A Dollar or Two: A Nevada Story

In a railyard headed east, at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, right along a snake-route river hosting a wide range of beauty, stained canvas blotted the land, and blackened pits of embers smoked the summer skies. A vast stretch of trees extended along the skyline, valley oaks, and slender pines, but there along the river, workers cleared the forest—axes splintering wood, and the laborious clanking of hammers echoed in numbers. Forced from a respite of mere minutes, Dara snuffed his cigarette and nodded curtly at the agent who beckoned him back to the spikedrivers and tracklayers. In the distance, treetops did pirouettes before they fell, and the green yet snow-capped expanse called to him the same as the guard. He had allowed his brain to wander unchecked, and in a fleeting reverie shadowed by a bleak reality, dreamt of a homeland he had never set foot upon.

“Back to work! Before I come over there and do some myself!” A company man bellowed as Dara picked up his hammer and joined the others. Metal in hand, he thought about smashing the man’s face unrecognizable. Still, he didn’t project said anger and considered the shrouding of his discontent a necessity, for the whips crack loudly and brutally through flesh, and the noose hangs low for heavy hearts. 

“Shipment of black powder should arrive this week, fellas! Pray they don’t choose you!” Another guard shouted and cackled after delivering his volatile news. They gave no response, nor the satisfaction of their palpable dread; he screamed again: “Quicker, the whole lot of you!” 

While roustabouts carried tools to and fro, he resumed his role of banging metal. The scorched woods and the smell of hot iron replaced the scent of pines. Days that refuse to end until by some miracle, the sun lays itself to rest and the moon is revealed. In the days he'd bled and poured sweat atop the tracks, some folk left for hopeful land, but others died under the guise of the railroad’s construction; the latter in a shallow grave. There was no sustenance to be had, and surely no fortune but that of another’s. 

Beneath a reddening sky, Dara sat by the fireside—shifting memories of his father about in his mind, drifting while men spoke with alien tongues and drank tampered alcohol away from the prying eyes of railroad agents. There was a world he’d left before birth, across seemingly unceasing oceans in which his father found the end, only to drown the same as his mother. Dara Doherty imagined a homeland, romanticized in vain and without bounds. An image burned without reference far from the black mountain—looming a monolithic wall, shadowing the evening’s final light.   

The fires hissed till morning, and he lay in his tent atop the hard ground, a thin layer of cloth between him and dirt. The voices had faded hours prior, and too did the guards now sleeping in their lumber townhouses. For many of the workers, sleep didn’t come kindly, and often was interrupted by demands and the occasional firing of a rifle into a tent. Today, there were no issues, save for the men who didn’t wake from their slumber. Along with the others scattered throughout the railway, he greeted the hot haze of the summer and blinked himself to terms. Still drenched in the night’s sweat, he coughed a lung, tried to disregard the pain, and grabbed his gear. Arduity awaited him as it did every other morning, a goal but no end in sight, and now a mountain to kill them all.

As he gathered with the bleak mass of sullen men, disdain was rife in the visible heat, the guards onto the laborers, and the laborers onto themselves. Though they shared the brutality of the railroad, few words were spoken between the Gaelic speakers and the Chinese, once divided by oceans, then ideals and government. He had never learned the language of his ancestors but pieces, when his mother would tell stories spoken in a broken tongue—of the Deidre of the Sorrows—and the lengths we may go through for those we love. He had loved once when he was Cú Chulainn and she was Emer, steadfast in their future together. 

His hammer conveyed these memories, echoing out over the whips of foremen—fellow Irish who lashed the straw hats, and occasionally, but less often the backs of their long-lost countrymen. Strap iron rail after strap iron rail, they laid them down and drove the spikes secure; days of drudgery, nights to loathe tomorrow. 

The hammers resounded in unison, and sometimes in succession. Whenever a worker dropped dead from exhaustion (a usual happening), they buried him low and continued the line, sometimes not burying them at all. Just beyond him—down an embankment, Dara could see the hastily planked coffins, dozens upon dozens displayed like a warning to emigrants. He envied the convictions of the Chinamen, and their wishful thinking too. In hopes of returning the deceased to their ancestral land, the bodies rot in boxes: and rot in boxes they will, no corpse repatriated. 

