Deep Trek

But he’d provided them with good hot soup and some drinking whiskey, thrilling Sly by popping some corn on an ancient iron stove called the Excelsior Dragon.

They’d stayed the night, able to relax for the first time in an age.

Ted Abbey, his white-flecked beard neatly trimmed, had slept in a bunk bed in a sort of open loft. Laying his thick horn-rimmed glasses carefully on a low table at his side, he smiled, the golden lamplight showing his extraordinarily milky blue eyes.

“Now we lay us down to sleep and pray the Lord our souls to keep.” Carrie thought he looked like a kindly Old Testament prophet. “Good night, all.”

He’d put Carrie and Kyle up for the night on two narrow beds that folded off the wall, and Sly had slept on a sleeping bag on the floor.

When they had risen next morning, it was to find coffee bubbling on the stove and eggs spitting merrily in the skillet. Ted Abbey had gotten Sly to help him by laying the table and keeping the beans stirred in the deep enamel pan.

The boy had been fascinated by the mirrored doors to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. They were set crooked, so that your reflection vanished as you moved from right to left, reappearing unexpectedly in the other door.

“Sly’s gone and back and gone and back,” he’d chanted, happily bobbing and weaving from side to side, his grin wide enough to swallow half of Nebraska.

They had sat down together, and Ted Abbey had pressed Carrie and Kyle about their adventures, shaking his head at various high and low spots.

“Why don’t you join us?” Kyle Lynch had asked. “Said yourself that the Hunters’ll track you down and wipe you out.”

“One of these days.”

“But that could be tomorrow.”

Abbey had smiled, using a rag to pick up the hot coffee jug. “Could be today, son.”

IT DID TURN OUT to be that very day. They all heard the jeep coming toward them off the dust-shrouded highway, its engine rumbling, driving a lone coyote scurrying toward the distant hills, belly down.

“Get ready,” said Ted Abbey, reaching for a 12-gauge that hung on hooks behind the main door. “Best get the boy in the back room, just in case.”

Kyle started to say something, then let the words drift away into the morning stillness as the sound of the powerful engine stopped.

Peering through one of the ob-slits in the heavy security shutters, Abbey reported, “Coupla men. Casual dress.”

Kyle had his Model V Mannlicher rifle with the scope-sight, a .357-Magnum round already under the hammer. He was standing by the door, waiting to see how the dice rolled.

Carrie’s gun was the six-shot Smith & Wesson 2050 revolver, firing .22-caliber rounds from the stubby four-inch barrel. It was a weapon that had already led to some teasing for her, but she’d proved more than once that it could be the right gun at the right time.

“Yo, inside!”

Kyle had caught Sly’s eye and put a finger to his lips. The boy was standing hesitantly in the doorway to the back room of the store. At a jerk of the thumb from the tall, slender black, he went in and closed the door softly behind him.

“What can we do for you?” Abbey had his mouth pressed to the narrow hole cut in the steel.

“Need some food. Got us some good bolts of cloth in the back. Barter with them? Could use some gas, as well.”

The sudden opening of the door to the back made everyone jump. Sly stood there, looking worried.

“What?” Carrie whispered.

“Me thought…”

“Can we come ahead?” asked the voice from outside. Neither of the men seemed to be carrying a gun.

“Wait a minute.”

Abbey turned to Sly. “Just get the hell out there, will you, son?”

“But…”

“Do it,” snapped Kyle.

The door nearly closed, then opened again, Sly’s face appearing in the crack. “But me see men washing the wall and roof.”

There was a long moment of stillness as everyone thought about that one.

“Fuck!” exclaimed Kyle Lynch, the fastest to react. “Burn us out!”

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