Free Sundance by David Fuller

hours, the guard came to Longbaugh’s cell with a response from Etta. Longbaugh read the single sentence over and over: “This time I believe you.”
    It was terrible not seeing her, but the following week a letter came from her, postmarked New York City. She wrote about her train journey across the country, but she hadn’t mentioned riding under the Hudson River. Perhaps she had crossed by bridge or ferry boat.
    The train slowed and entered a station. The passengers found their feet and collected their baggage and belongings. He took his own and stepped out onto a platform. The underground station was large, very large, but he managed to control his reaction. He followed his fellow travelers as they funneled to a staircase. He walked up with the others, each step bringing him closer to a light above his head until at the top of the stairs he was in an enormous room. He blinked to prove he was awake. His mind did not know how to absorb the size of this modern shrine of steel and glass. He leaned on a balustrade, craning his neck. It wasn’t that he didn’t know large spaces. In the West, he rode under expansive skies where he occasionally watched massive weather systems slam together. The desert spread endlessly, ashimmer with heat and mirage, where men and horses were baked into hard leather. Sleepy mountain ranges disguised their vastness and treachery, taking days, sometimes weeks, to cover, their endless beauty driving men to despair. But this space was indoors, man-made, littered with hundreds of tiny walking humans, and he was amazed. He tried to collapse it down into smaller bits, to understand the individual parts so that it might eventually make sense. Dozens of pillars were built on square bases made of a black metal grille with a repeating X pattern that carried up, way up, higher still, until branching out in four directions to flower into metal arches that crisscrossed under a roof that was yet higher with yet another giant series of arches. But then he saw a bird flying up there, whichbrought his perception back to the whole space. He did not understand how it had been conceived, how it had been designed, how it had been built, but somehow a bird lived in the space and called it home.
    â€œWhat the hell is this?”
    He was surprised when a passerby answered, “Appears to be a train station, if you haven’t noticed.” The man slowed after a glance, then came back grinning to look Longbaugh up and down, cowboy hat to boots. “You’re in Pennsylvania Station, pardner. The main concourse. Nothing like the lone prairie, uh?”
    â€œNo.” Longbaugh endured the man’s superior air.
    â€œYou lost? Get turned around?”
    â€œNot that I know of.”
    â€œWell, you’re going the wrong way.” He paused for effect. “Haven’t you heard ‘Go west, young man’?”
    â€œWe’ve got a western Greeley says, ‘Gettin’ too crowded, go east.’”
    The man nodded at the cowboy’s comeback, but his attitude lingered. “First time in New York?”
    â€œYou worked that out.”
    â€œYou win, pal.” The man smiled genuinely, his tone flirting with respect. “It opened some three years ago. Everybody came then, big crowds.” He looked up at the ceiling as if noticing it for the first time. “Now they’ve seen it, especially with the new one opening, Grand Central.” He again looked Longbaugh up and down and shook his head as he was on his way. “Jesus. Good luck to you, pardner.”
    Longbaugh walked a long way to be out of the grand inverted canyon of glass and steel, found exit doors and escaped to what he hoped would be the safe outdoors.
    He stepped onto a sidewalk in the middle of the island of Manhattan, a man of the West, standing in his boots on the racing, bustling heart of the great eastern city. He stared at the fevered nightmare madhouse around him. Pennsylvania