His wrist swelled in the afternoon’s heat, vibrating with each swing while guards circled like carrion birds, gray under the sweltering star. This was a prison, and the only thing missing were shackles around his ankles. East to west, the guards toted rifles on horseback; a prison—he thought—a penitentiary with mountains for walls. Dara considered the possibility of running and leaving in the night, but somehow… His heart had kept him barren. At the peaks of the cordillera, and on the watercolor horizon, streaks of violet and orange stretched ephemerally from palette to sky. 

Between puffs of his cigarette, he stirred pinto beans and only pinto beans on the rusted fire grate. The beans simmered, and their water evaporated into the cooling air. Over the sound of the cooking food and the rumbling of his stomach, he listened to the bushes rustle and spotted the star thistles swaying along the banks. Needlepointed plants as yellow as evening, invasive, and far from their native soil, spread like fire through dry seasons. Dara ate quickly as a dog, gouging himself on the small amount of food his pay had allowed; not enough to sustain a man, or any soul seeking a long life. 

His stomach far from full, he lay with his head in his hands, watching the night wind down, and the men stumble about, tired or drunk, perhaps both. Beyond the tents, huddled by their shacks, drinking and playing cards by lamplight. Near one of the shelters erected overnight, he saw the agent, the weasel, he spoke under his breath and walked from tent to tent toward the edge of camp. At the border of the perimeter, the space between him and the townhouses was stark, a rubicon of darkness he now considered crossable. Amidst this deep consideration, and the hushing of the world around him, a voice broke his perceived silence.

“What yeh thinking about doing, huh?” The man said as Dara turned around, though, to his surprise and relief, it wasn’t an agent but a drunkard. Swinging his bottle fore and aft, he spoke again, but louder. 

“Hear me, yeh hear me?” The gray-bearded man continued to inquire, wagging his finger and the half-empty bottle about. 

“What do you want? I ain’t got no drink,” Dara insisted before staring back at the shanty houses and the lazy guards. 

“I got me drink… what you planning on doing over there? I got a few ideas meself,” he snorted and headed back to his pitifully kept area. 

“Quiet down! Don’t want anyone hearin’ now,’ Dara said, appeasing the piss-stained drunk. As the man sat down on a makeshift bench, Dara asked: “What is it you think I plan on doing? Trying to get myself killed now?” He wasn’t sure what exactly he was thinking, but it involved running, and stealing whatever he could hold in his hands. 

“I’m just throwin’ it out there, hear me? If you plan on stealing from the stooges, count me in,” the narrow-eyed man said, leaning back on his pine bench. 

“C’mon, Ernst, you talk up and down this place, can’t trust you no more than a brick wall, I’m just thinkin’.” Dara jeered, tapping his patchwork pockets for a can of plug tobacco. 

“Want some twist?” Ernst asked and pulled out a tobacco leaf. It was twisted tightly into a rope, and he chewed on it until his teeth ran black. 

“You ever get tired of all this? A whole lot for nothin…” Dara broached, sitting beside the unkempt man, just a bit more filthy than the rest of the gravel. 

“Every day… but what I am to do? Got no one,” Ernst’s tone was calm, contemplative now. And behind the curtain of inebriation, the dread showed through, the signals of a man resigned to his squalor. 

“Well, you got me, Ernst,” he facetiously admitted to the drunken acquaintance, a man who, if given a dollar—would surely consider stabbing him in the back. 

“Sher, I do,” Ernst replied and was visibly unconvinced. He recoiled, sneering with disbelief. As Dara began to head back, the man muttered again: “See about gettin’ me a bottle, yeh hear?” 

“I’ll see what I can do,” Dara appeased him some more but with no intention of doing so, and continued away from the man’s slow and poisonous demise. Despite the turncoats in every direction, and dogs with no loyalty but to themselves, he pondered—praying, but reciting no particular scripture—that somewhere within himself there was goodness. He hadn’t found it in the flood of ‘62, and certainly not here along the tracks, a hundred miles from sodden memories of home and the lost water-swept corpses. 

