Storming

Thirty-Four

WALTER WAS AS far from home as he’d ever been by himself. At least, not without somebody knowing where he was.

He stood in the prairie meadow between town and the Bluff. The tall grass tussocks had turned golden brown at the top with their prickly loads of seeds. They swayed and swirled in the wind, like a sea of green soda pop with golden fizz on top.

Somebody had to find Schturming before anybody else got hurt, and it didn’t appear anybody besides him had thought to look out here. He clenched the binoculars Hitch had given him and looked ahead at the tan-colored spine of five dusty bluffs jutting maybe a thousand feet out of the flat ground.

His heart beat harder inside of him, and he looked over to where Taos was busy sniffing at a gopher hole. Walter slapped his leg like Hitch always did.

The dog looked around, pink tongue lolling, and trotted to Walter’s side. Taos had stayed under the porch all night. Mama Nan hadn’t known about it, and Hitch must have forgotten about him after his fight with Deputy Griff.

Walter’s stomach tightened. At school, the big boys—and sometimes the little boys too—would fight. But never like that. Never like they hated each other so much they wanted to pound each other’s teeth out of their heads.

And the things they’d said…

Deputy Griff was one of the best men in town. Everybody knew that. Mama Nan was always wanting Walter to spend time with him—go fishing or ride in his car when he did his patrols—and Deputy Griff was always plenty nice to him.

But Deputy Griff hated Hitch.

And Hitch was Walter’s uncle. They were related. Kind of, anyway. If Hitch had been married to Aunt Aurelia, that would have made him Walter’s uncle, so that had to mean that being married to Aunt Celia—who nobody ever talked about—meant the same thing. If they were all related, it made even less sense why everybody was so mad at Hitch.

Walter frowned.

Maybe Hitch hated Deputy Griff too, but he hadn’t looked like it. There at the end, his eyes had grown big and almost shocked-like. He’d stopped the fight himself, even though he’d gotten hit in the face an extra time for it. And he’d said he was sorry for whatever it was exactly he’d done.

Nobody was on Hitch’s side. Except Jael.

And Walter. Walter was on his side.

When the family had all gone back into the house, after everybody else left, Mama Nan had huffed out the deepest breath ever. Then she buried her face in Aunt Aurelia’s sopping collar and flat-out bawled. Everybody, even Papa Byron, stood there and stared. Mama Nan never cried. She got mad and hollered and sometimes sat at the table with her hands covering up her face. But she never cried.

Even though Aunt Aurelia was the one who’d near drowned in the storm, she patted Mama Nan’s back and said, “There, there.”

Walter curled his fingers in Taos’s ruff, squared his shoulders, and started marching through the tall grass toward the Bluff. Deputy Griff had said this all was Hitch’s fault. Walter frowned harder. There wasn’t a lick of truth to that, of course. Nobody was fighting harder or was more brave than Hitch. Brave people didn’t do bad things. Brave people were heroes.

This morning, when Walter sneaked out of the kitchen, Papa Byron had banged in through the other door, into the sitting room, and told Mama Nan the sky people had come down last night and ruined most of the airplanes.

“God help us,” Mama Nan had said. “Have they found the airship yet?”

“No. It could be beyond the Bluff by now.”

That’s what had given Walter his idea. He had pulled open the kitchen door, nice and slow, so it wouldn’t screech, then slipped out. He slapped his leg to Taos and started down the road. He walked maybe a mile, and then that Miss Lilla friend of Hitch’s gave him a ride the rest of the way and dropped him off.

That’d been a good hour ago. If it hadn’t been for all the clouds, the sun would’ve been way up past the horizon by now.

He followed the old wagon wheel tracks, embedded so deep from the pioneer days that they still striped the hard ground. The air was mostly calm, the clouds socked in instead of rolling—except along the horizon where the steely curtains of rain closed in all around the valley. Every once in a bit, a raindrop would splat against his face, and he’d wipe it aside with the back of his hand.

He walked with the binoculars held up to his eyes. They were a little big for his head, so he pressed one lens against his eye and squinted around the corner of the other. He followed the trail down into a gully near the base of the Bluff. A raindrop hit the main lens in the middle and spread out to wobble his whole vision.

He stopped and turned the binoculars around to rub the spot off on his overalls’ bib. The material there, thick with his pocket, was too stiff to do the job, so he raised a knee and rubbed it there instead. That’d have to do. He’d forgot his handkerchief. Mama Nan was always telling him for goodness’ sake remember your hankie, someday you’ll need it. Guess that meant she was finally right.

At Walter’s side, Taos yipped in the back of his throat. He perked both ears, although the floppy one wouldn’t go all the way up. He was seeing something with his good dog eyes. But what?

