“I am sorry to be such a crashing bore,” the old man muttered. “I can hear my pulse beating in my ears. A most unpleasant sensation.”
“Rest’s best.” Mildred glanced over at Ryan. “Could be that he’ll be real sick if we don’t take a break. Stop for the night now, maybe?”
He looked around. The trail wound temporarily downhill, rippled by the quakes of skydark, lined with scarlet Indian paintbrush, and Sierra poppies, blazing orange against the dark green forest.
“Fine,” he said. “Should be water close by. If Doc can make it, we’ll take it slow and steady, then camp once we find the river again.”
AFTER THEIR ENCOUNTER with the Apaches, Ryan kept them to a strict skirmish line, going on point himself. With only one eye, his peripheral vision was strictly limited, and he walked cautiously, head constantly turning.
Doc seemed to recover a little, stalking along, ferrule of his cane clicking on the blacktop, the wind ruffling his silvery hair. The temperature had dropped, and the sky was once more darkening ahead of them.
From a few steps behind him, Krysty drew Ryan’s attention to a figurine fixed to the flank of a stout, lightning-split pine just off the trail to the right.
“Not the Children of the Rock again?” He stopped and peered at the mannequin. It looked like it had once been a child’s toy, but it was stripped naked, with a coil of razored barbed wire wrapped around its sexless loins. Daubs of paint represented blood, as though it had been flogged.
It was crucified, upside down, to the tree, steel pins through the center of each hand and through the crossed ankles. The face was oddly blank, with a water-stained crew cut, indifferent to the myriad tortures the body was suffering.
“Some sickos around here,” Mildred said. “Look at the burn marks around the groin.”
“It much resembles some sort of religious totem,” Doc suggested.
Ryan nodded slowly. “Could be. Seen similar things all over Deathlands.”
“Sicko,” repeated Mildred, turning away from the tree in disgust.
“Seen animals impaled in swamps,” Jak said. “Voodoo medicine.”
Doc was breathing hard, his face pale, holding his chest. “Forgive me, but there has been talk of stopping early to take a good rest? I would appreciate that.”
“Fine.” Ryan looked around. “We’ll get a distance away from this place, then camp.”
Chapter Eight
It was a peaceful night. They had a tiny fire, glowing bright in the darkness while they sat around it, talking of old days, old stories.
The conversation had turned to the weather. It was obvious there was a storm brewing. J.B. told the tale that Ryan knew from the Trader days, about a sudden tornado in the open plains of old Kansas.
“Sky had gone dark as a beaver hat. Wind rising over the prairie from the north, tasting of winter ice. Flurry of hail pattered down, hard enough to sting if it hit you in the face. The cattle and horses on the farms all spooked, sensing that something bad was coming down on them.”
Krysty reached across and tossed a length of broken, dried timber onto the fire, sending a column of golden sparks into the velvet sky.
“There was this guy, had a wife and three little children. They only moved there a few months earlier, from Montclair in Jersey. He thought he knew everything, did Jerzy Pollinger. Fat, with a thin little voice, like a spoiled child. He hadn’t listened to the locals who warned him to build well and solid, with a decent storm cellar for shelter against the tornadoes.”
“I recall that a cousin of mine was once trapped in a tornado,” Doc began, then looked across at the Armorer. “A thousand apologies, dear friend. I have interrupted you in your story, have I not? Pray proceed.”
“Sure, Doc, thanks. One day, with this storm threatening, Jerzy was looking across the windswept plains. Always a wind in Kansas. Drives folks insane. And out in the distance, where the sky meets the land, he saw the beginnings of a twister. Fat and sullen. Wide bellied near the top, sweeping down to a sucking mouth, maybe fifty paces across.”