In a Handful of Dust (22 page)

The highway stretched to the horizon, an unbroken black strip that burned so hot in the afternoons the heat shimmer reached upward for miles. The landscape was equally monotonous, the stray breezes blowing up dust storms to compete with the mirages. The only thing that broke the view was the marching electrical poles, skeletons from a different world whose veins had been emptied of their power long ago.

Lucy reined in Spatter next to Mister and looked to Lynn, wondering why she had stopped. But the other woman’s eyes were rooted on the horizon, focused on nothing. “Lynn? What are you thinking?”

Lynn startled and seemed to struggle to focus on Lucy. “Just this—

           
“And I will show you something different from either

           
Your shadow at morning striding behind you

           
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you
;

           
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

“I think I like Walt Whitman better,” Lucy said.

“You would.”

Spatter and Mister ducked their heads low in the heat, their noses leading the party to the ever farther springs of water, some of them nothing more than a brackish trickle. For nearly a week after Fletcher had left their company Lynn kept her mouth shut, and Lucy knew she was waiting for her to make the right choice and unburden the horses. Her silence made Spatter’s nickering all the more precious. She twirled his rough hair in her fingers while she rode, putting off the inevitable for as long as she could. She was so focused on every aspect of Spatter—the sound of his hooves, the feel of his movements underneath her—she didn’t notice the speck on the horizon behind them until Lynn pointed it out.

“You’re lost in your head over there,” the older woman said.

Jerked from her reverie, Lucy was suddenly very aware she hadn’t spoken since they’d saddled up that morning. “Sorry,” she said, clearing her throat of the dust first. “Just thinking.”

“I’m not pointing it out for the sake of talk,” Lynn said. “There’s been someone behind us for a good two hours, and you’ve not spotted him.”

Lucy turned in her saddle, shading her eyes against the harsh midday sun. There was a black figure, barely discernable among the heat shimmer. “You’re sure it’s a person?”

“I been watching. Wasn’t much more than a dot, but he’s moving faster than us.”

“So he’s mounted?”

Lynn nodded gravely. “And on a horse that’s better suited to the desert than our own, I imagine.”

“Any chance it’s Fletcher? Maybe he changed his mind about going north.”

“Don’t think so. Terra Cotta was the slowest of the three, plus he knows where we’re going. No reason to push his mount to catch us.”

Lucy turned back in the saddle. “So who is it then?”

“Nobody we know. And if we can see him, he can see us.”

The fear of the unknown swooped back in to trump the nothingness of the desert. Anything could be done to them in the emptiness, and their bones left to be buried in the dust with no one the wiser. “So what do we do?”

Lynn’s brows drew together, and Lucy understood she’d been thinking over their options long before starting the conversation, weighing the choices that could end in life or death while Lucy had been making fine braids in Spatter’s mane. “I’m sorry I didn’t see him,” she added quickly.

“Don’t be sorry you didn’t, just be glad I did.” She looked to the bleak landscape around them, devoid of even a tree for shelter. “As for what we do, we can try to outrun him, which’ll likely kill the horses and land us helter-skelter in the middle of nowhere with no idea where we’re going. . . .”

“Uh, there’s an ‘or’ coming, right?”

Lynn inclined her head toward Lucy. “
Or
we hide.”

“Hide?”

“We need to get off this main road. There’s been unpaved ways breaking off here and there, but a lot of ’em aren’t on this map. Don’t know if I’m more comfortable being lost than being followed.”

Lynn unfolded the map as she rode, looping Mister’s reins around the pommel. “If we split off to the south up ahead, we’ll come across some canyons before long. I know you don’t like the idea of the rocks hanging over your head, but if we got down in one of those little maze-like canyons, he’d be hard-pressed to ever find us.”

“And we might be hard-pressed to find a way out.”

“That’s where me asking you to start paying attention comes in.”

A flush crept up Lucy’s cheeks that had nothing to do with the sun. “All right.”

