Mildred and J.B. had the main bedroom, opening a top fanlight window to air it.
Doc was allowed the bed in the spare room, which he went to early.
Krysty picked the sofa for herself while Jak scavenged in the garage and found a camp bed with an inflatable mattress. It revealed a very slow leak but it held up enough for him to have a reasonable night’s sleep in a corner of the living room, close to the window.
KRYSTY STARTED AWAKE once in the middle of the night, reaching out automatically for Ryan’s comforting hand, feeling the cold shock of desolation when she realized where she was, and that she was alone.
For some time she was unable to slide back into the warm comfort of sleep, and she found herself thinking of the tragic ending of the owners of the beautiful house. And how that same tragedy had to have been repeated countless times, as J.B. had said, all through Deathlands.
A phrase she’d heard Doc use came to her. Something about people leading lives of quiet desperation.
With that doleful thought she finally fell asleep once more, not waking until dawn light broke through a gap in the dark brown velvet draperies.
And she could smell the glowing embers of the night’s fire and the wonderful scent of fresh coffee coming from the brightly lit kitchen.
EVERYONE HAD SLEPT pretty well, and Doc, in particular, seemed a new man, back to his old form. He sang an old song in a hearty voice as he helped Jak prepare breakfast for everyone.
Mildred had given her approval to some sealed foil packages of scrambled eggs with ham and peppers, and Jak and Doc served them piping hot from a pair of skillets. They’d opened some cans of dough that they heated in the electric oven, finding that they came out as crescent-shaped rolls, soft and buttery.
And more coffee.
The only major failure was some self-bake pecan pie, which turned into foul-smelling sticky cardboard.
“Think it would be possible to actually live up here and get the house going again?” Krysty asked.
J.B. considered the question for several seconds. “Need reliable transport. Come the winter you could be locked in here for three or four months. Doubt the electrics would cope if they were used too much. Heating would be difficult with only one fireplace. And you wouldn’t be able to grow too much fruit and vegetables at this altitude and on an exposed scarp like this. Plenty of game. But, on balance, it’d be rad-blasted hard.”
It was an unusually long speech from the sallow little Armorer.
“Guess in those technodays the road would have been swept clear, and you could get groceries and stuff delivered from Leadville or Glenwood Springs,” Krysty said. “And all kinds of repairmen the other end of a phone.”
“Die here in winter.” Jak had just had a hot bath upstairs and come down with his long white hair plastered to his skull and shoulders.
“I’ll do the washing up,” Mildred said. “Maybe we should be going.”
“The hot-bath idea seems admirable.” Doc laughed. “Though I see little point in washing the plates. It has been a century since anyone came this way last. And it will probably be another hundred years before anyone returns. By then I think that the old house will be a mass of tumbled timber.”
Mildred stared at him. “You can live like a pig in muck, Doc, but I was raised not to leave dirty dishes around. There’s plenty of hot water from the boiler to the fire if we all want hot baths.”
The thought of that was too tempting, and they agreed to postpone their departure for Leadville and beyond until after lunch, by which time they would all have used the deep tub and be ready to face the trail once more.
“Ryan’ll wait for us up at Fairplay,” Krysty said. “Like we arranged.”
Chapter Twenty-One
After an excellent and sustaining breakfast, Ryan had a last brief meeting with Nicholas Brody.
The big bearded man was alone in his study, and as Ryan entered the room, he was doubled over his desk with a horrendous coughing fit. He had a white handkerchief pressed to his face, and Ryan thought that he glimpsed a dappling of crimson before the headmaster quickly put it back into his pocket.