Dust Read Online Free PDF Page B

jawbreakers, and small sugar candies that were ten for a penny. His mouth watered. He tried to commit them to memory.
    A sharp crack drew his attention toward the pool room. The unshaven men at the long tables were dressed in dirty work clothes, hand-rolled cigarettes dangling from their lips. A few were out-of-towners, maybe even hobos on their way east or west, trying to outrun the drought.
    They glanced at him with a flick of the head, no more. It was as though a bird of ill omen were perched on his shoulder, invisible to him. If they looked too long they might miss their shots, lose their good luck.
    In an attempt to be less conspicuous, he leaned against the door frame and watched as colors swirled around the tables. Each ball became a planet and the players gods, moving entire worlds.
    Mike Tuppence, a boy of six or seven, sat on a chair in the corner. He wore suspenders and an oversized shirt that might have belonged to an older brother. His family lived way up on the bench, the tallest part of the Cypress Hills. Robert's mom had once said she pitied Mike because his mother had died giving birth to him. The doctor had pulled hard to get little Mike into this world and now he was being dragged through all the sinful places in Horshoe and had no chance of growing up straight. It didn't help that his father was a drinker.
    Mike saw Robert. He got down from his chair one foot at a time and arched his back like a cat. He shuffled over, then leaned against the other side of the door frame, exploring his teeth with a toothpick, eyes focused on the game.
    Robert glanced down. Mike's feet were bare and horribly dirty.
    Mike took the toothpick out of his mouth. "They're gonna open the movie parlor again," he said.
    "Oh?"
    "Yeah, that new guy's gonna do it, and he'll play a film. Dad said he'd take me."
    Robert had seen several talkies and a couple of five-cent silent films with Uncle Alden. When his mom found out she'd spanked Robert with the wooden stirring spoon and yelled at his uncle, swearing he'd only be allowed to visit at Christmas and Easter. She relented a month or so later, but she kept the spoon hanging on a nail in the kitchen as a reminder to Robert.
    "It should be fun," Mike said.
    A man cursed when his ball bounced out of the pocket. Robert looked up, expecting lightning. Nothing happened. God must be busy today, he decided. Or maybe he's out of lightning bolts.
    "So's Matthew coming to town?" Mike asked.
    Robert thought hard about the question. "No," he said finally. "He can't."
    "Why not? Did he do something bad?"
    "No."
    "When will he come?"
    "He can't come. He's gone."
    Mike watched his father hit the cue ball and miss his target. Another curse was launched into the room and it hung in the air.
    "I know he's gone away, Dad said so. But he's gonna come back, isn't he? So's we can play together?"
    Robert glowered at him. "He's not coming back. Not ever. He's probably dead, okay? Dead. Like a little sparrow that falls out of the nest. Dead."
    The word had a weight all its own, could be swung like a hammer. Robert still didn't know exactly what it meant.
    Mike looked up at Robert, disbelieving, eyes welling up with tears. He slumped his shoulders and went back to his chair.
    Robert felt sick in his gut and angry. He wished he hadn't used that word. He walked out of the hall and across the wooden sidewalk. The sun forced him to squint. He climbed into the wagon and waited for his father.
    He wondered about what he had just said. Matthew had been gone for over four weeks, and that was a very long time. Four weeks was two fortnights, and that equaled a month. If Matthew had been trapped in a hole somewhere, by now he would have died from thirst, or starved. His parents hadn't talked about Matthew's disappearance since those first two weeks of frantic searching. And the Mounties had lost the trail. That didn't make sense to Robert because they were always supposed to get the bad guy. There was talk that a man had