Harrow's Run

The sun came up like an accusation that morning, a flat, hot glare that hit the boardwalk and made the nails wink. June Harrow moved through her shop with the practiced economy of someone who had learned to live by the rhythm of things that creak. The bell over the door jangled when she opened it; dust motes tilted in the shaft of light, and the smell of oil and boiled leather rose off the workbench. Her left forearm bore a thin scar that ran from wrist to elbow like a seam. When she shifted, the scar tugged under the skin and she felt her father’s voice—sharp, practical, unromantic—telling her to keep her hands busy.

She fed a thin ribbon of leather through the last buckle of a harness. The horse that belonged to Elias Brant, the stage driver, would be ready for the noon run if she finished before the sun rolled over the ridge. June liked the rhythm: one hand shaping, the other steadying. She could fix a broken spring in less time than it took some men to tell a lie. The telegraph key sat on a side table, its brass levers spattered with grease. When the town had first strung the line here, folks had thought the world would turn in a kinder way. The key still sang under her fingers.

The shop smelled like the town—sweat and tar and coffee gone cold. From outside came the clack of a mule’s hooves and the low hoot of someone calling across the street. June set the finished harness on a peg and walked to the door. Mateo—fifteen, thin, quick—was sprawled on the boardwalk with his boots kicked off, watching a pair of children chase a dog. He had June’s narrow mouth and their mother’s stubborn chin. He looked up when she stepped into the sun.

"You’ll ruin that back if you keep lying there," she said.

He grinned, flour smudged across the bridge of his nose. "Ain’t my back, Junie. It’s my dignity needs the rest."

Her laugh was a small thing and it sounded like it belonged here. "Mateo, go tend to the harnesses. Elias’ll be here with the coach at noon and if those iron bands ain’t tight—"

A metal clink interrupted them. The telegraph bell in the post office across the street chirred once and then again: a short, urgent peal. June’s fingers twitched. She moved without thinking, palms dusted with leather, across sunburned boards toward the telegraph office. The clerk, Miss Larkin, was a small woman with foxed eyes. She looked up at June and handed over the slip of paper with shaking fingers.

"Train from Marrow’s Gap—no answer past Dry Creek," Miss Larkin said. The words tasted like bad coin. "Elias says the coach should have been through. It’s late."

June felt the shop shrink and tilt for a moment. The telegraph key felt heavier when she pressed down. "Where’s the line been cut?" she asked, finding her voice.

Miss Larkin shrugged; she was already sewing the paper into her sleeve, as if she might stitch this worry away. "Out beyond the wash. We got no reply. Sheriff’s men gone out to look."

June closed her hand around the key as if it were an anchor. The sun over Sundown Ridge burned like a promise and like a threat both. A train late in these parts meant a hundred things, none of them small.