“We could tie her up.” Then she had second thoughts. “No. Do it properly and she’d likely die. Might deserve that but Tie her loose and you might as well leave her free.”
“Talking’s time, Krysty.”
“You’re right. Have to abandon any idea of finding transport. Meet the others as quick as possible and head out of town on the same trail as Ryan.”
“On foot?”
“Have to be. Take what food we got. Going to be a tough hike, Doc.”
He shrugged. “What will be, will be, my dear. If it’s to be done, then it will be as well to get it done quickly. Let us go unite ourselves with the others.”
IN LESS THAN THIRTY minutes they were all together, walking fast out on old 82, following the route taken by Ryan and Dean.
Jak had been all for going back and quietly strangling Maria, unable to believe that Krysty and Doc had spared her. “Don’t you learn anything?” he asked.
“Life is precious, Jak,” Krysty replied, defending their actions.
“Our lives!” he said angrily. “She comes around quick and gets mob after us. Be lot more dead than one girl. Real stupe, Krysty. Real stupe, Doc.”
By late afternoon the albino teenager was in better spirits, leading the way south and east. He climbed a spur of rock to peer back down the track behind them.
“Nobody coming. No posse pursuit. Mebbe hit her hard enough to put on last train to coast.”
There had been a number of marmots, almost as large as domestic dogs, popping up out of burrows as the five friends strode along, and Jak had managed to kill one with a shrewdly thrown knife. He took out another one when it came sniffing inquisitively to see what was happening.
“Least we got meat,” he said, skinning the animals as they followed the road.
EVENING CAME SOFTLY, almost unnoticed.
One moment they had been walking at a steady rate up a steep section of the trail, with woods close in around them. Only a couple of minutes later, so it seemed, twilight had come and gone and they needed to stop for the night.
Jak and J.B. collected plenty of wood for a good fire, setting it blazing as they cooked the butchered meat.
“Wonder how far ahead of us the others are?” Krysty said musingly.
Jak pointed ahead and a little to the left. “Thought saw pinprick of fire,” he said. “Could be them.”
They all stared into the clinging blackness, but could see nothing.
Krysty found it vaguely reassuring to know that they were, at least, on the same stretch of trail.
Though she slept restlessly, plagued by anxiety dreams.
Chapter Fifteen
Falling.
The wag rolled sharply to the right, the first pair of mules already shrieking like tortured humans as the trail vanished from beneath their hooves and they began to plummet over the edge.
Dean’s face was taut with panic, yelling for his father to help him, to free his trapped foot.
And all around was death and injury.
Lemuel lay sprawled back across the seat, blood flowing freely from the wound in his throat.
Joey, leader of the bandits, moaned on the trail, his face bleeding, his body crushed by the wheels of the heavy rig. One of his companions called for someone to free him from where he was trapped under his dead horse.
The piano squealed in protest as the wag began to twist and flex and bend, the weight of the mules pulling it over the sheer edge of the steep drop.
“Dad!” Dean’s voice was high and thin, his eyes on his father’s face.
Ryan was hanging on with his left hand to the top of the piano, saving himself from plunging over the wrong side of the rig. He could see the taut cord that had caught his son’s ankle, trapping it between the piano and the back of the seat, where Lemuel’s corpse was slumped sideways.
The problem was that his razor-sharp panga was sheathed on the left side of his hip, and he was holding the SIG-Sauer in his right hand. There was no way that he could holster the blaster and draw the panga without going over the edge.