“It’s made its kill,” Sukie cried, pointing at the eagle, now making its way eastward, wings flapping slowly, moving with a deliberate calm. Something that might have been a rabbit dangled from its curved claws.
They both watched the bird for several minutes.
Had either Doc or the woman looked behind them, down across the desert, they would have seen a cloud of dust drifting across the baked gray land, showing that a small party was moving out along a backtrail.
But by the time they turned from staring at the vanishing eagle, the dust had also disappeared.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Volvo stood in the lee of a high bluff that protected it from the worst of the midday heat. The metal ticked and clicked as it cooled a little.
“By evening?” Ryan asked.
“Should be,” J.B. replied, lying flat on his back, fedora shading his eyes, his glasses folded neatly and stuck in the top pocket of his jacket.
Trader had been complaining of some stomach pains earlier in the morning, but that might have had something to do with the fact that he’d eaten a very large bowl of fiery chili beans at ten o’clock, at the kindly invitation of a pair of Navaho sheepherders.
Abe was under the land wag, working away with a length of baling wire to fix a loose part of the exhaust system that had been rattling for the past thirty miles.
“How’s your guts coming along, Trader?” the little gunner called.
“Gettin’ better, thanks, Lee. Damn it! I mean, Abe. Yeah, gettin’ better after I emptied myself out in that ditch an hour back. But a clean bed and some sleep and home cooking wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“Be there by evening,” the Armorer repeated.
“Looking forward to it,” Ryan agreed. “Lost touch with how long we’ve been away.”
“Long enough.” J.B. flapped a persistent hornet from his face.
Trader was picking at his lip, where the sun had started a small sore. “You men sure changed since you rode with me. All this talk of goin’ back. Getting to a fixed place. Wantin’ to stop the moving.”
Ryan nodded slowly. “It’s true. All those years with the war wags, we were always moving, weren’t we? One day the Lantic, then a few days later in the bayous. Week later chilling stickies in the Shens and then a firefight with the baron of some pesthole ville in the Darks.”
“Damn right!” Trader whistled between his teeth. “That was the life all right. Never a dull moment. Living on the edge. Fighting over the edge. Running, always running hard, crossing the borderline. We should get back to that. Get us all back to the real basics of life.”
“Nobody stopping you, Trader.” J.B. looked at the older man. “We heard you were living and we wanted to check that out. Now we know. You want to go back to that life, then we’ll wish you all the best, Trader. But it’s not for us anymore.”
“Mean you got soft, Armorer?” He grinned wolfishly at Abe. “What do you say, Gunner?”
“I say that I’ll sort of go with what other folks decide,” Abe said quietly.
“Well, I guess I’ll meet up with all these good folks at the spread yonder.” Trader sniffed. “Then I’ll decide what we’ll be doing after.”
“No.” Ryan stood. “You decide what you’ll be doing, Trader. We’ll do the same for ourselves. I reckon we ought to get this land wag on the highway if we’re going to get back by dusk. Let’s move it.”
“IT LOOKS real pretty, Doc.”
They stood together, looking at the way the setting sun was throwing their shadows out ten yards beyond their feet. There had been a brief rainfall that turned the rutted dust to mud. Now the land smelled clean and good, purged of the heat of the day.
Somewhere, far behind them in the foothills, they both heard a coyote howling.
“Another quarter hour and we’ll be relishing some soup and fresh-baked bread, Sukie. With some of the best souls in the whole world.”
“I’m getting real antsy and nervous, Doc.”
“Nervous, my sweet bird of youth?”
“Suppose they don’t like me? I don’t think I’ll fit in with all of them. Them knowing you and about the time-trawling and all that stuff.”