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a cave, more a long trench in the otherwise smooth and rolling dusty plain. It started as nothing more than a crack to catch the foolhardy traveler (although, Joel knew, if they were walking in his footsteps across this particular part of the godforsaken Unclaimed Lands that he found himself in somehow, then they were fools already) but widened and deepened until it was big enough for a covered wagon to fall into, breaking the axle and probably the horse in the process.
    Joel had neither. He stepped into the trench and walked down toward the opening in the earth. The ground was dry and brittle, covered with a darker kind of dust than the surrounding plains, something more like ash. It was like the hole in the ground had been burned through the crust of the plain. But there was only scraggly brush nearby, dry enough but still alive, simply baked under the summer sun. If there had been a fire here then it had died long, long ago.
    A riverbed then, or a creek – perhaps an underground spring run dry. The cave entrance was a black abyss. Joel slipped and slid forward, dirt and rock cascading from under his old boots, the skin on the heels of his hands soon red and raw.
    He stopped when he realized the angle of the gully was steeper than it looked, but he kept sliding a foot or more toward the cave entrance before he came to halt. Nothing but dry dirt and loose rock, of course… except for the fact that Joel was sure there was something drawing him in. Not like being pushed, like some fellow settler desperate for a valid claim in the land run had hidden in the cracks and crevasses of the gully and had come out to shove Joel to his death, hoping his neck would break, and if that failed that he would be on the ground long enough for his attacker to smash his brains out with one of the heavy stones that lay scattered in some abundance around the cave.
    No, this was more like being pulled , like there was a lasso around Joel’s middle, drawing him gently, slowly in.
    Joel’s fingers found the coin again. This time it was cold but there was something else too, a sensation he couldn’t quite describe, like when you sometimes touched the metal rim of a wagon wheel just as you got off after a long journey. A spark, a pinprick, like being licked by the trailing edge of a whip. The sensation was gone in a second and Joel took the coin out, now used to the cold.
    But not used to the force that seemed to emanate from it. The coin was moving, or wanted to move, toward the cave. It wriggled in his fingers, back and forth, back and forth. Joel took a step forward, watching the coin, watching the cave.
    Then he let go of the coin, and it dropped to the sandy soil like any coin would, and it did not move. With his other hand he brushed the handle of the gun on his belt, ready to draw.
    Then a cold wind came from the cave, carrying with it the smell of metal and the voice, calling out, far away. The sun dropped in the sky and caught the face of the coin in the dirt, throwing up a shining, glittering flare into Joel’s eyes.
    The cave called again, and hand on his daddy’s gun, Joel stepped forward.

MURDER IN THE CITY
    …and in developing news this hour, the San Francisco Police Department has released the name of the woman whose body was found in a back street close to City Hall last week.
    The woman has been identified as Lucy Winters, 23. Relatives have been informed.
    Police are appealing to any witnesses who were in the vicinity of Olive and Polk in the city center in the early hours of July ninth, and have conducted a door-to-door of nearby businesses and residences. While no further statement has been made by the SFPD, a source close to the investigation told this news organization that the death of Lucy Winters followed the same pattern as that of an elderly resident of Chinatown the previous week. The unnamed Chinese male was found hanged in an apparent ritual murder inside a food import warehouse, but our sources could not