The High Divide Read Online Free PDF Page B

closed.
    As good as gone, he thought. No one was going to catch him now.
    The steam cylinders huffed and cleared their throats, and the long steel spine started snapping and clanging. The car jerked beneath him. He crouched low and set his hands on either side for balance. Then as he rolled past the grain elevator, he blinked and jammed his knuckles into his eyes to push the nonsense out: materializing like some droll spirit from behind a heap of crates, and dwarfed by the giant coat he wore that flapped and billowed around him, his brother Danny came running, arms pumping, knees lifting and falling, head jabbing forward chickenlike—all this motion, and yet there was a dreamlike sluggishness about him, too.
    Danny’s arm stretched forward. “It’s me, it’s me,” he yelled.
    Eli jumped up and grabbed hold of the doorframe with his left hand and leaned out, reaching. Danny’s hand felt small and damp. Stretching farther, Eli clamped hold of his brother’s narrow wrist then pulled back hard against the doorframe, leveraging his weight and hauling Danny up like a catfish out of the river until they both fell back. Side by side they lay on the rough plank flooring of the boxcar, breathing hard.
    â€œWhat in the hell,” Eli said.
    Danny turned on his side, his roll of blankets caught beneath him. His eyes were huge. Besides the coat, which reached to his ankles, he wore a big, wavy-brimmed hat that made his ears stick out even more than usual. Both the coat and hat were their father’s. Danny’s dog-eared book— Buffalo Bill, King of the Border Men —had come free of his bedroll and lay open on the planking.
    â€œWhere are we going?” he asked.
    How in God’s name? Eli thought. What would their mother do when she found Danny gone in the morning? He was tempted to grab his brother by his ears and toss him back out. Picking up speed, the train blew its whistle at the crossing west of town. Eli sat down, legs crossed Indian-style, on the rocking floor of the car, and Danny did the same, facing him.
    â€œHow did you figure it out?” Eli asked.
    The boy shrugged, matter-of-fact. He said, “That money you’ve been putting in the wall.”
    â€œYou think this is going to be easy? You think it’ll be fun? Well, it won’t—sleeping outside, nobody watching out for us. I’ve got to send you home, you know.”
    But Danny didn’t seem to hear. He shook his head, smiling. “I didn’t know if I was going to make it there, for a minute.”
    â€œAnd no one cooking for us, either,” Eli said.
    Danny reached into the pocket of his big coat and pulled out a tube of sausage and a brick of cheese that smelled so good Eli’s jaw began to sting.
    â€œWhere’d you get that?”
    â€œFogarty,” Danny said, grinning.
    â€œHis smokehouse?”
    Danny nodded. “While you were inside the hotel. What were you doing in there, anyway?”
    â€œDoesn’t matter,” Eli said. The mischief he’d pulled with the ring of keys seemed pointless now, foolish, not to mention dangerous and stupid.
    â€œSo where’s Dad? Did he send for you?”
    Eli took the letter from his pocket and gave it a shake. “All that snooping around you were doing and you didn’t see this?”
    â€œYou must’ve just put it in there,” Danny said.
    â€œA couple days ago.”
    â€œLet me see.” Danny snatched the letter from Eli’s hand. There was a flash of orange, and then Danny’s matchlit, grinning face. “Here.” He handed the wooden match to Eli, reached into his big coat for the stub of a candle, and set its wick to the flame.
    Danny flattened the letter on the splintery floor, then moved the candle back and forth across the lines. Eli sat and watched, recalling the sick turning of his stomach when he read it himself the first time—also the relief at having something real