“Look for a good place to moor us up for the night,” J.B. called.
Jak had been correct. The rain quickly stopped, the sky clearing, bringing the promise of a fine evening and night. Once more they all went out onto the wet timbers, watching the wooded banks of the mighty river drifting by.
“Some sort of sign there,” Mildred said, looking ahead and to the north bank.
“Who’s got the best sight?” Ryan shaded his eye, seeing the black lettering on a white board but unable to make out what it said.
“Not I,” Doc replied. “I can see a blob of white that could be this sign you speak of. But I fear that I can see no detail upon it.”
Krysty was concentrating on it. “Something Landing,” she said hesitantly.
“Shiloh?” the Armorer suggested eagerly, working the makeshift sweep oar to bring them closer to the right bank of the river.
“No. Begins with a letter P , I think. Yeah.” The sun lanced through from behind a low bank of cloud, illuminating the sign more clearly. “Pittsburg,” she said. “Pittsburg Landing. And it says to alight here for the Shiloh battlefield experience and tour. Spelling’s kind of rough. This is the place.”
A SMALL COLLECTION of ragged tar-paper shotgun shacks lined a narrow trail that ran westward from the banks of the river.
Rat-eyed, dirt-poor men and women came out of shadowy doorways to peer suspiciously at the outlanders, some of them making no effort to hide crude cap-and-ball pistols, or shouldering smoothbore muskets.
Ryan had called out, asking if it was all right to moor the raft at the primitive landing stage, but at first nobody would give him a reply. Then a large woman wearing a dress torn across her pendulous breasts, smoking a corncob pipe, came swaggering out of a building that called itself The Stor.
“Moorings cost good jack, outlander. You want free, then go back a spell up Snake Creek. Or farther down the Tenner you’ll find an inlet called Dill’s Branch. Mile or so downstream’s Lick Creek. Free there.”
“How much to moor here?”
She sniffed, wiping her running nose on her sleeve, leaving a slimy trail like a snail. “Depends on what you got. You want it looked after safe?”
Ryan’s patience was never all that high, and he had never responded well to threats.
“We got enough blasters and plas-ex to blow every building in this ragged shit hole to the other side of Memphis,” he snapped. “And to chill anyone tries to make out they can threaten us with their cheap trade blasters.”
“Whoa back there, buck,” she said, holding her hands out, palms spread. “No need to get your balls in a twist, mister. Just tryin’ to be friendly.”
“So, we can tie up here for the night free? That what you’re telling me?”
“I guess so. Sure, I guess so. You come for the tour of the battleground?”
“Mebbe.”
“Then you’ll likely want Judas Portillo. Kin of mine, young Judas is.”
“Heard word of him on the river. Couple called Jericho and Daniel. Said that Portillo owed him for a faucet. Put in his new shack.”
The woman slapped her thigh, beating out a cloud of dust and fleas. “Damned old goats! Reckon if there’s any owin’ then the foot’s in the other boot.”
Ryan nodded. “Thanks for your kindness, lady. Your store carry food?”
“Trade it for a handful of them bullets you got for those pretty blasters.”
“If the food’s any good, you got a deal.”
“And I’ll send word along to Judas to come see you all while you eat?”
Ryan shook his head. “No. Been a long time traveling downriver. We’ll take some supper and then sleep some. See Portillo at breakfast.”
She nodded. “I’m Ma Jode.”
“Still trampling out the grapes of wrath?” Doc asked, beaming broadly at the puzzled woman.
“You a few buckets short of a full flood, mister?”
“Just a small jest, ma’am.”
“Very fuckin’ small.”
“That’s what they all say,” Mildred said with a grin.
Ryan turned away from the settlement. “We’ll tie up safe and snug and come along for some eats.”
Ma Jode pinched her nose between her fingers and blew a spray of yellowish snot into the dust by her broken-down boots. “Be welcome,” she said.