Lynn watched Lucy for a second before continuing. “I want to get over the next ridge, and then we’ll cut to the south. I can’t imagine it’d be easy to track us down in the rocks, ’specially if that cloud there graces us with a bit of rain.”

An unassuming storm cloud was rolling in from the west, and Lucy licked her parched lips as she glanced at it.

“Let’s hope so,” she said.

They broke away from their path once they crested the ridge. Without the baking road reflecting the heat back in their faces, the horses picked up the pace. But without the familiar black snake of blacktop, the sameness of the desert made the word
lost
seem too short to capture the enormity of their situation. The only hint of the road they were traveling was an old fence that ran parallel to it, remnants of a pasture devoid of animals.

“If someone kept their herds here, there must be a creek nearby,” Lucy offered, hoping perhaps the horses had sped up for more reason than one.

“Makes sense,” Lynn said, her lips pursed so tightly the words came out in a growl.

The road met up with the creek shortly, and the horses stumbled wearily into the cool water, Spatter wading in up to his knees. Lynn and Lucy slipped off their saddles as well, filling their near-empty bottles and thirsty mouths. Coaxing the horses out of the stream was tricky, and Lynn caved in to their mournful eyes.

“Our friend behind us won’t be able to track us in the stream, and it’ll lead us down into the canyon besides,” she said.

The shadows of the towering steeples of rock striped their path as they moved silently southward. Then the stripes disappeared as the rocks reached for one another, forming a sheer wall on either side.

“Just breathe easy,” Lynn said softly, though Lucy noticed she also looked to the bright-blue strip of sky above them as she said it. “This is mostly a straight shot. When the canyon dumps us out, we’ll be able to backtrack to the highway.”

Lucy nodded her assent, too spooked by the sound of Lynn’s voice bouncing off the nearby walls to answer. The innocent splashing of the creek rebounded as well, echoed and magnified. Spatter’s ears flicked backward, then forward in an effort to make sense of this new phenomenon. She scratched his neck, and he made a deep mutter she could only too well agree with.

“I don’t like it either, boy,” she leaned forward to whisper.

At first she thought the goose bumps were caused by fear. She’d become all too familiar with the rushing prickle of them in the long, lonely nights. But a cool breeze was playing with her hair as well, and the first cold drop that splattered on her skin was as big as a shotgun shell. Ahead, Mister startled to the right when another drop struck him, and he brushed against the close canyon walls that made it impossible for the horses to ride abreast any longer.

“Guess the rain is coming,” Lynn said, the calm that carried back in her voice soothing Lucy, though she suspected it was on purpose, as she saw Lynn dig her heels into Mister a little deeper, urging him forward.

The thin strip of sky above them was no longer blue, and the swirling clouds moving past weren’t the comfortable shade of gray they’d been when Lucy first saw them, but a menacing black that contrasted with the red rock so sharply that her heart skipped a beat.

Another drop fell directly on her face, as if scolding her for looking so closely. She wiped it away, trying to ignore the increased pattering of the rain falling into the creek and seeping through her clothes. A streak of lightning shot through the sky, and the answering thunder was so loud that shards of rock were knocked loose from the walls. They rolled down to the path, spooking the horses.

Lynn had pulled Mister into a trot, her gaze sweeping the rock on either side and the widening water rivulets that were pouring into their hiding place. “Lynn?” Lucy called out, alarmed that she had to raise her voice to be heard over the rain.

Lynn looked back and said only one word. “Faster.”

She kicked the already skittish Mister and he took off, hooves splashing in the water that was now creeping up his legs. Spatter needed no coaxing; he leapt to follow. Lucy wondered if he could sense the danger of the rising water as it touched the tips of her boots.

They cleared a turn to see Lynn and Mister only paces ahead of them, and no end to the canyon walls in sight. A slight whimper escaped Lucy, but she could see only grim determination in Lynn’s face when she glanced back to check on her. Lucy waved that she was all right and urged Spatter to go faster, although he was beginning to lose his footing. A near panic had settled into Mister, and Lucy watched as he slipped, nearly unseating Lynn. She jerked back on his reins and brought his head around, but the horse was wild, and the splashing his struggles brought around them didn’t help. He took off at his own frenetic pace, anxious to find a way out.

