by Jessie Haas
It wasn’t as simple as stepping. His boots slipped and fumbled, and he clamped the rope with his knees, pinched it between the arches of his feet, his whole body gripping it desperately. He drew himself up; one inchworm length, one knot.
The rope wobbled alarmingly. He could fall now and be all right, but for every foot he climbed, the fall would get worse—
“Hurry!” Jimmy’s voice reached him in an oddly flattened way. There was no choice. Phin took a deep breath and started up.
Reach. Pin. Worm his feet up, grip the knot, and push. Reach. Pin. Worm and push. Reach, pin…
His arches began to ache. His knees felt raw. His arm muscles shook.
Worst of all was the reach, that moment when only his weak left arm hugging the rope kept him from falling. Or maybe the worst was bumping the side of the hole, or the way the rope shuddered and swayed. He didn’t look down, did his best not to think. Just count the knots. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
The light got broader and nearer and finally blazed in his eyes, half blinding him. The rope disappeared over the edge of the hole at an angle. Phin reached. His left foot slipped off the knot and kicked the side, setting loose a shower of small stones. They pattered far below. His right hand closed on the unseen rope, and Jimmy said, “That’s the boy. Up and at ’em!”
Phin pushed off the last knot, throwing himself over the edge of the hole, scrabbling with toes and knees and elbows.
Sun on his shoulders, a blur of bushes, packed earth under him, and Jimmy twenty feet away braced against a small rock, straining at the rope, a look of horror on his face.
Wasn’t he going to make it? Phin scrambled forward and sprawled on his stomach. Jimmy fell back. The rope flew in the air and dived snakelike down the hole, but Jimmy rolled up and over and after it. He caught the tail just in time and turned toward Phin, staring, gradually going green in the face.
“What?” Phin touched his cheek. It was stiff, crusty with dried blood. “I didn’t do it,” he said quickly.
Jimmy tried to smile. “Right,” he said, and swallowed. “‘Phin Chase shoot a man?’ I said. ‘Next you’ll be tellin’ me’—ugh!”
He sat down abruptly and put his head between his knees. His hand fumbled inside his shirt, and a moment later he brought out a water flask, untied his bandanna.
“Cripes, Phin, will you wash your face?”
5
DROVE
Phin fumbled the bandanna open to its cleanest surface. He uncorked the bottle, took a long pull, then sloshed water onto the cloth. His hands shook, spilling some on the ground. He bunched the cloth and scrubbed.
Jimmy hauled the rope up. Slap slap, it landed in loose coils. Slap slap went Jimmy’s voice. “Here’s the way of it. We downed tools, half of us, when we heard about Engelbreit. They had no call to kill him. So he was a hard driver! I say no man can drive you if you don’t let yourself be drove. The men he let go were drinkin’ down there. Could have killed any one of us.”
Slap slap swish—the end of the rope emerged in sunlight. Jimmy started to pull apart the first knot. “So there’s more men out than you’d think, this time of day. That’s one thing.”
“What about…Plume?”
Jimmy glanced over his shoulder at Phin. He was pale under the coal dust. His thin black eyebrows looked like the wings of distant birds. “Plume came down late and stayed down. Don’t tell me, Phin. I don’t even want to guess!”
Wise. Guessing could get you killed.
“Constable’s at Dennis’s,” Jimmy said. “Saw him when I nicked the rope. ‘Did you look at Murray’s,’ Dennis says. ‘Murray hasn’t seen him,’ says Mahoney. He’s searching the barn now, so I say go there.”
“What?”
“Time you get there, he’ll be gone. He won’t look again for a while.”
Phin shook his head, trying to get his brain started. That was good thinking, hide-and-seek thinking—what he needed to start doing—but he was still stupid with shock.
“Okay,” he said. “Then what?”
Jimmy looked full at him. His eyes were startlingly like his father’s, round and dark and heavy. “Get down to the yard tonight, hop a freight. Don’t stop till you’re out of coal country.”
Phin stared. Out of Bittsville, he’d been thinking—but Jimmy was right. Wherever anthracite and Irish came together, you’d find Sleepers; Coal and Iron Police, too, the private army raised by the mine companies.
