Soft tissues like the eyes, lips and genitals went first. Though it had been hidden in sagebrush, the predators had found the corpse easily enough. The stomach was grossly distended with the rotting intestinal gases it contained, and the man’s skin was all a gleaming black, like highly polished leather. Hundreds of glittering golden ants were scampering busily around the tops of the spread, lolling thighs.
The knife wound was clearly visible, a pale-lipped bloodless gash, five or six inches in length, running sideways a handbreadth above the groin.
“She did him good,” J.B. observed, shooing away the insistent flies.
“Quick with a knife, Christina,” Jak said softly. “Very quick.”
Ryan wrinkled his nose as the evening breeze carried a fresh wave of the foul stench to his nostrils. “Yeah,” he said. “She did good.”
He and J.B. climbed back into their saddles, rejoining the others. But Jak stood still, looking down at the stinking corpse.
“I understood that time was of the essence in pursuing this matter,” Doc said.
“One moment,” the white-haired teenager replied. “Just one moment.”
He drew his massive Cold Python from its holster and thumbed back the hammer, leveling the six-inch barrel down into the ditch.
“Waste of a round,” J.B. commented.
“Not to me.”
The gun boomed, sending a flock of wild turkeys bursting wildly from concealment fifty yards down the trail. From the height of the gray stallion he rode, Ryan was able to see the predictable effect of the .357 round.
At almost point-blank range it struck the dead man through the center of the blackened face, smashing away part of the nose and exiting into the dirt behind the skull. There was no blood, just a thin trickle of a glutinous yellowish liquid from the entry hole below the missing right eye.
Jak holstered the blaster and walked to where Dean was holding the reins of the teenager’s horse. He vaulted into the saddle with an effortless acrobatic skill.
“Feel better?” Mildred asked.
“Just a little,” he replied. “One down and plenty to go. Good beginning.”
At Jak’s insistence they rode on well past dusk, until Ryan pointed out to him that they could easily miss a fork in the trail by pushing too hard in the dark.
So they camped.
Chapter Fourteen
They were on the move again before dawn.
Breakfast was a hasty few mouthfuls of jerky and bread, washed down with plain water. They were all agreed that a fire wouldn’t be a good idea. It would take too much time and announce their presence to anyone within fifty miles.
While they ate, there was a brief combat meeting. Despite the invaluable information from Michael, their knowledge was extremely limited. The enemy was a couple dozen well-armed and well-trained men and women in two armored war wags, led by someone who called himself the General. It could be that they had their origins close to the old Grandee border with Mexico. Or below it.
There was also a number of mounted Native Americans, quite probably Navaho, following the pair of wags southward for their own reasons.
“Likely they’ve got the same motives for pursuing this General as we do,” J.B. said, his sallow face a pale blur in the predawn gloom.
Ryan nodded. “Agreed. What we know points to raiding on pueblos and isolated communities and homesteads. Steer away from the big villes and the powerful barons with their sec armies. If he hit a village in the last week, seems likely there could be a hunting party out after him.”
Jak’s hair blazed like a beacon in the darkness. “Been good friends with Indians around here. We get together and have more chance.”
Doc had been suffering from the jolting gait of his roan gelding. He lay flat out while he nibbled on the last of Krysty’s fresh-baked bread. “How far do you think we’ll need to ride to catch these runagates?”
“To the big river,” J.B. suggested.
“Through jaws of hell,” Jak vowed.
NONE OF THEM KNEW the region of what was once southern New Mexico all that well. Ryan and J.B. had ridden that way with the Trader a few times, but neither had particularly clear memories of those occasions.
“There are some big caves,” Ryan said, as they moved their horses along at a brisk walk.
“Right. Millions of bats. Trader was triple worried about rabies. We had to keep the wags locked down sec tight. Nearly suffocated.” The Armorer took off his glasses and squinted at the midmorning sun through them, wiping away a smear on the sleeve of his coat.
“Yeah. It was Abe, wasn’t it?”
