Saddle Dust

Chapter 11

Bill and Casey traveled for weeks on the road, through some miracle, making it through Bolivia and finally arriving at a nearly extinct cattle town just inside Brazil.

There, they bought rail tickets from a man selling extras. Casey and Bill had just enough money from selling "Bill's" horse to get the tickets.

Despite Bill's protests, Casey refused to sell the draft and paid a train worker loading other horses to make room for the draft with money she had "just picked up along the way".

Casey and Bill attempted to climb into the passenger car but were quickly removed when the conductor saw that their tickets were fakes. Bill told the conductor where they had gotten their tickets, but the conductor stood firm, apparently unmoved by their tale.

Casey pulled a picture of a news article advertising the faces of herself and Bill out of her bag and unfolded it carefully. She made sure that the words "Outlaw" and "Dangerous" were clearly visible to the conductor. The image seemed to have a stronger effect on his emotional state than their ticket story had, and so while he refused to seat them in the shabby-looking passenger car, he took them to the horse car and let them climb aboard.

As soon as the door had jerked closed with a painful wood-on-steel screech, Casey stated that the car was fancier than the passenger car's joint dining room because it had "only the freshest pies."

Bill did not find this to be entertaining in the least, but instead proceeded to stalk towards the back wall, nearly tripping on his way over.

"Careful, your clumsy-arse boots nearly wrecked one of the pies!"

Bill turned to Casey. His face went a stormy purple. He was embarrassed that he had not only been denied a seat on the train but that he had allowed the conductor to put them in the cattle car without so much as a damnation in the man's direction.

Casey stifled a laugh at his obvious embarrassment and slid down against the opposite wall pulling a pocket knife out of one sleeve and a small bruised apple out of the other. She sliced off the stem and pushed it into the waiting mouth of the black draft. This seemed to satisfy the horse, and it chewed on the tough wooden stem for some minutes.

Casey cut a slice off onto her knife blade and offered it out to Bill. He just sat and glowered at the hay-brushed floor. She ate in silence, slicing off pieces and popping them into her mouth one by one, finally munching the core of the apple down, the seeds snapping off the wall across from her whenever she spit.

"So, we're getting off where exactly?"

Casey said through a full mouth of apple.

"The line goes near all through Mexico. We'll take it as far as we can."

Casey wiped at her mouth with her bandana.

"Texas? What is that, a week? Two?"

"Yeah. About."More silence as the train's shabby wooden floors shook with each jolt of the wheels.

"We won't make it. No way. Not to Texas. Not all train, at least." Casey's sudden statement shook Bill's eyes off the ground and he looked sadly at Casey. She had grown up, he thought. Shame Sundance and Butch couldn't see her now. He replied in a weary tone.

"No, maybe not. Probably not even close to the middle of Mexico. But we'll just...let's...just ride as far as we get." Casey and Bill looked away, giving each other a full cow's length to consider the death of their friends. The train rumbled incessantly through the rough landscape.

If Casey and Bill could see the scene changing, they would have noticed the sharp yellow and white rocks tumbling by into a smattering of small brush-like trees which were gradually overtaken by thick underbrush and tall trees. The sun bled out over the landscape and the few rays that could slid their cooling fingers between the slats of the cattle car and fell onto where two figures lay slumped against a wall in a deep sleep. A rat clambering over a boot and reaching up to a horse's tail caused only mild stirrings from the two figures as the horse sharply whipped the rat away, throwing it into a corner where it got up and proceeded on its scavenge for food seemingly unperturbed at its sudden, short flight ended by the wall of the car. The rat found the drying apple seeds nestled in the hay and began to happily pack them away into its mouth.