Away from Irish, then. Away from mines—away from all of this, exactly as his mother had wanted.
But he’d always thought he’d leave freely, not be driven. “Why should I run?” he said. “I didn’t do it.”
“Don’t be simple, Phin! You can’t go to the owners—they think you killed Engelbreit! The union’s smashed—anyway, you were never a miner. And the AOH—well, you aren’t Irish, are you? And they’re so thick with the other crowd, you might as well turn yourself in at the jailhouse as go to them.”
Jail? Phin could feel the bars closing around him—and that was bad, but it would be shelter. Would he be allowed even that much? “Vigilantes—they said—”
“Wouldn’t take vigilantes to settle your hash. All it’d take is the right jury!”
Phin knew that was true. The word would be passed, the verdict predetermined; and would Bittsville do that to him? A harmless boy?
It would. He was caught in something big—caught but left out, too, not securely part of any one group.
He nodded. Yes. Yes, he’d go.
“Your parents—did they tell you about the rider?” he asked. “Who was he?”
“They didn’t know him. C’mon.” Jimmy helped Phin to his feet. Phin straightened; Jimmy pushed him, making him stagger. “Get ahold of yourself, Phinny, or you’re done for!”
Oh. Stay low. Downhill was the Street. Anyone could be looking up.
Jimmy scooped something off the ground—the bundle his parents had given Phin. “Found this behind the house,” he said, pushing it into Phin’s hands. “Look—” For a moment his glittering, narrowed eyes searched Phin’s. “You grew up in the worst dive in Bittsville. You’re tougher than this, right? You’ll be okay?”
Phin felt himself nodding.
Jimmy gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “Up with ye, Phin! I gotta get back.”
And he was gone, the brambles waving behind him.
“Thanks,” Phin said, too late.
He put the bundle inside his shirt and turned away, circling wide around the Dog Hole, around the horse tracks with their eloquent, deep-dug rims.
What horse? What rider? Where were they now? Hurry; but watch for holes. He was tougher than this. Right? His head throbbed, his arm throbbed, something in his pocket thumped his leg at every step—
Plume’s wallet.
He’d actually forgotten it. There were blank spots in his mind, like the blank spot his foot came down on when he fell in the Dog Hole. He wasn’t good at this. He was going to make some terrible mistake.
He came to the graveyard, squeezed between two broken slats in the weathered picket fence, and stumbled into a run, dodging stones, leaping graves. Names flashed past, names he knew. The name on the stone nearest the opposite fence stopped him.
Mary Chase: her dates; nothing more.
Phin felt what he always felt here—nothing. Why would her spirit linger? Bittsville was never meant to be their home. She and his father had planned to save their money and buy a shop somewhere; a little shop and a lot of books.
Instead she died in that back room where they’d lived, the eggs and ale and tea sent up by Murray during her brief illness piled uneaten on the table. Unlike in novels, there was no time for a speech. She whispered “Son,” or “Sun,” and then she stopped; stopped speaking, stopped breathing, though for a long time Phin wasn’t sure of that and sat staring at the mysterious movement he was sure he saw in her body—not as large as breathing, more like the shimmer of gases off the culm banks on hot summer afternoons.
&n
bsp; Nan Lundy came and said she was dead, closed her eyes, and began doing things. Phin went downstairs, chill and wide-eyed, and that hairy boar Duff Murray poured him a shot of whiskey. It made a thin streak of heat down the middle of him, raw and metallic. He didn’t finish it. He saw Murray approve of that.
He should say something now. But “good-bye” felt wrong, and there was no time to think. Phin ducked his head and turned away, over the fence and into the blackberry tunnels.
They led on a long way in leafy darkness, flashes of sunlight, unexpected openings that left him exposed, sudden dead ends. He lost track of how far he’d come, and straightened to look.
Nearly there. He could see the stable roof, below, and a man riding toward town.
He ducked, listening. That was the mule dealer, who’d waited three weeks already for “Little” Bitts, the owner’s son, to get back from his Adirondack vacation. What was the man’s name? Fraser? Graham? He drank good Scotch, nursing each glass a long time, and rode a horse that was more than good; a dark stallion of extraordinary quality.
