7, 2, 5, 17, 1, 3, 3, 3, 12 – the numbers were thicker and more present. I endeavored to ignore them.

Even though it was fool of us to stay as long as we did, Ashli and I held the way. There was an ebb to the fight, a differential; like to the principle of Archimedes of Syracuse1. The two of us yielded steps slowly, until we were closing against the fence. Hand Simons only tried himself once against a drudge, but the tip of his steel snapped off against a facet. He had cracked a hearty sliver off the mineral foot, but the vakero-point whizzed back on the rebound and near winged him. I suppose he was convinced at that, he’d best make scarce alongside us.

“I hate this job, I hate your whole family, I owe both you fecal squirts a drink. Let’s go,” Ryder panted. He had earned a place too close to us; and as such could neither safely nor easily swing his spear about. So he leapt over the last few locusts, and tumbled. Since he didn’t land entirely into empty space, we had to haul one of them off the man, recover his weapon, and help him to his feet.

“Yea? Well, we’ve always gotta fix the saddle straps, every time you half-ass the job. So,” my cousin shoved away from the fence and smashed tin down into the turf, “like, get bent, or whatever.”

I regarded our escape, which was fast being shut behind us. “We could run on top of the railing,” I offered.

“If I wasn’t dead tired? If it was daytime?” Ashli refused.

Ryder experimented (once or twice) at using his sticking-pole to lift and toss locusts from underneath. It did about as much good as flipping a griddle pancake with a chopstick. “I’m starting to think you were on to something with that shovel, girl. Gosh-darn toothpicks. When’s the last time we had to stop a charge? Git me some’n with heft, I say.”

“Mister Simons, with respect. We’re trying to get out alive,” I rebuked him, “help.”

With venomous mutterings, the hand hiked up his pajama leggings and lofted his spear to move his grip to its center-back. “Swift arrow, hunter in the dust, striking asp. Dance, sidewinder.”

A full-grown man weighs thirteen stone; more if he’s been fed. So when Ryder moved, he outraced my preconception. Crouched low, and throwing his body to the side and forward, he shoved with sudden momentum along the length of his vakero. He’d bowled away a path for us, and we cut our way out after him and into the open field.

We broke into a sprint once were were clear, tilting to curve ‘round until the barn. The considerable roof cut a sharp line, which undercut the sky. Great clanging sounds, and whistling shouts announced to us there was plenty of fight still ahead. Since Liam’s subtraction, there were only two men left of ours, still to see. We would, by deduction, be joining Maynard and Michael O’Carrol in short moments.

“I don’t sound stupid,” Ryder had just objected.

“Not saying stupid, I just don’t think you need to say it out loud,” I was arguing between wheezes, and while my accessories jangled.

“I’m tellin’ you, squirt. It feels better to say your rosaries,” Ryder declaimed. His vakero was lain back over his shoulder and bounced with his strides. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost a shoe. “It’s right that way,” he insisted.

“See, I’m not the only one!” Ashli whuffled. “You, trying to make fun of me.”

“Oh, please, Ash.” My perspiration stung my eyes, and I gulped my air irregularly. “Wrath of gunpowder, mighty calibers of lead most hot. Bullet shoot!” I threw my head back and effected a most aggravating voice, such to communicate my disdain for the notion. “You ever heard a gunslinger say somethin’ so insipid on the trigger?”

“That’s not the same thing,” Ashli protested. She dodged to her left, and recovered from a half-stumble.

“Maynard!” I hollered, “O’Carroll!” I waved my arms both overhead to signal them, but the horde which had converged on the barn and surrounded the hands was twice at least what we’d just fled.

A faint intention of the Lady snaked ahead of us –Ryder zigged, then zagged, surging along with it. He swung a great arc forward from there, demolishing a quartet of gòshëm. They rang like wind-chimes as they flew away in pieces. “Besides, whatcha even know nothing about? Who died and made you Pope of magic? Brat, ain’t even can get a mustache in, pampered like a house-cat, mommas just barely got your bonnet off, milk on your lip, high and mighty n’ not even been half-pickled yet.”

Ashli slowed down a step, then recovered pace. “Damn. I think you broke Simons.”

“Good Glory, I think I broke Simons,” I echoed her softly.

The barn had not come into our possession at its current size; the requirements which do emerge concurrent with good fortune had caused it to outgrow its original footprint. The addenda of the building were hewn mostly of rough lumber. In the same way one might divine the year of a drought from the rings of a stump, I do believe a person could (in the uneven shape of the planks) see where we’d most regretfully lost our carpenter. The ceilings of those extensions were pitched up to a high steeple, thatched with hay and automobile roofing, and the walls were painted red with rust and lime activated milk casein2. But all those constructions were clung like a barnacle to the germinal structure which served as our primary enclosure. It was laid in neat brick, a long rectangle with a flat roof. The old sign fixed above the doors read: ‘Peter Hanraty and Margaret Rees Montessori School’, in flaking white letters. We had long since removed all the old glass entry frontage, and replaced it with heavy wooden shutters. At night, we would bar them shut with a timber.

A hundred and more locusts, a dozen drudges, and even some designs which were new to us had finally gummed up our advance. We were blocked from our men, just as they were stalled from reaching the animals. Knifed feet were chipping at both brick and board. The voices of our herd screamed from inside. Though the windows were all sealed, they were points of weakness which we would regret if the gòshëm yet happened to demonstrate any particular talent for climbing whatsoever. The three of us stopped to gather ourselves, and to convene on some plan of action.

It seemed to me as I watched him fight, that Hand Michael O’Carroll appeared to be the only man at Ghost Perch who’d properly supplied himself for the occasion. He’d tied a stiff rope, securely at the end to a farrier’s hammer, and it howled as he whirled it round in an orbit. It dipped and clamorously de-occupied the circle about him. He didn’t whisper in Her favor, like my aunties or even Ryder Simons. The wind caught a smell of tenacity, and good hemp. The dust swirled in the shape of little horse-shoes. The moon shook off its boredom, and peered down for a closer look.

Maynard was less a factor than a liability in the effort. His vakero proved itself no more fit than Simons’, and he could benefit from Michael either: O’Carroll’s technique could not, fundamentally, provide any acreage of safety – no, not even the square of a quarter-inch.