Terrain Page 2

  There was a trail between the big house and theirs, a web worn into the earth from people going back and forth like family. Fa Liang had one from his house to theirs, to pick up Faye and head to the barn for dog racing.

  He delighted in maneuvers, pivoting full around on just one leg; Faye delighted in how fast a dog could cross terrain.

  The dogs were too useful, she thought. River Pass had to get messages across the mountains. The town might not care for them, but they’d stand up for the dogs.

  You always wanted Elijah to be right; she’d even wanted to believe him when he said this could be home.

  Faye and Frank had come to Elijah’s by accident.

  They’d escaped from the Mormon school in winter—light snow before a blizzard, when they’d be harder to follow—and struck out for home.

  They made it.

  Fa Liang found them while he was testing Dog 2; they were both nearly asleep, he said later, and frozen through.

  She knew how to look for shelter, how to keep away from the worst of the wind. She knew how to find them enough to survive on—they’d lasted weeks that way. But she’d forgotten how many it takes to keep warm in a cold that deep. (For that you need a family.)

  There hadn’t been time to fetch help—snow was coming, and it would have been too late.

  So Fa Liang had draped them over the dog and taken them straight to the house.

  “You’re welcome here,” Elijah had said that first night. “Consider this place your home.”

  “It is,” said Frank.

  Faye set her jaw and waited for Elijah to strike, to tell them to get out.

  But he only said, “Fair enough,” and looked at Faye, the closest anyone had come to apologizing for anything.

  “We’ll see,” Faye said, and Elijah smiled.

  Frank loved the idea of a service too useful to run out of town, and he and Joseph struck up pretty well, and he treated the place like it really was home.

  Faye was waiting for a sign to move. It hadn’t yet come, that was all.

  If she got fond of the dogs, it was just from being there so long; if 2 was her favorite, no one faulted her.

  Dog 2 was safer than the prototype; Faye’s only burn was a thin line across one wrist, where her arm had hung too close to the shell, and Frank’s just a smudge burned into his stomach, where he laced his hands, sometimes.

  When the railroad wants land the owner’s unwilling to sell, it sends a man like Michael Grant to file with the clerk’s office a finding that upon inspection, those acres, a gift from the United States, are being mismanaged.

  Grant is tall and clean-shaven and has a new coat, and everyone gets friendly with a man who has money to burn.

  Before long, he admits who he is. He says, “Shame about that Pike homestead. Seems we’ll be moving on to Green River.”

  Word spreads—they’re close, held back by so little, it wouldn’t take any work at all, the railway will pay Elijah a king’s ransom, who does he think he is to cut the town out of its chance.

  A town beside a railway town never makes it. It’s the train, or nothing, everyone knows.

  (Michael Grant might have said this himself, to Harper at the general store, who speaks to everyone and never quite remembers the words aren’t his.)

  When the railroad wants to make sure, they call the residents “unsavories,” and remind God-fearing folk what happens if that kind are allowed to stay long.

  It’s easy work. Most people never forget their little fears.

  Elijah, Maria, and Frank took the wagon to River Pass a few days later—dry goods, oil for the dogs.

  They came back too early.

  Faye saw the line of Frank’s shoulders, and knew something terrible had happened.

  She swung down from the dog, locked the engine off.

  Elijah was white as a ghost.

  They weren’t speaking.

  “Joseph,” she called, “Fa Liang. Trouble.”

  Fa Liang came from the barn, and Joseph from the smithy, and watched them.

  “We should run,” said Fa Liang, so quiet only Faye could hear.

  (She agreed. The town knew about the train. There was no good news anymore.)

  In the yard, the horses were specked with foam and breathing like they’d run for their lives.

  Elijah took Maria’s hand. Someone’s hand was shaking.

  Neither of them looked at Joseph.

  “We’ve agreed it’s wise to marry,” Elijah said.

  They went to church early Saturday, before parishioners were awake to object.

  They were without Frank, who didn’t like the idea of home being empty, and Joseph, who didn’t like the idea.

  As it turned out, neither she nor Fa Liang were legal enough to sign the witness line, so they had to wake Susannah Pell.

  “It’s no trouble,” she said, when Elijah apologized. “I wondered if you were in love, you had that look about you. And it’s good to see this for you, what with Grant telling people—”

  The father cleared his throat; she said, “Congratulations,” set down the pen, stepped back.

  Elijah glanced at Faye, then Maria, her hand in his, standing like a soldier in a black dress.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  With someone of the right temper, you could work in quiet for a long time. It was the thing Faye liked best about Western Fleet; it was the reason she’d been able to stay here as long as they had.

  But they told stories, in the barn mending dogs by lamplight, or on the porch in summer, when it was too hot to be in the barn any longer.

  Joseph had his Freedmen’s Bureau schoolbook, so well-read the binding had gone, and he recited from memory.

  “Awful lot about forgiveness,” Faye said once.

  “It’s all forgiveness,” Joseph said. “Mercy.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Frank.

  (Maria lent Joseph her Bible; he’d handed it back, said, “I’d just as soon not.”

  No one questioned.)