Phin risked another look. They’d gone on toward town. The man’s back moved easily to the horse’s gait. The long coat billowed, and the stallion’s flowing tail dusted the ground—off on their daily ride as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Phin shuddered and stumbled on through the brambles.
At last the big door yawned before him—the upper level, the hay mow door. Phin watched awhile. When he was sure the barn was empty, he darted across the open space and into its dark shelter.
6
DENNIS
Warm, safe barn smells enveloped Phin—hay, horses, manure. Tears stung his eyes. He sagged against the side of the mow, shaking, seeing Engelbreit fall and fall—
Voices snapped him upright. Out front. Dennis—and someone else. He crept forward and looked through a crack in the wall.
Down in the stable yard, Dennis sat scrubbing a wooden bucket. More buckets were lined up beside him. Pat Mahoney, the Sleeper constable, loomed over him, hands in pockets. His head turned slowly like a suspicious bull’s, darting looks into all the corners, while Dennis’s acid voice scratched on.
“—kill a man in cold blood and then come in to work! That’s just what a murderer’d do. I’ve a good mind to telegraph Allan Pinkerton about you, Pat; he’s always lookin’ for detectives! Now get out of here!”
Mahoney took his hands out of his pockets.
“I’ve got all that boy’s work to do, too,” Dennis said, “and you’ve wasted enough of my time. If he shows up, he’s finishin’ these buckets, I’ll tell you that right now! Maybe then I’ll think about turning him over.”
“Oh, you’ll turn him over,” Mahoney said.
Dennis splashed more vigorously. Water sloshed on Mahoney’s boots. He took a step back, and Dennis stood, tipping his head to meet Mahoney’s gaze. Mahoney was a bad man with his fists, a brutal man, but Dennis showed no fear.
“Tryin’ to scare me? You’ll have to try harder’n that! I got a chunk of cannonball in my leg hurts me every step I take. Had my fill of that, and I’ve had my fill of fools!”
Mahoney’s head lowered; his shoulders bunched. Dennis said, “Your crowd’s gone too far; the owners’ll smash you like they smashed the union. Oh, you’ll have things your own way awhile longer. You can blame that boy and get a jury that’ll do what you tell ’em. But you’ve outsmarted yourselves. I smell it comin’. Your days are numbered!”
Phin’s pulse thundered in his ears. Next came the murder. He’d never be able to stop it. He opened his mouth with that dream-feeling of a shout that wouldn’t come. Mahoney cocked his head, as if listening to some deeper meaning within Dennis’s words. There was a long pause.
Then Mahoney shoved his hands back in his pockets, glancing around the yard. “You got a good nose, Dennis,” he said. “Ain’t sayin’ you’re wrong.” Thoughtfully he went out between the gateposts and turned down the Street.
Phin leaned there watching him go. The blood thundered in his temples. The shot hadn’t come, no blows even, but his body didn’t seem to understand that. He felt flooded with fear and shock. Dennis had taken a risk—
And Dennis, Phin realized suddenly, was standing down in the yard, staring straight up at him.
Phin jerked back, thinking Stop! Stupid.
He was almost stupid enough to come back and look out again. But a second mistake wouldn’t put the first one right. He waited, listening. After a moment the splashing resumed.
How could he have been so stupid? His instincts were all wrong for this. Hide. Rest. Maybe his mind would start working again. He crossed to the stairs and eased silently down them.
They brought him to the back row of stalls, empty now. Only the stallion was stabled here, and Phin had just seen him leave. The barn was quiet, dim, and from the old days of hide-and-seek with Jimmy, Phin knew just where to hide. He dropped to his stomach and wormed into the open area under the stairs. It was like a little room, festooned with cobwebs and floored with a deep litter of chaff. Cracks between the stairwell boards gave a view of the corridor and stalls.
Phin hunched there, cradling his arm, staring: at nothing, at the boards, at the cracks between the boards, at the day as it had already happened. Time slowed, blurred. Events happened again in broken flashes, out of sequence. People said their lines over and over.
