Angeltears was the smallest of the seven villes. As such, it was the least productive and the least developed. Any of the other four barons would have ignored it and let the people in Angeltears work out their own problems.
Hardcoe cherished every bit of his temporary empire, though. Even if he had to relinquish it to one of the other barons at the end of the Big Game in eight days.
In the day and a half he’d been tracking the brushwooders, LeMarck had found out the group had grown to nearly a hundred strong. He’d gotten his information from three brushwooders he’d tortured the previous night. The different groups had united under a man named James Ball Daugherty, who’d blown in from somewhere across the big desert if the stories were to be believed. No one had known how successful Daugherty had gotten at organizing the brushwooders until the raids on Angeltears had left so many dead farmers in burning fields. It was the biggest mob of them that had ever been seen in the history of the villes.
After learning how many enemy they were truly facing and knowing they’d be taking them on in their turf, LeMarck’s team had wanted to pull back and call on Hardcoe for reinforcements. With all that the baron had going on in Jakestown, LeMarck had been reluctant to do that until he couldn’t see any other way clear.
That was why he’d been tailing the brushwooders. If Daugherty was to get himself suddenly dead through an assassination attempt, LeMarck figured the big group of brushwooders would break back down into smaller, more-manageable units that could be exterminated at the proper time. Their threat would have been removed.
The sec man was in his late twenties, and his closest experience to a father figure had been Hardcoe. There wasn’t anything LeMarck hadn’t done or wouldn’t do for the man. He knew Hardcoe was concerned about losing the seven villes to one of the other barons through the baronial charter, and LeMarck had been up late nights thinking about how to ensure Hardcoe retained control.
That was why he’d been playing with the idea of trying to take Daugherty alive after hearing about the man. Arriving in Angeltears the day before yesterday, though, he’d heard about the way Daugherty ran the brushwooders like barbarians. There was no finesse about the man, no real cunning. The only thing that stood out about him was that he had a genuine taste for blood.
Before, the brushwooders had scavenged from the outlying farms, not killing unless someone tried to stop them. They were thieves, and a menace only to people who traveled among the seven villes. Of the Five Barons, Hardcoe was the only one who organized sec parties to ride shotgun on trade caravans. Of course, to get the protection, the caravans also had to fit in their schedules with Hardcoe’s, which caused problems for those people selling perishable items.
Now LeMarck figured it was only a matter of time before Daugherty got to thinking about taking one of the fat caravans in the next eight days. The people of the seven villes knew about the Big Game, too, and the fact that they might be changing barons again. And if Hardcoe did lose out, there would be no more caravans.
It would be Daugherty’s last chance at a big score worth a lot of jack.
LeMarck had come into the forest with the intent of not letting that happen. But watching the one-eyed man work his team ahead of the brushwooders and double back on them, the sec boss got to considering his rejected plans for Daugherty.
The brushwooders’ leader wasn’t as cunning and smart as LeMarck had hoped. But the one-eyed man was a thriller on wheels, the kind of man Hardcoe could use for the Big Game. He’d like to give the baron some good news when he joined his sec men on the ride to Vegas.
Still, the brushwooders outnumbered the two men they were stalking. Just in case he had to tip the scales in the one-eyed man’s favor, LeMarck reached for his rifle and kept a keen eye on the advancing brushwooders.