Hour Glass Read online

  “Get outta here, Jimmy!” yelled Joseph as he threw another bucket of water into the roaring mass in front of him.

  The man I didn’t know handed him another bucket, but their efforts weren’t enough. Fire was a living thing, and it was growing too strong for two mere men to control. It was turning into a beast, and the beast reared its ugly head to the ceiling and beyond.

  “Jimmy, get Hour. Get the hell outta here!”

  My legs flinched at first, wanting to help the men, but thinking of my sister got them running again. I made my way through the dining hall and to our hallway, coughing up smoke and cinder all the while. When I reached our room, the smoke was thicker than before. Hour still huddled in her corner, knees up to her forehead. She coughed into herself.

  The building shook a bit. Some force of nature told the folks sleeping on the second floor to run from this place, and they did so at the same time: a stampede of girls and customers moving quickly and in unison down the stairs and out into the morning fresh air. They might as well have been cattle for how it rocked the saloon. Even the walls of our storeroom home shook and the wood beneath us trembled.

  Though no soul meant to cause the shelf to fall between me and my sister, it happened all the same. The shaking of their combined fear toppled a shelf of sundries that crashed onto the floor. It barely missed the curled ball that was my sister, and she whimpered louder for it.

  The air thickened with smoke. Blackness made seeing harder and harder. The clear picture of the little girl in the corner dimmed, obscured by the haze. I coughed again into the sleeve of my shirt, trying to call out Hour’s name.

  “Hour! Hour, can you see me?”

  She said nothing and showed no sign of moving. I crawled on top of the over-turned shelf, a feat in itself seeing as how it weren’t at a steady angle smashed against the wall the way it was. I took to crawling on my hands and knees to get to Hour. By that time, I was coughing a good bit, and she was shaking her head back and forth with a violence I knew I could calm.

  “I need you to come with me. Hour, can you hear? Come with me. It’s a fire. You gotta come with me!”

  She made no move, no change to indicate she heard me or wanted to go.

  “Come on! We gotta get outta here. It’s a fire. Fred’s already out there. So’s everyone else.”

  My sister just kept shaking her head. The smoke around us thickened more, and I coughed hard trying to breathe it in. When I reached out to her, trying to grab her arm to pull her along, it was like grabbing at a stone. Hour locked up. There would be no moving her, not without the leverage to get under her and lift her dead weight in my arms. How I might achieve such a feat while working around the broken shelf, I didn’t know. But I had to try.

  “Please look at me, Hour. Please snap out of it!”

  I pulled myself forward a bit, and tried to see a gap big enough for me to slide into. Another coughing fit knocked all of the energy from my body, and I slumped into the shelf below me. I tried to get back up, but the smoke had a hold of my lungs and twisted them like a rope. Reaching out ahead of me, I felt my sister’s elbow and tugged as hard as I could.

  “Hour please. Please come with me,” I said, choking. With every breath I wasn’t getting, a bit of energy left my person.

  Suddenly, I was moving backward and away from my sister. Something stronger than me had a hold of my feet and dragged me back toward the door. My body scraped along the hard wood surface of the shelf, making me bleed in places on my arm. I saw the dim silhouette of my sister’s huddled form vanish before me.

  “No no no! Hour!”

  Before I knew it, Joseph had his ample arms wrapped around my chest, and he was pulling me from the storeroom. I fought against him as best I could, but years of hauling crates made him stronger. He wrestled me out of the storeroom and into the hallway where another barrage of smoke met us.

  “No! Joseph! Hour’s still in there!” I screamed through a coughing fit.

  “I’ll come back in fer her. I can’t get you both.”

  I pulled against him, kicking and hitting where I could. My sister was in there. The only family I had left was shivering in that tiny room alone.

  “Go get her, not me! She don’t understand. She won’t run!”

