Cress  

The headlamp beams carved a murky yellow swath through the night as I pulled the truck over, my hands so tight on the steering wheel my knuckles ached. I stared blankly at the coal cars lined up on the service track to my left, their riveted sides a dull orange in the headlights. Beyond that splash of golden illumination there was nothing but darkness. Miles and miles of it. I took a breath and let it out in a long, soundless whistle. Against my orders, a tear snuck out from beneath my lashes and rolled down my cheek. 

I swore. Then swore again and lifted my right hand, grinding the heel of my palm across my eyes. "Just stop it!" I hissed at myself. "Crying isn't gonna get you no place. Isn't gonna change a dang thing. So just quit." 

And it would only make the boys worry if I showed up home with puffy eyes and tear tracks all down my face.

Still, despair had it's claws sunk in me deep, and I fought to keep from bending over and sobbing right there in the rail yard. 

I couldn't believe I had actually thought I could talk Caulley out of calling in that loan. We could barely pay the first mortgage. Doing it twice and then some? I couldn't get those numbers to work no matter how I stretched the books. Couldn't pay bills with money I didn't have. Which that wretched man clearly knew. I could still see the smug little smirk on his face as he sat back in his padded desk chair and pronounced the death knell on Heritage Acres. And that bit about it being dangerous to be up there in the mountains alone. I shivered despite the hot summer air billowing into the cab through the wide open windows. 

What in blazes had Daddy done with that money?

He lost it on the races. That's what he did. 

I sagged in the driver's seat. All those weekend trips into town that had him bright eyed and swearing he'd get us out of this mess, only to have Sheriff Riley bring him home hungover and reeking of Red's Alehouse... Might as well have put up a sign saying he was gambling again. 

We were doing alright. The south field was gearing up for a bumper harvest, the paddocks were full of prime yearling critters that would all bring in forty marks apiece, easy... if that was a mess, it was so beautiful I'd happily wallow in it.  

I groaned, that sick feeling descending again with a vengeance. 

It had taken every last drag of my energy, running the farm after Mamma passed. While Daddy was nursing a beer on the porch and moaning about the heat, the boys and I had spent all day, every day in the fields, planting and tending row after row of beans and meal grain. I even fixed up the truck and drove it all the way to North Star by myself to make a deal with Boss Anders to take our newling herd. It was because of me that the farm could even sniff at turning a profit this year, and in one thoughtless move, Daddy had swept all that hope, sweat, and back-breaking work away like it was nothing. I might as well have left the back fields sallow and let the critters stay up in the hills. There was no way we'd make enough to pay Caulley and Shust off before Caulley seized everything.  

No. I couldn't think about that. That would make me want to give up, and there was no way in the blue I was going to hand that fat, patronizing toad my Mamma's farm. I inhaled and made myself exhale again slow and steady. The path might be more rocky, but the goal was still the same. Somehow, I was going to find a way to get those boys to school. They were too smart, the both of them. Mamma had been so proud when Jimmy passed his fourth form exam with marks so good he got letters from universities. 

I pressed my teeth together. There had to be something I could do. 

But no amount of grand determinations could overcome reality - I still couldn't afford to hire Granger's combine this year... or a wrangling team to drive the critters to North Star. With a groan I sagged forward again. How would I ever get a hundred acres of grain in without a combine? I was never going to be able to —

My thoughts were cut short by a deafening impact in the bed of the truck that set the whole thing bouncing up and down in a shriek of rusty springs. 

I let out a startled squawk, my hands jumping to my mouth as my heart nearly climbed right up through my ribs. For a split second the truck swayed on its chassis, suspension groaning, the back end dipping as if it were overloaded. 

Someone had just dumped something huge into my little Gopher. 

"What in all the blue do you think you're doing?" I shouted, shoving the door open and vaulting down out of the cab, assuming I would find a front-loader pulled up at the tailgate with the coal bucket extended over the truck bed. All the goods from the Mercantile were in there. It would be just my luck if some idiot from the train depot buried it in coal. 

"That lantern oil better not be all over my new cali...co..."  

There was no front-loader. I walked the length of the chassis, peering up and down the narrow access road that ran along the edge of the rail yard between the repair line fence and the wall of what used to be the service bay.

I'd driven that spur for years because it connected the northbound town road with the mountain wagon trail, and knocked fifteen miles off my trip into the foothills. I wasn't surprised that it was quiet. The service building wasn't in use anymore. There were boards on most of the ground level windows, and the doors were all chained shut, with a big yellow caution sign above them.

So there shouldn't have been anyone back there dumping anything, much less into somebody's truck bed.

"What the blazes..." I muttered, still craning around, not needing to look at what I was doing to find the running board with my foot as I grabbed the edge of the wooden bed box, simultaneously leaping and hauling myself up to get a peek over the highside.

What I saw made no logical sense.

There was a sculpture of a man in my truck. An amazing sculpture, really, that looked like it was made of endless loops and coils of mirror-shiny metal. I could see the gleam of them clearly in the moonlight, cleverly arranged to form muscle and bone. I had never come across anything like it in my life.

But even as lovely as it was, I was fairly sure it couldn't have jumped into my truck.

Frowning, I looked up.

There was a large, man-sized hole in the big central window, as if something had come punching through it.

I stared for a moment. That hole hadn't been there when I pulled over to calm my fractious nerves. I was sure of it.

The statue must have somehow come flying through the window. And now it was crushing my supplies. Thankfully, it seemed to have missed the crate full of oil cans, but it was most definitely lying on my bolt of calico.

I really was not allowed to just have a thing.

With a groan, I tipped my head back and looked up at the sky. "You hate me. Don't you," I muttered, then looked down again to give the metal man a sullen glare. "Well. This isn't your ride, mister," I said, climbing the outward curve of the rear wheel well to the tailgate. I had just started unpinning the bolt when a sudden fizzing sound started up a few yards behind me.

I whipped around to look at it, and nearly fell off the back of the gopher.

The door to the old service bay was glowing a deep angry orange. Then, as if by some witch-trickery, a bright, fiery blade came sliding through the door itself, molten metal dripping and spitting from it as the knife sliced downward through the lock plate, severing the chains that bound the handles together.

I dragged in a startled breath, my mouth falling open on a voiceless, incredulous, "What in blazes..."

Then the doors came flying open, and two men came stepping over the sill. One was putting something into his pocket - the knife, I assumed - the other was wielding a fancy ion pistol, and both of them were searching for something.

Common sense screamed that they had to be looking for the thing in my truck.

With a pistol. And a glowy-fire-knife.

The whole situation had spiraled into the ridiculous, but in a purely frightening way. I didn't think. I just hopped down off the truck and pelted around to the other side. After two decades of reading Daddy's quicksilver moods, I'd learned to trust my gut about people - especially angry males. And my gut was insisting that if they caught me with their heap of pretty metal, those men would shoot first without bothering to ask questions.

So I stole their statue.

That's what it amounted to, anyway. The thing was in my truck, and I wasn't about to stop and dump it with an ion pistol aimed right at me. I just climbed into the cab through the passenger side door, scooted behind the steering column, gunned the engine, kicked the brake lever free, and sent the old heap rattling off down the access road as fast as she could go on her spindle wheels, leaving a billowing, moonlit cloud of coal dust and exhaust fumes in the rear view.

I would figure out what to do with their metal man later. Getting home in one piece was more important. My boys weren't going to lose another person in one year if I could help it. 

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