He managed to keep up a fairly brisk pace for the next few miles, but as the horizon began to glow with the approach of sunrise, exertion, blood loss and pain were taking their toll. He tottered on his throbbing feet like a horse with the blind staggers, and his breath was a constant cloud before his eyes. Though he raged at his lack of stamina, the walk didn’t get any easier.
He stumbled up the side of a low bluff, fell and crawled up the rest of the way on his hands and knees. He crouched at the top, panting. In the distance he could make out the high stand of trees and the crystal glintings between and among them. He whooped with joy, but it was a pretty poor whoop. It sounded like the death caw of an elderly crow. He rolled rather than climbed down the opposite side.
“Hang on,” he muttered between lips that were dry and cracked from the chafing wind.
The eastern sky was gray with false dawn. When the first flooding of red sunlight touched the distant, surrounding peaks, J.B. was entering the forest city. The few Indians he saw were bundled against the chill, and at a distance they assumed he was one of them, wrapped in a blanket.
He walked determinedly through the outer perimeter and into the silently brooding avenues between the gigantic trees. Dry leaves blew lonely on the wind, and not even the birds sang. The crystal disks glistened from the rising sun, but torches still burned inside the tree tower that served as their temporary home.
There were no guards at the arched entrance, and he shuffled along the corridor to the room where he and his friends were quartered. Before he walked in, he sensed somehow that only Mildred was there. One dim torch guttered in a wall bracket.
Mildred lay on their bunk. Her face wasn’t relaxed in sleep. Dried tears shone dully on her cheeks, and his fedora was crumpled between her hands.
He moved stiffly toward her, slipped, stumbled and nearly fell atop her. Her upper body jackknifed up at the waist, her face contorted in anger and fear, reaching beneath the furry pillow. The ZKR was in Mildred’s hands before she was able to recognize him.
He half crouched on the floor beside the bed, his limbs shaking as if caught in a spasm. “So, you have my hat,” he croaked.
Mildred gaped at him. She couldn’t speak, and for a moment she couldn’t even breathe. What she could do and did was jump out of the bunk and catch him in her strong arms and hug him so hard he half groaned, half laughed.
She kissed his face, his lips, even his nose, and while she still held him tight to her body, she shouted, “Krysty! Jak! Doc!”
She repeated the call and released him when they hurried into the room. Their faces in the weak sunlight were masks of grief. Then, when they saw J.B. standing beside Mildred, their jaws dropped.
They crowded around him, pumping his hands, slapping his shoulders, shouting questions. Only when Mildred saw him wincing under their enthusiasm did she say, “Give him room, he’s hurt.”
Sitting at the table, J.B. allowed Mildred to clean and probe the ugly cut on his neck. Rapidly he told them what had happened at the Wolf Soldier encampment.
“This might need stitches,” Mildred grunted, gently sponging the dried blood away.
“Perhaps I should fetch our singing shaman,” Doc said.
In a voice tight with fear, eyes clouded by unshed tears, Krysty asked, “Ryan? Is he dead, like Joe said?”
“I don’t know. Did he tell you I was dead?”
“Thoroughly,” Mildred said, planting a careful kiss on the swelling at the back of his head.
“I honestly don’t know,” J.B. continued. “I don’t think Joe knows, either. I guess he left me for dead, and here I am.”
“A miscalculation,” Joe said from the doorway. “I apologize, Mr. Dix.”
The lithe Lakota came into the room, followed closely by Little Mountain.
“Wasn’t only thing miscalculated,” Jak said disgustedly. “Triple-stupe fuckup.”
Joe shrugged, then winced in pain. “The fortunes of war. I admit I was a fool not to realize that when Blood-sniffer sent his pack brother back along our trail, he’d strike our scent and thus know something was wrong. He brought the Wolf Soldiers down on us.”