  Joseph locked both arms under mine and around my chest so I couldn’t kick at him anymore. He dragged my squirming body backwards out of Diddlin’ Dora’s and out into the street where a motley array of folks were gathered watching us. The cool, clean air sent goose flesh across my body. The back of my boots hit mud, and a new set of hands held onto me. I was beset on both sides by women, Dora to my left and Missy to my right. Their eyes were wide, and their faces smudged with old makeup and soot. I struggled to stand, but the women wouldn’t let go of me.

  “Hour! My sister is still in there. Let me go!”

  Joseph left me and ran back toward the smoky entrance to Dora’s saloon. He threw himself inside, only to be knocked back by the heat. He tried again, but the smoke was so think, he couldn’t get three steps in without bending over from the cough.

  I struggled once more against the women, but they held fast to me. The fresh air had given me new energy, but not enough against two strong women. I wanted to go after my sister. She was still in there. She wouldn’t move to save herself.

  “Let go o’ me! I need to get to her!” I screamed with tears falling down my face.

  “You gonna get yerself killed in the process,” said Missy.

  Joseph tried again and again, but the heat and smoke was too much. Even crawling on his belly didn’t work. Panic hit me in the chest over and over again. My limbs twitched to run back inside. Everything moved far too fast for me, like a fish I couldn’t grab a hold of. My mind couldn’t keep up.

  A wagon filled with men and water pulled up at that moment. They moved with an impressive urgency toward the back end of the building where the kitchen fire had begun. When Joseph spotted them, he gave up his efforts and stumbled back to us.

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy. I can’t get past the bar. I’m so sorry.”

  “No! No, it can’t be!” I said, trying to break away from the women and crawl back toward the saloon. “I can’t lose her too!”

  Joseph grabbed my torso as I got to my knees and held me there. Dora and Missy surrounded us. I reached out to the smoke-filled brothel, crying for my sister and clawing the earth beneath me. Wet brine poured down my face so much I could barely see through it. Snot and all manner of things covered my cheeks and mouth.

  “It’s okay, Jimmy. Them’s the vol’nteers. They’ll get the fire out. Then we can get yer sister,” offered Missy with no real conviction in her voice. She too was already crying.

  Dora and Joseph offered no words. All they could do was solemnly stare on, trying not to look into my eyes. Their silence was all I needed to know. Somewhere behind us I heard the gentle rhythm of a prayer. Hour was lost. No one could survive in smoke like that.

  It was then I saw the figure in the blackness. Perhaps it were a figment in the eyes of a desperate boy, but it made the whole world slow down again. I blinked hard against the tears and breathed deep to clear my mind. She was still there, the specter of a woman amid the smoke inside the saloon.

  She hadn’t the form of a person. Not really. However, there was no mistaking the curve of that face, the long raven hair, and the sturdy arch to her back. The woman turned to look at me with a face I knew so well, a face that had been taking me back again and again in my dreams.

  “Cage?” I whispered, but no one heard me.

  The image of her began to fade into the blackness. I ached to call out to her. To tell her Hour was inside. To beg her to save her daughter. Everything around me was speeding up again, getting louder. She faded anyway without a word, and my heart sank back into the knowledge I was alone, completely.

  “Where’s Jane?” asked Dora su
ddenly.

  “Around back by where she normally is, I reckon,” answered Joseph.

  “No, she ain’t,” said Dora. “I checked there when I got out. Figured she’d be out here.”

  It was at that moment we heard the knocking of boots against hard floorboards. A normal sound by most accounts on any other day at Diddlin’ Dora’s, but on a morning where the saloon was a home to only ghosts, it sent everyone’s hearts to beating again. That meant movement, that meant life, and that meant a chance. The knocking quickened as if someone where running.

  I wiped the tears and snot from my face with the back of my hand, staring at the door, waiting for something to happen. Anything. The quiet prayers behind us stopped as well. We all held our collective breaths waiting for what was next.

