the war. He didn’t want to draw attention by consulting the time, which would be a giveaway that he was awake and planning a departure.
As unobtrusively as possible, he used his index finger to raise his hat just far enough to gauge the degree of darkness beyond the opening. Since the last time he’d sneaked a look, the rectangular gap had turned from solid black to dull gray.
Moving only his gaze, he looked toward the men who were a short distance away, lying at various angles to each other. Two were snoring loudly, feigning sleep. One, Thatcher could tell, was watching him through slitted eyelids. Thatcher lowered his finger from the underside of the brim. His hat resettled over his face.
He forced himself to breathe evenly while he counted to sixty. Then in one motion, he lurched to his feet as he popped his hat onto his head and grabbed his duffel bag by the strap. He made it to the opening and hurled his bag out.
Just as he was about to spring, one of the men grabbed his sleeve from behind.
Shit!
Thatcher came around and swung his fist toward the guy’s head, but he saw it coming, ducked, and held on to Thatcher’s sleeve like a bulldog. Out the corner of his eye, he saw another approaching in a crouch, making wide swipes with a knife.
The man holding on to him threw a punch that caught Thatcher in the ribs. He retaliated by chopping the guy across the throat with the side of his hand. His attacker let go of his sleeve and staggered backward, holding his throat with both hands and wheezing.
Thatcher spun around to the one with the knife. He had less than a second to throw up his hand to protect his face from being slashed. The sharp blade sliced across his palm. Thatcher yelped.
The hobo grinned and charged. With his good hand, Thatcher caught hold of the vertical iron handle on the door and kicked the knifer in the balls. Dropping the knife, he screamed in agony, grabbed himself, dropped to his knees, then fell onto his side. Thatcher picked up the knife. The third in the group was poised to attack. Thatcher, winded, his cut hand hurting like bloody hell, said, “Call it quits why don’t you?”
But the tramp didn’t listen. He came up on his toes, preparing to lunge. Thatcher threw the knife end over end. The point pierced through the man’s right shoe, nailing his foot to the floor of the boxcar.
Thatcher turned and made a blind leap through the opening. As he went airborne, howled obscenities trailed him into the predawn light as the train rumbled on.
He landed on his feet, but his knees buckled at the jarring impact. Unable to break his fall, he tumbled down the incline, cussing the pounding he was taking from boulders and stumps.
On one of his revolutions, he recognized the shape of a large agave, dead ahead and coming up fast. As he slid downhill toward it, he dug in his heels. They kicked up loose rocks and grit that struck him in the face, but he was able to stop within inches of being impaled by one of the plant’s barbed spines.
As the dust settled around him, he took mental stock of himself and determined that none of his limbs hurt bad enough to have been broken. His breathing was hard and fast, but it didn’t hurt to suck in air, so no busted or sprained ribs despite the blow he’d taken on one side. He wasn’t dizzy, didn’t feel like puking.
Accepting that he was basically all right except for his throbbing palm, adrenaline seemed to leak from his pores like sweat. He stayed as he was, lying there on his back, taking in his expansive and unobstructed view of the sky. It was turning paler by the second, causing the panoply of stars to dim, and he thought what a hell of a thing it was that he was still alive and could admire that sky.
Then, as only one who had slept standing up in a trench while rats scuttled across his blood-soaked boots could do, he dropped into a deep sleep.
* * *
He woke up to an early sun, but kept his eyes closed against its brightness, basking in the clean warmth of it on his face. He savored the stillness of the ground beneath him. He’d been unsteadily rocking for two days in that mother-lovin’ boxcar. It had been almost as bad