The Savage Gun by Jory Sherman Page A

grass and dank moss, the coarse bark of the trees.
    Ben walked the end of the fuse away from the planted sticks of dynamite, to the edge of the meadow. He stopped and looked around for a place to hide.
    â€œBetter drive the team up the meadow and as close to the trees as you can get. Just wait there. Crouch down in front of the seat and put your fingers in your ears. Take that box of dynamite with you.”
    â€œWhat about you?”
    â€œI’m going to run into the woods. See that big old rock over there? I’ll hunker down behind it. You’ll be all right where you are. Most of this stuff’s just going to plow ground underneath it. Be a few small rocks, maybe, flying like bullets. But they won’t go far. A hundred yards or so, I figure.”
    â€œYou’re the powder man,” John said.
    â€œThat’s what I am, Johnny. Now git.”
    John walked over to the wagon, carrying the unused coil of fuse with him. He set the box of dynamite and the fuse material into the wagon and climbed up, released the brake. He drove the wagon far up the meadow, nearly five hundred yards from where Ben stood, waiting to light his match. After he stopped, he looked back, then doubled over in the well beneath the seat. He waited, the stillness around him as deep as a mountain well back home.
    The explosion was nothing like the one he’d heard that morning when Ben blew the wall inside the mine. This one made a deep whump sound, and then he heard the rain of dirt and rock through the trees like hail hitting a sod roof. He raised up and saw white smoke hugging the grass, creeping though the trees, billowing out into the air. The wind caught the smoke and severed it into wispy scarves that pirouetted in graceful arabesques until they vanished against the blue of the sky.
    He drove back down the meadow to where Ben stood waiting for him. They took their shovels and began to scoop the loose earth out of the wide depression created by the blast. They dug into soft earth until they struck rock and could delve no deeper.
    â€œNot six feet,” Ben said, “but they ought to be all right here. Bears and wolves won’t be able to smell ’em, and we can haul rocks in here to put over the graves. That all right with you, Johnny?”
    â€œI reckon. I don’t want to think about it right now.”
    Ben softened.
    â€œI know.”
    They carried the bodies, which had become stiff by then, into the glade. They wrapped the corpses in blankets until they resembled large cocoons and laid them side by side, packing them close. They had five more bodies to haul up there. But there was room for those they had left behind.
    â€œI can cover them, Johnny, if you want to sit down somewheres by yourself.”
    â€œNo. I’ll help. They’re gone. I can’t bring ’em back.”
    Ben looked at the young man who had been growing old before his eyes. He felt the hardness in the youth, and he thought he could see that dark place where his soul had gone. He said nothing, but he knew that could be a dangerous sign in one so young as John Savage. Life shaped a man, and some men bent under its withering winds, its freezing chills. But a strong man weathered the bad times and grew taller and straighter and stronger. He hoped Johnny Savage was such a man. But he knew that this was a turning point in his life, a dangerous crossroads in light of all that had happened that day.
    He watched as John got the shovels and brought them back, handing one to him. He stood there for a moment, his shovel at the ready, watching John start to throw dirt onto one of the bodies. Beneath the flung dirt lay Dan Savage. John had started the burying with him, his father.
    Ben started shoveling loose dirt onto the corpses at the other end, his own brother and Clare’s brother. For a long time there was only the sound of dirt spattering onto the blankets, and the wind sobbing through the trees, the far-off piping of a