Walter raised the binoculars and stood on his toes.

Only twenty feet away, nestled in the curve of the Bluff, plain as a coon in the corn, was the great ship hanging from its inflatable sail.

His heart scooted up his windpipe into his throat. He almost choked.

Breathe, keep breathing. Pretend to be brave. But the breath wouldn’t quite come. He threw himself onto the ground, behind a spiny yucca. Breathe! He gritted his teeth and sucked air through his nostrils. A lot of dust came with it and scraped in the back of his throat. He swallowed hard to keep from coughing and hoisted the binoculars back to his eyes.

The ship was snuggled against the Bluff, where it’d be hard to see from any angle but this one. The pirates had brought it in low to the ground, only a couple dozen feet up. Men were running all around it, and their shouts drifted out to him. The words were hard and growly-sounding and sure not English.

His heart beat faster. He’d found it. He, him, he! Nobody else, just him. He could take the news back to town, tell Hitch, and Hitch would fly out here and beat them all up. Maybe that’d make folks stop thinking things were Hitch’s fault when they weren’t. Maybe that’d make them both heroes.

Little carts were being hoisted up and down between the ground and the ship, carrying men and boxes and burlap sacks of what might be supplies. Some other men were gutting a couple of mule deer. The cannon rested on the ground, half-hidden in the tall grass, while up on the balloon, men with ropes tied around their waists scurried around the cannon’s track, making repairs. Men with revolvers stood guard in the gaping doorway at the front end of the ship.

Toward the back, some of the other men hammered away at a big hole. More of them worked on the propellers, which seemed different looking—wrong somehow. He squinted. Yessiree, the tip of one of the blades was missing.

It was broken! It couldn’t move. Hitch could hunt it down right here.

Walter would just have to get up and run back down the trail. It would be easy.

He inched his legs up under him and crouched. His heart hammered. He looked over at Taos and patted his leg, but not loud enough to make a slapping sound.

Taos kept right on staring at the airship. He stood on all four feet, leaning forward, ready to run right at them.

Walter patted his leg again, a little harder.

Maybe Taos thought the slap was permission to go. He leapt the ridge of the gully, and he ran across the flatland, barking all the way.

Terror swallowed Walter up. He jumped to his feet.

Men started to turn and look at Taos. Some of them pointed; some of them hollered. Some of them got real still, and some of them started moving faster. Maybe they couldn’t decide if the dog was just a dog, or if somebody big was coming for them.

One man, in a funny round hat like the one Papa Byron wore in his and Mama Nan’s wedding photograph, stepped out from the shadow of the airship. It was Zlo, the lead pirate.

Zlo glanced at Taos, then raised his face, looking out across the prairie. He looked straight at Walter.

A chill hit Walter, and his skin shriveled up. He dove back behind the yucca. They were going to kill him now! They’d catch him and take him up in their ship and throw him off the very top.

“Boy!” The shout carried across to the trail.

He peeked through the long, sharp yucca leaves.

Zlo had caught Taos. He held the dog in both arms, trapped against his chest. Taos kept barking, both whining and snarling, but he was stuck fast.

“I know this dog! I know who has sent you. You must come out and talk to me. I will kill this dog!”

If they’d kill the dog, they’d kill him too. Walter didn’t even have to think about moving his feet. They just ran. They carried him up the other side of the gully and fifty feet across the prairie. When he looked over his shoulder, the corner of the Bluff hid Schturming.

Taos! His feet stopped on their own.

He was no hero. He was a dope. He’d brought Hitch’s dog out here without asking. And now he just ran away? His throat thickened, and tears pinched the corner of his eyes.

No crying! No running. What he should do was punch himself in his own face.

Pretend to be brave. Pretend, pretend, pretend.

He gritted his teeth. His feet didn’t do anything on their own this time. He had to make them turn his body around, step by step, and creep back through the grassland to the gully. He clambered up through the dust and peered over the ridge.

The cannon dangled from a harness of ropes, slowly inching upwards. Three men straddled it like it was a horse and dangled the hollow deer carcasses off the sides by their hind legs. The rest of the men crowded into the elevator cars. Zlo stood at the front of one, empty-handed.

What did that mean? Walter’s insides clenched up. Had Zlo let Taos go? Had he killed him already?

Walter scrabbled the binoculars up from where he’d dropped them under the yucca and raised them to his eyes. His hands shook, and he pressed the lens hard against his eye socket to hold it still.

Some of the men in Zlo’s car shifted. Two of them held Taos upside down by his legs. A third man wrapped a handkerchief around his muzzle.

They were taking Hitch’s dog. And it was all his fault.