Spatter answered in speed. Seconds later Lucy felt him lose contact with the ground as the rushing water buoyed him above it. He neighed in fear and she wrapped her arms around his neck, unable to control him with the reins any longer. She called out for Lynn, but Mister had the upper hand on his rider as well, and the two of them were out of sight.

She felt Spatter’s legs pumping beneath her, working with the current to move them forward. His courage gained them precious minutes until the first swell came, rushing over his back and plucking Lucy from the saddle as easily as she pulled overripe pears from the trees at home.

The water enveloped her, shocking in its coldness. She kicked upward to break the surface, managing a single gulp of air before the strong current took her in its own direction and slammed her against an outcrop. Her head struck rock, and she felt the thin skin of her temple parting easily, the hot blood releasing from her head to mix with the cold flow of rainwater.

Lucy clutched the outcrop and managed to drag herself on top of it. She swiped at her eyes only to realize a darkness was seeping into her vision that wasn’t blood, the ringing in her ears overwhelming even the rushing of the river sweeping by only inches from her face.

“This isn’t fair,” she managed to say weakly as she slipped into unconsciousness, knowing she was about to drown in a place where little water could be found.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

S
he was out long enough that her clothes were dry when she woke, as was her mouth. Lucy tried to sit up, but a wave of vertigo forced her back down, the lump on her head pulsing in time with the nausea. She vomited over the edge of the outcrop, into the serene water below. The angry rolling white froth was gone, but Lucy knew enough about moving water to know that didn’t mean the current wasn’t strong. She rolled onto her back to glare at the mockingly blue sky above, clear of any trace of the storm. She had no way to judge how long she had been out. It could be the same afternoon, or two days later. The only gauge she had was the scratch of dehydration in her throat and the gnawing hunger in her belly.

She sat up by inches the second time, letting her pounding head adjust to the change. Once upright, she leaned back against the canyon wall, which soared at least a hundred feet above her head. Climbing out was not an option. Neither was staying and waiting for the river to recede more. If she waited too long she could die of thirst, hunger, or even the drop down to the shallow water. Jumping now meant a drink, and the very real possibility of drowning. In the best of health she would’ve jumped without question, trusting to the strength of her body. As it was she couldn’t move more than a foot at time without feeling dizzy.

She swallowed once, ignoring the thickness of her own saliva, before calling out. “Lynn?” The single syllable echoed off the walls, bouncing back and forth as it traveled upwards toward nothing, to the endless expanse of desert. There was no answer.

It was what she had always feared.

She was alone.

An hour later the water had receded another five feet, and there was still no answer to her increasingly panicked calls. Her heart beat so quickly, she could feel the answering pulse under the thin scab that had formed on her temple. The sun had dried her lips, and as she thought, she chewed on the thin strips of skin that flaked off.

Delay would only increase the drop as the river fell, and Lucy knew it was time. Her legs were still shaky, but her weakness would grow along with hunger pains. She shimmied to the edge and swung her legs over, meaning to dangle and drop after taking a deep breath. But she’d misjudged the strength left in her arms, and the sudden weight was too much for them. Her hands scrambled for purchase as gravity yanked her over the edge. She had a pristine moment of clarity as one fingernail was ripped off, the pain standing out like a sharp moment in time.

And then she was falling. She gasped deeply and closed her eyes. The water was so cold it felt like hitting rock as she sliced through it, her heart stilling for one second at the shock. Her feet struck bottom for one moment and she pushed upward with the strength she had left, scissor-kicking to propel herself to the surface. She gulped the air, which tasted sweet and made it seem like her lungs were the only warm part of her body.

The current had her, but its fingers lacked the cruel grip that had ripped her from Spatter’s saddle, and she allowed herself to relax until her foot was caught up by something beneath the surface and she was pulled under. The water closed over her head, before she was able to take a lifesaving breath.