“Went out for a shit. Found himself smack in the middle of a bat storm.”
“And fell down that hole. Turned out to be the remains of someone’s liquor cellar.”
J.B. grinned. “Ace on the memory line, Ryan. Trader wouldn’t let anyone go out after him for nearly an hour. Thought that it might be an Apache trap. And when we found him he’d gotten pissed out of his skull on two quarts of ancient Thunderbird.”
“Are there any villes toward the Grandee?” Krysty asked, heeling her Appaloosa forward to join the two men. “Could the General be heading for one?”
Ryan shook his head. “Doubt that, lover. Word seems to be he keeps off the red trails. Sticks to the blue back roads. More likely got a base down south.”
“There’s El Paso and Juarez across the bridge.” J.B. looked behind. “Doc’s falling off the pace some. Want me to go hurry him up?”
“No. Not yet. I’ll ride back with him and sort of ease him along. Old man’s got pride. You mentioned Juarez, the Mex ville. Remember that Easter?”
“Sure. Cohn was duty nav. Had us a thunderstorm. Rain so thick you could’ve cut it with a knife. Just on the edge of Juarez and he got us lost.”
“Took us right through the middle of an Apache camp. Rain was so heavy that they never saw us and we never saw them. Not until we were driving slowly out the other side. Nobody ever let Cohn forget it.”
Krysty looked ahead of them, where Jak was sticking out at point. “Is the kid all right?”
Ryan smiled. “Sure. Best way of coping with grief is figuring on paying the person gave you that grief.”
THE DAY PASSED without any sort of incident.
Jak set the pace, though Ryan twice warned him against tiring the horses.
“Better to take a half day longer to get there than not get there at all,” he pointed out.
The morning had broken with a beautiful sunrise. The sky shaded from pale gold in the far west to a deep orange in the east, around the rising sun. Off to the northwest there was a tall bank of clouds, their flanks tinted by the brilliant dawn light.
“Beautiful,” said Doc, leaning back in the saddle to appreciate the enchanted vista.
“Storms.” J.B. delivered the single word with a terse flatness.
“Is that your opinion, John Barrymore? A scene that would have brought tears to the eyes of Tiepolo or Turner and you simply say it means there will be a storm.”
The Armorer looked puzzled. “Don’t catch your drift, Doc. You saying you think it won’t storm?”
“Course it will,” Ryan added. “Be a serious chem storm. That’s what those clouds mean.”
“But the beauty of them, gentlemen! Do none of you have eyes for that?”
“Rain, lightning, flash floods. That’s all.” Jak heeled his horse on ahead.
Doc turned toward Mildred and sighed. “Sadly, my dear, we are surrounded by true Renaissance princes, are we not?”
“Frankly, Doc, I don’t give a damn.”
THE STORM SKIRTED AROUND to the west, never approaching within twenty miles of them, though that was still close enough for them to appreciate its grandeur.
The skies darkened and huge banks of purple-black clouds rose into space. Every now and again there would be dazzling flashes of chem lightning, the deep thunder rolling across the vastness of the surrounding deserts.
Later in the afternoon the clouds lifted, revealing a pale strip of blue beneath them. But that was frequently darkened by a gray misty curtain of falling rain.
“You mentioned flash floods, Jak,” Dean said. “What’s that mean?”
The albino glanced sideways at the boy. “Means shit-lot rain in shit-short time.”
“What sort of floods?”
“Big. Camp in steep-sided canyon. Storm higher up. Bad. Foot of rain in couple hours. Wake up and twenty-foot wave on top of you. Can happen.”
“Wow. Hot pipe!”
“No. Cold pipe.”
THE ONLY MINOR DRAMA came in the late evening, when they’d finally stopped to camp.
Jak had taken them to a small water hole, that turned into a shallow, snaking stream, under the looming bulk of a shattered highway bridge.
“Getting to edge of places I know,” he said. “Take all water we can.”
The horses were quickly unsaddled and Dean led them to the muddy pool, watching them carefully to make sure they didn’t gorge themselves.