“You’ve come to talk, then talk. If you’ve come to shoot…”
It was one of the Trader’s favorite sayings.
A spavined, brindled mongrel had crept, belly down, toward the group of strangers, sidling in closer to Ryan. Its teeth were broken and jagged, its eyes red rimmed, panting jaws dripping clotted foam. When it considered it had crept in near enough for its sneak attack, it snarled its hatred and lunged toward the groin of the one-eyed man.
Ryan had been watching it, readying himself for the attack. His SIG-Sauer was safely holstered, the Steyr rifle slung across his shoulders. The hilt of the panga was close to his left hand.
It didn’t look like he’d have a chance of fending off the vicious animal.
There was a blur of sudden movement, the pallid sunshine blinking off the honed and polished steel, the whisper of the eighteen-inch blade as it flickered into sight from the soft leather sheath. The hiss of whirring metal overlaid the growl of the charging dog.
There was a dull thunk, like a swung ax blade biting deep into a thick log of sodden wood.
The deep-throated bark was cut off into instant silence. The dog’s lean skull dropped in the dirt, washed with a gout of bright arterial blood. The body, paws still scrabbling, fell alongside it, moving a couple of yards nearer Ryan, with the impetus of that final charge.
“Holy shit!” Steele breathed.
“Shep!” cried a woman, standing on the other side of the big smoldering fire at the center of the open square. “That stinking bastard outlander’s slaughtered poor old Shep!”
The man in the house clapped one hand against the frame of the door, in sarcastic applause. “Fast as ever, One-Eye. Age hasn’t wearied you.”
Finally, as though sensing Ryan’s building rage, Brother Joshua Wolfe stepped out into the morning air.
Ryan recognized him, the years flooding back at the sight of the man.
“I remember you,” he said.
“Me, too,” J.B. muttered. “Yeah. Me, too.”
“And I remember both of you, oh, so very well. This is always here to remind me, should my memory become lax. With this I can never forget.”
The man held out both arms, like a huckster displaying his wares—two arms, but only one hand.
The left hand was missing, ending in a neat stump, just above the wrist.
Ryan looked up from the mutilation, recalling the man who now called himself Brother Joshua Wolfe. He was around six feet three inches in height, weighing close to 240. He was broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hip, wearing the same kind of uniform as most of the men in the ville. His hair was graying, where it had once been as black as a raven’s wing.
His black cord pants tapered down into a pair of mirrored black Western boots with a silver rattler embroidered across the toes. He had a Mexican rig, ornately worked in silver-and-gold thread, strapped low on the right thigh, holding a revolver like most of the men carried, the big .45 caliber Hawes Montana Marshal. Only Wolfe’s had gleaming pearlized grips.
“Remember, One-Eye?”
He turned toward J.B. “Remember me, Four-Eyes?”
“Sure. Didn’t have the Hawes back then. If I recall it right, you had a matched pair of Iver Johnson Cattleman pistols, .357s. And a hideaway? Now, what…? Dark night! I remember it. Shoulder rig. Harrington and Richardson vest-pocket model. Smith & Wesson .32. Five rounds. Real short barrel. Pretty little toy.”
Wolfe shook his head admiringly. “By the saints… You sure got a memory for a blaster, Dix.”
The Armorer nodded, unsmiling, the muzzle of the Uzi covering the leader of the Children of the Rock. At his side Doc gave a raucous sneeze, tugging out his swallow’s-eye kerchief to blow his nose.
Ryan’s memory was carrying him back. How long? Good ten or fifteen years? Could even be as long as twenty years. Memory for things like that was notoriously unreliable.
But he recalled where it was that the Trader had run into Joshua Wolfe.
“Near Spearfish, up in the old Dakotas. We’d been trading on the site of the old Little Bighorn battlefield. Then we were heading along toward the east. Beaver skins, collected from the Oglala. Ville where you lived was called…” He hesitated a moment. “Pine Fork.”