ran, as quiet as thought, around to the far side of the stack. Jack put his shoulder to one, and I saw his plan. I put my hands up beside him.

From inside the shed, we heard Morgan say, “Time…”

Jack shoved. I shoved. Those empty barrels came down like thunder in high summer.

Inside the shed, the men sent up a holler. Dogs bayed and barked in answer. Jack and I whooped like wild Indians and took off running. I glanced back to see the vigilante men pouring out of the shed in time to collide with those rolling barrels. The men fell, yelling words their mothers never taught them, and the barrels bounced and banged all around them.

A shotgun blast tore through the dark. Startled, I tripped over a rail and Jack yanked me to my feet. Holding on to each other, we ran. Actually, he ran. I got dragged along.

Screams filled the yard, echoing off the sides of the train cars. Men, women, and kids shrieked, cursed, and cried. Another shot exploded, followed fast by an unsteady pounding-a sick, hollow kind of sound, like wood smacking against wood, except I knew it wasn’t. We hadn’t been fast enough. Morgan’s vigilantes had been ready, and that pounding was the ax handles and the clubs saying a bloody hello to people’s skulls.

“Don’t let them get away!” called Bull Morgan from somewhere in the dark. “It’s time these bums got what was coming to ’em!”

People streamed between the cars, a great, huge river of noise and panic. A shotgun flashed. The pounding wouldn’t stop. I could feel the pain. All of it. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t think. There was nothing but the pain and the fear and Jack wishing he could do something to stop it.

A woman passed us, a little kid clinging to her skirt, a baby held sideways under her arm. There was something wrong with her other arm; it was dangling funny. I saw the gleam of the shotgun barrel rising up behind her. I saw the vigilante take aim.

“NO!”

My magic snatched up Jack’s wish and threw it hard at the man. The vigilante hollered and fell backward, and the shot went straight up to the bloody moon. The woman and her kids vanished between the boxcars.

“Come on, Callie!” Jack tugged at me. “Let’s go!”

“Why?” I hollered. “I can take ’em all on! I got the magic!” All these wishes, all this feeling, it was power for me. I could use it, turn it against Bull Morgan’s vigilantes. I knew I could.

“Because they’ll see us standing here, you dope! And I ain’t bulletproof!”

That hit me. I wheeled around to follow him and collided with his back. Because he’d run straight into Bull Morgan.

“Gotcha!” Morgan’s meaty hands clamped down on our shoulders.

I gritted my teeth. “Let us go!”

“Well, well!” Morgan shook me away from Jack. “If it ain’t the little girlie bum. I thought I warned you off, girlie.”

“I said, let us go!”

“You ain’t goin’ anywhere except onto the chain gang,” Morgan crowed. “I’m sick of you whiny bums helpin’ yourselves to what ain’t yours. No respect…”

I didn’t even think. I just reached out to that powerful feeling pouring around me to take it for a wish.

It was like I’d stepped into a furnace. There was nothing but pain. Pain like stars, like flames filling the whole world. I was surrounded by the roar and burn of a thousand thoughts, a thousand feelings.

… hurt, hurt, hate, no, no, gotta run, help me, please help me, where are they, where is he, where is she, hate you, hate you…

I couldn’t move. The hate and the pain of the riot rushed into me, cutting me off from my body.

… gonnakillyouallhateyouhateyouturnaroundandfightyouhelpmehateyouhelpmehateyouhelpme…

My body fell, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I stared up at Morgan’s swollen face as the railroad bull bent over me. There was a flash of movement and a yell, and Jack kicked Bull Morgan in the kneecap. Morgan leapt back, but Jack kicked his other knee and Morgan toppled over. I felt his pain too, and his wish for the one who caused it to be dead, dead, dead.

“Callie!” Jack had hold of my wrists and tried to pull me to my feet. “Callie! Come on, get up!”

He wished I’d get up. My scattered thoughts grabbed hold of that wish, knotted around it like his hands were knotted around my wrists.

And I could stand. I could see. I was all right. Except I was all right in time for Bull Morgan to rear up behind me.

“Run!” shouted Jack. He bolted backward, and I bolted forward. Morgan was reaching for his club, but I got there first and yanked it right out of his holster. Morgan stumbled, and with all the fear and strength I had in me, I slammed that club against the side of his head. There was a sharp crack, and Morgan sprawled into the dirt. I was staring again, because there was blood spattered on his temple, and on my hands.

Jack shoved me sideways, knocking me down, and dragged me under the nearest boxcar, pushing at me until we scrambled out the other side and took off running. All the while I felt how Bull Morgan wasn’t moving, wasn’t even breathing, and his blood mixed with the dirt on my hands.

“He’s dead.” I panted. “Oh, my God, he’s dead. I killed him!”

“Stop it!” Jack jerked hard on my hand. “Just run!”

I closed my mouth and ran.

There should have been plenty of places to hide in that dark yard. But at every turn there was somebody in front of us, somebody with a gun or an ax handle or in the thick of a fight. It went on forever, the flashes of light, the cracks and the screaming. I was crying and Jack was cussing, taking us this way and that. We climbed over the couplings between the trains; we dodged around sheds and coal piles. My lungs burned and my legs got heavier with each step, and the whole time my head was babbling, No way out, no way out, no way out…

“There!” boomed Morgan’s voice. “There they are!”

I looked. I couldn’t help it. Bull Morgan reared up in the floodlights like a monster, with a crowd of shadows at his side. He pointed at us with his club.

“Get ’em!” he bellowed. “Bring ’em here!”

Men surged forward, guns and ax handles ready.

Jack swore and we ran. Ahead, I spotted the livestock pens.

“Jack!” I pointed. He saw, and he dove forward.

We were small, and we were running for our lives. We slid between the slats; we climbed over gates the blow dirt had drifted shut. We even ran on the top rail of the crisscrossing fences, a game every farm kid has played. The men swore and stumbled and got stuck and swore some more. But they kept coming.

Bullets sound like hornets when they pass too close to your head. After a while, the world closes down. You can’t hear much, you can’t see much, just the way ahead, the next slat, the next open gate. All you know is running; the only place that’s real is away.

Finally, we hit the edge of the stockyard. Jack swerved toward the lights of Constantinople. I hesitated, but when a truck engine rumbled up from behind us, I tore after him. If we headed out to the prairie, they could drive us like rabbits. Back among Constantinople’s houses, we’d have a place to hide, and maybe the vigilantes wouldn’t be so ready to fire off their guns in the middle of town.

Not that I was thinking that straight then. I just followed Jack as close as I could. Jack dodged into the streets, ducking around buildings, trying to get walls between us and the headlights and shouts.

“Gotta get inside somewhere.” He panted. “Gotta…”

“Movies!” I shouted, pointing at the lit-up Bijoux.

Jack swallowed hard. This time, I took the lead, and after a split second, he followed.

There was a small, plain door in the back of the theater. I grabbed the knob and yanked it open, and all but fell inside.

Jack slammed the door, fumbled for the latch, and shot the bolt home. As it snapped shut, I felt the world twisting around us.