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Before they had ridden far, they heard the shriek of a train whistle in the far distance. Great billows of black smoke rising into the sky drew their attention.
“The iron fiend,” Sage said, then urged his horse into an even harder gallop, Runner keeping steadfastly at his side.
Runner could not help but feel a strange, building excitement every time he watched a train traveling along on the gleaming tracks. Like something magical, on and on it would go, rumbling and flashing in the sun.
Chapter 3
Love sent me thither, sweet,
And brought me to your feet,
He willed that we should meet,
And so it was.
—JOHN NICHOLS
The sun was pouring its heat from the sky, reflecting on the steel rails of the railroad tracks like white lightning. Runner rode at a gentle canter beside his father, squinting his eyes as he studied the new rails being laid, even now, by the work gangs. Although he felt a deep hatred for this invasion on the land of the Navaho, he was undeniably in awe of the power of the trains that rode these sorts of tracks. Distances were joined like magic.
“Do you see how the land is being destroyed by those men?” Sage said, as he edged his strawberry roan closer to Sage’s stallion. “The earth is Mother and is to be revered. Not to be made ugly by steel rails.”
Runner nodded, his eyes shifting to the men who had stopped their labors and were now leaning on their pickaxes staring at him and his father. These men, who performed the labor for the Santa Fe Railroad Line, were quiet, self-effacing men. They worked by day, and drank and played by night in the saloons and bawdy houses in Gallup. It was this sort of men who were not welcomed in these parts. The threat of them corrupting the young of the Navaho was too severe.
Runner rode onward with his father. They left the work gang behind and inched their way alongside the rails that had already been installed. Runner looked over his shoulder. “There are but a few rails left to be laid before it reaches Fort Defiance,” he said, mentally counting those that lay strewn along the ground. “Then perhaps the laborers will leave.”
“But today, even now, the iron fiend and its carloads of white people come to invade our land, freedom, and privacy,” Sage said, his dark eyes angry. “This Navaho has always searched for ways to keep peace with the whites. But now? Now I feel that I was wrong to have given in so easily to their demands. See where it has taken us? To a time and place of more invasions of the whites.”
“It is not something that can be changed, Father,” Runner said somberly. “Unless—”
“Unless we rip these tracks up, and all of the others as they are being laid from day to day,” Sage said, casting Runner a heated glance.
“That would bring the white pony soldiers to our village,” Runner said, his eyes locking with his father’s. “I have known you long, Father, and I know that you do not want this.”
“Nor do I want to flee again, as I did when Kit Carson brought heartache to our people,” Sage said, in his mind’s eye remembering the day that he had been forced from his stronghold by flames lit by the white man.
“Then let us wait and see how all this truly affects our people,” Runner said, reining in his horse beside Sage’s. He reached a comforting hand to his father’s shoulder. “This son means no disrespect by saying his mind.”
A smile quavered on Sage’s lips. He reached up and patted Runner’s hand. “It is always good to hear you call yourself my son,” he said. “You are not of my blood, but you are even more my son than if you had been. Your thoughts often match my own, so do not despair when occasionally we disagree on how things should be.”
“It is not that I disagree,” Runner corrected. “It is . . .”
His words were stolen away and he dropped his hand from his father’s shoulder when the long screaming whistle from a train drew his quick attention. He turned from Sage. His spine stiffened and his gaze was drawn to the sky, where again he watched billows of black trailing along in the wake of the approaching train’s belches.
His jaw tightened when another loud, long shriek came from the train. He was now able to see the black engine coming into sight, black smoke pouring from its smokestack that was shaped like a great kettle.
“Is it not an ugly monster?” Sage said in a grumble. “And listen to it. Hear how it snorts, puffs, and screams?”
“That is so, Father,” Runner said, yet the white side of him could not stop the fluttering of his heart as he watched the train’s approach. When he was a child, he had heard rumors of trains. The thought mystified him no less now than then.
And here he was, a grown man, coming face-to-face with such an invention.
If he could but only see that it was true progress for his Navaho people, as he knew that it was for his white heritage.
But everything pointed to it being hogay-gah, bad, for the Navaho. Bad, ugly, and a disgraceful thing to happen to the land of his Navaho loved ones.
He fought off feelings that were wrong and accepted that he must hate this train as much as his Navaho father. Yet their hate seemed as bad as the train itself.
Hating anything meant trouble.
