her away. The rest of the family had taken the Dodge into Merced, and wouldn't be back until it was time to start the 4:00 P.M. milking.
There was nothing else along this road except for his dairy. The cars pulled up the lane and stopped in front of the house in a cloud of white dust. He went out to meet them. He didn't bother to hose off his boots.
There were four men in each car, and all eight of them stepped out at the same time. Their clothes were fancy-boy city clothes, black or pinstriped suits and nice hats. The farmer didn't even dress that nice to go to church. He could tell these men might have been from the city, but they weren't fancies. They looked hard and dangerous.
The old farmer knew right away why these men were here. His wide straw hat covered his grey eyes, and he risked a glance back toward the barn. Faye had done as she'd been told and was out of sight.
The tallest one seemed to be the boss. He was square and thick, one of the biggest men the farmer had ever seen, with a jagged scar crossing half his face that had left one eye a blinded white orb. 'Are you Joe?' that one asked. That didn't mean much. Half the Portuguese men in the world were named Joe. 'Travelining Joe?'
They had been bound to catch up with him eventually. The old farmer tipped his hat.
Faye was sweating, using a pitchfork to toss alfalfa over the barbwire fence to the dry cows. The hay was dusty, collected in her hair and inside her too-large, hand-me-down work shirt, and it made her nose itch. She stopped to sneeze a couple of times, then went back to work.
It was hot. The valley was always extra muggy in the summer, probably from the irrigation, and the sun was always beating down on her head. Her rubber boots were heavy with dried poop, too big, and made her feet sweat.
And she was as happy as she could be.
The Vierras were good people. They were always loud, frantic, and yelling about something, but that's just how they were At least here she didn't get beaten daily for having the devil in her. Grandpa was actually proud that she was different. And unlike her life before, there was always food. Faye liked to work. She didn't even mind the Holsteins much.
Life was simple, and it was hard, but she was content, because it wasn't mean.
A cow stuck its head through the fence, curious, smelling her. It chuffed and blew green snot all over her pants. She wiped it off with a handful of hay and patted the cow on the nose. She licked Faye with a giant rough tongue and the girl giggled.
A gun fired. The line of Holsteins jerked, ears all cocked suspicious in the same direction. It had come from the other side of the milk barn. A flock of black birds leapt into the air and flew over the roof. Grandpa was probably shooting at crows, but Faye frowned, since that sure hadn't sounded like Grandpa's shotgun. One of the dogs started barking like crazy.
Then there was a whole bunch of guns. A giant mad bumblebee passed overhead and it took Faye a second to realize that it was actually a bullet. Something was terribly wrong. She clutched the pitchfork tight and the dry cows bolted from the fence and ran for the far side of the corral.
The Okies are robbing Grandpa! It was like the bank robbers they talked about on the radio. Still holding the pitchfork, she ran for the barn, big boots clomping, but that was too slow, so she focused on a spot fifty feet ahead, which was as far as she'd ever Traveled before, touched the magic, sent her senses ahead, clear, and was just there.
She'd done just like Grandpa had taught, appearing an inch or so off the dirt so she wouldn't melt her soles to the ground, and hit the ground still clomping forward. Now she could see around the block edge of the barn and there were two black automobiles, and a bunch of men in suits running toward the house and shouting. There was another boom and one of the men fell off the porch and into Grandma's rosebushes.
A hand landed on her shoulder, and Faye nearly jumped out of her skin. 'Girl!' Grandpa whispered in her ear. He had Traveled right behind her. He dragged her back around the corner as he broke open his shotgun, pulled the spent shell out, and fished another one out of his coveralls. He didn't seem any more upset than when he was dealing with a particularly nasty cow. 'Go hide.' He snapped the shotgun closed and pointed with it toward the haystacks, but then he scowled. 'Shit. Forgot.'
'Where are you going?'
'Something in the barn I need. Go hide.' He closed his grey eyes and disappeared.
Faye focused on the haystacks. A man's voice came from behind her. 'There's somebody el-' And then her boots landed in a pile of straw and she didn't hear the rest. Scared, she scrambled behind some broken bales, just her eyes sticking over the top, and she searched for the men. The nearest one was rounding the barn, silver gun in his hand, and he was jerking his head back and forth, wondering where she'd gone. She squeezed the pitchfork even harder, though she didn't know what she planned on doing with it.
Then she saw something strange. Another man, a giant, seemed to fly over the edge of the barn and landed easily on the tin roof. It was like he'd jumped right out of the yard, but Faye knew there was nothing to stand on over there, so he would have had to have leapt twenty-five feet straight into the air. The man crouched, scanning slowly, perched effortlessly next to the lightning rod. He reached into his suit and pulled out a huge gun. Faye ducked lower so he couldn't see her. This man was special too. Like her, but different. Scary.
Grandpa Traveled and appeared right behind the first man, stabbing the shotgun barrel right into him. The man never knew what happened as the Sears amp; Roebuck shotgun blew him near in half, but Grandpa didn't see the big man on the roof.
'Grandpa!' Faye screamed.
The old farmer looked up, seeing her, surely focusing on the safety of the haystack and-
BOOM!
Grandpa lurched forward as the man on the roof shot him. He Traveled, and was instantly before Faye. Grandpa took two steps and fell to his knees. 'Oh…'
Faye dropped the pitchfork, grabbed him by the straps of his coveralls, and dragged the little man behind the broken bales. 'Grandpa!' she screamed. Blood was welling out from between the top buttons of his shirt, way too much blood. 'Hold on, Grandpa!'
He grabbed her wrist, his fingers hard as rocks, and he shoved an old leather bag into her hand and squeezed it shut. Blood came out his mouth when he tried to talk and she had to put her ear down next to his mouth to hear him. 'Don't let them get it. Find Black-' and then she couldn't hear the rest because it turned into a gurgle as he breathed out. He didn't inhale. Faye pulled away, and Grandpa Vierra's grey eyes were staring at nothing.
'Grandpa?'
A man in a suit came running around the edge of the hay. Faye saw him coming and she was filled with an emotion she'd never felt before. The wood of the pitchfork was hard in her calloused hands as she rose, straw- colored hair covering her face. Fifteen feet away the man raised his gun.
He shouted to the others. 'I got th-' but then Faye Traveled, screaming, and drove the three narrow tines of the pitchfork through his ribs. Still screaming she pushed the man, driving him back, until his knees buckled and she drove the fork all the way through him and into the ground. The man grabbed onto the handle, but Faye put all her weight on the shaft and held him there while he kicked and cussed. After a few seconds he quit moving.
'Hey, girl,' a very deep voice said. She turned, and the giant man from the roof, the man that had killed the first person who'd ever loved her, the man who'd murdered her Grandpa, was standing there, calm as could be, with the biggest revolver she'd ever seen pointed at her head. He cocked the hammer. One of his eyes was white. 'No reason for any more killing today,' he lied. 'I'm looking for something. That's all.'
Faye wrenched the pitchfork out of the fallen man and pointed it at the big man. Blood dripped from the tines. 'You… you killed… killed my Grandpa,' she gasped.
He nodded. 'I guess that's how it's got to be then.' He pulled the trigger.
The bullet passed through the space where Faye had just been as she materialized off to the man's side. She gasped in pain. She'd gone too fast, hadn't used her instincts, and done something wrong, but there was no time, and she stabbed the pitchfork deep.
The man looked down at the iron embedded in his body. The top was in his ribs, the middle had to be through
