“There’s that land wag again,” Trader said, head to one side. “Looks like there might be a gas supply around to the north of the ville. The wag’s big enough to get us well on the way home. If we can steal it.”
“They’re watching us like hawks over rabbits.”
“Wonder what happened to Abe and the Armorer?”
Ryan shook his head. “Can’t bet jack on them turning up, Trader. Down to us.”
“Always is.”
There was a knock on the door of their room, and Arkadin called out, “Ready Danny? Willard? The little girls are waiting for the rehearsal.”
“Coming,” Ryan said. One of the lamps was still burning and he turned the brass wheel to extinguish it, nearly knocking over one of the spare cans of oil as he moved.
“SOME KIND OF CEREMONY,” Abe said. “They got sec men all over the place.”
J.B. checked his wrist chron. “About five minutes to high noon.”
“Fine day.”
“Sure.”
There was an open space on one side of the old building, on the opposite end to the wing that had plunged into the canyon. It was crossed with a number of narrow stone-lined paths, some of them skirting the white picket fence that edged the drop. About a dozen armed men stood in a loose circle, as though they were waiting for something to happen.
The Armorer and Abe had made their way through the scrub and scattered trees that filled the area around the ville. They had seen a crudely carved sign warning them that they were moving onto land owned by Hightower.
Now they were lying in an ancient drainage ditch, about eight yards from the nearest point of the ville.
“Could get some food there.” J.B. yawned. “Wait until dark. Doesn’t look the tightest-run ship in the world.”
“You don’t think Ryan or Trader might be there?”
The Armorer considered the possibilities, weighing them up in his combat-computer mind. “Mebbe,” he decided.
“Only a mebbe?”
J.B. ticked off the points with his fingers. “Firstly they might have been chilled in that initial surge of the flood after the main quake hit. Horses went under. I doubt they could have made their way out of the canyon at that point. Unless they crossed when we did, and I don’t think they did that.”
“No,” Abe agreed. “Hey, there’s a fat lady coming out the door. Means the show’s goin’ to start when she sings.”
J.B. ignored him. “But we didn’t see them anywhere caught. So, they might’ve made it onto a fallen tree or something like that. Enough shit going down the pike. No sign of anyone getting out where we did, on that bridge. Or tracks higher, where we ran into the cottonmouth.”
“It’s a man, not a woman. Old and unsteady on his feet. Got a scarf around his head. Way the sec men straightened up, I figure him for the baron.”
The sun flashed off the Armorer’s glasses as he glanced up for a moment. “Yeah.”
Abe looked across at him. “I didn’t hear you say anything to make you think that they probably got out. Just a lot of stuff about what they didn’t do.”
“This place can be seen from the bottom, by the river. Only one for miles and miles. If they came down on the flood, then this is where they would’ve made for.”
“That the mebbe?”
“Yeah. That’s the mebbe.”
RYAN AND TRADER WAITED in the main entrance hall of the old resort hotel. Great timbers, hewn from the living forest, towered all around them. Andy Arkadin was standing with them, his blaster held very casually in his hands. They had watched Baron Torrance sweep past, his head swathed in a turban of vivid purple silk.
His thin lips had been moving, and his hoggish eyes twitched nervously from side to side.
He seemed totally oblivious to their presence, or where he was going. Or why he was going there.
A young woman servant stepped discreetly from the shadows and guided him out of the double door into the brilliant midday sunshine beyond.
“Where does he get the jolt from?” Trader asked.
Arkadin looked sharply at him and gestured with the barrel of his gun. “Being married to one of the precious ladies don’t mean you can flap your mouth like that, Willard.”