  Fa Liang told them about dragons and giants and the bird that tried to fill up the ocean. Once or twice he stopped halfway, saying, “My brother told it better,” going quiet after.

  He’d left the Central Pacific because he’d lost his brother to a blast, clearing rock for the rails.

  Faye wanted to wrap her hand around Frank’s wrist, like when they were little, every time she thought about it.

  Maria sang in a sweet soprano that floated when it was cheerful, and settled on their skin if it was sad.

  She didn’t often seem sad, save on long nights where there was nothing left but to look at the sky and be mournful. Then she sang, voice trembling, eyes on the stars.

  Faye and Frank never offered anything. The few stories they knew they held like secrets, like they’d need them someday, when it was time to move on.

  “Bury me not, on the lone prairie,” Elijah sang sometimes, when the others had fallen silent, his arms behind his head, face turned to the moon.

  Faye tried not to look at him; when he sang it, her shoulders ached from not looking at anything.

  After the wedding, they rode home in silence. Elijah looked older now that the worst was coming true. Maria looked determined not to let home fall to pieces.

  It wouldn’t, if the law held, Faye thought. It was hard to be sure; the laws changed so easily when people’s hates built up against you.

  They came back too late for supper, which Faye thought was for the best; when she met Frank in the yard, she could see Joseph already headed to his cabin, as if he’d waited to see them coming before he lost his heart for it.

  “This won’t be enough,” Frank said, when he met her.

  Faye said, “Let’s go home.”

  They lay awake a long time, each looking at the other sometimes as if checking their worries in a mirror, until at last they slid into sleep.

  (They didn’t have the same worries; it was the only way they’d ever been different.

  Frank touched he
r wrist whenever they reached their cabin, as if he was afraid she’d keep going.)

  The boy from River Pass rode Dog 3 back to Western Fleet near midnight, six hours ahead of schedule.

  Then he shouted them awake about the fire.

  At the first scream, Faye and Frank were pulling on boots; you ended up a light sleeper, after as much running as they’d done.

  They ran, breathing in time—they’d done this, too—and reached the yard ahead of Joseph and Fa Liang.

  The barn was a tower of orange and smoke and a horrifying crackle as the heat started to do its work on the dogs.

  For a moment they faltered.

  Then Maria shouted, “Right, move,” and they jerked into action like a spell had broken.

  Frank ran for the water pump. Joseph dragged the hose from the horse barn, and as they attached it, Maria was enlisting the boy from River Pass (Tom, maybe, Faye couldn’t think) and the boy from the Express in a bucket chain from the kitchen.

  As soon as the doorway was damp, Fa Liang and Elijah and Faye used the wood-chopping stump to break through and run for the dogs.

  Fa Liang and Elijah grabbed the two closest to the doors. Dog 5 was crushed under a beam, but Dog 2, parked farthest back, was still whole, and glowing underneath a canopy of fire.

  “It’s not worth it!” Fa Liang was already shouting, and Elijah called, “Faye! It’s a goner, leave it!”

  Frank, outside, was screaming, “FAYE!”

  She stumbled, but didn’t stop. They needed as many dogs as they could save.

  They weren’t mounts, now. They were weapons.

  She shrank back from the walls as the heat rolled out, but she reached Dog 2 at last.

  As she grabbed for a canvas, as she spat on her palms and turned the key until smoke rose between her fingers, as she threw the drape over and rode out with her back blistering, she never heard the sound of the fire.

  She only heard Frank, screaming her name over a hundred other voices.

  Elijah pulled her from the rider’s seat, the canvas around her like a shroud.

  But Frank was the one who carried her up the stairs of the big house, who cut Faye’s shirt off her back—she bit down on something and screamed, hoped Maria put a belt in her mouth and she hadn’t severed her tongue.

  “Did the dog make it?” she asked later, when she was in a tub, and Maria was making something with mortar and pestle, and Frank was rinsing her with cool water.

  Frank snorted, said thickly, “You would worry about that now.”

  Even in pain, she knew that wasn’t fair; dimly she thought, I’ve always forgiven you, when you worried about what you loved.

  “Not as bad as it could be,” said Maria, bandaging her ribs. “It might blister, but we were quick, and your skin is thick there.”

  Faye never thought she’d thank the Mormon school for those scars.

  Her hand was another story—there was a diamond key mark burned into her palm, as deep as Frank’s. Some things were past healing.

  “It’s all right,” Marie said. “The wound is clean, it will be no trouble. I’ve brought you some clean things.”

  “Whose?”

  “A wife has ways,” Maria said, with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  But she was right—a clean wound hurt less, once the shock wore off. After Marie helped her into Elijah’s clothes, Faye was calm enough to say, “Let’s go down.”

  “Good,” said Marie, fastening Faye’s belt. “They’re waiting.”

  Frank was at the door, and he walked so close Faye thought it was a good thing she hadn’t burned her shoulder.

  The others stood as she came in—even Tom, green with fright.

  “I’m all right,” she said as they took their seats. (Maria sat next to Joseph.) “How are the dogs?”

  “Fine,” said Fa Liang. “Dog Two got out all right. He just needs mending.”