“I hear the powders comin’ tomorrow.” A one-eyed man whispered to his dusty friend as they played cards atop a stump, speculating on the potential death toll. Hovel by hovel, with the blankest of faces, sickly men watched Dara from their lean-tos, drinking and eating whatever their dollar could afford.

“Yellers go first… if there’s anything left, micks too,” another shouted, teetering about his chair, toothless and smiling sadly.

Returning to his temporary home, Dara cursed the cold night, and at that moment, the planet as a whole. The embers of the fire still whimpered, so he rekindled them and lay down beside the revived flame, picturing someplace else. When sleep found him, so too did his late parents, coming to him as smooth-faced fragments in his dreams, a stained glass kaleidoscope of regret. His subconscious ponderings didn't linger on any specific moment, but instead, spent every neuron compiling images to preserve their countenance. Sacramento had left them abandoned, and no hope ever rose to the top of the surface, not in his father's gold pan, his mother's heart—or their bodies. Three hundred miles north to south, water flooded the valleys, and where there had been drought, there was sea. Everything had washed away from him, and the three years passed like a decade slowly.

Awoke by the signal of guards and the ringing of bells throughout camp—Dara postured himself from the ground and yawned as routine. However, today was particularly awry and the ants scrambled to position. Hundreds gathered, watching the wagons make their way through camp: wagons full of black powder, barreled and ready to be lit. It was as if Helios himself had propelled the sun, light minutes above; and from his nebula, is warmed by the burning backs of workers.

“Moment’s a here, boys!” The guard shouted; the same guard that threatened Dara day in and day out. He had never had the displeasure of learning the guard’s name, nor did he wish to. And beside the stetson-donning railroad agent, stood the supervisor: a thinly worn man who hitherto—hardly made himself known to the lesser than—began his much-anticipated speech. 

“Morning, men. I hope you got some good rest, 'cause we're going into the mountain!” The man informed them with jubilance, with a smile, and the tipping of his bowler hat. After he did so, a Chinese translator stepped forward, and to the confusion of English speakers, commenced his rendition of the supervisor's speech. 

Leaning on his grub axe, a worker belted: “Who’s going first?! I vote for the squints!” 

“Amen!” A dirt-freckled boy yelled and spat on the ground next to his feet. The Chinese were silent, and in this case—the majority. With cutting stares, they cursed the revisionist natives: no different than them. 

“We will be sending the Chinamen first. Any complaints you should have, keep them to yourself. We’ll set up shop and get to blowing. Load the trundle carts with the barrels.” When the supervisor finished his commands, the translator began speaking to his side of the herd. No protests were made, though some muttered obscenities and they shuffled towards the carts along with every other laborer. Their teeth clenched, and at the limit of their strength, they lifted and lowered the barrels onto the carts. One by one, Dara and the cesspool of men delivered the material to the mountainside. 

Under the shadow of granite spires, they bored through unyielding rock. Sledgehammers sparked the shade of the mountain; a throng of thousands, sun-soaked again with the planet’s revolution. Each swing slightly weaker than the last, Dara broke stone until it was time to ready the powder. He was familiar with the process, but regardless, this did nothing to prepare his nerves when the other man stepped forward—reached into the narrow crevice—and poured the powder as gently as he could before tamping it down. Nobody said a word, and Dara watched as he struck the match and lit the fuse. 

“Back! Back!” he yelled in the few words he knew as they all scampered to a safe distance and awaited the detonation. The tiny flame crackled along the fuse, and in the absence of their voices was the anticipation of the blast. 

