by Chloe Garner
The flats were composed of boulders worn flat by nature and time, mortared together with soft limestone that yielded perfectly under the various digging implements that had somehow worked their way into the hands of two young teens.
“If they didn’t want us to borrow them, they’d watch ‘em closer,” Jimmy had said the first time they’d stolen a set of digging equipment from one of the miners whose cart sat outside of the tavern. Peter Lawson had never known who was stealing things, and since they always eventually came back, he hadn’t worked very hard to figure it out.
So Sarah and Jimmy had explored the flats, digging out the sandstone in between boulders for the sheer joy of destruction at first, and then in bigger and more elaborate attempts at constructing underground quarters.
Forts. Strongholds. Pits. Their imagined purposes were as varied as the things they’d called them, but in the end, they’d had several dozen workable shelters that they stocked with water and wood. In the way of children, they’d invested way too much energy for the utility of the end product, but in exchange, they’d created a network of hideouts that, in a pinch, they could have used for weeks, given a supply of food, to avoid interaction with humans.
Today, it wasn’t humans they were avoiding. It was the sandstorm blowing south, the exact natural feature that had blown the boulders flat and cemented them together in the first place. They raced east, Dog running full out but with a happy tail, toward the nearest one. Somehow, Sarah knew this place better than the mountains she’d spent most of her adult life studying the maps for. She led them directly to the dugout and leaped off of the black horse’s back as the leading edge of the sandstorm hit, kneeling to push the heavy, flat rock from off of the entrance.
It was tall enough for a horse. They’d spent days and days digging it, and weeks before that, reading rocks looking for ones that looked like the available space between them would be big enough. She dragged the reluctant black horse down into the pit then whistled for Dog and went to go find the pile of kindling off in a corner that would light the space as Jimmy followed her down and pulled the closing rock back over the entrance.
There was deep darkness for a moment as Sarah threw sparks into the nest of grass waiting for them, just as dry as the day she’d formed it with her hands as a teenager. A spark took and the grass lit, spreading to the kindling as she added larger cuts of wood over top. A vent directly above the fire pulled aggressively, dragging the smoke up and out of the cavern and only leaving just enough heat to prove a fire was there.
She sat on her heels.
“Ain’t had a real big dust storm through here in a couple years,” she said. “Should blow through by mornin’.”
“Sounds like you’re due,” Jimmy answered, pulling the saddle off of his horse and going to see to the black horse.
“Gonna make the rains worse,” Sarah said. Jimmy nodded. Big sandstorms could set down inches of sediment that tended to roll like snakes through town as the yearly rainstorms swept through. The normal dust washed away all on its own, but the sand would leave muddy piles of near-cement in serpentine shapes anywhere something got in the way of the water. She glowered at nothing in particular.
Like they needed that this year.
“May as well eat,” she said, going to get jerky and bread out of her saddle bags and feeding Dog. Jimmy went down to where the underground store of water was, coming back with the sealed containers.
“Still good,” he said. She nodded. So long as there was water, they could wait out any length of storm.
“Inconvenient,” she murmured. “You ever think maybe we ain’t supposed to save Lawrence?” she asked, sitting down on the saddle and tearing apart a loaf of bread, handing half of it to Jimmy.
“No,” he said. She thought on that for a moment. It was profound, how true that was. Lawsons never thought that anything getting in their way was ever there for a reason other than for them to go over or through it. Usually through, with significant show of force. Lawrences weren’t that much more pliable, Sarah knew. They just tended to be more clever about how they got past the things in their way.
Todds got drunk and felt sorry for themselves, if her pa was any model.
Sand soughed its way into the cave at intervals as the wind outside gusted, and Sarah chewed at her hard bread.
“I brought beer,” Jimmy said, getting it out and handing her a bottle. She squinted at it in the flickering light.
“This is real barley beer, ain’t it?”
“From Carson,” Jimmy said. “Petey won’t drink anything else, if he can get away with it.”
She opened it and took the first sip off of it. Shrugged.
“Don’t seem so special to me.”
“It wouldn’t,” Jimmy said. “Just seemed like the time for it.”
They drank in silence for a time, listening as the wind continued to pick up. Both horses shifted around, stomping their feet and grunting at each other, anxious, but Dog sat at Sarah’s feet contentedly.
“You forget how cold it gets out here,” Jimmy said, looking up at the ceiling as the heat continued to ebb out of the air and the rock around them. Sarah nodded.
The fire popped occasionally, but the wood was too desiccated to make a real effort at explosions like fresh wood would. Sarah got up once to add another log, then sat back down again and continued to drink her beer.
“That doesn’t sound like a little one,” Jimmy said, looking at the ceiling again. Sarah looked up as well, shaking her head.
“No.”
“Bad night to be stuck out.”
“Yeah.”
And that was about it.
As far as it went, both of them were quiet by nature, and it was pretty easy to spend the last of the evening just watching the fire and drinking their beer. At some point, Sarah slid down off of her saddle and pulled her blanket up over her, patting the ground next to her for Dog to come lay down.
“Night,” she said.
“Yeah,” Jimmy answered, unmoving. She didn’t know how much later he stayed up. It didn’t much matter.
