“We will. And thanks.” Krysty looked out at the dreary morning. “Let’s go.”
THE FRESH PAINTED GATE swung silently to and fro on its greased hinges as they passed the house at the edge of Leadville. Krysty turned as they walked by and caught a glimpse of a round face peering at them from behind lace curtains. She lifted a hand to wave, but there was no response.
In less than a quarter hour, the township had vanished in the driving rain and the five friends headed into the high country, toward Fairplay.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ryan had made the steep climb up toward Alma, seeing no trace of life for several hours. Then the first sign that he saw of life was death.
A telegraph pole on the right side of the road had been rigged into a makeshift crucifix, and the body of a naked woman hung from it.
The rain had finally eased, but there was still a persistent drizzle. Ryan blinked up into it, looking at the corpse, suspecting that it might well be one of the kidnapped Quaker women. Not that anyone would ever have recognized her.
It was impossible to tell at what point death had come to the poor wretch. The probability was that she’d still been living when they’d strung her up, using thin baling wire around wrists, elbows and ankles to hold her in place. The wire had cut into the flesh, leaving deep, white-lipped gashes.
The bruises around her breasts and across her thighs told their own tale of how viciously she’d been abused before death, and the circular torn patches of skin showed the rending hands of stickies had been involved.
The hair on her head and on her body had been burned away, which also indicated stickies. Nothing in Deathlands loved fires and explosions like stickies did.
After they’d used her to satisfy their own sexual lusts, the gang had crucified her, then used her for target practice. Her right hand had been blown off at the wrist, and there were other devastating wounds all over the body. What remained of her face was unrecognizable. What blood there had been had long washed away in the downpour and the corpse was as white as marble, the various wounds showing dark purple.
Ryan stared blank-faced at the sight.
If he’d had any doubts of the sort of gang they were going to deal with, then this would have removed them. It was a brutal mob with no sense of the dignity of life.
A few pebbles and clods of earth clattered down the hillside, making him jump and draw his blaster. But it wasn’t repeated, and he guessed that it was a result of the heavy rain.
As Ryan started to walk on, boots splashing through the watery mud, the drizzle grew stronger, turning into full-fledged rain.
“SOMETHING’S LYING at the side of the trail,” Krysty said, pushing back threads of soaking red hair from her forehead. “Looks like a body.”
The light was very poor, more like evening than noon, the visibility diminished by the curtains of rain that swept across the top of the pass.
“Dead one,” Jak said.
“Man or woman?” Krysty had already quickened her stride, feeling a lump like cold lead in her heart.
“Can’t Got white hair.”
It was an old man and he wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t far off, his breathing shallow and rapid, his pulse barely there. He was sodden and looked as if he’d been lying faceup at the side of the road for some hours.
Mildred had carefully checked him over, kneeling in the muddy pool where he lay. She looked up at the others. “No chance,” she said quietly. “Hypothermia’s way too advanced. If I had a hot bed and a warm room within a hundred yards, and skilled nursing staff, then maybe I could just save him.” She stood. “That’s only a maybe.”
“What do we do with the poor old fellow?” Doc asked, water streaming down his stubbled cheeks, matting the silver hair to his leonine head.
“Nothing,” Mildred replied.
“We cannot just leave him! By the Three Kennedys! He is our brother.”
J.B. shook his head. “No, he isn’t, Doc. He’s a stranger. Help him if you can. If you can’t, then you might as well move on. Sympathy won’t help him. He’s dying.”