Chase Read Online Free PDF Page A

there.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œTime you get there, he’ll be gone. He won’t look again for a while.”
    Phin shook his head, trying to get his brain started. That was good thinking, hide-and-seek thinking—what he needed to start doing—but he was still stupid with shock.
    â€œOkay,” he said. “Then what?”
    Jimmy looked full at him. His eyes were startlingly like his father’s, round and dark and heavy. “Get down to the yard tonight, hop a freight. Don’t stop till you’re out of coal country.”
    Phin stared. Out of Bittsville, he’d been thinking—but Jimmy was right. Wherever anthracite and Irish came together, you’d find Sleepers; Coal and Iron Police, too, the private army raised by the mine companies.
    Away from Irish, then. Away from mines—away from all of this, exactly as his mother had wanted.
    But he’d always thought he’d leave freely, not be driven. “Why should I run?” he said. “I didn’t do it.”
    â€œDon’t be simple, Phin! You can’t go to the owners—they think you killed Engelbreit! The union’s smashed—anyway, you were never a miner. And the AOH—well, you aren’t Irish, are you? And they’re so thick with the other crowd, you might as well turn yourself in at the jailhouse as go to them.”
    Jail? Phin could feel the bars closing around him—and that was bad, but it would be shelter. Would he be allowed even that much? “Vigilantes—they said—”
    â€œWouldn’t take vigilantes to settle your hash. All it’d take is the right jury!”
    Phin knew that was true. The word would be passed, the verdict predetermined; and would Bittsville do that to him? A harmless boy?
    It would. He was caught in something big—caught but left out, too, not securely part of any one group.
    He nodded. Yes. Yes, he’d go.
    â€œYour parents—did they tell you about the rider?” he asked. “Who was he?”
    â€œThey didn’t know him. C’mon.” Jimmy helped Phin to his feet. Phin straightened; Jimmy pushed him, making him stagger. “Get ahold of yourself, Phinny, or you’re done for!”
    Oh. Stay low. Downhill was the Street. Anyone could be looking up.
    Jimmy scooped something off the ground—the bundle his parents had given Phin. “Found this behind the house,” he said, pushing it into Phin’s hands. “Look—” For a moment his glittering, narrowed eyes searched Phin’s. “You grew up in the worst dive in Bittsville. You’re tougher than this, right? You’ll be okay?”
    Phin felt himself nodding.
    Jimmy gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “Up with ye, Phin! I gotta get back.”
    And he was gone, the brambles waving behind him.
    â€œThanks,” Phin said, too late.
    He put the bundle inside his shirt and turned away, circling wide around the Dog Hole, around the horse tracks with their eloquent, deep-dug rims.
    What horse? What rider? Where were they now? Hurry;but watch for holes. He was tougher than this. Right? His head throbbed, his arm throbbed, something in his pocket thumped his leg at every step—
    Plume’s wallet.
    He’d actually forgotten it. There were blank spots in his mind, like the blank spot his foot came down on when he fell in the Dog Hole. He wasn’t good at this. He was going to make some terrible mistake.
    He came to the graveyard, squeezed between two broken slats in the weathered picket fence, and stumbled into a run, dodging stones, leaping graves. Names flashed past, names he knew. The name on the stone nearest the opposite fence stopped him.
    Mary Chase: her dates; nothing more.
    Phin felt what he always felt here—nothing. Why would her spirit linger? Bittsville was never meant to be their home. She and his father had planned to save their money and buy a shop somewhere; a little shop and a lot