Dustrow Springs

Dustrow sat like an old tooth in the dry gum of the prairie, edges rough with mud and sun-bleached boards. Rhiannon Calloway—everybody in town shortened it to Rye—worked in Harlan’s Wheelwright beneath a lean-to that smelled of pine tar, hot iron, and the faint rot of horsehair. Her hands had the honest map of a tradeswoman: split knuckles, rims of callus, little crescent moons where splinters had once been. She spun a spoke in the hollow of her palm and listened to the wood the way a man listens for thunder.

Outside, a wind ran shallow and restless along the main street. A freight wagon creaked past, its load puffing dust into a bright, patient cloud. The townsfolk moved between their errands with a tired dignity. There was an old saloon with a cracked mirror that held ghosts sharper than any photograph. There was a one-room school with a bell like an old coin. There were jacaranda saplings planted by someone hopeful, now only scraggly twigs.

Rye wiped her hands on her apron and looked up when the shop door banged open. Harlan—broad-shouldered, hair thin as hackberry bark—peered in with the expression of a man who had just swallowed a bad smell and knew it would not pass. Beside him stood Sheriff Beckett, hat in hand, his jaw set into a flat ridge.

"They've posted it up on the board," Beckett said. The paper rustled when Rye snatched it. The words might as well have been carved into bone. The Iron Line Railway, agents of Mr. Silas Hargrove, claimed the spring east of town. The notice was brief, quiet as an ax-work list: claim filed; contest at county seat in thirty days; possession to follow.

Rye read the type twice. Jasper—her little brother, ten and stubborn as a burr—came in on a ragged breath, cheeks flushed. He'd been helping with a cart of apples and had a cough that sounded like someone trying to clear a hinge.

"We don't have thirty days," Harlan said. His voice made the rafters wince. "If they start grooming the spring now, we'll not have enough for feed, not for the mill."

On the back porch, the spring's trough gurgled a thin whisper that had once been a laugh. The water line, which had sat full all summer, had pulled its lip back like a shy animal. Everyone in Dustrow knew the smell of dwindling water: it was metallic and honest and made the children move slower.

Rye closed the paper. She could imagine the lawyers and ledgers, the cold hands of men who never smelled tar. She could imagine the Hargrove rail spikes swallowing the creek. She thought of Jasper's cough. The shop smelled of smoke, of iron, of her decision hardening.