––—
The storm was still blowing in the morning. The horses were becoming impatient with the small space and the darkness. Sarah fed them from the gremlin she had packed in her bags, metering it out carefully in case this were one of the legendary sand storms that lasted five or six days. They could go hungry for a couple of days, but more than two and she and Jimmy would be walking home, with or without horses.
She fed Dog bits of jerky until he stopped nibbling her fingers, then she stirred at the fire and added a little more wood to it. She had a lamp for use at the mine, but only about twelve hours of oil for it, so while they didn’t need the fire for heat, very much, after a while, it was their only source of light. She kept it burning as low as she could through the day.
“How did they say excavation was going?” Sarah asked.
“Thomas was impressed with your man Thor. Said he’s a brute to work for, doesn’t let anyone slack off at all, but that he knows his business.”
Sarah nodded.
“He’s reliable,” she said.
“They’re out of sight of the main entrance, by now,” Jimmy said, “so they sent everyone home and are just working, the three of them. I gather from Thor that they aren’t getting along very well.”
“No surprises there,” Sarah observed.
“No. Rich and Wade don’t like manual labor, and Thomas isn’t a strong leader. They’ll be fighting constantly. You got smokes?” he asked. Sarah pulled out a paper and wrapped the dried gremlin leaves into it, lighting it and starting it before handing it to Jimmy.
“I’m not a child,” he muttered, taking it. She grinned at the fire, wrapping her own cigarette and smoking it quietly.
She’d spent days like this, before, holed up here or there for various reasons. It had never bothered her the way it would have Pete - he said as much more than once - and his constant need to fill empty space with words had been one of the reasons s
he had always been reluctant to bring him with her when she went out and wasn’t absolutely certain that she would need him.
Jimmy was like her.
Sitting at a dinner table, he might not speak the entire meal, but his presence was integral to the conversation. Sitting in a hand-dug cave under the flats, neither one of them had to speak. There was no need, there was no desire.
They sat, smoking, then just sitting, for hours. She got food out when she wanted it, and he retrieved another container of water from the store that they split among the five of them. There was enough water for a week, including the horses, but they would have to keep an eye on waste. As evening approached, Jimmy brought out another pair of beers and they drank those in their comfortable silence.
The storm raged on. More sand came down the vent, leaving a pile at the far side of the fire pit, but it wasn’t any more uncomfortable than that.
“You got lucky we didn’t end up doing three days of riding, straight,” Sarah observed late the second evening.
“Yeah, this is much better,” he answered.
Other than the request for cigarettes, that was all they spoke the second day.
The third day, she tended the fire, fed the horses and Dog, ate a little, drank a lot, and smoked some. They might have spoken a little bit, but none of it was of any consequence. At this point, even Dog was growing restless, but Sarah and Jimmy just waited.
The fourth day, the horses were growing hungry and angry. Dog whined at the entrance stone from time to time, coming back to sit at Sarah’s feet again with hope in his eyes.
“Not yet, Dog,” Sarah would say. If she wasn’t wrong, the storm was letting up, but the rain this year was going to be disastrous. She said as much to Jimmy.
“You remember the year we had the big sand storm when we were little?” he asked. She nodded. They’d been trapped at home for days. The only people who had gone out were Peter and Grin to make sure the horses were okay. It had driven Little Peter crazy, being trapped in the house like that. The twins were fine with it, off in their own world playing like they always were, and Thomas had been small enough that Sarah didn’t know that he’d had an opinion to express about the whole thing.
“The rain that year,” she murmured. Jimmy nodded. They’d had to rebuild the tavern after the rains, because enough sediment had piled up against it that it shifted off its foundations and started to grind its walls away on the rocky ground. The Lawsons had hired every able-bodied man in the area for cleanup, just because if they didn’t pay for it, it wasn’t going to get done - everyone was too overwhelmed taking care of their own property.
Sarah thought they could have left the tavern just where it had ended up, as a relic of a previous era. Made Willie and Paulie get real jobs. Digging, somewhere.
“I think it’s letting up, now,” Jimmy said. “Don’t know if it will be in time for us to get out of here tonight, or if we’re stuck here until tomorrow morning.”
“If we can go, we should,” Sarah said. “Even a couple of miles closer to grass is going to make a big difference.”
“How are they holding up?” Jimmy asked.
“If we’re here until tomorrow morning, we might not ride out.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“Very inconvenient. Our investors are going to be here in a little over a week.”
She nodded.
“And you want to be able to do tours.”
“At least show them what the new-mined material looks like,” he agreed.
“You think about how hard it would be to get all them city folk up into the mountains? That it might not be a one-day trip, for them? How are they gonna feel, camping out in all their fancy city clothes?”
“It gets worse when you consider security,” Jimmy said. “We’d be taking the biggest bag of red meat ever out into the wild for the bandits to try to pick them off.”
Sarah made a face.
“What d’you figure they’d do with ‘em?”
