“Won’t you and Papa live forever?” Doc remembered how the scarlet ribbons in Rachel’s hair had bobbed and bounced as she’d asked that question. It was as clear in his memory as though it had only happened yesterday.
Emily had laughed and squeezed his hand, kissing him gently on the cheek. “Of course, my sweet angel,” she replied. “Papa and I intend to live forever.”
“Forever,” he whispered to himself. “My own words, a thousand times.”
He sat up abruptly, sniffing, wiping away a tear that had trickled down his cheek.
“Mustn’t give way to this,” he said fiercely, his angry voice making Judas turn his head toward him.
Doc stared, unseeing, across the beautiful land.
The memories crowded in, day and night, sleeping and waking. Yet life in Deathlands with Ryan and the others tended to be somewhat hectic, not giving time for any serious, considered thoughts about what he should do.
The old man sighed. “Dearest Emily,” he said quietly.
IT WAS such a heavenly morning that Doc decided to forgo the dubious delight of splitting his groin apart on Judas’s serrated spine.
He chose to walk, leading the mule by its bridle, picking his way along the pebbled trail.
Judas had mixed feelings about this change of role. At first the animal had seemed pleased with its burden-free day. Then, with its own singular perverseness, the mule decided that Doc was treating it badly, slighting it.
First it nipped at his hand, snagging its long, yellowed teeth on the sleeve of the faded frock coat. Doc virtually ignored the attack, brushing at the mule as though it were an importunate mosquito.
“Pray desist,” he said mildly.
But the mule was insistent in its own malevolent way. It waited for a slightly downhill section of the trail to make a four-footed jump forward, taking Doc by surprise. Its attack was actually too successful, and it overshot its target. The intention had been to nibble a slice out of the back of Doc’s right thigh, but Judas banged its muzzle into the old man’s skinny buttocks, quite missing its bite.
“Whoreson bastard! By the Three Kennedys, but it’s time for another lesson, you ditch-spawned drab!”
He looked around and spotted a fallen ponderosa pine a few yards off the trail, tugging at the bridle and pulling the stubborn animal after him. He looped the reins around a broken branch to hold the mule still.
“Judas by name and Judas by nature. You damnably traitorous brute. Trying to take a pound of my poor flesh rather than your thirty pieces of silver. If there was a convenient tree, I would happily string you up like your treacherous namesake. Since there isn’t”
He reached down and drew out his blaster, flourishing it at the mule.
“See this? It is one of only five hundred ever made. Etched, gilded and polished with gold. The General Stuart commemorative Le Mat pistol. Jeb Stuart. Let me search my memory for a moment. Jeb. John Ewell Brown Stuart. Good. The little cells of my memory still function in part. Now, Judas, I propose to beat you harshly about the head with this fine example of American workmanship. It weighs in at around three and a half pounds and might drive a small measure of sense into that vexatious skull of yours.”
He hefted the gun by its double-barrel, bracing himself to begin the punishment.
“Touch that poor defenceless animal and I’ll give you a whipping, you bad-tempered old bastard!”
The voice was female and very angry, coming from among a tumbled mound of sandstone boulders a little way behind Doc. He hesitated, not striking the mule, and not lowering the blaster, either.
“The animal merits chastisement, madam,” he said, his eyes straining to see where the woman was lurking.
“Chastise it and see what you get.”
“I am not a man to be swayed from his purpose by an empty threat.”
“Empty. How do you like these apples, mister?” The words were followed by the crack of a small-caliber pistol, the bullet hitting the trail a yard from Doc’s feet and making Judas jump even more than he did.
He lowered his own pistol, but didn’t holster it, having spotted the puff of powder smoke from the left-hand edge of the rocks.