Free Chase by Jessie Haas Page B

knees. His heart beat so loudly he thought Fraser must hear it. Why hadn’t he waited? Just a few minutes, and he would have been able to leave safely, but he’d been impatient and now Fraser’s head was level with the stallion’s. All he had to do was turn his head—
    â€œStand back!” Fraser said. There was a scraping sound, the crunch of gravel, then a sudden sense of air and emptiness in the car and a drumbeat of hooves outside, rapidly receding. The trainman whistled. “Look at him go!”
    Then the voice spoke through the open door: “In a bad way, ain’t you? Wouldn’t want to have your head right now!”
    Phin hunched, holding his breath, until the man walked away. Then he scrambled across the crates.
    Plume was down there. Phin could see his boots pointing slackly toward the ceiling. But there’d been nosound from him. Passed out, Phin hoped. Anyway there was no choice. He let himself rapidly down.
    Plume lay boneless against a pillow of hay, his face pale and slick with sweat. He seemed unable to move, but his eyes followed Phin, dark, narrow, and filled with hate.

13
P URSUIT
    H e’d never been hated before. He was never important enough to hate. The look almost stopped him; but then Plume tried to move and Phin was out the door.
    Bright, so bright. Blinking, he made out a fat man in overalls stumped away up track. Beyond him the world blurred red, scarlet, and orange—trees in their fall colors. A distant gray steeple floated above them, transparent against the blue sky.
    Plume groaned and scuffed the floor, trying to get up; Phin ducked between cars to the other side of the train, where a green meadow sloped up to a bright wood. He jumped down the railroad grade and ran.
    It felt effortless. His long afternoon shadow raced ahead of him up the grass. Insects leaped wildly out of his way. A crow squawked and angled off into the sky.
    But the steep hill quickly sapped his strength. He stumbled in an unseen swale and almost fell. Watch out! Holes.
    No, this wasn’t coal country. Was it? Chest heaving, he turned to look back.
    A landscape of fields, farms, stone walls spread before him. Patches of colorful woodland were thrown over the knees of the hills like quilts. No breaker buildings loomed. No scars of digging or heaps of mine waste marred the earth. The train was the only industrial thing in sight, tended by little figures of men up near the engine. A lady’s bonnet poked out a window of the passenger car like a daisy.
    Phin walked on. His legs felt weak, his head throbbed, train noise echoed in his skull—but he was someplace else, someplace new. Birds. Treetops sighing in the wind. Whisper of falling leaves.
    No tavern talk. No breaker. No explosions underground. The air was fresh and spicy, like the stray breeze that morning at Engelbreit’s.
    He stepped into the shadow of the woods and turned to look back. A tiny horse and rider and a miniature buggycame from the direction of the steeple. Fraser’d found his doctor.
    Would Plume mention having seen him? Would he even remember? He was in very bad shape—but a man like Plume couldn’t be counted out until he lay dead in his grave.
    Phin drove himself uphill toward the setting sun. Walking eased the ache in his bones. The fresh breeze carried away the leftover heat of the boxcar and brought a promise of chill. He was thirsty, hungry, and he needed shelter before nightfall. Still, a weight seemed lifted from him. He was out of the boxcar, alone and free.
    The trees thinned to open meadow, brown with dry goldenrod. An abandoned farmhouse overlooked it, sway-backed, with glass-less windows. Its dark weathered siding blended with the woods above. Toiling up the slope, Phin found the remnants of a fallen barn, some rotted fence rails, a stone pen—
    And at last, what he was looking for. Behind the barn, a tiny stream trickled from a stone pipe in the hillside, dropping