“Can’t be the same. I drank from that bag,” Dean started hesitantly, then pointed and said. “No, wait, it was the smaller bag on Doc’s horse.”
“You triple sure?” Ryan asked sternly, squinting his good eye.
“Yeah, Dad, I’m sure.”
“Good. Then that water is clean,” J.B. said gruffly.
“Jak, what about your water?” Ryan demanded.
“Not used mine,” Jak said, patting the heavy bag hanging from the rear of his saddle. “Drank canteen before.”
Grabbing her satchel off the pommel of her mount, Mildred strode to the other horse and removed the bag as if it were a ticking bomb. Pouring some of the water onto the ground, she sniffed, then removed a small swimming pool testing kit and ran a sample. It wasn’t much, but all that she had and it did give accurate results within a limited spectrum. Filling a plastic tube,
Mildred added a few drops of chemicals and the water promptly turned a bright orange, and then went clear.
“Damn, the water neutralized the acid immediately,” she reported, holding the vial to the sunlight. “This is contaminated with a base chemical of some kind. There’s no way to tell for sure, but I would guess it’s scorpion venom.”
Doc raised an imperious eyebrow. “Ridiculous! Venom strong enough to kill a horse, madam?”
“These things like the daylight, instead of the night like a normal scorpion,” she reminded him. “And the ones caged back at Rockpoint were the largest I’ve ever seen. Who knows what other attributes may have mutated since the nukecaust?”
“Egad,” Doc rumbled, worrying the silver lion’s head of his swordstick. There was a sharp click, and the decorative head slid back to reveal several inches of shiny steel hidden inside the stick, then he slammed it back into place with a locking snap. “By the Three Kennedys, this is why those water bags were hanging near the horses!”
“A trap,” Dean said solemnly, scratching at his cheek.
“Makes sense,” Ryan grunted. “A bag of water just hanging there for anybody to take in a town where folks were killed over a thimbleful? It was just bait for horse thieves to take along. Then the locals could simply watch for buzzards in the sky and get their horses back.”
“Along with the blasters and other possessions of the thieves,” Dean added thoughtfully.
“Smart,” Jak drawled in wry acknowledgment, brushing back his snowy white hair.
“Millie, anything we can do to clean the water?” J.B. asked hopefully. “Boil it or something?”
“Too bad not have bread,” Jak said. “Drain radiator fluid through stale bread and make drinkable. Not know if work this.”
“Piss might do it,” Ryan said calmly.
J.B. made a rude noise at that, but Mildred agreed.
“That might work,” the physician said. “Urine neutralizes scorpion venom in an external bite, so logically it should also work on tainted water. Basic chemistry there, bases and acids.” Then she paused and frowned. “However, for water this strongly polluted, it might require so much urine that the resulting mixture would be rendered totally undrinkable afterward.”
“Well, I would certainly think so,” Doc muttered softly, trying to contain his revulsion.
Titling her head, Mildred smiled. “I agree. Tobacco also works on scorpion bites, but with the same results. The water might be safe, but nobody would willingly drink it until absolutely necessary.”
“Which might become the case,” Krysty said. “We’re low on water now, and have no idea how much farther it is to reach the lowlands where the Trader travels.”
“Couple of hundred miles at least,” Ryan growled, looking into the distance. “From now on, we piss in that bag and save it for boiling later.”
“Much much later,” J.B. said.
“We can only do this once,” the physician warned. “We’re already dehydrated, and the ammonia content of our urine will be dangerously high.”
“Better that than death,” Ryan said grimly.
“Okay, do we have anything else that hasn’t been checked over yet?” J.B. said wryly, hooking both thumbs into his belt. “We could be hauling a dozen more boobies among our stolen supplies.”
Quickly, the companions laid out their belongings and checked over every item carefully, but no other traps were discovered. That was good news, but it was tempered by the fact that the companions were now dangerously low on water and reduced to only five horses for seven adults.