James Axler – Demons of Eden

“What?” Jak asked.

“The Grandfather, the One Above.”

J.B. rolled his eyes. “Religion. I was afraid of this.”

Joe ignored him. “When you strengthen your spirit body, you exercise these high laws against low laws that the material world obeys. The Wolf Soldiers have abandoned the high laws and practice the low.”

“You may have to define the practice of low law,” Doc said. “I presume you do not mean divorce proceedings.”

“Low law is the lust for material power,” Joe said. “Power over everything, even the methods of healing Grandmother Earth.”

“Healing?” Ryan inquired, looking up from the pieces of the blaster scattered on a blanket before him. “Explain.”

“I cannot. It is something you will not believe or even understand until we reach the valley.”

Joe drew a blanket around him with such a flourish it ended the discussion. Ryan put the weapon back together, then went to relieve Krysty. He told her what Joe had said. She pursed her lips but said nothing.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Tribal superstitions?”

“Who knows?” Krysty shrugged, then patted back a yawn with her hand. “Want me to stay out here for a while?”

“No,” Ryan said. “I’ll be okay. Send J.B. out to take over for Jak in a little while, though.”

Krysty kissed his cheek, then returned to the campsite.

Leaning against a tree, Ryan looked toward the distant mountain range. Clouds squatted on the snowy peaks. Before the nukecaust and the earth-shaker bombs, the Continental Divide had followed the crest line of the Wind River Range. God only knew what it was like now, but it was possible it had been unaffected. This was still good, strong country and it had always been.

A couple of hundred years earlier, a government Indian reservation at the base of the Wind River Range had confined the Crow, the Ute, the Bannock, the Sioux and the Cheyenne. He couldn’t help but wonder how they’d felt to look up at those tree-lined hills, carpeted with high, sweet grass, and know they could never roam among them again.

The nukecaust had been a blessing to most Indian peoples, the “purification” of ancient prophecy. The white man’s government had dissolved in a twinkling, and though the world wasn’t as rich and beautiful as it had been when the tribes had raced wild and free across the plains and the mountains, this part of the country was still rich and beautiful enough.

SETTING OUT at first light, the company of travelers followed an old, overgrown paved road that traced its way across high-plains country, flat acres and plateaus of good pasture. In the far distance was the burned-out ruin of an old ranch house.

The day dawned overcast, with thick clouds, but rain didn’t come. The color of the day fit the moods of the travels. Everyone seemed absorbed in his or her own somber reflections.

The longer they traveled, the rougher the terrain became, slashed with narrow ravines and steep drop-offs, reminders of the quakes that had shaken the West Coast more than a century earlier.

At midmorning the rumble of countless hooves reached them. The party reined in and studied a dust cloud hanging in the distance.

“There’s your buffalo again,” Mildred said to Joe, standing in her stirrups and staring at the cloud beneath a shading hand.

“About a mile away,” Joe replied. “Cost us a couple of hours if we wanted some fresh meat.”

“After last night’s stew,” J.B. said. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Nor would I,” Doc added.

The consensus was in favor of going after the game. Mildred was the only dissenter.

The animals picked their way carefully over the uneven ground, following the crest of a ridge that dipped down into an open meadow. As they continued along the stony slant to the prairie, Jak saw a one-story log cabin set back a quarter of a mile from their path. It squatted in a barren clearing, surrounded by upthrusts of shale and scraggly thornbush.

The cabin displayed no sign of human habitation except for a trickle of smoke that rose from the crude chimney. Also from the chimney fluttered a tattered red flag.

When Ryan pointed this out to Joe, the Lakota replied rather uneasily, “An old woman lives there. A seer, what you would call a doom-sniffer. Everyone thinks she is touched, so even the tribes leave her alone.”