They ride at night. A mismatched pack of wild animals atop their tamed horses, thundering across the desert under the pale moon when the air is coolest and the sky is darkest. She is the youngest. She rides near the back where the rest are in view, galloping marauders with their trailing cloaks and clanking boot spurs glinting in the night. On the largest horse rides the man named Ben in front of the rest. Sleep is restless and difficult under the blazing sun of day and the horses grow sickly and stick thin. They manage on gritty sand and promises of grain when all is over.
Ben raises his hand and the horses all come to a halt. A mud brick bungalow towers tall in the endless plains of dust. The horses neigh and paw at the ground fifty or so metres away. Ben speaks to the two men beside him, one named Charles and the other Henry. The men named Charles and Henry disembark their steeds and walk toward the low lying buildings and through a rawhide flap of a door. The girl prods at the peeling leather on her saddle as Ben glares at the bungalow. A man called Henry coughs and a few others rummage through their packs. The girl looks between Ben’s horse and her own; between the great white stallion whose coat shines even in the light of the moon and stands twice as tall as she, and the unsteady foal that struggles to keep upright under her weight. She spits to her right.
Light pours from the bungalow as the flap opens and a black silhouette emerges. It walks towards the group of outriders with a limp, the left leg dragging dead. The man named Henry returns and speaks:
“Theys was folks home.”
He clambers onto his horse and the group trots over to the low lying clay building. She is the last to enter the warm interior and see the three bodies. Two men, one she knew as Charles with a knife in his chest, and the other, an unknown tanned fellow with a bloodied and bruised face. The last one was a boy younger than her with a wound in his belly.
A fire roars inside and warms most of the group while a handful of them burn the bodies outside. The horses are given warmth for the first time in ten nights thanks to the daring bravery of the mud brick dweller.
A fire roars inside and warms most of the group while a handful of them burn the bodies outside. The horses are given warmth for the first time in ten nights thanks to the daring bravery of the mud brick dweller.
In the evening of the next day when the sun sets and the home is thoroughly ransacked they set off again. She argues with Ben who says Charles’ horse is too big for her, and worth too much. The horse gallops alongside Henry's, connected with a rope. Her fledgling ride trails behind. They take a long route around the rocky peaks of a lofty mountain that reaches high into the starless night. The night riders happen upon a cluster of broken down carriages and glinting bones polished by the relentless desert wind. A few horse bodies dried up like blackened leather litter the ground occasionally, and sometimes they see a swarm of avian scroungers pecking away at bloody remains.
They don’t dare go into town. Not as a group at least. They gather about a mile out of a small collection of buildings in the early hours of the morning. One man named James rides his horse and pulls Charles’ behind him into the distance towards the dusty town.
“Stop fidgetin’ lad.”
Henry’s leg is poked and prodded at by one of the women named Maria as they wait on the outskirts. She drips a conservative amount of her flask on the wound and Henry swears.
“It’s fine, lady. I ain’t even feel it no more.”
“You’re yappin’ all night about it!”
“It’s only hurtin’ sometimes!”
“It’s infected is what it is. What have you been coverin’ it with?”
“Rag.”
“What rag?”
He pulls out a bloody, congealed strip of brown cloth that one imagined used to be of a different colour.
“This’un.”
“Throw that away, stupid.”
The man named James eventually returns with only one horse and a pouch of coin in hand. He gives it to Ben who stuffs it in his saddlebag and yells at Henry and Maria, and they set off again.
Later in the morning they hunker down underneath a large overhang ten miles away. Creeping weeds create beds for the weary and many of them rest. The alcove is hard to spot in the side of the mammoth hill it lays. They decide they only need one man on watch at a time. In the evening they prepare to leave; sacks are packed and the lithe horses are grunted at and their saddles mounted. Henry remains prone in the corner of the protrusion, his eyes closed and unblinking. The rest leave with his horse in tow.
