“Baron Silas likes folks to know who he is when they arrive,” Crow said, observing the companions’ silence on seeing the statue.
Both J.B. and Ryan glanced at the Native American sharply, but he kept his head turned away from them, seemingly impassive.
“If I did not know better than to say so, I could readily assume that there was a touch of sarcasm in that statement,” Doc murmured.
Crow stayed silent while Tex leaned out of the wag’s side window. “Hey, Lenny, let me back in, you bastard!” he yelled.
An obscene reply, half-lost on the morning breeze and the sound of work within the ville, came down from the observation post, followed a few minutes later by the man Ryan took to be Lenny. He unlocked the gates and pulled one side open, taking his time to open the other.
“Yeah, very funny,” Tex drawled. “Let’s see how the baron likes you screwin’ me around when I got some booty he wants to see.”
Lenny’s reply was as obscene and incomprehensible as before, but the attention of Ryan and his people was taken by the terms Tex had used.
“Is that how we’re seen?” Krysty asked Crow. “We’re some kind of commodity or jack to be used for trade?”
“Not my choice of words,” Crow replied, “but everyone is that to some extent. Especially when they work for Baron Silas. And you do.”
“That remains to be seen,” Ryan muttered.
“It does?” Crow countered.
Tex put the wag into gear and drove through the portals of Salvation, and into the heart of the ville, followed by the two wags holding the construction materials. They soon lost these wags, as they turned off to head for wherever Baron Silas had his work supplies sequestered. The wag driven by Tex, however, kept heading for the center of the ville.
It slowed considerably as it began to hit the heaving mass of humanity that was crammed into the relatively small area that was the ville of Salvation. In an undertone, to avoid being overheard by Tex or— most particularly—Crow, J.B. and Ryan discussed the ville as they could see it so far.
“Way I figure it, old Silas couldn’t devote too much time or manpower to building the wall around the ville to begin with, so they had to make the ville just the size of a few old blocks,” the Armorer stated. “That’d account for the fact that the wall is so strong—”
“Otherwise,” Ryan concluded, “they would have been wide open to attack while they were constructing it. So as the ville’s got richer, and Baron Silas has got more and more people coming in to take up living and working here, then it’s got more and more crowded.”
“Guess he’ll use some of the jack from the oil well to enlarge his barony,” J.B. mused.
“Got to get the fireblasted thing working first,” Ryan reminded the Armorer.
While they discussed this is undertones, the others kept watching the ville of Salvation go by. It was obviously to the center of the old oil town, and many of the towers that were used in predark days for offices had been pressed into operation as residential. The upper levels hadn’t stood up to the ravages of time, and were left empty and derelict. But some kind of maintenance had to have been observed, for the lower levels showed signs of occupation as dwellings. At a level closer to the street, the old shops of the oil town were used for trading and holding markets where goods were bartered or sold. The old bars had been pressed into use as gaudy houses, and there were some that were used as homes by the residents.
Progress through the streets became slower and slower as the crowds grew more and more dense, spilling off the old sidewalks and onto the streets, obstructing the little traffic that passed.
“Doc, have you noticed something?” Dean queried,
“I have, my young friend, noticed many things,” Doc retorted. “To which, in particular, do you refer?”
Dean ignored the slight condescension in the older man’s tone, and continued. “It’s just that, for somewhere that’s supposed to have its own fuel well and refinery, we’re the only wag that I’ve seen since we lost the construction wags.”