Mindy McGinnis - In a Handful of Dust

“Spatter,” Lucy corrected her.

“If your horse stops for some reason, yell out. If I don’t hear you, shoot into the air. We’re crossing that bridge as fast as they’ll go. Assuming this horse will mind me, I’m breaking south the second we hit the town. The road follows the river a little ways before heading back west. You stay so close you can grab my tail, understand?”

“You don’t have a tail.”

“And don’t get distracted by the river,” Lynn added, ignoring the joke. “I’m guessing it’s a sight to see, but you concentrate on staying on your horse.”

“’Kay.”

Lynn gave her a grim smile and looped Brown Horse’s reins around her pommel. “Well, here we go.”

She slapped Black Horse’s rear, sending up a cloud of dust from his rump and the sharp sound echoing over the fields. He only flicked his ears at her. Lynn growled in irritation and dug her heels into his side, getting a slow walk that kicked up into trot when she did it again.

Spatter jumped to follow and Lucy dug her own heels into him, surprised when he immediately bolted past Lynn’s mount with his head in the air, flying toward the bridge at a pace she’d never guessed the little horse had in him. She tightened her thighs around his middle, wrapped the reins around her wrists, and closed her eyes against the wind whipping past her face. Behind them, she heard the other horses burst into a matching speed.

At that pace, the bridge came up quickly, and Lucy ignored the bite of the wind and opened her eyes to see the river. Spatter broke onto the bridge at a dead run, his hooves sending out an echo that rang back at them from metal struts and the endless expanse of water.

At first glance Lucy thought Lynn must have been mistaken. This was no river. Water stretched as far as she could see, wider than any field from home. It had to be a lake, or even the ocean itself. It should have made her glad to see a seemingly endless supply of what so many yearned for, but she screwed her eyes shut against it. The sheer terror of something so large existing in the world she had thrown herself into only made her own smallness more apparent, the very fact that she was alive meaningless to anyone besides herself.

She heard Lynn pulling up beside her, Black Horse’s hoofbeats ringing out in time with Spatter’s, gaining on them, then passing them, followed closely by Brown Horse. Still, she kept her eyes closed.

When the first raindrop fell on her cheek she cried out in alarm, her eyes flying open. The dark clouds that had hovered all day were cracking open and dropping their burden. She could see the far shore now, and the buildings of the river town they were heading toward at breakneck speed. Most of the houses looked deserted; the empty eye sockets of glassless windows stared blankly at their approach.

Lucy leaned low over Spatter’s neck, not daring to glance left or right at the endless stretch of water, focusing only on Black Horse’s flying tail and the flash of his hooves. They cleared the bridge and Lynn’s horses followed her guidance, breaking to the left and following the river as it flowed south. Spatter was losing ground on the bigger horse, his smaller legs unable to eat the distance as quickly.

Lucy clamped down on the urge to cry out to Lynn. Buildings stretched along her right, more than she had seen in a long time, sparking memories of Entargo. Lynn shot a glance over her shoulder, but Lucy waved her on despite the distance opening between them. There were no signs of life, no reason for concern as their mounts sped southward.

The wet smell of the ground opening up to welcome the rain filled Lucy’s nostrils, and she pulled it deeply into her lungs, happy for the reminder of home—a place where she had mattered. The buildings on the right gave away to a residential area with houses set so close to the water, it made Lucy shiver to think of every drop of rain falling into the river and swelling it. A brick house flashed past, and she just had time to register the sight of three buckets set out on the sidewalk to catch the rain as she passed.

Soon the houses grew sparse, and the road veered west again. Spatter followed it, a deep huffing in his lungs giving voice to his irritation at Black Horse for leaving him so far behind. Lucy could see Lynn had slowed her mount after breaking into the open. Spatter pulled up alongside him, and they matched each other at a slower pace, the riders not exchanging words until they were well clear of the town, and the river no longer lingered in the air.

“Well,” Lynn said, wiping raindrops from her brow and motioning toward the unbroken road ahead of them. “We’re in Iowa.”

“Wow,” Lucy said, still breathless from their ride. “And I thought Indiana was flat.”

The heat beat down on them, drawing all their water to their skin and killing the grass that filled the plains. An endless sea of brown stretched to all sides, undulating with the wind and reminding Lucy of the rolling Mississippi, but drawn in dead tones. The horses stopped to rest more often, and their riders let them, their own misery trumping the need for progress.

Lynn slid from her horse and nearly tumbled into the shade of a tree. Lucy followed suit, not bothering to loop Spatter’s reins around a branch like she usually did. She wiped her face with her shirt and sank beside Lynn, whose eyes were closed against the unending glare of the sun. Her lips were cracking slightly.

“You need to drink more,” Lucy said, uncapping her own water bottle.

“I’m fine,” Lynn said, her eyelids not even fluttering. “Right now I’m wishing I could take my own skin off and wring it out.”

“I know it,” Lucy agreed, wiping more sweat from her brow.

“I’m thinking we might consider traveling at night,” Lynn said, eyes still closed. “We’d make better time, and it’d be less work on the horses.”

Lucy pulled from her water bottle. “Could we even sleep in this heat? Not to mention anybody could see us.”

“True enough. There’s nowhere to hide out here.”

It was impossible to leave the road without creating a trail behind them. Anytime they allowed the horses to wander into the grass, a perfect line of broken stalks followed them. Lucy pictured a group of men much like the ones from Indiana veering off course to follow the curious path of crushed grass, and finding Lynn and Lucy peacefully asleep at the end of it. Even in the heat, she had goose bumps.

“I think we should stick to what we’re doing, for now,” she said. “The heat has to break sometime.”

“You’re talking about Ohio weather,” Lynn reminded her. “We’ve got no idea if Iowa follows the same rules.”

Lucy took another tug of her water and held it out to Lynn. “You need a drink.”

“I’ve got my own.” Lynn waved her off and dug her bottle out of her pack, checking the water level inside before drinking.

“That your last bottle?”

“I got another.” She took a sparing sip and shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun. “We’ll be out of Iowa in a few days. Farther west we go, all these little springs the horses keep finding will be drying up.”

“Right,” Lucy said, eyeing Spatter as he cropped off grass with his teeth, flicking velvety ears when flies landed on him. “We won’t be able to keep the horses forever.”

“No, we won’t. But beyond that, since Joss took some of our bottles, we’ll be needing to replace them sooner rather than later. We can’t walk into the desert with four bottles between us.”

“We still all right on food?”

“We’re okay,” Lynn said. “This heat has been good and bad in that we’re not very hungry, so we’re not eating. But we’re not eating, so we’re wore out.”