Ryan shot it through the chest, a little to the right, splintering ribs and ripping the irregularly pounding heart to shreds of torn muscle.
The cougar toppled on its side, its legs carrying on for several seconds with a strained, walking motion, as though it didn’t realize that it was dead.
Its breath leaked out in a curiously human sigh, and then it was still.
Ryan was aware of a cacophony of noise all around him.
The three pack horses had vanished over the drop, and were about to pull Doc’s roan after them. The old man had risen shakily to his feet, taking a hesitant step toward the doomed animal, stopping at a shout of warning from Ryan.
“Leave it, Doc. Too late.”
The saddle horse disappeared with a high, thin scream of agony and terror. There was a moment of relative silence, then they all heard the sickening crash of the four animals striking the jagged rocks three hundred and fifty feet below.
“I fear that I needs must rely on my own legs for transport,” Doc said a little shakily.
“Not necessarily.” Mildred grinned, pulling at the leading rein. “There’s Judas here, ready and able. But not very willing.”
“I would rather die, madam, than trust myself to that spavined brute.”
Ryan was already reloading the SIG-Sauer, looking back at the watching faces of his friends and the Navaho. He turned to Doc. “Could be death to try and make it that way,” he said.
“Still to be preferred to that devil’s walking parody of all four-footed things.”
Judas was standing, splay-legged, glaring at the angry old man. Sensing it was at the center of the discussion, it threw back its head and brayed noisily.
“There, Doc.” Dean sniggered. “Can’t wait to get to be better friends with you.”
“If you are that eager, you spawn of Satan, then why don’t you ride the donkey and I’ll take over your pony?”
The boy grinned again. “Thanks a lot, Doc. Thanks, but no thanks.”
Ryan grabbed at the bridle of his own horse and swung himself back into the saddle. “Time’s wasting, Doc. Looks to me like Judas or nothing.”
“Then I fear that it will have to be nothing.”
“That your last word, Doc?”
The old man folded his arms across his scrawny chest and nodded. “Indeed. That is my last word.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Looks like a fish trying to ride a bicycle,” Mildred commented, heeling her mount alongside Krysty.
“More like a goat astride an alligator,” the flame-haired woman suggested.
“Oh, yes,” Doc snorted. “Merriment and whatnot! You cackling harpies! You two would have been most admirably sitted to suit I mean suited to sit, knitting beneath the shadow of Madame La Guillotine, and jeering at the tumble of every aristocratic pate that rolled into the blood-sodden straw.”
“Temper, temper, Doc,” Mildred warned, wagging a reproving finger at the red-faced old man, perched uncomfortably on the back of Judas.
“I confess most freely that I had no idea what temper meant until I attempted to ride this misbegotten son of a sea cook. My dear and saintly mother once hired an Irish cook. Flaming red hair, begging your pardon, Krysty, my dear. No connection, I am most certain.” The mule stopped suddenly, nearly tipping Doc over its head. He responded by giving it a clout around the side of the jaw with a clenched fist, and it immediately resumed its halting gait forward.
“You have a wonderful way with animals,” Sleeps In Day said solemnly.
“Runs in the blood,” Doc replied.
“How about this Irish cook?” Mildred asked.
“What’s ‘Irish’ mean?” Dean asked.
“It would take me far too long to answer that,” Doc said. “But I tell you she had What was her name? Mary? Marie? That was the name of the latest flame.”
“What are you talking about, Doc?” Krysty asked. “Try and stick to the point, will you?”
“Mary, it was. Hair like Anyway. She had the most ferocious temper I ever knew. I would only have been about nine or ten, and I took pleasure in teasing the poor woman. I knew her rages and that gave a spice of true terror to the teasing. But she taught me a lesson one day. Sadly my mother dismissed her on the spot, but I still remember it.”