  The dense smoke parted as a figure busted through it and out into the thoroughfare. Only after she left did the choking blackness return to stand vigil where she had been only moments before. Jane pushed her way through the doorway, her face ducked down and her eyes shut. In her arms was the stiff body of my sister. Hour clung to Jane. Her arms wrapped tightly around Jane’s neck, and her legs locked around her body. The buckskinned woman held her tiny body close as she stumbled to her knees next to us. Jane turned her head to the left and coughed a good bit of smoke from her lungs. She spat wetted cinder to the ground. We rallied around them.

  “Hour? Can you see me? Are you okay?” I asked, trying to see her face.

  There was no moving her. Hour’s face was buried in Jane’s chest and her limbs were locked tightly around her body. She didn’t respond at all, and it worried me to no end. When I saw the gentle rise and fall of her little back against Jane’s protective arm, I relaxed into the dirt below me. Hour was breathing. She was alive. That’s the best I could’ve hope for.

  23

  It took a while for the volunteers to put out the blaze and clear the building. Remarkably, a good bit of the place was still in working order. The fire had begun in the kitchen, a fact that would surely plague Nancy May to her dying day, and it spread to the dining room, storeroom, and parts of the saloon. The rooms upstairs were spared.

  When we went back inside, everything smelled of smoke. The pictures and paper on the wall were gray and singed around the edges. Nearly everything in our room was destroyed, though we managed to salvage Hour’s penny jug and her colored beads. Fred too was spared. We found him outside cowering under a broken wagon wheel. In the end, hearing the kitten meow was the only thing that would convince Hour to let go of Jane.

  The first thing Dora did was run back to her private room and check her safe. She smiled when she returned to us with the knowledge all the money was intact, even the funds raised for our schooling.

  We all milled about without words that day. Even Jane moved silently. So many times I tried to run up and thank her, but she wasn’t having it. All I got was a wave of a hand in my face and a strange look. Maybe it were too much for her. It certainly was for me. We agreed on silence and slept in close quarters that night in the rooms spared by the fire.

  Fire or no fire, our traveling day was still on the horizon. We were to ride with Charlie Utter to the school Jane had picked for us. I tried to convince them to let me stay. Surely, there was much to do to rebuild.

  “You nearly lost yer sister to that fire on account of her nature,” said Dora when I begged to stay. “Best thing is to get her to folks who can help her with it. We raised that money to get you out, and out you will go.”

  The money raised was enough to send Hour and me off to school twice over. At least, that’s what Dora had told me. I didn’t know a thing about school or how much it cost. All I knew was the bit of prospecting my pa had taught me, and the saloon work I learned at her place.

  When told how much it was, I tried to give the difference to her. Hour and I only needed enough to get us there and through our schooling. The least I reckoned I owed Dora was some money for the room and board she’d provided us. Perhaps it might pay for the whiskey she’d given for the benefit. The great Madame wouldn’t have it.

  “You been workin’ here fer that, kid. Keep yer money.”

  “But, you and Joseph, you been so kind. Jane, she saved us.”

  “Jane won’t take it neither. Don’t even ask.”

  I thought on that for a good, long second.

  “What if I pay off her drinkin’ tab with you?”

  Dora’s first inclination was to say no. I could tell that in her face, but she stopped herself and looked thoughtful. She considered my proposal while rolling a silver dollar in her left hand. Jane, with all her goodwill, had a tendency to run up quite the tab at Dora’s saloon. It was a hot spot between the two women.

  “All right, kid, but the rest you keep, you hear me? There’s gonna be things you need that ain’t paid fer by the school. And no tellin’ Jane. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  We spat on our hands respectively and shook on it.

  It was two days before we were to head out. Jane and Dora made arrangements with Charlie Utter to take us to Sturgis where we’d be enrolled in a Catholic boarding school called St. Martin’s Academy. Two days was all we had until we said farewell to everything we knew in the world. The idea of a boarding school loomed over me like a beast awaiting in the dark of my nightmares. I knew it was right, but this sort of life was all I had ever known. Anything else seemed terribly odd and frightening. The devil you knew, as it were.

