“But we have Crow and the sec men on our side,” Ryan argued. “And I really feel that getting to Salvation will be good. If we chill them and get out, then we could have the whole of Baron Silas’s sec force on our tail. There’s too much time and jack invested here for him to let us go if we stall his plans. Besides where would we go?”
“Much as I hate to admit it, the man has a point,” Mildred said. “Lord alone knows I should be the first to blow them away, but it wouldn’t do us much good.”
Ryan nodded. “So it’s heads down, people. I reckon as we’ve got a couple of days’ work left here, then we get a ride back to Salvation. I figure we can keep it frosty that long.”
“Mebbe,” J.B. mused. “As long as they see it that way.”
THE ARMORER’S WORDS of caution were justified, as the next morning would prove.
The companions found themselves ignored, cold-shouldered by the workforce when not actually involved in the act of construction. And when they were working on the extension, they were addressed only if necessary.
And then the accidents happened.
The first was on the outside of the building, where J.B. and Ryan were working on the outer walls. Those were now in place, and using ladders to scale the twenty-five-foot exterior, the workmen from Salvation were placing roof joists and timbers to take the asphalt tiles that would be laid on top. J.B. and Ryan were shifting the timbers from where they had been stored on delivery, carrying the heavy wood across the short distance to where they were handed up the ladders to Mikey and Molloy, who were placing and securing them across the roof space, flinging boards across the gaps between the tops of the interior and exterior walls, running across to place the joists and poles.
The two workmen had been talking to each other, and also to Tilson and Hal, who were also catwalking across the open space. But all had been pointedly ignoring Ryan and J.B.
The one-eyed warrior planted his foot firmly on the first rung of the ladder, shouldering the weight of the joist that J.B. balanced from the rear.
“Okay,” the Armorer said, affirming that he had the joist steady.
Ryan then began to climb the ladder, swiftly and surely ascending. He gripped the joist with a hooked arm, knowing that J.B. would be lifting the heavy piece of wood by its bottom end and following him up the ladder.
Sweat pouring down his forehead, plastering his dark curls to his forehead and making his good eye sting with salt, Ryan looked up to see the silent Molloy standing on the edge of the wall, ready to take the joist as Ryan and J.B. pushed it upward, taking the weight until Molloy had rebalanced it for positioning on the roof.
Molloy watched Ryan impassively, and the one-eyed warrior wasn’t surprised that the workman was making him do the maximum amount with the minimum help. That was in line with their behavior all morning, and it wasn’t surprising bearing in mind their attitude to the previous day’s events.
“Okay,” Ryan granted, partly as a signal to J.B. that they were to push the joist upward, and partly to let Molloy know it was coming.
As the heavy piece of wood was propelled upward, Ryan felt some of the weight taken by the workman, and the passage of the joist became smoother.
Both the Armorer and Ryan began to descend the ladder as the joist left their grasp. At the bottom, J.B. paused for his friend.
“I’ll be glad when they’ve got them all in place. Guess we drew the short straw in this one.”
Ryan grinned wryly. “Is that any surprise?” Then he noticed that the flicker of light on J.B.’s spectacles had disappeared.
The one-eyed warrior threw himself backward, rolling in the dust as he hit the ground. Without looking, he knew that J.B. had also noticed the sudden change of light and had acted accordingly, particularly as he heard the Armorer curse as he, too, hit the ground.
But this was drowned by the thud of the joist as it hit the ground at the spot where the two men had been standing a fraction of a second before. The indent it made on the earth revealed that it would have been fatal had it landed directly on the two companions.