“White hair,” Michael said, shading his eyes against the lowering coppery sun.
“Jak.” Ryan glanced behind them, making sure from ingrained habit that nobody was coming up from their rear. For a moment he thought that he saw someone duck out of sight into a furrowed arroyo, but he stared hard and nothing moved.
“Yeah,” J.B. agreed. “It’s Jak.”
Christina Lauren didn’t share her young husband’s delight at the visit of his old companions. She was standing on the porch, wiping her hands on an apron as they arrived. Little Jenny was beginning to walk, toddling from the open door, then hiding behind her mother’s long skirts when she saw all the strangers.
“Knew you’d come back one day, Ryan Cawdor,” the woman said, as she walked down to meet them. Ryan spotted the butt of a small revolver holstered at her belt, something he’d never noticed on his previous visits.
“Sheer chance, Christina,” he replied. “Can’t control jumps. You know that.”
“Sure, sure. You come out of the desert like a one-eyed storm crow.”
Jak turned on his wife, eyes glowing like hot rubies. “No way speak to friends, Chris.” He faced Ryan and the others. “Stay few days?”
“Few. Good to see you, Jak. And you, Christina. And the little one.”
“We were doing well without you, Ryan,” the woman stated. “Not saying you aren’t welcome to stay a few days. We both owe you, the Good Lord knows. But just for a few days, all right? Then you move on.”
“Sure,” Ryan agreed. “Few days, and then we move on.”
Chapter Four
The first of those few days were wonderful. The weather was excellent, from the cool clarity of the dawnings, through the cloudless mornings and bright afternoons, into the mild evenings where they all sat outside and listened to Christina singing along to an inlaid guitar that she’d bought from a traveling packman a few weeks earlier.
It was a time for healing of wounds and injuries, those of the body as well as those of the soul.
Ryan found that his neck was better, the wound finally clearing up, leaving only a small, puckered scar. Michael’s shoulder also mended quickly, his efforts at exercise earning him Mildred’s approval.
Four days slipped past so quickly and painlessly that it hardly seemed possible that they’d been at the ranch for that long. Christina’s fears seemed to have eased away and she sat among them, Jenny on her lap, laughing, joking and sharing in their memories of some of the good times gone.
The food was wonderful. After the vegetarian fare that they’d been given in Quindley, this was fine ranch eatingloin of pork and a sauce of apples laced with cloves, sweet potatoes and a blended mix of buttered carrots and corn. Jak had traded some furs he’d hunted in the high country behind the spread, bringing home several dozen green bottles of a sweet white wine. Doc delightedly pronounced them to be better than a halfway decent Piesporter Michelsberg.
The fourth evening found everyone on the porch. Only half of the setting sun remained, a corridor of gold leading to it across the desert. Jak cuddled the sleepy baby, while Christina sang quietly.
Mildred was lying down, her head resting in J.B.’s lap, her right hand folded into his. Krysty sat on the edge of the stoop, leaning against Ryan’s shoulder. Dean was on the other side of his father, silently playing jacks with the tiny black pebbles that are sometimes called Apache tears. Doc lay stretched out on the swing seat, rocking himself back and forth in time to the music.
Michael stood at the far, northern end of the porch, whittling a piece of wood with one of his twin daggers. While not joining in the singing, he still seemed to be a part of the group.
Far off, a thousand feet above the house, a single coyote howled at the setting sun.
“Coffee anyone?” Jak asked, getting a chorus of “yes” from everyone except Michael.
“How about you, Michael?” Christina peered along the porch, in the gathering gloom.
“No. Nothing for me. I want for nothing. When you got nothing, then nothing’s what you want. Sorry to be a downer, Mrs. Lauren. Can you go on singing, please?”
“Sure.”
Jak handed the child to Mildred. “I’ll put kettle on stove.”
Doc stood and stretched. “A man could get used to living out here.”
“We like it,” Jak said, vanishing inside the building.
Christina took up her guitar again to sing the final verse of the song. Her strong, true voice ringing out across the desolate wilderness
The light departs and night comes fast,
All life and love will soon be past.
And darkness follows after day
Over the hills and far away.
Hesitantly, following on Doc’s lead, the others repeated the melancholy chorus.
The last plangent chord faded slowly, and the night seemed to crowd in a little closer around the fragile oasis of light and warmth.
“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc exclaimed. “But I think that some specks of grit have entered my poor old glims and made them water most fearfully.”
“Sure is sad,” J.B. agreed. “Reminds me of the hymns those Amish folk used to sing. You remember, Ryan? Time with Trader when that sickness hit the war wags?”
“Yeah. I remember. Who was it said that the Amish were open people with closed minds? Can’t recall.”
“Think that Abe will ever find Trader, Dad?”
The little gunner from War Wag One had become preoccupied with rumors that the Trader still lived, despite a considerable body of evidence that said that he’d gone off into the forests to die from the stomach rad cancer that often made him puke blood. It had seemed like Trader to crawl away hke a dying animal to end his life in solitude.
But the stories kept coming about a grizzled man with a battered Armalite rifle. They saw him in Portland, Maine, then a day later there was a word of him up in Portland, Oregon. He was spotted down on the Gulf and up in the Canadian tundra.
So, Abe went looking. Ryan couldn’t precisely recall how long ago it was now. Months? There hadn’t been any message, but communication within Deathlands tended to be, at the best, erratic. At worst it was nonexistent.
“Dad?” the boy repeated.
“Abe find Trader? If the old son of a bitch is still to be found, then I’d back a hatful of jack on Abe being the man to ferret him out.”
“What’s that you’re carving, Michael?” Mildred leaned forward, carefully holding on to Jenny, one hand supporting the tousled little head.
The teenager walked slowly from the end of the porch, tucking the knife back into its sheath. “Been whittling away at my future.”
“Show me.”
Jak had lighted three oil lamps, hanging along the veranda. They gave off a gentle, yellow glow, attracting a number of death’s-head moths that fluttered around the hot glass.
The young man had his right hand clenched tightly in front of him.
“Show us your future, Michael,” J.B. urged, smiling up at him.
“Here.”
He opened his fist and turned it over, allowing dozens of tiny white chips and splinters of wood to fall onto the ground by his feet.
“Michael.” Krysty half rose, then sat down again, closing her eyes and putting a hand to her forehead.
“There’s my future,” he said, very calmly and very reasonably. Then he turned on his heel and walked away from the house.
Later that night Krysty lay in the double bed she shared with Ryan. She was on her left side, facing the wall, with Ryan pressed hard against her from behind, one hand cupping a breast, the other guiding himself between her thighs.
They both hesitated as they heard the click of the back door opening and closing, then the steel sec bolt being firmly pushed across.
“Michael?” Krysty whispered.
“Guess so. Muties wouldn’t lock the door behind them, would they?”
“Where’s he been?”
“Walking and thinking? Fireblast! I don’t know, Krysty. It’s really getting to the point where I’m seriously worried about the lad.”
“Had some double-bad shocks since we brought him around in the trawl.”
“Life’s never easy.”
Ryan had resumed the slow, thrusting movement, the springs on the narrow bed squeaking in unison. He reached around Krysty’s hips and touched her with the tip of his index finger, making her moan and push back harder against him.
Their conversation faltered away as they both became deeply preoccupied with the lovemaking.
Ryan set his teeth into Krysty’s nape, with infinite gentleness, while she stretched her arm up and pushed a moist finger into the corner of his mouth, letting him taste her own arousal.
The door of the adjacent room to them opened and closed softly, where Michael was sleeping in a bunk bed next to Dean. For a brace of heartbeats Ryan checked his movement, but he could feel his own climax gathering force and he carried on.