The bang came shortly after, as loud as thunder but with great brevity. Black smoke lingered in the air, and his ears rang out for what felt like minutes. Birds flew from their nests, leaving their babies to fend for themselves. Wildlife scattered—from mammal to insect—up hills and down them. When the ringing of their ears ceased, and the smoke had risen above them, they expected to see a deep hole in the guts of the mountain. Though, to their general dismay, the explosion had only left a dent. If mountains lived, he thought, conceivably they had angered it: the sleeping giant. And less abstractly, but intensely so, he found it difficult, in the din of constant eruption, to foresee any terminal in his future. Growing less likely with every keg of black powder, and every dead worker. 

For days, the black powder shook the mountain, filling the valley with smoke. It wasn’t until it cleared for the hundredth time, that they had finally seen progress and a tunnel forming through the summit. The Chinamen went first, and the sound of incessant hammers sprang from the hole until the evening lingered on, and none of the men came out for rest. When the hammers did happen to stop swinging, it was noted by the men outside they were either dead or in the process of pouring the powder. 

“You boys alive in there?!” a railroad agent yelled, but there was no reply. He yelled again, “Hello?!” A few seconds passed in which the men said nothing, so the guard marched to the maw with a club in his hand. 

“We alive, just loading powda’.”

“Hurry it up,” the impatient agent insisted… followed by silence, and a bang. 

“My hand! My hand!” The worker screamed in a language nobody understood, sprinting out of the smoke and dust with the other two in tow. His hand was entirely missing and had exploded from his wrist into fragments of blood and bone. 

“Fuckdidn’tdoitright!” Ernst yelled while others lent the sobbing man a hand. The splintered bone and torn sinew were like tendrils extending from his newfound stump. Crying, he won’t stop crying. 

“God dammit! What happened?” The guard rushed to the wounded man, as did the others circling. 

“What the fuck do you think happened?!” The man writhed about the dirt, biting his tongue until that too bled his mouth red. 

“Get this fool a doctor… Now god dammit!” The guard belted and took his post again. Most scattered, but a few stood by, not over watching him suffer.

“Jesus, you smell awful,” Dara said, leaning over the delimbed man. 

“Pick me up already!” “Alright, hold on.” Dara and the Chineseman carried him to the nearest lean-to and left him to his injury. Ideally, a doctor or someone who deemed themselves so would patch the wounds, but the most likely outcome was his passing.

“It’s going to get infected,” the Chinaman spoke with decent English. 

“Thanks for the help,” Dara replied, the two of them standing in the open heat. 

“Name is Lee,”

“Be safe out there, Lee.”

“Yur up,” one of the guards said, tapping Dara on the shoulder. 

“Say again?!” he shouted at the guard as he turned to meet him, the flat-faced guard who’d had it out for him. 

“I said, yur up! Get some of the boys to help you,” he screamed back, loud enough to hear this time, and Dara walked himself to the barrels and the wagons full of black powder. 

“Here, take this,” the guard handed him the tamping rod, and a bag full of volatile dust. “You saw the Chinamen. Get to it,” the guard demanded with all five feet of his stunted authority, and a neck that made up the fifth foot. 

“Why you always givin’ me hell? Ain’t done nothing to you,” Dara said to The Weasel, staring the man down, and with the straightest of answers, the man responded: “Jus cause we both micks don’t mean yur exempt,” and with the stock of his rifle, he shooed him back to the mountain with a look of contempt.

Arriving back at the blackened site of the blast, he found that the mountain no longer cast its shadow upon him; instead, every man with a hammer cast their glare. The tunnel was ovular, extending into the darkness with no light at the end. He was to create light, destroying matter in the process. 

Beside him, an ash-ridden immigrant was coughing up a lung, and another was nursing his hand, wrapping it in rags. Just yonder, he could see Ernst spittling, leaning over sick when a guard kicked him and sent him tumbling with his bottle. 

“Need help with the powder? Got time,” Lee asked, enunciating each syllable as if remembering the words to convey. 

“Let’s get to it then,” Dara said, skipping the pleasantries as they gathered their gear. Near the others who had fulfilled their duty for the day, a straggler was sitting with his head down.

“You… hand,” Lee said with seniority as the boy stood quickly and strode over to them. He couldn’t have been a day over eighteen, and his comically conical hat sat oversized atop his long black hair. 