  The day before our departure, Jane offered to take me back to our old shanty by the creek to retrieve anything else the other miners might have left. Hour was busy helping Nancy May clean out the old stove, and Joseph had the saloon well at hand, so I agreed.

  Dappled sunlight fell on our faces like warming shapes in the brisk air. Summer was over as far as the weather in Deadwood was concerned, and the autumn painter was already getting busy changing the leaves to all manner of colors. The past few days had been blissfully devoid of rain, making the ride an easier one with no mud to contend with, but there were gray clouds in the east building up their bulk and threatening to turn this fine day into a stormy one.

  We rode in silence, partly due to my nervous nature when facing the prospect of school, and partly due to the hangover Jane normally suffered from around this hour of the day. I sat atop one of Dora’s horses, and Jane rode the crazed, half-Indian horse she had saved me and Hour from. It wasn’t just a thing that was said in passing. That horse was Jane’s now. No one would touch it, and the thing was wild around everyone else. Under Jane, the horse was so tame he practically purred like Hour’s kitten.

  We tied the horses at the edge of where the landscape jutted down steeply into the gulch. Below and through the trees the creek and our shanty sat, so we carried on by foot. This part of the land was prone to give way under our steps and early fallen leaves made the floor a canopy of booby traps. It was all too dangerous to go on horseback, so we hoofed it to where our shanty once stood.

  I say once stood because it stood no more in a manner of speaking. The thieves and beggars of the land had come through and cleaned us out so thoroughly, not even the canvas that once acted as our walls was left to mark its presence. We nearly passed it by before I recognized the ill-fitting floorboards Pa and I had installed to stave off trench foot. Neither of us had been much of a carpenter, and I had snagged my pant cuffs on loose nails more often than not. Now, those loose nails were all that was left.

  Jane didn’t say much of anything as I slowly walked the ruins of our former life. A barren tomb of a life if I ever saw one. Everything of value we owned was gone. There was no point looking for Pa’s deed to the land. It had been taken first, along with anything of worth that wasn’t nailed down. Pots, pans, cups, pillows, blankets. You name it, and it was erased from existence. All that was left were some rotting floorboards and a place that looked much smaller than it had a month ago.

  The loss
of it all took away my breath. I wasn’t so foolish to think it would all be waiting for me, but I thought some scrap might have been left for the children of Hank Glass. His pocket watch for his son or a ribbon for his daughter’s hair. There was nothing here. Nothing but some crooked floorboards that we once fussed over and deemed too much of a hassle to redo. A little boy somewhere within me wanted to cry, but the man who enveloped him wouldn’t allow for it.

  Jane hadn’t said a word the whole time. Not a moment’s mention or the fleeting thought of a word. When I turned to look for her, I found her leaning against a nearby tree with her hat tilted down over her eyes. She reminded me of a statue of a person rather than a person. Someone waiting.

  “It’s . . . it’s all gone.”

  “Yeh.”

  For the first time since I met her, Jane had blessed little to say. She had been very quiet since the fire.

  “They left nothin’.”

  “Looks to be the way of things.”

  “I don’t get it. They was our neighbors. Some were men my pa trusted, but they left nothin’ fer his children.”

  She turned her head and spat. A fat glob of something or other splat on the dirt a few feet away. I waited for something, anything to come from her mouth that might make all this right, but not a thing was forthcoming. Jane spat again.

  “I saw one of ’em at the benefit the other night. I didn’t say as much, but I recognized him from the day I come here alone to collect our things. He was there puttin’ coins in for donation like everyone else, but all along, he was a thief.”

  The look I gave was a pleading one. Jane always knew the way of things. There were always words on her tongue to make sense of a scene, to make it sting a little less. When she did speak, it was like she read my mind on the matter.

  “Kid, I ain’t got nothin’ fer you on this one. The day I understand the likes of men will pro’lly be the day I die or thereafter. I wish I could answer you something true ’bout this, there ain’t nothin’ fer it. All you can do is look forward. Hell, it’s all any o’ us can do.”