Ryan glanced in the bow of the boat and spotted Elmore sitting with his back to the railing, gazing out at the trees and the lazy water passing him by. His eyes looked hungry but wary as he considered his options.
Dean sat across from him, his dark hair ruffling in the wind. The boy kept his Browning Hi-Power bared in his lap, his fist resting casually around it.
“You took my boat and the safety I had at Idaho Falls,” Morse went on. “Can’t just take a man’s home and expect him to be happy about it. Your problems weren’t none of my own. Right?” He looked at Doc, obviously expecting support.
“My dear fellow,” Doc replied, “you do a disservice to yourself by assuming that I have any sway with the gentleman who champions our little group. Though friend Ryan and I admittedly do not share the same perception of time, events or orchestration, it is through his savvy and strength that we have lived so long and adventured so much.”
“What about it?” Morse pressed Ryan. “Know you’re a bad man from the way you carry yourself, the way you handle those blasters of yours, but are you an evil man?”
And in that moment, Ryan had to admire the man. Morse had grit. The Trader always cut a little slack for men who stood up for themselves, took a little off the bottom line when he sat down at a table to cut a deal.
“No,” Ryan answered, “I’m not an evil man by nature. Leastways, I’m not an evil man today. What kind of jack are you looking for?”
Morse grinned. “Got a bottle of smooth-drinking whiskey down in the hold. If we’re going to dicker, we ain’t gonna do it dry. Let one of my boys go get it?”
“Sure,” Ryan said. “Doc?”
“I shall accompany the lad, my dear Ryan.”
“And take a look around at what’s to be had for eating.”
Ryan advised. “Bastard self-heats right now don’t sound good at all.”
Chapter Fifteen
The whiskey burned the back of Ryan’s throat as it went down, igniting a small fireball in his stomach. They drank from small ceramic cups molded by hand and fired in a postnukecaust kiln.
“Now, that’s the stuff to set men’s souls ablaze,” Morse stated.
Ryan silently agreed. The whiskey possessed a rawness to it, but had been aged for a time somewhere in good barrels. He knew the difference from his time in his father’s barony, and from the years spent on the road with War Wag One. And good whiskey barrels meant some kind of stability in a ville or small group of homes.
“Where’s the boys’ mother?” Ryan asked after drinks had been poured around again.
“You’re thinking mebbe we left her in Idaho Falls?” Morse shook his head. “You’d have had to chill me to keep me from leaving any woman at the mercy of them Slaggers. Oh, those coldhearts gouge us for protection jack, as they term it, saying they keep most outlanders away from the ville. But they learned early on not to fuck around with any of Docktown. They came down a couple times, took some women and savaged them. Chilled one of them and fed her to those fucking dogs. Mebbe ate her themselves, way I hear it.”
The sailboat glided across the water, hardly noticing any of the chop that settled across the river’s surface. The shadows from the trees lengthened behind them as they headed east, stabbing shadowy branches into the water. Ryan had noticed a lot of game around the banks, winding between the trees and brush. It told him the water was good and the food plentiful. The companions definately wouldn’t go hungry.
“No,” Morse went on, “I lost Sandy’s ma to a tinker man. Came to the ville with knives and such. Predark nonsense an honest body wouldn’t have a need for. But he was a good-looking man, and he had dresses the like of which that woman had never seen before. When he left after a few days, she left with him.”
“Love never quite goes along the paths one wishes for it to,” Doc lamented.