“Money?” Aahz asked. “We’re going to need money as well.”
“I don’t think so,” Glenda said. “This place doesn’t use money.”
I thought Aahz was going to have a heart attack. It was like telling him the sun would never come up again.
“So what do they use to trade and buy things with?” Tanda asked, also shocked at the very idea.
“Work,” Glenda said. “Work is their capital.”
Now I was just as lost as Aahz and Tanda looked.
Glenda went on. “You work for someone when you want something from them. They keep everything on IOU’s. So if you want a drink or some food, you sign an IOU and then later you have to work off the debt.”
“This is a strange place.”
Glenda agreed and we started off down the hill, four strangers walking into a town full of cowboys. I just hope my disguises worked. Just in case, I stayed real close to Glenda. Not that that was a hardship or anything.
The town of Evade was active and primitive. The only street was appropriately enough called Main Street. It was dirt and hardened mud and very rough. It split two rows of wooden buildings with covered wooden sidewalks in front of them. Outside the main street were houses scattered through the farmlands, tucked into groves of strange-looking trees.
Music and laughter were coming from a number of the doors along Main Street. Bright-colored signs were over some of the doors, with names like Battlefield, Wild Horse, and Audry’s. I had no idea what any of those names meant.
Horse-drawn wagons and single horses were tied up on rails along the wooden sidewalks, and the entire town smelled like horse droppings, of which there were some pretty good-sized piles spaced along the road.