You’re tougher than this, right?
Do you ever sleep, boy?
Tell Ned I said you’re to have a penny for your trouble…penny for your trouble…
Tell Ned—
The wallet. Dangerous. Get rid of it. As long as he had it, he was guilty of a crime. It seemed important not to be guilty.
But it was hard to move. He had to force himself to dig into his pocket and bring out Margaret’s package.
The paper had been pounded as he ran and fell and climbed. It was bruised thin, and one corner of the wallet poked through, leather and a fringe of bills.
Phin shuddered. Sometime this evening, down at Murray’s, Plume would find out.
A sound in the outer part of the barn came nearer; footsteps, Dennis’s distinctive dot-and-carry limp. He turned down the aisle with a bucket and went into the stallion’s empty stall. The gray cat followed, taking her own route over the partition and tightrope-walking along it. Phin watched glassily, feeling a hundred miles away.
The cat miaowed at Dennis. He ignored her—worried, or listening. He hung the bucket on its hook, fluffed the stallion’s bedding. Bored, the cat jumped down and trotted toward the stairs.
Suddenly she stopped in the middle of the aisle, tail lashing and puffing out till it looked like a raccoon’s.
Phin sat rigidly unmoving. The cat growled, a low, throbbing sound that brought Dennis to the stall door. She turned and scuttled toward the other end of the aisle.
“Here, Puss.” Dennis reached down and snapped his fingers. She hesitated.
“Now you know there’s nothing under there.” Dennis spoke in the gentle voice he used only with animals. “Didn’t I see Mahoney look? And if your friend was there—well, he’d bide quiet till tonight, wouldn’t he? Slip into the wagon when I leave for the station. He’s not a complete fool. If he was, they’d have him already.”
The cat looked over her shoulder. With another growl she disappeared around the corner. Moving deliberately, as if advertising to the world at large that everything was normal, absolutely normal, Dennis closed the stall door and limped after her.
Phin hugged his knees tight, fighting the urge to run. He wasn’t good at this. Found again already; if he didn’t get out of here soon, he’d be found by the wrong person, or get some friend in trouble.
But it was broad daylight, and he wasn’t a complete fool. Act that way. Think.
He’d do what Dennis said, get to the rail yard, get on a train. How?
Ride the rods; that was one way. There was a cradle of support struts under each car. You could hide there, inches above the rails. Men and boys had tr
aveled the whole country that way—the lucky ones. Fall off, though, and they gathered you up in a basket. Phin shuddered. Not the rods. Not unless he had to.
Thirsty. Hungry, too, in a distant way. He could smell the bacon warming inside his shirt, next to his body—
—Engelbreit’s body would be cold by now—
And he had to pee.
No one was near. He could hear Dennis cleaning stalls in another part of the barn. He turned over, dampened the chaff beside him, rolled back to hug his knees. That was the best position. It held him together.
The breaker whistle blew. Boys poured down the Street, running, yelling, fighting. A stickball game began outside. Horses returned from the day’s work. Phin heard their measured hoofbeats in the front aisle, snorts, harness shaking. Talk. He couldn’t catch much of it; just again and again, “Engelbreit.” It startled him every time, brought back the fearless face, turning, falling, the gun leveled next at him—
A quicker set of hooves clopped through the barn. The mule dealer turned the corner, silhouetted in the dim light; hat low over his bearded face, long coat sailing out behind. The stallion followed on a loose rein. A ruddy bar of sunlight slid over shoulder and haunch, revealing the red glow within the apparently black hide.
The stallion sniffed along the floor as he came. Quick and restless, with a tang of wildness in him, he still searched out oats like any ordinary horse. Phin relaxed at the sight, smiling—
As if he heard the smile, the stallion paused, one front foot lifted. For a long moment he stood that way, looking toward the stairwell.
7
DARK HORSE
Phin stopped breathing. His heart drummed. He heard the air whistle in the stallion’s nostrils, saw them flare, flare, flare.
The mule dealer turned to look at his horse, then glanced briefly toward the stairs. “Aye, lad,” he said. “Right enough.”