“Come,” was all Lee spoke as they carried their tools into the granite burrow.

“Say, what do you think of the diggers?” Dara said with his tongue and cheek, though he wasn’t sure if the Chinese man understood. There was a pause in his reply, and a few seconds later they broke out in rare laughter, looking out from the claustrophobic tunnel at the even rarer Indian laborer, a Native Paiute chipping away at stone—a true Native—misjudged and dislocated. They began to do the same, and were no better off than the rest; Dara and the boy readied their sledgehammers while Lee held the oaken-bit steady. Every quarter-turn of the cylinder, they took turns smashing the bit. Quarter-turn, a smash, quarter-turn, smash; hour by hour and with a dignified pace, they breathed the gaseous air and worked their skin raw until it was time. 

As Dara measured the acrid powder and began to pour it into the hole, the smell of rotten eggs filled his nostrils—charcoal, saltpeter, pungent sulfur: China’s greatest concoction. “Step back, it’s in…” Dara said. 

“Put the fuse in,” Lee voiced his concern. 

“I did… now get the boy out before I light it,” Dara replied, and the two of them hurried out of the tunnel. Soon after, Dara put the flame to the fuse and spoke the lord’s name. “I’m coming out!” he yelled, and as fast as his legs could carry him, he bolted out of the tunnel and away from the crackling fuse, flickering in the darkness of the tunnel.

“Stand back, everybody! Stand back!” Dara shouted, and Lee in Cantonese; there was a pause of silence, and the men stepped back some more. 

“Any second…” Dara whispered. “Any second now.” 

“It’s a dud!” Someone shouted amidst a crowd. But as soon as he got the words out, the blast went off. Smoke billowed from the entrance, and the base of the mountain shook as if in agony, roaring for any relief.

“Run!” 

“The mountain!” Voices echoed in tandem with each other as the spire began to shed its skin: chunks were sent flying down its slopes and from its ridges, rolling over men and leaving the place a cloud of smoke. Screams cut through the pale but Dara couldn’t see a thing, and only could he hear the coughing, and groaning of the injured. 

“Anybody alive in there!” Someone yelled, but Dara couldn’t see who, so he dusted himself off and crept through the smoke and screams.

“Fucking Hell, Doherty!” 

“Get us some fucking help!” Dara could hardly hear his voice in the displacement of rock that continued to crumble down. 

“I ain’t goin’ over there ‘till the smoke settles!” The railroad agent screamed back and went about his business.  

“There’s men in here!” Dara yelled as the smoke around him began to clear. 

“Chinks!” The guard yelled back.

“Christ!” Dara did too, and he trudged back into the fading smoke as others came to help. He knew he had armed the powder correctly, or had he? He kept asking himself as he looked for Lee in the blast. As his eyes adjusted to the dust, he could see then the feet of some poor man poking out from under the rock that had flattened him. There wasn’t much blood and the lack of it was startling—but it soon seeped, and ran from the rocks and down the subtle decline. He wasn’t sure if it was Lee so he kept looking until the smoke finally cleared. There were more men beneath fallen rock, and it was after scrutinizing their corpses that he discerned the smallest one to be the boy, but this he couldn’t confirm. And he never laid eyes on either of them again, alive or dead. 

“Where’s Doherty? Where the hell is he?” The Weasel scrambled for Dara in the chaos of the crowd, wanting more than anything to beat him by rifle stock.

“Did someone say, Doherty? Did I hear that right?” A man inquired with the strangest of accents, riding atop a grey splotched horse. 

“Now who in the hell are you?” Weasel snorted: “And what kind of god-forsaken accent is that?” He spat, staring up at the man in the feathered hat. Compared to the rest of his attire, the feather was white as snow, juxtaposed with his brown waistcoat and patchwork pantaloons of practicality. On either side of his hip rattled a revolver, peculiar pieces of metal that traveled oceans without so much as a blemish. The Adam’s revolvers had been nurtured a decade, strapped to the thighs of the looming hunter. 

