he would have been an attractive man, but the scar was all one noticed on first impression. Tonio nudged her along.
"There's plenty more of them down at the Lux my friend," Tonio called back good naturedly.
They had nearly reached the depot when the first charge went off. It thundered down the valley like the wrath of God. The earth reverberated, the air clapped, the windows in the nearby buildings shook and shattered with the force. Angelina screamed. Tonio cursed as he pulled her under the eaves of a nearby building and crushed her against himself, shielding her with his body. She covered her ears, certain her eardrums had burst, unable to stand any further noise.
A second blast rocked the valley, followed closely by a third and fourth, possibly a fifth. Angelina lost track in her terror. Her ears rang until she could no longer distinguish individual sounds. The sky rained kindling and toothpicks, pieces of wood of various sizes, and razor sharp nails, bits of hot metal. The window above them showered the yard with shards of glass. For a moment there was stillness, nothing but Tonio's strong arms around her, the steady beating of his heart and the dull roar in her ears left by the explosion.
Tonio released her and stepped back to stare up the hill. She huddled against him like a child seeking comfort and noticed with horror that the backs of his arms were freckled with hundreds of small cuts. In his eyes was none of the excitement she expected to find there; something else was there instead, something she couldn't name.
Reflexively, she brushed at her skirt. They were both covered with soot and dust. Tonio didn't seem to notice. Her eyes followed his stare up the hill to the main body of the mine.
The mighty Bunker Hill concentrator was a pile of rubble. Tongues of orange and angry red flames leapt at the sky where the boarding house had stood only moments before. The fire so fresh that its plume had only begun to stretch to the sky and curl towards the valley.
Angelina released her grip on Tonio and stepped out from beneath the eaves into the rail yard. Odd personal belongings littered the area, blown thousands of feet away from the boarding house. Yet many were still intact and looked as if they'd been set carefully in place.
Everywhere buildings were reduced to piles of lumber, yet a single power pole stood untouched near the center of the tumult, rising ridiculously over the disaster to hold smoldering lines rendered incapable of carrying a single watt of power to the plant. For a few seconds all was quiet in awe of the show of power just demonstrated.
The distinctive blast of Al's train whistle shattered the silence. As if on cue, a current of miners left their posts and rushed down the hillside to board the train. They appeared from every direction, heading for the train in an unstoppable wave of humanity, whooping and screaming a victory cry.
"We've done it!"
"We've won!"
"The second Battle of Bunker Hill is a success!"
Their voices blended in a cacophony of human sound and victorious emotion.
Tonio was beside her again with his good arm around her. And then they were swept away toward the train with the black tide of miners.
The ride home on the train was a nightmare she couldn't forget. Through some miracle Tonio had been able to keep them from being separated. She rode home on his lap in a fetid, cramped rail car meant for hauling freight, not people, with a group of men so raunchy and drunk she feared for her safety and her immortal soul for witnessing their foul language and behavior.
Flasks of whiskey and rum circulated freely from man to man. Tonio drank liberally from each one that passed his way. She couldn't condemn him. He drank to deaden the increasing pain of his gunshot wound, but she worried about his ability to protect her. She clutched his stiletto with such passion that her knuckles turned white and the feeling in her fingers faded, but she would not weaken her grip. Tonio acted casual, joking and laughing with the men as he refused their lewd offers for Angelina. Still, his hand was never far from his revolver.
The train made stop after stop. At each tiny town, at every mine, men piled off, many returning to work the shifts in the mines that they had abandoned hours before, acting as though nothing out of the ordinary had