Running Out of Night Read Online Free

eyes looked big aschestnuts. Her mouth hung slack open, and she gasped for each breath like the little doe the dogs run down and cornered by the woodshed. I could feel how scairt she were.
    But could she feel how scairt
I
were? What if she got caught and told where she’d been hidin? What if afore I could get indoors and make things aright, Pa or my brothers come in and seen the cellar all tore apart? And what if she got shot, and hurt, and sent back … sent back where?
    Boom
. I dropped my gatherin basket, and the birds tornadoed around me. A shattered, bloody nest laid at my feet. A barn swallow swooped past, skimmed just inches above the ground, and arced up to the spot where the nest once clung. As it flew, it made a keenin cry—most the saddest sound ever.
    I could hear my brothers laughin, but I couldn’t see them. Another shot, another nest on the ground. When I looked over to the porch, that trouble girl had disappeared. I reached into my apron pocket to rub against the reassurin smooth of my good-luck buckeye, but it weren’t there.

K ill a swallow and bad luck will follow
.
    M y heart felt near broke for the swallows, but I were fearin for myself and for the girl. Clem yelled that he needed food for his hunt. Samuel whistled for his cry of dogs, and they streamed into the barnyard from three sides. I didn’t see how they’d missed that girl.
    I grabbed the handle of my basket, heavy with tomaters—some of them ripe ones squished from the fall—and run for the porch. I needed to make sure that the trapdoor were closed afore the boys got into the cabin.
    The door stood ajar. I pushed it wider and ran inside. On the floor, a little pile of jerky spilled from the girl’s gray bandanna. The trapdoor gaped open, the bench laidon its side, and two disks of dried apple stared up from the floor.
    Bathsheba and Delia was close at my heels. I whirled on them. “Stay, girls. Tend to your manners,” I scolded, and they almost stopped, but they caught the smell of the jerky and near trampled me gettin to it.
    I could hear them boys behind me. They clomped up the steps. The dogs tore at the bandanna. I run to the trapdoor, and there, framed in the dim square of light on the ladder, the girl backed down into the cellar. I dropped the door into place, righted the bench, scooped up the bandanna, and stuffed it into my basket of tomaters.
    “Girl!” Clem yelled. “Look at that mess of spoilt maters.” He pointed at them. He grabbed me by the neck, bent me over the basket, and shoved my face hard into the pile. I sputtered, pushed myself up, and used the sides of my balled fists to rub the burnin juice out of my eyes.
    “And you let them dogs in. You know them dogs don’t come inside.”
    I guessed I couldn’t explain that they wasn’t hardly invited in.
    Bathsheba yelped as Clem’s heavy boot landed in her soft flank. She usually outruns everything, but her long, saggin teats slowed her some. Afore Clem could reach Delia, both hounds was out the door. I wished I could foller them. I knowed that them killt swallows was bringin in bad, bad luck for me.
    “Get us some pack food,” Samuel ordered. “We gonna be out trackin upriver all night.”
    I pushed strands of wet hair behind my ears, blinked my blurry, burnin eyes, and started for the basket of victuals I had set beside the trapdoor. Samuel spied the two golden disks of apple a second afore I could kick them acrost the floor and out of sight.
    “You been in them cellar apples?” he yelled. He walked toward the trapdoor, picked up the basket of food, and kicked the bench over and out of the way. Then he stuck his fingers in the door holes and threw it open. Afore I could duck or move out of Samuel’s way, he walloped me.

I f you hear whispering, it is the sperrits arguing which one is going to be near you for the day and night
.
    M y arm and shoulder was on fire. The stabbin pains shot through me till my stomach churned. I turned my head and throwed up,