He told them about his dreams, about riding the singing wolf and the voice that had intruded on his slumber.
“If I didn’t know better,” Mildred said, tying a bandage around Ryan’s forearm, “I’d be of the opinion you experienced a vision, or the beginnings of one.”
Ryan knew Plains tribes attached a crowning importance to visions, but he also knew the normal procedure for obtaining one was a period of solitude, fasting and suffering.
“I don’t want a vision,” he said wryly. “I see just fine as it is.”
Mildred smiled. “From what I’ve read, spirit guides and animal totems occasionally come unsolicited to befriend mortals. Maybe that’s one interpretation.”
“A wolf,” Doc mused. “I can’t think of any animal more appropriate to serve as your totem, my boy.”
Mildred’s words had brought an incredulous stare from J.B. “We don’t need to get tangled up in Native religions.”
“Mebbe not,” Krysty said quietly. The sparkle of her emerald eyes was slightly dimmed by worry. “Can’t help but wonder if we won’t be.”
Ryan took another swallow of White Mule. A long one.
Chapter Thirteen
If Ryan had felt worse the morning after indulging in corn liquor, he couldn’t recall the occasion. When he was shaken awake by Krysty, he saw the sky was still dark, with no sign of the sun. Everyone else was up and in the common room, getting their possessions together.
Massaging his temples, he croaked, “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s stay here and help rebuild Amicus.”
“No,” she said unsympathetically. “You should have known better than to drink that rotgut on the night before a journey.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“I’m not your mother, Ryan. You go on and on about folks taking responsibility for their actions. Well, you’d better take responsibility for this hangover or you’ll be left behind.”
Ryan felt too fragile to argue with her. At least he hadn’t had another strange and disturbingly vivid dream. If he had dreamed at all, he couldn’t recollect it.
He got up, managed to dress himself and stumbled over to the washbowl. After dunking his head four times into the water, the pain in his skull had abated enough for him to talk.
“Where’s Joe?”
“Outside. He has our horses ready. Do you want breakfast?”
The very thought of the green-black tea, cheese and fatty, blistered bacon made him want to heave. He swallowed the column of burning bile working its way up his throat and shook his head, but not too vigorously.
Joe was waiting for them at the corner of the hostel, holding the lead ropes of seven horses and two mules. The mules had supplies packed onto their backs.
Everyone was pleased with Joe’s ability to judge horseflesh, except for Doc. He had expressly asked for a small animal so he would have less distance to fall when he was inevitably thrown, and Joe had chosen a dun-colored mustang.
Doc walked around the animal, studying its legs and withers. It was a little bigger in the chest than Joe’s pinto, and it gazed at him with an alert suspicion in its brown eyes. He took the reins from Joe and put one foot in the stirrup. The pony immediately shied, and he went down in the street.
“The reincarnation of Judas,” he said tonelessly, referring to the tricky, recalcitrant, skew-backed mule that had served as his transportation at Jak’s ranch in New Mexico.
With the help of J.B. and Joe, Doc managed to corner the little animal against the side of the hostel, and he climbed aboard the saddle. Everyone laughed at the ludicrous picture he made. He squatted on the pony’s back, feet in the stirrups, his knees sticking outward like a grasshopper’s.
“Just like Judas,” Mildred said with a laugh.
Doc patted the mustang’s neck and said, “Then that is what I shall christen him, Judas Redux.”
At a walk the mounted party made for the pass. Though there were people up and about in Amicus, none spoke to them or bade them goodbye. Not even Mose Autry turned out to wish them good luck.
Ryan wasn’t surprised. The Amicans were probably just as relieved to see them go as the Red Cadre.