“Right. Man who wrote that notice doesn’t sound like the kind of person would listen to many excuses.”
“Think it’s Nick Brody, Dad?”
“Seems a fair guess. But I don’t”
“Then he sounds a triple-tough mother, Dad. Not the sort to take shit. Not Nick.”
“Mebbe. But listen, Dean.”
“Yeah? What is it, Dad?”
“Might be best to call him Mr. Brody. Not Nick. Show him some respect right from the start. Might be he’ll like you to call him Nick, but it’s best to start off on the right foot. Know what I mean?”
The boy nodded, the wind ruffling his dark, curly hair, his eyes fixed piercingly on his father. “Whatever you say, Dad.”
“Let’s step it out. Should arrive there ready for a noontime meal, if we get it right.”
“THERE’S SOMEONE watching us, Dad.”
Ryan stopped, his hand feeling for the butt of the SIG-Sauer. He cursed himself under his breath for letting his attention wander. His mind had been filled with thoughts of saying farewell to his son, and he had let his combat sense sleep as they walked along the roadthe road that they knew carried dire warnings for trespassers or outlanders.
“Where?”
“Ahead and to the left. Caught the flash of sunlight off a glass on the edge of the spruces.”
“Can’t see it.”
“It’s there, Dad.”
“Believe you.”
“What do we do?”
“Keep walking. Not much point in turning back when we’ve come this far. Can’t be more than a couple of miles from here to the school. Must be set among the trees over there,” he said, pointing toward the north.
The place where Dean had seen the glint of light was about four hundred yards ahead.
Ryan took that side of the blacktop, the rifle across his shoulder, his right hand never far from the butt of the SIG-Sauer. Dean was beside him, on the other side of the road.
They had closed to within a hundred yards, and there was still no sign of any action.
“Dad?”
“Yeah.” Ryan’s nerves were stretched with the tension of knowing that something was likely to happen at any moment and not having any idea what that something might be.
“If anything happens, least we’re together.”
“That’s some consolation, Dean. It truly is. But I don’t think anything’s going to happen.”
It was almost a replay of their run-in on Lemuel’s wag with the three killers.
A blaster was fired from out of the spruces, the noise muffled by the trees, the bullet kicking a chunk out of the pavement a yard or so in front of Ryan’s feet. It ricocheted off and whined into the distance.
“Far as you go,” a man’s voice called.
Chapter Seventeen
“Wag’s smashed to shit on rocks. Mules all dead. Can only see one body.”
Jak had shaded his pink eyes against the sun, now setting low on the western horizon. He stood perched on the very edge of the deeply rutted trail, staring into the shadowed drop to the deep ravine on the right.
“Who?” Krysty asked as she joined him, her legs feeling oddly stiff, as if her knees had become filled with ice.
“Mule skinner. Recognize coat. Was coyotes there but run off when saw me.”
The bodies of the three men and two horses behind Krysty were also showing signs of having been raided by predators. A pair of raw-necked vultures had flapped reluctantly from the feast as Krysty and the others appeared around the bend in the track, one of them with a long string of gristle and flesh dangling from its yellow, hooked beak.
All of the men and both the pinto and the bay had lost their eyes, plucked neatly from swimming sockets. Much of the soft tissue of the men’s faces had also gone, rendering them unrecognizable, though it was obvious from their clothes and their builds that none of them was Ryan or Dean.
“How long?” J.B. asked, studying the scene of slaughter with a professional interest.
Mildred had knelt and slipped her hand inside the collar of the plaid shirt on one of the corpses. “Cold. Several hours. Think that this all is Ryan’s work?”
Doc had sat on a seat-sized boulder, wiping sweat from his forehead with his kerchief. “Where he walks, death steps in his shadow,” he said quietly. “Flowers die and the little children weep in the streets.”