The brightest point of light came glowing from Jak’s hair.
Behind him, they could all hear the Navaho in deep conversation, their voices rising.
“It sounds as though our putative allies are a little undecided,” Doc said. “Which reminds me of the time I stood astride the Continental Divide, on one of my camping trips of yesteryear. There was a sign that said that it was the place for the undecided raindrop.”
“How’s that again, Doc?” Krysty asked, fascinated with the old man’s peculiar story, despite the dangerous tenseness of the moment.
“Well, my dear madam, it is simple. It was one of the points in the old United States where a drop of rain might be carried either to the east or the west. To the Pacific or to the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf.”
“What if it fell” Dean began, but a shout from the leader of the Navaho interrupted him.
“We have spoken.”
“And?”
“We will come and talk more.”
“That’s good,” Ryan said.
THE GENERAL WAS better known among the isolated communities of the Native Americans than among the flea-pit villes of the Anglos.
The leader of the Navaho, whose name was Sleeps In Day, told Ryan and the rest of the group about the attacks by the heavily armed band of killers.
“General is not a stupe. He knows that to tackle any baron in the Southwest could lead to defeat. Though he has two wagsonce he had threeand twenty or so men and women, he would lose against sec forces.”
“So he picks on ranches and the hunting camps of your people?” Ryan asked.
“It is so. We have blasters, but not many. They are old and much repaired. Few repeating rifles. No grens.”
“How did the General come to lose his third wag?” J.B. asked.
The powerfully built Navaho smiled, his teeth white in the dawn that was now creeping fast across the land. “A number of the young men of the Comanche were clever. And lucky. The wag was trapped in soft sand crossing a river. There was much driftwood and dried branches close by.”
One of the other Navaho said something, and the whole party laughed.
“What did he say?” Dean asked.
“Two Dogs Fighting said that the evil men were like rabbits in a cooking oven. Their cries made our Comanche brothers smile for many long minutes.”
“They burned them?” Mildred queried.
“Yes. Piled the brushwood around under cover of night. Kept them trapped in their useless wag with arrows, then set them on fire.”
“What did the General do? How come he didn’t try and save his wag?”
Sleeps In Day looked at Ryan. “The General is not a man with a heart of bravery. Only the coldest of meltwater trickles through his body. He saved himself and abandoned his followers to the dreadful death they deserved.”
“What did General do to make you chase?”
The Navaho looked across impassively at the albino teenager, pausing before answering the question.
“What they did to your woman the one who was kind and walked crookedly. And to the baby. The General did that to our women. To our little ones.”
One of the others said something, a harsh, angry, monosyllabic sound.
Mildred nodded. “I still remember enough of the language from my college minor. He said that nine of their people had been murdered.”
“Nine!” Krysty shook her head, the long hair seeming to discharge a shower of bright sparks into the cool morning air. “Gaia! We owe it to the land to carry out a cleansing of this man, don’t we, lover?”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah.”
To the Navaho, he said, “You have any idea where the General holes up?”
Sleeps In Day nodded slowly. “They have their home camp in the place where there is always night.”
“Caves,” J.B. said.
“Yes. There are many bats in the caves. Creatures of the dark. It is right for the General.”
“Then we best go pay him a visit,” Ryan said. “And soon.”
Chapter Twenty
After the first brightness of the dawn, the sky darkened once more, as though time were being reversed and night was looming over the far horizon.
Ryan hunched his shoulders against the cold norther that was blowing across the foothills. “Some serious rain going to be falling,” he said.
“It drops upon the General.” Sleeps In Day smiled grimly. “The gods are with us, brothers.”
J.B. had heeled his gelding alongside Ryan. “Those wags can get through most kinds of weather, but a flash flood would slow them down some.” The sky to the south was as black as pitch.
Even as they all looked in that direction, there was a dazzling bolt of purple chem lightning, cutting from land to sky. Dean counted off the time until they heard the distant rumble of the thunder. “Twelve to fifteen miles,” he reported.
“How far to the caves?” Ryan asked.
The Navaho passed the question to his comrades, all sitting silently on their stocky ponies. The one called Two Dogs Fighting answered him.
Sleeps In Day translated. “It is half a day at a fast ride. A full day if we go more slowly and more carefully.”
“Other side of these hills?” J.B. was standing in the stirrups, looking as far ahead as he could.
The Indian nodded. “There is an old blacktop that we will cross. The camp of the General is hidden beneath the land, very deep.”
“Any your people made inside?” Jak rubbed his white hands together, feeling the morning cold more than the rest of them.
“No. Not to return alive.”
Ryan whistled between his teeth. “Time’s wasting,” he said. “Let’s go.”
But the leader of the Navaho held up a hand. “A moment, so that we are all sure of what is happening.”
“How do you mean?”
“We ride together against the General.”
“Sure.” Ryan puzzled at what the check-shirted Navaho was leading up to.
“If we win?”
“Then he gets chilled and we all go home.”
“Who chills him? Who will count coup on this shadow from the dead world?”
“Me,” Jak said. “Anyone does it me.”
“We have lost more. Every man has lost a wife or a sister or a child.”
The teenager’s bloodless lips peeled back off his sharp teeth, in a feral, dangerous smile. “Then we see. Man gets there first gets to do it.” He pointed to himself. Me.”
THE TRACKS WERE EASY to follow, eight big wheels on each wag, driving their relentless way south. The General didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry, probably unaware that he was still being followed. J.B. was a good tracker, but he was happy to give best to the Native Americans.
The youngest of the Navaho, called Man Sees Behind Sun, was the finest. He led the way on a spirited pinto, occasionally vaulting from the blanket across the animal’s back, stopping and running his fingers across the furrows, feeling the temperature and the moisture of the hatched marks.
He told Sleeps In Day that they were closing in on the wags. “He says that we are only about four or five hours behind them.”
“Could be that they’re just taking it easy to try and economize on gas,” J.B. suggested. “Probably their HQ got a good store of it.”
They reached the edge of the threatening storm a short time later. The air had the bitter flavor of ozone from the lightning that had strafed the mountainside, spooking the animals, making them skittish and difficult. Judas, in particular, was even more stubborn than usual, taking a bloody chunk out of the thigh of one of the Navaho who made the foolish mistake of riding in too close to the mule.
A number of small streams flowed down toward the arid plain, all of them filled to overflowing, bubbling and racing over the quartz-lined rocks.
The gradient had become more steep, and the tracks of the wags showed that the hill had been a problem. At one point, with a steep drop to the right, there were clear skid marks, going to the brink of the fall.
“Slowing them down,” J.B. called to Ryan.
“Yeah. Not helping us any.”
“Storm’s riding ahead of us. We’re on its tail. They’re in its heart.”
DOC FOUND HIMSELF at the head of the procession, perched on the big barrel-chested roan gelding, leading the first of the trio of pack horses on a strong rawhide line tied to his own pommel.
The trail was narrower, less than twenty feet across. To the left was a rock face, craggy and irregular, streaming with muddied water. To the right the trail vanished into singing space. There had been a metal fence bordering the old road, back in the times of the long winters, but it had long gone, leaving only occasional rotted iron posts.
As he rounded a sharp bend, half-turned in the saddle to call something out to Mildred, who was next in line, the old man barely registered the mutie cougar.