Now Ryan was back once more, this time on foot and alone, knowing that in pestholes like that, an outlander had to set his feet real careful. And watch his back.
Munching a tangy apple, he set off to walk the last mile or so into Leadville.
“MUTIES,” Jak said tersely, looking out the wide picture window in the living room at the pack of huge timber wolves.
There were more than a dozen of them, rangy animals, the biggest of them standing at least four feet high at the shoulder. They had heralded their arrival by howling as they forced themselves through the powdery snow. But once they had reached the house and circled it a couple of times, they had fallen unnervingly silent, contenting themselves with sitting in a half circle and observing the humans observing them. Their shadows were crisp and clean in the bright moon.
“The brutes look half-starved to me,” said Doc, who’d been roused from his bed by the noise of the pack. “Gaunt and hungered.”
Krysty brushed back an errant strand of hair from her eyes. “Agree with that, Doc. Looks like they regard us as being their next meal.”
“A choice selection of cold cuts,” Doc said, “personally selected by our chef for your dining pleasure. I think they feel they’ve discovered the original boneless-chicken ranch. Look at the way their leader has his tongue hanging out. And those astounding fangs. Ah, yes, I remember them well. Fangs for the memory. Sorry.”
The ferocious red eyes of the wolves glinted in the silver light, and their heads turned as one to follow any movement within the house.
Mildred had drawn her revolver and was taking aim at the animals, her finger settled on the trigger. “Bang,” she whispered. “And another of the critters bit the dust. Yum, what delicious dust we have here.” She laughed. “Not that I’m cracking up, friends. Not at all.”
“Problem is how long they’re prepared to stay out there,” J.B. said.
“I don’t think I’ll be going out to bring in some more logs,” Krysty stated.
“Chill all from upstairs,” Jak suggested. “Easy target for you, Mildred.”
The Armorer wiped his glasses while he spoke. “Not sure that’s the best idea. Not yet, anyways. Rad-blasted animals would run at first or second death. Noise could bring more of them. Riding with Trader in northern Minnesota, we once counted a pack of nearly two hundred wolves, all running together. If that number turns up here, then we are in serious trouble.”
It was a chilling thought and stopped any more conversation dead in its tracks.
A VACANT FACED LAD was hammering nails into a five-bar gate as Ryan passed the first few houses of Leadville. He walked over to him. “Hey! Is there a good place to stay the night in the ville?”
The teenager turned and gave him a moonish smile. “Why, sure, mister. I know that, all right. Palace Hotel. S-u-n spells Palace, don’t it?”
“Likely it does, son.”
“Around the corner and down the hill and on your right,” he chanted in a singsong voice.
“Obliged,” Ryan said.
Around the corner and down the hill brought him into the ville’s main drag. The sun had almost set, and lights were on in many of the buildings. A number of saloons and gaudies were open for business. The Palace rooming house was where the boy had said it would be, and Ryan went and booked a room, paying with a little of what remained of his once-substantial amount of jack.
He didn’t meet any sort of formality pay the jack, get the key, go to the room, which looked out over the desolate back of the main street, and lock it behind you.
The bed was narrow but comfortable, and the sheets were remarkably clean, making him guess that he’d arrived on washing day at the Palace.
There was a dining room in the place, but Ryan decided to check out the quality of some of the other eateries, walking along the left side of the street, down past the opera house, where a sign said that public donations were requested to carry out some urgently needed repairs and renovations. Ryan had the feeling that there had been a similar sign when he’d first come through the ville with Trader, a good twenty years earlier.