as the merchant marine freighter requisitioned and re-outfitted to ship troops home from Europe. If he never saw the Atlantic again, or a wave stronger than a ripple in a stock pond, it would be fine with him.
After several minutes, he sat up. His vision was still clear, and he wasn’t dizzy, although he had taken a clout to the head during his downhill plunge. A goose egg had formed on his right temple at his hairline.
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to wipe the blood away from the cut across his palm. It wasn’t all that deep, but it made his hand ache. He wrapped the handkerchief around it.
By the position of the sun, he figured out the directions. The landscape was dominated by rugged limestone outcroppings, some bare, some with live oak trees or cedar breaks seeming to grow straight out of the rock. Scrub brush, like that wicked-looking agave, dotted the shallow topsoil.
He figured he was somewhere in the hill country. Still hundreds of miles from home.
He stood up and dusted himself off as best he could, then climbed the incline back to the tracks. The wind was southerly and warm, but strong. It had blown his hat off when he’d made the jump, but miraculously it was still there, lying in the railbed.
He clamped it onto his head and pulled the brim down low over his eyes, then started walking along the tracks in the direction from which the train had come, until he reunited with his duffel bag.
Shouldering it, he reversed his direction and continued in the northwesterly direction the train had been traveling. He saw no indication that a settlement of any kind was anywhere close. He didn’t even see a road. The only living things he spotted were a small herd of cattle on a distant hill, and three buzzards, circling their breakfast. Or what soon would be their breakfast.
His stomach was gnawing at its own emptiness, but the only food left in his duffel were a few saltine crackers and the last of a hunk of cheddar. Eating them would make him thirsty, so he decided to hold off until he found water.
He hiked along the tracks for an hour before he reached a crossing. A gravel road ran north and south perpendicular to the tracks, extending for seeming miles in both directions without a turnoff. He took the northern route, hoping that he wouldn’t have to hoof it for too long before someone came along who would give him a lift.
The road was easier to walk on than the railbed, but the sky was cloudless, and the sun grew hotter than what you’d expect in mid-May. He shucked off his jacket and draped it over the duffel bag, unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and rolled them up.
Sighting a thin trail of smoke rising from behind one of the hills, he was tempted to go in search of the source. A ranch house, or even a campsite, could provide him with a drink of water.
But the smoke was swiftly dispersed by the high wind, so he couldn’t be certain how far away it was, and he was reluctant to go exploring off the beaten path. He was no stranger to living without a roof over his head, but he wasn’t equipped to do so now.
He estimated he’d walked three or four miles before he spotted a structure on the crest of a rise. At first it was only a dark dot, but the closer he got, it began to take shape. He smelled wood smoke, even though he didn’t see any coming from the flue sticking out of the roof at an angle. A Model T was parked in front, along with a truck that looked like a junkyard on wheels.
The place didn’t look hospitable, but somebody was at home, and he was damned thirsty.
He started up the dirt lane. As he got closer to the house, he saw that it wasn’t a house at all, but a line shack, as ill-kempt a one as he’d ever seen. It must belong to a slipshod outfit that instilled no sense of pride in the cowboys who worked for it.
However, it was no cowboy in the yard, but a young woman who was wrestling with a wet bedsheet. She was trying to get it onto a makeshift clothesline strung between the back corner of the shack and the outhouse. The strong wind was hampering her effort, but she was