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else. “But it’s a miracle we got this close before the bird gave up the ghost. I could’ve sworn she’d never make it back into the air, but man, she made a liar out of me.” He kicked at the dirt and shifted his load to strain the other shoulder for awhile. “I never thought she’d fly again,” he added.
    The captain knew what Lamar was fishing for, but he was too distracted or too exhausted to humor anybody, and he didn’t say anything in response. He only ground his jaw and stared into the long, stretch-limbed shadow that stomped in front of him, and he wondered if his arm would fall off before they reached Bonner Springs.
    But Simeon’s free arm swung out to clap the engineer on the back, and he said, “That’s why we keep you around.”
    “Not five other folks of any shade, in any state or territory could’ve got her back up into the sky with only a set of wrenches and a hammer, but I made her work, didn’t I?”
    “Yeah, you sure did,” Simeon said. “It was a nice job.”
    Hainey grumbled, “Would’ve been nicer if the patches could’ve held another five miles.”
    Lamar’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t snap back except to say, “Would’ve been even nicer if nobody’d crashed our ride into Kansas in the first place.”
    The captain’s nostrils flared, and even though the approaching evening had left the flatlands cool, a bead of sweat rolled down into the scar on his cheek. “Four or five miles,” he breathed.
    Simeon said, “And then some food. If we don’t stop and eat, I’ll starve to death before we can grab a new bird anyhow.”
    “Me too.”
    “Fine,” Hainey shook his face and slung more sweat down to the dust. “But we eat on the road. Once we hit Bonner, how much farther is it to the big town, do you think? I’ve flown over it, but never walked it like this. You think twenty miles, maybe?”
    Lamar shook his head and said, “Not that far, even. Maybe fifteen or sixteen. We can do it easy in a couple of hours, if we get horses good enough to pull us. We play our cards smart, and we might be in bed by midnight.”
    “Midnight,” the captain grunted. Then he said, “Hang on,” and stopped. “Other arm,” he suggested to Simeon, who nodded and complied.
    They switched, and Simeon said, “I’d like that a lot. I could sleep a week, easy.”
    “Well, you aren’t gonna.”
    “We know,” Lamar said it like a complaint, but the look on the captain’s face made him to keep the rest to himself.
    The sun set fast behind them, and the world went golden. The sky was rich and yellow, then pale maroon; and before it went a royal shade of navy, the captain stopped to pull a lantern out of his satchel. They lit it and took turns holding it by their teeth, and by the ends of their fingers. When the last of the rose-pink rays had finally slipped down past the horizon line, the lone lantern made a rickety bubble of white around the three dark men.
    As they trudged, coyotes called back and forth across the grass.
    Snakes rattled and scattered, winding their way into the night, away from the crushing boots of the heavily laden travelers; and while the crew staggered along the wheel ruts that passed for a rural road, sometimes overhead they could hear the mocking rumble of a dirigible passing through quickly, quietly, looking for a place to set down and spend the night.
    By nine o’clock, they reached the town’s edge, and by ten they’d purchased a tiny, run-down stagecoach that was almost too old to roll, and they’d bartered two horses to pull it. The horses were only marginally younger and fresher than the coach itself, but they were well fed and rested, and they moved at a fast enough clip to bring the trio rolling into Kansas City by half past midnight.
    Hainey drove the horses. Simeon sat beside him and smoked. Lamar stayed inside the cabin with the Rattler and the provisions, where he would’ve been happy to nap, except for the persistent, jerking bounce of the