AN OLD WOMAN, her face furrowed and filthy, brought him a bowl of stew a little later. As she crept into the tent, Dean saw from the fading light outside that evening was closing in.
“You chilled our prisoner,” she said.
“Yeah. Best I could do.”
She put down the wooden bowl and carved spoon, then spit in the greasy mixture. “Spoiled our funning,” she lisped through her toothless mouth.
“Thanks for the spit.”
Her face didn’t change. “Wanted to piss in it, but Ditchdown stopped me.”
“You’re a real queen, aren’t you?”
The old woman looked over her shoulder toward the entrance, and shuffled closer to him. Dean, his hands bound in front of him, readied himself to try to kick her in the throat.
“Might be the baron’s son,” she whispered. “Mighty and buggerin’ high. But the day’s comin’ fast when you and all your buggerin’ high-nosed kind are goin’ to get brought real low. Very soon.”
“That’ll be the day.”
She nodded, her veiled eyes peering malevolently at him. “Pretty little boy. Brave little boy. You reckon I’m ugly and old, don’t you? Think I’m way below you. Wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole, would you?” She smiled through chapped lips. “When we got what we want from your limp-dick daddy, then Straub says we can have our funning with you.”
“Go fuck a dead armadillo, you stinking slag,” Dean said, just winning the battle to stop his voice from cracking.
“You’ll crawl and cry and beg me to let you lick shit off my shoes,” she hissed. “And that’ll just be for a starter, kid.”
Dean watched her go before picking up the stew and gobbling it down, regardless of her having spit in it. Food was food.
That night, alone, Dean whispered into the blackness to try to lift his sagging spirits. “Hurry up, Dad. Hurry up.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Back in the ville, the explanations were over. The letter from the brushwooders had been read by Baron Weyman, Doc, Mildred and Abe.
The wounds of Ryan, J.B. and Jak had been bathed, treated and dressed.
Two of the older women of the ville had been told that their husbands, the sec men, were dead, and Micah’s sister received the news that there was little chance that she would ever see her brother alive again.
The sun was already setting.
On the winding trail back to the ville, they had spotted a couple of the mutie pigs, heading away from the horsemen, toward a narrow side canyon that led away north, between high cliffs. Rainey had pointed to them, suggesting that it could be the place where the herd was presently living.
It was a fact that Ryan had tucked carefully away into his memory in case it might become useful in the next couple of days.
The one thing blindingly obvious was that they had only a couple of days at the outside. By then the baron would have surrendered his ville, or Ryan would have organized a rescue party for his son. Either way, the outlook was grim and menacing for all of them.
The baron had asked for a little while to consider his options, wanting to spend some time with his only child in his rooms, promising that he would meet with the outlanders over the supper table at seven o’clock.
MEANWHILE, RYAN AND THE REST of the group also withdrew to their own rooms. He lay on the bed, on his side, wincing occasionally at the way the arrow wound was pulling. Mildred had suggested that it would help to stitch it, but Ryan had argued against it, claiming the wound would heal more quickly unaided.
The musket ball that had gone in and out of J.B.’s upper left arm had left a neat entry and exit wound that was now tightly bandaged. The Armorer kept flexing his fingers, working his shoulder, trying to find out precisely how much damage had been done and how it might have limited his range of movement. It didn’t seem serious.
The splinters of stone in Jak’s right ankle was the most serious of the trio of injuries. Mildred had asked for an array of oil lamps to be provided on one of the big scrubbed tables in the kitchens. She peered over the white flesh, using a pair of borrowed tweezers to pick at the tiny shards of rock. The blood had welled from the dozen or more holes, some of them bone-deep, but the teenager had lain quite still, not making a sound, though he was biting his lip from the pain.