“Reckon that any man tangles with that quartet and their pets is going to end up being badly mauled.”
“Yeah. Handsome, aren’t they?” The Armorer had a vague, ruminative smile.
“Sure. How about some food, J.B., before this conversation wanders into alleys we might both regret when we get home to Mildred and Krysty?”
THE FOOD WAS as good as it smelled. The only thing that put Ryan off a little was having the big carnivores watching him through what seemed peculiarly flimsy iron bars.
J.B. was more relaxed, lying on a faded quilted blanket, tucking into a third helping of the beef stew, his scattergun at his side, the Uzi ready by his left hand.
Ellie and her daughters were remarkable women. She had been married three times, each of her husbands having fathered one of the girls, which accounted for the fact that they all looked very different.
“Guess I’ve been unlucky with my men,” she said, taking a swig from a bottle of moonshine. “Not one lasted longer than a month married to me.”
“What happened?” Ryan wiped the tin plate clean with his last hunk of bread.
She ticked them off her fingers, relating each man to one of the daughters. “Julie’s Pa was Renaldo. Bit of Mex in him. Stupe way to go. Shoveling shit from the lions’ cage and he cut his ankle. Turned poisoned. Dead in a week. Father of Nell was Raleigh. Nice man from what little I recall. Claimed his folks came from Ireland. Not that I cared about that.”
“Wish you’d have had pix of them, Ma,” Nell said. “Liked to have known what they looked like.”
“All real handsome is all I remember of them,” her mother replied. “And we don’t have any pix of a single one and that’s an end to that.”
“What happened to Raleigh?” J.B. asked.
Brutusor Cassiusgave a roar that shook the forest, but none of the women took a shred of notice of him.
“Raleigh liked to fix himself up with jolt, now and then. I didn’t know that when I met him.” Ellie shook her head sadly. “I don’t have a problem with folks that do drugs like jolt or spin. Trouble was, jolt made Raleigh imagine things. It made him imagine that he could swim across the Sippi, in a flood, near Memphis, when he couldn’t swim a stroke. Never found his body.”
“My pa was called Jake,” Katie said. “And Ma cut his throat when she found him fucking a gaudy slut in the wag.”
“What did you do to the slut?” J.B. asked curiously. “Chill her as well?”
“Course not,” Ellie replied indignantly. “She was doing her job. Jake was the only one needed chilling.” The woman drained the last few drops from the bottle, then laughed. “But I only paid the slut half of the jack she wanted. Told her that she only did half the job. Poor old Jake never got to shoot his load before I opened him up an extra grinnin’ mouth.”
“You coming with us tomorrow?” Julie had returned from throwing some meat to the tiger.
“We have to be on the road,” Ryan replied.
“See our show.” Ellie pushed her shoulders back, making her breasts jut forward. “Show worth seeing, boys.”
J.B. stood. “We got to go.” He paused. “Where are you doing the show, Ellie?”
“Wetherill Springs. Never been there. Someone on the trail said there was a bunch of buffalo hunters passing through right about now.”
“That good for trade?”
“Mebbe, Ryan. Mebbe not. I done my Satana turn all over Deathlands. Done it for the blackest-hearted sec men you ever saw and never had a hair of trouble. Done it for some sort of closed-off church of religious monks up close to Sidalia, out west, and they rioted. Came after me and the girls with their cocks up and their pants down.”
“What did you do?” J.B, asked.
“Loosed Rosa and Balthazar. Cleared the lot of them in six seconds flat. One tripped over his own breeches and provided the lions with fresh meat for a day and a half.”
“You should come and see the show,” Katie said. “Ma’s the best there is.”