Dust Read Online Free Page B

secret.
    "Can't say I ever saw Matthew frightened," Robert's dad said.
    "Is there anywhere else he would have gone? An old granary? A potato cellar? If someone had scared him, that is."
    "Who would scare him?" Robert's father asked, angrily. "Is there something we should know? I'd appreciate the truth."
    "Yesterday, a girl went missing in Moose Jaw," the sergeant said slowly. "She was four years old."
    Robert's mom moaned in the back of her throat, a trapped sound from deep in a tunnel.
    "The detachment there doesn't have any leads," the sergeant continued, "other than someone who says he saw a truck ..." He paused. "Look, whoever took that girl—if anyone did—probably wouldn't come this way. They'd go south and cross the border, not west, where every stranger sticks out like a sore thumb. It wouldn't make sense."
    "A fellow who steals kids probably isn't in the habit of making sense," said Robert's dad.
    A long silence followed. Robert's father cleared his throat, seemed about to ask a question, but didn't.
    The sergeant turned to the backseat. Robert was mesmerized by the movement of the muscles on the Mountie's neck, the little bumps of the spine, right below his hairline.
    "Do you have any idea where your brother might have gone?"
    Robert breathed in. Again, a weight pressed on his tongue. He closed his eyes and saw the image of a truck going west, dust trailing behind it. "West," he answered, dreamily. He opened his eyes, squinted. The sun seemed brighter. He glanced from the sergeant's face to his father's, who stared as though Robert had spoken in tongues. He quickly added: "Maybe Matthew walked past town. Maybe he did."
    Ramsden nodded. He steered the car onto the main road.
    Robert was glad he'd chosen to speak up because he knew west was the right way to go, like a compass knows where to point. He had an inexplicable urge to look through the back window at the grain elevators.
    He glanced at his mother. Her eyes were wide open, as if the car were driving through a snowstorm and she didn't dare lose track of the road. She had grown thinner in the last few minutes, the skin tight against her cheekbones. Her lips moved: "deargodjesus I pray thealmighty-sweetlord find us and find our son and hold us close."
    The road led to Maple Creek. Robert had been on it a few times, most recently last fall when his dad had taken him to the cattle sale. But it was essentially a new, unfamiliar road, straight as a railroad track for a mile or so, then twisting and weaving around some hills. They were nowhere near the majestic stature of the Cypress Hills, but they were high enough to hide things.
    "The unexpected" could happen here, and that was often bad, like a sneaky bandit attack in a western novel.
    But it worked the opposite way, too. The unexpected could be swell: a grand surprise. Like finding a treasure chest overflowing with gold coins in your backyard, or you could be sitting in your white tent in the middle of the Sahara and an old friend pops in and says, "Hello, partner."
    Robert held his head high to see over the seat. Banks of dirt filled the ditch, and tumble-weeds—"Russian thistles" his dad called them—clung to the fence. Had they actually blown in all the way from Russia? He pictured the thistles tumbling over the North Pole, the Yukon, and landing here in Saskatchewan. The thistles struggled against the barrier like soldiers trying to scramble over barbed wire. It reminded Robert how his Uncle Edmund had gone over the trenches into No Man's Land.
    A brave lad. Uncle Alden had always said his younger brother was a brave, brave lad. They'd fought side by side in France.
    The car rounded a corner. Before them, the land was even flatter, the road stretching for miles. Robert's dad craned his neck, leaned ahead, blocking Robert's view.
    "He couldn't have walked this far," the sergeant muttered, pressing the brakes.
    Robert felt his mom tug on his shirt as she said, "Sit down and let the men do the looking."
    He