  “We have to fight,” Frank said. “The next time some coward from the city or the railroad comes here, we send him back dead on his horse.”

  “It can’t have been someone from town!” Tom cut in.

  “The tracks led that way,” said Joseph.

  Tom blanched. “But—” he started, then fell silent as something occurred to him he chose not to voice.

  “Go home, Tom,” said Maria. “If anyone asks what happened, you tell them someone set the barn on fire, and not a word else. Safer.”

  After a little silence where no one spoke in his favor, he pulled on his gloves and stood.

  “It wasn’t the town,” he said, but this time it was half a question.

  “The railroad put him up to it, whoever he was,” said Maria, when they were alone.

  “I need to talk to the mayor,” Elijah said.

  “No,” said Faye.

  They all glanced at her.

  “She’s right,” said Frank. “No point.”

  “The mayor probably set it,” said Maria.

  “It does us no good to start fighting without asking for peace,” Elijah said.

  “That’s all we ever asked!” Frank said. “And see how they treat us the second we stand up.” He propped two stiff fingers on the table. “Who here ever had understanding from that kind?”

  No one raised a hand.

  Elijah got an odd, quiet expression.

  He said, “Not every man’s army, Frank. Not even railroad men. Many folk are kinder.”

  Frank sat back in his chair.

  “Strange thing I’ve run across,” Frank said, “since Faye and I were given to the school—knowing how many of them want us dead, and expect forgiveness.”

  Elijah got the expression of a man for whom some things he’d never thought about were falling into place.

  “Well,” he said at last, “then it’s a vote.”

  He plucked five singed chips of bark from the hearth. He passed one to each of them.

  Then he stood back empty-handed.

  “Burned, we fight. Clear, we look for help.”

  Maria snapped hers on the table char up like the high card in a hand of poker, pulled back fingers dusted black.

  Faye wasn’t surprised. Anyone can be run off once, but roots take stronger, sometimes, on strange soil.

  (They were around this table, weren’t they?)

  Fa Liang sighed, and scratched at the back of his neck, and set down his chit with the pale side up.

  Joseph was quiet for a little while before he spoke.

  “I’m a free man, and if any man questions me, I have his answer. But I don’t know as I want any more fighting.”

  His bark went on the table, the pale side up.

  Frank sat forward, slid the black chit into the center of the table.

  Elijah pressed a fist to the wall behind him. “This won’t bring any peace,” he said.

  “Expect not,” said Frank.

  Then everyone at the table turned to look at Faye.

  Frank didn’t. Frank had closed his eyes, laced his hands tight against his stomach.

  He did that, sometimes, when he was frightened.

  Faye wished Elijah hadn’t asked her.

  She’d wanted to leave three winters back, as soon as they could walk, but Frank asked to stay the night, and then they’d met the others, and the dogs.

  Despite everything, Frank loved this place, where their ancestors might have lived, and somehow she had tricked herself that if they were happy, this was home; but it never had been, and it couldn’t be.

  Home was a safe place. That was gone.

  Now there was only Frank, fingers curled against the necklace he’d bought in River Pass from a trader, because it was what he remembered of their father, long white strands looped like armor.

  She tossed the bark back into the fire.

  “No vote,” Elijah said, trying to hide a smile.

  When she looked at Frank’s face, her heart broke.

  Don’t doubt me, she thought, more angry at him than at the men who’d tried to burn them out.


  She’d freed them from the school; she’d led them to homeland again; she’d trained gangly boys to ride the dogs and never been so far as the summit by herself, because he’d asked her not to go, and she’d promised.

  If she didn’t want them fighting, he should know why; they’d seen what happened when you were outnumbered.

  She let the wind slam the door behind her.

  Faye remembered being young, when the land was the earth and the marks of antelope and the horizon that told you what was coming and plants growing in the shadow of the rocks.

  At the school, she’d learned about barren. Barren was what happened to bad women, to the crops of people who did wrong. In the prayers they repeated until their tongues were numb, there was the hope of plenty, the fear of the blank land.

  She found the path to their cabin without really looking, set herself on the hard-packed dirt that marked three years of habit.

  There was a chill on the breeze, the edge of a winter that was still far off.

  She knew why Frank wanted to make a stand. She just couldn’t risk it.

  If he would only leave, she’d go tonight, head for the mountains, never stop moving.

  Their cabin was on a little rise, and she could tell its shape by the way it blocked the stars.

  It was close enough to home, sometimes.

  Of all the things that had been taken from her, she missed most the days when she looked across the place that had been home, and hadn’t yet learned what empty was.

  She was still awake at dawn, looking across the plain to the disappearing stars, when Frank found her.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Elijah’s gone to speak to the mayor.” He sat with her. “How are your burns?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “I was calling for you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  They sat that way, not talking, just together and awake, until there was enough light to start work on the barn.

  They worked all day, hacking out dead boards and scavenging replacements, trying to fit a home for the dogs.

  “We could board them with the horses,” Joseph said.

  Maria frowned. “Absolutely not. Those dogs will go in the sitting room first.”

  “I’d beat you in a race through the house,” Fa Liang said, and across Dog 2, Faye gave him a look until he laughed.