“Well, I’m from the queen’s country, of course. But by and by, I’m an American chap. Left home as a bloke. And now I’m here, hunting lowlifes,” the Englishman smiled with his teeth, sitting tall on his horse.

“Hah! American?!” The rat forced a laugh and said: “you a bounty hunter?”

“Indeed I am—may I take a look around?” The bounty hunter asked and scanned about the place for an Irishman. 

“Shouldn’t be hard to spot the micks in the crowd, if that’s what yur lookin’ for,” the weasel said before asking a burning question. “Now what kinda name does a feller like you got?” 

“Harrington, and you, sir?”

“Patrick.”

“Say, Patrick, care to help me out? I’m looking for this man,” the bounty hunter rustled in his saddlebags before pulling out a tattered piece of paper, “Ah, here we are,” he said, waving it around in the air. Harrington was excited, and closer to his target than ever. “Who the hell drawn this? Looks like any mug here,” Patrick said, squinting at the crude drawing of an Irishman. Presumably, he was in his twenties, or so the paper read: wanted for horse thievery in Sacramento. 

“Handsome for an Irish lad, horrendous as they are,” Harrington remarked to the bullous-skinned man, a self-hating stain on the dry hills of Nevada with no fealty but to himself. 

“The nose is a little off,” Patrick pointed at the picture of the man, “I know this one,” he said, and looked over his shoulder toward the encampment. 

“Show me the way, Paddy,” Harrington jibed, but the man didn’t seem insulted or even ask why he referred to him as such. He did look confused, but Harrington assumed it was a constant state for the unionless man. Surviving by his wit or lack of. 

Dara was digging through rock for survivors when—straight across the railyard and near the main trail out—he could see Ernst talking to The Weasel, and beside them—a man with a feather tucked in his hat. It took him a second to register the past, through the haze of the sun and the dust of the mountain, but he soon chose to recall. Bounty hunter, the thought sparked a fire under him, and as the Englishman began his walk through the camp, Dara ducked low, using the lean-tos as cover from the eyes of those who would send the world raining down onto him. He’d stolen his share of horses in Sacramento and rightfully felt some inkling of guilt about it, but it was by no means a reason for him to turn himself in. I won't hang for horses. 

He edged the camp and away from the tents; the guards were scrambling now, some went to join the bounty hunter, and others left their shacks to round up any red-haired men that may have been Doherty. Work was put to a halt, and the Chinese gathered with their own on the opposite side of the yard, leaving the crushed corpses to their weighted rest. He dipped through the crowds, and up to the houses where the guards had vacated in search. There was a straw hat lying on the ground, so he scooped it up and went around the corner of a shack. Peering inside, he could see a bottle of unlabeled whiskey and a rifle propped against a table. With little time to think about the practicalities of escape, he crept into the shack and snatched them. Out the window, he could see them scattering to every corner of the yard, so he set the rifle down and pulled out his folding knife in a state of panic. Please, lord, not like this, Dara muttered as he stuck the knife into the cork and twisted till it popped. 

Whiskey poured everywhere; he dumped it on the tables, on the chairs, and dashed the alcohol against the walls before taking a swig of the wretched liquid. Stepping out of the shack, he retrieved a booklet of matches from his pocket and struck one. 

The fire was quick in its expanse, it did not creep the walls but instead chose to engulf them in an instant. With the shack swallowed by flames, he slid down the hill and crouched along the gradients, peaking his head up every so often to ensure the fire had caused an ample distraction. It did, and the men were like wolves drawn to fire. His heart allowed him a few reflections, but they were of a plan conspired mid-collapse. And he assumed, in the quickening moments, this was to all come crashing down upon his attempted escape—wherein he would start again, running from everything inevitable. It had become a way of living, to repress the past as if it didn’t exist and would never come seeking retribution.

With his head low and the stolen Spencer rifle in hand, he etched a path along the perimeter of the railyard. It was well above ninety degrees, and burning even hotter where the seekers huddled, staring off in all directions for an Irishmen of suitable description. He thought they spotted him, but this notion was discarded when they split up and began to crest the surrounding hills. The trail would take him eastward along the river, through the forest where in the distance, the trees are no more, and the naked cliffs are the color of copper. 

