“Bitch to see,” a sec man stated, squinting at the mutie. “There be snow falling, it could have easily chilled the whole group.”
“I saw its breath, but wasn’t sure until it moved,” Dean said, his expression of a mixture of serious and embarrassed. “Then it was too late.”
“Not your fault,” Ryan said, resting the stock of the Steyr on a hip.
“Strangest mutie I have ever seen,” Mitchum said, hitching his blanket closed more against the wind. “Only hope it’s traveling alone.”
Jak slid off his horse and walked closer to it. “Want see paws,” he said. “Case find tracks elsewhere.”
“Good idea,” Mildred said, and pressed a paw into the snow. Together, they scrutinized the pattern closely, logging the details of the pattern into memory.
“How odd. It’s sort of like that symbol for Forbidden Island,” Mildred whispered softly.
“Yeah,” the teenager agreed. “Not like.”
Walking her mount to the dead girl, Krysty bowed her head in prayer for a minute, then said, “We should bury Ann. But without shovels, I don’t see how.”
“Leave her for the birds,” Ryan stated, glancing at the sky. Condors were already circling the area. Blasterfire always meant food for the scavengers. Also gave away their position. The one-eyed man didn’t like that, but there was nothing he could do about birds. What could not be changed, had to be endured, as Doc liked to say.
But more important, with Ann on the last train west, it meant the companions now depended on the goodwill of Mitchum and his sec men. And Ryan didn’t like that one bit. Ann owed them her life; these folks only owed them their freedom. It wasn’t the same thing.
“This is bullshit,” a sec man grumbled, rubbing his blaster as if it were a source of warmth. The air fogged before the man, his visible breath mixing with the exhalations of the horse. “Colonel, how do we know these folks ain’t tricking us somehow. Get the ville gates open and in pour the cannies!”
“Shut up, trooper,” Mitchum snapped, glaring at the shivering man. “These are the folks who hauled us out of the stew pot. I’ll trust them with my life.”
Ryan said nothing, hoping it was true.
“Yeah?” the sec man said rudely, then pointed. “Including the freak?”
Jak looked up from studying the mutie, his snowy hair billowing in the cold wind, his red eyes and ruddy cheeks the only touches of faint color in his pale face.
“Got prob?” the teenager asked, in a dangerous tone of voice.
“Bet your ass I do! You look like the thing!” the sec men raved on. “Sir, mebbe he worships it or something.”
“A mutie? What a load of spent brass,” Mitchum shot back. “Listen up, feeb. They saved us from the cannies to feed to the mountain cats?”
“I say we should ace the freak to make sure!” the sec man shouted, grabbing the flintlock at his side to brandish the weapon in the air. “Who’s with me?”
Nobody said a word, the only movement the windblown snow and the horses shifting their legs to stay warm. The companions exchanged glances and judiciously walked their horses out of the line of fire. They could smell death coming.
“You can see he’s a stinking mutie!” the sec man shouted in argument. “By the baron’s law, we’re supposed to ace any human muties!”
Feeling her red hair flare angrily at the pronouncement, Krysty kept her features neutral, but filed that information away.
“Shut mouth,” Jak said, opening his jacket to expose the Colt Python holstered at his side. “Or go steel.”
“Think I can’t take you, freak?” the trooper said, sneering, the flintlock already in his hand.
Reaching behind his back, Jak pulled his jacket out of the way. “Any time, stupe,” he said softly, flexing his blaster hand.
“You in on this?” Mitchum asked, flicking a look at Ryan.
He shook his head. “Between them.”
“Agreed,” the colonel said. “Anybody helps this asshole gets on the wrong side of me. Natch?”
The rest of the troopers nodded in agreement and moved away from the lone gunman. Suddenly realizing he was without backup, the sec man dropped the blaster to his side, then whipped out a second pistol from inside the blanket, the hammer already cocked and ready to fire.