Storm's Thunder by Brandon Boyce Page A

blows hard from the sprint, harder than usual. I ease him down into a canter and let him shake out his legs on a ribbon of level ground. Then we stop in earnest. Storm is tired and I need a think.
    You think better when we ride.
    â€œAnd sometimes I require a ponder what without my bones jangled, or you thundering my ears into deafness,” I say, removing my hat to cool the sweat in the high desert air. A young shoot of milkweed within striking distance proves too irresistible for Storm and he dips for it, not minding a hoot what my thoughts on the matter might be. “I saw that.” Storm gulps it, but dares not test me on going for seconds. The sky above blazes deep turquoise and the blooming sage flavors the breeze. “And as far as thinking places go, we could do considerable worse than what we find ourselves offered presently.”
    All at once we hear something else riding atop the breeze, both our heads turning left as the faint, lonely whine of a train whistle rolls up from the valley. I replace my hat to lessen the glare and make out a scratch of unnatural blackness cutting a line, straight as an arrow, across the valley floor. The whine comes again, softer as the locomotive charges away from us, followed by an eruption of gray vapor from its leading edge.
    â€œMaybe it might be the best way after all.” For all the vulgarity of its mechanized intrusion into the landscape—its coughing and clattering—I find myself drawn to the rhythms of the churning wheels, seduced by the Great Step Forward that is the rail. The truth is, the mysteries and riches of California lay at a distance too daunting from where we stand at present to be conquered by one man and his horse, even one as fearless as the stallion. We might just survive the treachery of the mountains and the pounding heat of the desert that lies beyond, but the third challenge—the one that stamps its bloody imprint onto my mind’s eye even as I try to shunt it out—tips the scale beyond recovery into the domain of madness. Those naked, butchered bodies entombed upriver speak to a roving evil that surely has not sated its lust for blood.
    I paw through my coat until my fingers find the rounded edges of the brass buckle, the letters U.S. as gleaming as they were in the sunlight a day earlier. If a detachment of trained army cavalry, to which I am certain this hardware belonged, could offer only pitiful resistance to such an overwhelming defeat, then the considerable faith I stock in my own skill of survival would do little more than drag out my death and prolong the inevitable, as those responsible would eventually track me down. “We both managed to keep our balls this long, I ’spect we deserve to die with them still attached.” Storm throws that eye he gives me whenever I’m not sure if I have been thinking out loud.
    I bring him about toward town again and we start back the way we came. No sense in leaving a conversation unfinished once I start it anyway. “Good news is we both get to bed down soft tonight. Right now, the plan is we slip back into town so I can sort out this train business.” Storm decides to point out the bad news by stopping dead in his tracks, giving me a chance to reconsider. I heel him forward and he blows a long one. “Yeah, I know we made two enemies already, but I don’t think they will be up and about anytime soon.”
    * * *
    Near the edge of town I dismount and lead Storm by the bridle into the alley that flanks the shops along the main drag. We creep silent in the tall weeds, one ear trained up the road for any afterclaps of the previous scuffle, or a pair of curious eyes that may connect us to it. But in the harsh glare of late-morning, the only sound in this quiet corner is the droning, relentless wind. A single line of track extends off to the left, dead-ending at a cluster of low buildings, newly erected with sturdy pine and fresh paint unfaded by the sun.