They were passing the gloomy dining room, places already laid for breakfast, when the grizzled figure of Joaquin appeared by the main doors. His green jacket and blue pants looked as though they were fresh from the laundry and the ironing board. His hair was neatly parted, and he was holding a rebuilt percussion revolver in his right hand.
“Early to leave, outlanders,” he said quietly.
“Don’t want to outstay our welcome here.” Ryan was trying to measure the man, seeing how far he might go to stop them from leaving the ville.
“Baron might be offended.”
“Make our apologies,” J.B. said.
Doc made a half bow. “Pray do us the favor of explaining to him that we suddenly discovered that we had a subsequent engagement, elsewhere.”
“Could be he’ll be pissed about it.”
“Could be it doesn’t bother us all that much.” Ryan allowed his hand to move, quite openly, to rest on the butt of the powerful SIG-Sauer.
“Don’t like being threatened,” Joaquin said, showing no sign of concern at being massively outgunned.
“Thought you were the one doing the threatening.” Ryan took three steps closer to the sec sergeant. “We don’t seek trouble with you, Joaquin. But we’re leaving, like it or not. Easy or hard. Clean or bloody. We’re leaving.”
Joaquin looked at him, not shifting his eyes. “If we both push this, then it won’t be easy and there’ll be some cleaning to do afterward.”
“Agreed.” Ryan moved two steps closer. The revolver came up, almost imperceptibly, pointing at his groin. “You see a way around this one?”
Joaquin nodded. “Sure. Stay and eat. Tell the baron you’ve decided to move on. Probably he won’t give a small-jack shit about it. That way it’s all open.”
Ryan considered the offer, trying to think all around it and see whether there was something lying coiled behind it. But he couldn’t see it.
“Fine.”
He turned to the others. “We eat first.”
“Can’t we go?” Emma’s face was pinched with worry. “Please, let’s go now.”
Joaquin’s eyes opened wider with interest. “What’s the problem, little lady?”
“Nothing. I can’t cope with being inside buildings for too long. Panic sort of feeling.”
“Surely another hour won’t fret you too much, will it? Unless there’s another reason.”
Jak had his arm around Emma. “Be all right,” he said. “Stop eat, then go.”
“Just that I have a feeling about-”
“That’s enough,” Ryan snapped, deliberately stern to shut her up from blabbing out something that might risk all their lives. “I’m hungry. We’re all hungry. So let’s cut out all the talk and sit down to it.”
As they sat down, the young woman passed close behind Ryan’s chair, dipping her head to mutter to him. “Stone and water, but this is a dark day.”
BARON SHARPS APPEARED before the first food was brought to the long table. He was wearing a black silk shirt, unbuttoned, over a pair of ancient stone-washed jeans, tucked into low-heeled Western boots of dark maroon gator skin.
His cold, milky eyes turned first to Ryan. “Dressed for a trip outside into the Hole?”
“If it’s all right with you, Baron, we figure you’ve been hospitable to us, and we’d like to move on.”
The eyes turned to his sec man. “Have we repaid the debt we owed for their saving of that clumsy fool, Morgan? What do you say, Joaquin?”
“Done enough, Baron.”
Sharpe helped himself from a black iron caldron filled almost to the brim with cooling, leathery, unsalted scrambled egg, piling some salsa on the side and taking two rashers of fatback bacon and half a dozen links of pork sausage.
“Weather’ll be bad,” he said, as though the subject of their leaving the ville had been settled.
“Air feels heavy,” Ryan agreed.
“Real bad.”
“How do you know?”
The baron paused with a forkful of egg halfway to his mouth. “Got a tank of mutie prairie dogs. Midgets. Go ape-shit when bad weather’s in the way, or a quake. Visited them this morning and they were tearing each other apart. Fur and skin and blood everywhere. So it’ll either be a big quake or a triple-evil storm.”
Emma, trying to cover her fear, had become preoccupied with the meal, eyes never leaving her plate of grits, fried tomatoes and a pair of sunny-side eggs. But a part of her mind had been listening to what was being said.