“Ransom,” Jimmy said. “They’ve never had anyone out here worth enough to try it, but I bet they’d figure out how to communicate a demand, if they really wanted to. Plus claim-jumping. Pete really didn’t pick the easiest claim to guard. It’s been hard enough keeping the claim a secret with the laborers. Try doing that with businessmen who have no experience or interest at all in being secretive with where we’re going.”
“You’re still gonna try, though, ain’t’cha?” Sarah asked.
“Of course,” Jimmy told her. He put his hand out and she slid her hand into her pocket to find papers.
“You’re buyin’ me a bunch of smokin’ gremlin when we get back to town,” she said. “I’m nearly out.”
“Deal,” he said, taking the cigarette and lighting it. He put his feet out in front of him and crossed them. “I’ve gotta say, this has been about as pleasant as it could have possibly been.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Being stuck underground,” he said. “You’re the least obnoxious person I know, in a closed space like this.”
She lit her own cigarette and scratched Dog’s ears.
“You mean you prefer my company to Lise?” she asked with a touch of sauce. “I can only imagine what the two of you would have done to pass the time.”
“Lise is uptight,” Jimmy said. “If I wanted entertainment, Jezzie is the one to go for.”
Sarah blew smoke at the ceiling.
“You baitin’ me, Lawson?”
“No more than you are me,” he answered. She gave him a sideways look, and he put on his most amused face, the one where one eye closed just a little and his cheek actually rose from the sideways smile.
“I’d think you’d want a woman all to yourself,” she said. “Rather than one you’re sharin’ with everyone else.”
He shrugged.
“No more than I want my own horse or my own plate at dinner,” he said. She shook her head.
“You’re lyin’ to me.”
He shrugged again, taking a slow drag of his cigarette and blowing smoke upwards.
“Not as if it matters much,” he said. “I’ve got the selection I’ve got, wouldn’t you say?”
“Here, maybe,” she said. “But you just came fresh from Intec. Lotta women there.”
“There will be a lot of women here, too, someday,” Jimmy said. “I’m in no rush.”
“Hope that works out for you,” Sarah muttered. He laughed.
“You jealous, Sarah Todd?” he asked.
“Disgusted, Jimmy Lawson. Just disgusted.”
He shook his head, looking up at the ceiling again.
“I think I’m going to stick my head out.”
The wind had died down appreciably, and Sarah didn’t argue with him. He came back a minute later without having shed any light into the dugout.
“I can’t budge the stone,” he said. “Too much sand on it.”
She stood, throwing her cigarette into the fire and following him up the incline to the flat stone.
“You coulda left a gap,” she observed, going back for her lantern and holding it up underneath the stone.
“Wasn’t supposed to be a four-day sandstorm,” Jimmy said. Sarah eyed the rock, giving it an experimental push. It was heavy enough that she couldn’t have carried it on her own, but she should have been able to lift it, if it hadn’t had so much sand on it. And lifting was going to be a lot easier than sliding it, with just her fingers for traction. She shook her head again, going back to look through her things.
“Don’t suppose you carry a crowbar,” Jimmy called from the entrance.
“Not in this coat,” she answered, having the sudden and devastating image flash through her head of the flat stone leaving enough of an edge to start and accumulate a full dune of sand on top of their enclosure. Sand got really heavy, really fast. This she knew.
She went to the pile of wood and picked up one of the kindling sticks, solid enough still that it would bear weight pretty well, then fo
und a loose stone where it had rolled down into the water store. She passed Jimmy, standing so that he could hold the lantern up for her, and drove the stick into the underside of the stone, pounding it with the rock until it began to lift, fraction of an inch at a time. Finally, the stick was all the way under the sealing stone. She stopped driving it, tipping her face sideways. She knew what she was going to find. There was still no light coming in, so she would be looking at nothing but sand, but she had to look at it anyway. She nodded.
“Yup. Sand.”
Jimmy stuck his fingers in under the stone, pulling a small amount of sand into the dugout and Sarah smacked his hand.
“That stick rolls out, you’re goin’ without those,” Sarah said. “I’ll cut ‘em off to save your life, but you ain’t gonna like not havin’ em.”
“What do you recommend?” he asked.
“A better tool,” she said, going back and getting another, larger stick. She pounded that one in until the first stick went loose, then she used the first one to dig. It was stupid, slow going, brushing tiny amounts of sand in, when there was potentially several tons of sand up on top of it, but she kept at it for a moment before shaking her head.
“I can’t tell,” she said.
Jimmy was behind her with a round stone that was thicker than the last stick, and she nodded, putting it up to the gap and beating it into place. Now she had a three-inch gap to look through, at the pile of sand cascading under the stone and in toward her. Hourglass sand came to mind.
No one knew where they were, and the town would be in catastrophic cleanup mode as it was. All the vagrant men would have been at risk of being buried alive or blown away, and any shelter that had survived the fire or gone up after it would be gone. They’d have crowded into the general store, the tavern, the tailor’s shop, and any of the abandoned stores they could break into, and they’d be struggling to make it work with no space, no food, and no water.
No one was going to even ask where Sarah and Jimmy were.
Jimmy was standing next to her, looking at the wall of sand just outside.
“It’s sand,” he said. She nodded. “That’s all it is. There can only be so much of it.”