He considered blending with the crowd of Chinese, but abandoning his rifle was something he would not entertain. When the pack of wolves split, he took a deep breath, counted his blessings, however few, and hurried towards the hitching posts where horses nickered, flicking their tails lazily under the sun. 

His heart was off time in his chest, beating out of rhythm as his feet carried him in a blur of flight. When he reached the horse and grabbed the lead rope, the shack collapsed into fire, and the bounty hunter stared him down from across the smoldering yard. He’d never shot someone, nor had he ever fired a gun in the direction of another human—and he didn’t intend to now. Saddling the horse, he grabbed hold of the horn and leveraged himself atop the brown beast. The Quarter Horse reared, and in the corner of Dara’s eye, he could see the burning rider raise his revolver from afar. 

With no warning, or perhaps the shot was such—he could hear it, in that flashing moment—the bullet as it whizzed by—thereafter shattering stone. His ears rang out with the gunshot, and the horse reared again, kicking up gravel from its hooves as it took off toward the trees and down the hillside. Its eyes were wider than Dara’s, and the beast weaved between the conifers unconscious of its precarious footing.  

The Englishman wasn’t far behind, and he knew him as an Easterner when he shouted from atop the hill: “Keep running now! See where it takes you!” His voice echoed out of the trees, but Dara couldn’t hear such a thing, and his ears were still clanging metal when the horse allowed him control. 

“Come on, boy!” 

The man and beast stomped a quick path eastward, descending through the cottonwoods where the calmest of rivers misted the air. He knew they had to be close, just atop the hill, circling him from every possible direction; so he continued downward until the hillside turned from quartzite and to glistening shingle. The mist was cool against his face, but when the sun found him over the trees, the heat returned, and so too did the men shouting from the ridges for the horse thief. 

The river was limpid before him, a clear blue where the minnows spawned and danced the soft waters, hitherto, secluded and undisturbed by the men above. Another voice rang out; bullets struck the water—and off basalt boulders, ricocheting into bushes. Dara picked up pace again, downriver and along the escarpment as fast as the horse would take him. There was no time to appreciate the scenery or punish himself for his choices in life, so he rode and rode, with a parched throat and heavy eyes, between gunshots and breaks in the trees. 

The tube-fed Spencer Dara carried, he did so with a death clutch, refusing to drop it over every bump and obstacle, and never firing it at the pursuers uphill. Shooting from horseback was a task said easy, and he held onto all seven rounds through the elongated minutes of distress. The voices atop the ridge had ceased, and he rode the river until the monzonite mountains appeared far overhead, more mound than crag in their ascent. It was three hours till sundown when the Quarter Horse finally broke of fatigue. The hillside had eased into a ford across the river, but if his ponderings were correct, he wouldn’t head that direction, and eastward he would go. 

His assailants had vanished—and the sun—which fell with their absence and the raising of the moon. There was movement all around him: insects sang songs of despair, whirring around the horse that drank, imbibing a cascading delta. He was tired now, the horse and the man, both of which searched for food. The horse within the wheatgrass, and Dara in the saddlebags. It chomped away, unaware and glad to be eating, but the Irishman found nothing but a few belongings and something wrapped in paper. He tore at it, and underneath, his suspicions were confirmed as he devoured the hard tack. It did little to suffice him, and so his stomach rumbled some more. He’d found a mirror too, it was nothing ornate, merely silvered glass—reflecting his sunken features and the river bank beside him. Bored with his countenance, he put the mirror back in the saddlebags and knelt beside the horse. 

A few hours passed in which he didn’t sleep, instead, with unreliable vision, and the dulling of his senses, he scanned the trees and the clearing beyond them. He was used to a lack of sustenance, but this was worse; cursing his disposition, he drank from the river again until the shivering went away, and his insides quit shaking. Against a cobble, he lay with the moon above him, listening to the swaying of branches, and frogs croaking afloat.