“Looks like the trouble in the camp has died down, but now seems as good a time as any to see what was going on. So how about you take us there? And one more thing,” he added as the baron put the wag into gear. “Getting pissed at us is no answer to your problem. We can’t do jackshit until we’ve actually looked the area over and got to see the people in their own shit. Don’t get heavy on us, because that isn’t going to help anyone.”
The baron’s cold eyes met Ryan’s ice-blue orb. He said nothing for a second, as though assessing the one-eyed man once more, then grunted. “Okay, but I need results bad.”
“Fair enough. You’ll get them, but it doesn’t mean to say you’ll like them,” Ryan commented as he swung himself back into the rear of the wag and the vehicle lurched into motion.
The wag careered across the harsh desert surface, raising clouds of dust in its wake as it followed a track beaten into the earth by the constant tramping back and forth of the workforce. As they neared the camp, the companions could see the workers coming toward them in ragged lines, policed by a group of sec outriders who were mounted on unruly, flea-bitten horses that they could barely control.
“Horses?” Mildred yelled.
“I guess they save on fuel for the sec men and Baron Silas,” J.B. said, “and until he gets that well and refinery running, every drop of fuel is like burning jack. Especially if he’s into the other barons for a lot of that jack.”
Dean laughed. “Hot pipe! If those are the best horses they can get, then we really are gonna be up to our necks in horse shit.”
Ryan said nothing. He was too busy watching the faces of the workers as they went by. A mix of different peoples, even in procession they had segregated themselves into groups that bespoke of their villes. From the state of some it was obvious that whatever had caused the fire in the camp had been precursor to a fight. There were abrasions and contusions on many of the workers’ faces and exposed arms that showed a pitched battle had taken place. And from the small size of the sec force, it was also clear that the number of people involved had been hard to control.
The one-eyed man already knew that their task was to be difficult. This was brought home even harder when the wag entered the camp, and he could see the almost visible dividing lines between the different peoples. It was visible from the way the huts and tents were constructed, from the ways that the children, running ragged, played and stuck to lines that were so clearly demarcated that they could almost have been drawn, and from the appearance and dress of the womenfolk tending to the camp.
They all had one thing in common, though: the hostile glares with which they greeted the wag as it passed.
This was going to be harder than Ryan had thought.
Chapter Twelve
Baron Silas took the opportunity to give Ryan and the companions a tour around the camp. With the workers on their way back to the refinery and well, and the fire and interville fight quelled, it was the right moment to show them what they would provide sec for with the minimum of interference.
The fire that had emptied the work site was in the part of the camp that housed the migrant workers from Water Valley. As they entered this quarter, the companions noted that the dwelling switched from the blanket, material and wooden pole constructions of the Running Water people into the much harder lines of huts constructed from scrap wood and sheets of corrugated iron, the wood gouged deep with running joints for the metal to slide into, securing it against the vagaries of the weather.
“Those Crow’s people,” Jak said to Dean, pointing out the Running Water women, who were dark-skinned with dark hair, and dark-eyed children at their feet.
“Yeah,” the younger Cawdor replied, “and I’d guess they get less trouble with the elements than these guys—” he indicated the run of huts “—but they must be near to each other, their villes, because they seem to at least tolerate each other.”