"We should get back. " she said, her voice tight. "Nalin will worry. " She vaulted onto her horse and rode away without looking back. Luke watched her go, his heart hammering against his ribs, knowing that something had shifted in the canyon, something far more volatile than a runaway horse. The storm hit a week later. It began as a strange copper tint to the sky in the west.
The wind died completely, leaving a vacuum of silence that made the dogs whine and pace. Then, the horizon simply disappeared. A wall of brown darkness, thousands of feet high, was rolling toward them, swallowing the mountains. "Sandstorm! " Dosan screamed. The camp erupted.
This was not a dust devil. This was a haboob, a monster born of the dying summer heat. Luke dropped the wood he was carrying and ran to the wikiups. The wind hit them with the force of a physical blow, screaming like a banshee. The air turned instantly into a grinding slurry of sand and gravel.
Visibility dropped to the end of his arm. "Get the children inside! " Luke roared, though he could barely hear his own voice. He saw Sani struggling with the flap of her shelter. The wind was tearing it from her hands. Luke lunged, grabbing the canvas and wrestling it down, lashing it tight to the stakes.
"Inside. " he ordered, shoving her and her son into the darkness of the shelter. He moved to the next wikiup. It was Cheese. The main support pole was cracking under the pressure of the wind. The old woman was inside, huddled under a blanket, wailing.
Luke dove inside. He grabbed the fracturing pole, wrapping his arms around it, bracing his shoulder against the wood. He became the pillar. The structure groaned and shook, the wind hammering against the sides, but Luke held it. The storm raged for hours.
Sand filled his nose, his mouth, his eyes. It scoured his skin raw, but he did not let go. Outside, in the howling gray, Ayana was checking the horse lines. She saw a figure moving through the gloom. It was Luke, leaving Cheese's stabilized tent to run toward a group of children huddled behind a rock.
He grabbed two of them, shielding their faces with his own jacket, his body taking the brunt of the stinging grit as he hustled them toward the safety of a cave at the canyon wall base. He was coughing, his eyes red and streaming, but he did not stop. He did not retreat to the safety of the cave for himself. He turned back into the wind to check the next shelter. Ayana watched him, shielding her eyes.
A strange sensation twisted in her gut. He was fighting the wind for them. He was bleeding for them. It was becoming harder and harder to see the monster she wanted to hate. The storm died at midnight, leaving the canyon buried in drifts of fine silt.
The silence returned, ringing in their ears. Luke collapsed just before dawn. He had spent 6 hours fighting the wind, breathing in the dust. His lungs, already scarred from years of rough living, rebelled. He fell near the fire pit, his body shaking with a sudden, violent rigor.
By morning, the fever was burning him alive. The women gathered around him. He lay on a buffalo robe, his breathing ragged and shallow. "He is done. " An older woman named Coco said, looking down at him. "The dust fever.