“What did you do, Doc?” Mildred swatted midges away from her face. After reaching the edge of the storm, the dark clouds had raced ahead of them, leaving a sultry, leaden calm. A heavy sky lowered upon the sixteen riders.
Nearly three hours had slipped by since the sudden attack from the mutie cougar, and they were moving along, southward, still following the blurred tracks of the two wags.
“A simple matter of changing over the sugar and the salt as Mary was preparing the luncheon. The potatoes and the stew were peculiarly sweet while the lemon mousseher pride and joywas oddly bitter.” Doc lifted a hand to his mouth, but failed to smother a mean little snigger.
“That’s really shitty, Doc.” Mildred eased herself in the saddle. “Be glad when we can finally rest some,” she said. “Anyway, what did this redheaded cook do to punish you? Hope that it was nothing trivial.”
“The woman came from a long line of powerful giants,” Doc replied. “She took advantage of my relative weakness to strip me of my knickerbockers and my drawers.”
“What?” Dean said.
“Took off his pants,” explained J.B., who had fallen back to hear the story.
“Then what?” Krysty asked.
“Covered my the all of in molasses.”
Everyone laughed at the expression of remembered distaste on the old man’s wrinkled face.
“All over your cock and balls?”
“Yes, my dear young Dean. Precisely as you so explicitly put it. And, indeed, all over my rectal orifice. That was not so uncomfortable in itself, but the removal was To recall it still brings tears to my eyes.”
“And your mother fired her?” Mildred tutted. “Shame on her and shame on you. Still”
“Still, what, madam?”
“Explains a lot about you Doc.”
He would have pursued the matter further, but Judas chose that moment to sit down like a ton of bricks, making the old man slide backward over his rump, finishing in the mud.
“Sure right.” Ryan grinned at Sleeps In Day. “Doc has a wonderful way with animals. Or do they have a wonderful way with him?”
MAN SEES BEHIND SUN, the youngest of the Native Americans, spotted a steep-sided, narrow arroyo a couple of hundred of yards ahead of them, not far from the crest of one of the rolling, sagebrush-covered hills. He called their attention and led them quickly to it.
“Why we going there, dad?” Dean asked, as they walked their mounts in a long line, with the first spots of rain already beginning to patter heavily around them.
“In a chem storm, the higher you are and the more exposed you are, the more dangerous it is.”
“I know that. But we’re going up the slope.”
“Navaho says we can get inside that arroyo. Protect us from chem lightning.”
“What about a flash flood? Always thought you should never shelter in a small valley in a storm.”
Ryan nodded. “True again, Dean. That’s why we go up so’s we can go down. No risk of getting trapped in a flash flood if you’re close to the top of a rise.”
And so it proved.
RYAN SAT HUNCHED OVER, his back against the steep slope of the arroyo, his mind numbed by the ceaseless pounding of the rain on the top of his head and nape. It was as bad as anything he could remember.
Trader had once said that the only thing rain did to a healthy man or woman was make them wet.
But Ryan could recall a near tragedy when Trader’s saying had been proved false.
There had been an engineer on War Wag Two. His name was Lek, a fat guy with only one eyebrow and a silver streak through his dark hair, the result of a knife scar in a pesthole on an island near Ell Ay. He’d always been unbalanced, and the Trader had warned him a couple of times about his behavior.
One day in the Apps, they’d been camped in the middle of a torrential downpour. The rain slanted against the sec-steel roofs and walls of the two ponderous wags, making conversation almost impossible.
There’d been an argumentRyan couldn’t remember the details. In the close confines of the war wags, it was all too easy to have a major row about a minor disagreement.
Lek had freaked out. Ryan had always been suspicious that the engineer was secretly into jolt. But Trader was strict on drug users and abusers. At least Lek had been clever enough not to get caught.
Now he started screaming about being locked in. Going “clostro” was what it was called.
The man had darted to one of the side doors and started to open the sec bolts. Trader had given the order to leave him be, not wanting to risk a fight inside the wag.