A few nights later after the selling of Henry’s horse the girl strays further behind than usual. She whips the reins with ferocity but her pony continues to slow. She swears at it. Its hind legs buckle underneath itself and it lets out a loud cry as the two crash to the ground. The girl spits out a considerable amount of dirt and crawls away from the fallen foal, its legs bent in the wrong directions and its nose poking at the dirt. The shaking ground subsides as the pack of hooves thunder away from her. She sits up and takes a long swig from her canteen. She swears at the horse again, who continues lamely prodding at the ground and occasionally crying out. It’s a few moments after the sound of the dozen or so horses fully subside that the ground quakes again. It’s far more gentle, and soon she sees a majestic pale steed riding toward her.
There’s little room on the back of Ben’s horse. They arrive at the next town, and once more they gather far away from its reaches. Into the cluster of buildings the girl and Ben endeavour, with promises of a new horse ringing fresh in her ears. The stables are tall and grand, mahogany planks placed with skill and precision and a wide doorway reveals the giant interior. She tours hungrily from one stall to the next studying each specimen with great fervour. None quite match the spectacular creature that is Ben’s mount. She frowns and kicks the dirt floor hard with her boot. Ben walks up to a thoroughbred with a dappled light brown coat. It’s better than nothing.
Ben pays with the money from the men named Charles and Henry’s horses and he leads the girl’s new steed out into the main road of the town. As they leave the wide barn of the stable he spots two men a little further down the road. They’re wearing spotless black suits with red ties and black hats. They peek inside shops and saloons, down alleyways and around corners. Ben mounts the new horse and pulls the girl up with him. As the thoroughbred sprints away from the main road the air is torn apart by a loud crack and a plume of dust is kicked up to the left. Ben and the girl duck down on the horse as another round breaches the sound barrier and misses again. The new ride proves to be a quick one indeed and they gallop back to the group.
A crowd of horses missing their riders greets them when they return. The girl hears Ben swear loudly. He climbs down and finds his own horse again. The two don’t stay around for long.
Harsh sand whips at the faces of the two lone drifters. They tear along endless seas of beige, across rolling hills and giving wide berths to signs of civilisation. The girl grows tired of the unending riding but Ben doesn’t falter. His dull red poncho flaps rapidly in the wind behind him and his steed kicks up mounds of dirt and sand.
A long, slender metal line snakes its way through the hazy desert, stretching infinitely into the horizon. They ride alongside the tracks for a while until a small station comes into view. Ben and the girl tie up their horses at a pole on the outside. The station is deserted. The girl questions their being there.
“We just need to sit for a while.”
She squints at him and they both sit down inside. Ben walks outside while she takes off her boots and shakes the dirt out of them. She realises just how sore her legs are from riding and massages them. The air outside is distorted in the heat. She hears a distant rumbling behind her and stands up. A black spot in the distance on the tracks slowly grows larger. The girl takes her hat off and sits back down again and whistles. The ground starts shaking underneath her as the rumbling increases and the sound of metal screeching against metal fills her hearing. An ear-splitting whistle sounds out as the tireless wheels chug toward the station. She peers out of the window at the steam engine spitting out black smoke arriving at the wooden platform. With a hiss, the engine stops and stays for a while. No one gets off. The girl leans back on the bench and stares at the ceiling in boredom. Eventually, a hissing and the deafening whistle streams out again, and the engine starts sputtering out smoke and moving forward. She watches as the mile long train chugs along the twin metal serpents.
It’s after about an hour that the girl finally stands up and begins investigating. She first looks all around the platform, then around the sides of the station. It’s a small building and only has the one interior. With every inch searched there’s no sign of Ben anywhere. She hurries inside again hoping to see him packing his bag, only to see the ever empty benches. She feels like throwing up. The girl paces back and forth and swears at the thought of Ben. She swears at the bounty hunters, and at her old weak horse. She bursts through the front doors with tears in her eyes before they widen. She approaches the two steeds where they were left at the pole outside. She gathers everything she has in her saddlebags. Lifting the saddle off the bigger horse and tossing it to the ground she replaces it with her own. She unties the brown thoroughbred and sets it running east. The girl mounts the white horse and heads west.
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