James Axler – Trader Redux

“Thought it was totaled. Just ghouls and a shit-lot of nuking left.”

“Ah, this wasin another sort of place.” He pressed on before she began to question him again. “Anyway, these whores on Seventh Avenue. I must confess that there were odd occasions that I took some comfort there to ease my loneliness.” He coughed. “But it was a poor comfort indeed.”

“Well, it feels to me like you’re ready for some of my own home-cooked comfort again, Doc?”

“So I am, my dear madam, so I am.”

After that they slept together, most comfortably, secure in the knowledge that Judas would give them ample warning of any dangerous intruder.

For the first time in a long while Doc Tanner relished a gentle and dreamless sleep, free of the hagridden nightmares that normally plagued him.

BY THE TIME HE WOKE, the fire was burning brightly, and Doc could smell sausages frying in the skillet. Coffee sub was boiling and, most amazingly, Sukie was standing next to the mule, gently stroking his neck.

“Watch him, dear lady,” Doc warned. “He can be trusted as far as a politician’s promise.”

“Seems sweet enough to me, Doc. Guess he’s like a lot of men. Handle them right and they’ll just eat out of your hand.” She turned and walked toward him, smiling. “Though it wasn’t exactly my hand that you were eating out of last night.”

To his great embarrassment, Doc found that a rosy blush was spreading up his neck and across his cheeks, suffusing his entire face with bright crimson.

“I did not think that you” he stammered.

Sukie laughed and sat down by him, leaning across, one arm snaking around his neck. She kissed him softly on the cheek, then tousled his hair. “You’re something else, Doc, you know that? Really something else.”

“I’LL CLEAN UP the pans, Doc.”

“No, I would not dream of” He shook his head. “Not with you injured.”

She held up a hand. “Hell, that feels a sight better than last night. The exercise must’ve helped it. I mean it. There’s a triple-big debt between us.”

“Firstly there never was a debt, as well you know. If a gentleman cannot assist a damsel in distress without some expectation of recompense, then things have come to a sorry pass. And, secondly, if That is If a debt had existed, then last night’s activities would have more than wiped the slate clean between us.”

She kissed him again, then left him to clamber slowly out of the bed. He headed to the nearby stream for a wash, taking care to give Judas a wide berth. Doc gasped at the icy chill of the bubbling water.

It was a wonderful morning, with the cool freshness in the air that is so typical of the Colorado Plateau. A large bird flew way above him, riding the thermals, but Doc couldn’t make out what it was.

Peering into the bright sky made his eyes blur, and he rubbed at them.

He looked out across the flowing ridges of the foothills, way down to the open expanse of the desert. Somewhere down there was the homestead of Jak Lauren. Down there would be Krysty, Dean and Mildred. Maybe Ryan and J.B. returned, during his absence.

A dust devil skittered across the gray-yellow land. Or was it smoke?

“Smoke,” Doc muttered. “By the Three Kennedys, but it looks uncommonly like a plume of smoke. I trust that all is well with my friends.”

But, even as he looked, the wind rose and the thin pillar of smoke was blown away. Though he watched for another couple of minutes, it didn’t reappear.

“Everything all right, Doc?” Sukie called from near the embers of the dying fire.

“Indeed, yes, my dear lady. I believe that everything is quite excellent.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Dean’s morning bonfire had gotten just a little out of control. It had started well enough, when he’d risen very early from his bed, before anyone else was stirring, intent on finishing the job of clearing old straw out of one of the smaller barns. It had been dry, mixed with ancient horse manure, and he’d shoveled and barrowed it outside.

Jak had told him to take it out well beyond the corral fence, past a patch of dry scrub, along the flank of an old wall, to the edge of an arroyo. He wasn’t to start burning it until he’d found a safe place.