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  J.B. nodded. The others laughed at the boy’s enthusiasm.

  “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on one or two of them,” Ryan said. “But our girl swept them up clean, along with the wounded and the chills. Not that I’m complaining.”

  Krysty stood up. She swayed. Ryan caught her in his arms.

  “Krysty—” he began.

  “Shut up and kiss me,” she said. He did.

  Mildred walked around the nose of the wag. It looked as if somebody had taken a twelve-pound sledge to the bumper and grillwork.

  Whatever those guns were, she thought, they pack a hell of a punch.

  Disengaging, Ryan looked ahead to where Jak and Ricky were examining the road where the mirrorlike thing had appeared.

  “Anything?”

  Gently Krysty pushed away from Ryan. “Thanks. I can stand on my own now.”

  “No,” Jak called.

  “Didn’t leave any kind of mark we can see,” Ricky said. “I bet it didn’t touch the ground. But there’s nothing here but scuff marks, some blood and seven spent bullets that seem to have bounced off the gateway. Or whatever it was.”

  “It would seem the portal, whatever its nature, was selectively permeable,” Doc said.

  “I tried to push my whirlwind through it,” Mariah said. “It wouldn’t go in either.”

  She frowned. “I’d probably have to go through myself to get it to...wherever they are.”

  “But you’re not going to do that, are you?” Krysty asked.

  “Oh, no.” Mariah’s black pigtails swung as she shook her head furiously.

  Krysty knelt beside her so that she was looking up into the pale face.

  “Thank you,” she told Mariah. “You saved us all.”

  “When they shot you, Krysty, I almost lost it. I couldn’t let them do that to you!” She threw her arms around Krysty’s shoulders in a fervent hug and burst into tears.

  Mildred felt her jaw set. She looked past the pair to where Ryan and J.B. stood.

  Almost lost it, she mouthed. Ryan shrugged.

  He said nothing. It wasn’t as if Mildred could think of anything for him to say. But the inevitable speculation of what might make the girl “lose it,” and just what exactly might happen next, hung over them like a cloud far darker and more ominous than the dense black cloud cover that had closed in overhead.

  A droplet hit her cheek.

  “Best we break this up and head out of here,” Ryan called, as thunder rolled in from the southwest. “It looks as if the cloud’s fixing to open up on us big time. We’ve got a roof to put over our heads, for once. Let’s not waste it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Hello, people of Lone Calf. What’s happening?”

  Ryan’s eye popped open at the words. After only a moment’s free-wheeling, his mind snapped into focus. He realized they were being broadcast through a loudspeaker, and not from close by.

  “This is Hammerhand, and the New Blood Nation. We have come to embrace you as our own. You’d be triple smart to embrace us back with open arms.”

  He went to the window of the second-story room he shared with Krysty. The redhead sat bolt upright in bed, the thin sheets falling from her pale, bare breasts.

  Outside people were spilling into the narrow, crooked streets of the little ville in the predawn gray light. Although “ville” might be too grand a term for the little straggle of not upward of twenty structures, none too firmly nailed together out of crudely cut planks and random bits of scrap.

  “I thought people didn’t bother this place,” Krysty said from the bed. “What with who the Spotted Elks are related to and all.”

  Ryan frowned out the window, which was open to allow in cool night breezes. The weather was warming up as summer came on.

  “Wherever he’s talking from,” he said, “it’s not where I can see.”

  “It’s from the west,” Krysty said. Their room faced east.

  He glanced back. She was on her feet, bent over by the bed and just pulling her jeans up over incongruously purple scavvied panties. He did not fail to appreciate the sway of those heavy, beautiful, pink-tipped breasts.

  Never know when might be the last time I see them, he thought. Could be today.

  That was how they lived: it could always be that day.

  “Looks like mebbe Hammerhand’s decided he’s big enough not to have to play by the old rules,” he said, turning back to the window.

  The amplified voice continued speaking, describing the glories of peace and prosperity—plus the prospect of adventure, for those who felt inclined—to be had by joining his growing nation.

  “That’s the carrot,” Ryan muttered. “Where’s the nuking stick?”

  Lone Calf had started out as a crossing-spot of trade routes, from north to south and east to west, about thirty miles northeast of the mutie-haunted Pierre rubble. It had good water in the form of Bodacious Creek, along whose southern bank it stood. Then when shifting weather patterns had brought more rain of the water sort and less of the acid sort to this segment of the Plains a couple generations back, it had formed the informal center of a region of small-holder farms. Over the years it had grown to twenty or thirty buildings, none more than a single story save the big house, holding a hair over two hundred residents.

  It was still held and largely occupied by the Spotted Elk clan, which, despite being named for a legendary Minneconjou Lakota hero, was more closely affiliated with the Northern Cheyenne. They had made it a point to intermarry as broadly as possible, which was considerably aided by its growing commercial importance, to the point the present scion, and proprietor of the Bodacious Creek Trading Post and Hostelry where the companions had passed the night, was a stout blond-braided woman named Helga Spotted Elk.

  They made sure to maintain close family ties inside both the Lakota and Cheyenne nations, though, which meant that in spite of the fact they did fairly well for themselves, coldheart bands tended to give them a wide berth. Both those nations were always full of young warriors, male and female, who were young, dumb and lusting to make a kill or two and start their own reps, as the occasional raider found, usually right at the time they thought they had gotten away with a heist.

  But apparently Hammerhand had decided he had enough coldhearts under his command that he longer need be afraid of retribution.

  “So I’m waiting for your submission,” Hammerhand’s voice boomed. “Just fly a white flag from the top of that fine hostelry at the center of town, there. That’ll do fine.”

  “There they are,” Ryan said.

  “What’s that?” Krysty said, coming up behind him. She had her plundered M16 in one hand and was checking the magazine in the other.

  Ryan pointed. “The stick.”

  The countryside around about the ville was the common rolling prairie. The flatter spots of low ground showed the deeper green of cultivation, and passing over the top of a hill, five hundred yards or so east, drove a trio of open-topped wags, stuffed with armed fighters. The sun rising red into a low black band of cloud made him blink.

  “But there’s something else I need to ask you for, Lone Calf.”

  Someone knocked at the door. Without even thinking about it, Ryan had picked up his P226 SIG handblaster from beside the bed as he rose. Now he pinched back the slide just far enough for a glimpse of dull silver to confirm a 9 mm round was chambered.

  “Come in.”

  The door opened far enough for J.B. to poke his hatless head inside the room.

  “Not going to shoot me, are you?”

  “You’d already be a chill if I had a notion to shoot you, J.B.,” Ryan said dryly. “What’s happening?”

  “Jak’s up on the roof already. He says the voice is coming from a wag atop a hill, out five hundred yards
or so west.”

  “That’s a nuke of a long way to carry.”

  “Our boy Hammerhand found himself a big set of speakers and a generator to power the amp, looks like,” J.B. said. “Plus the breeze is from that way.”

  “Wonder if we float a white flag if he’ll let us drive right out of here?” Krysty asked.

  “There’s a group of outlanders put up in your hotel. Got a little girl with pigtails with them. I need you all to send her out to us. Just to show your good will and your good faith and all that happy horseshit.”

  “Sounds like that’d be a no,” Mildred said, bustling in the open door with Doc and a frightened-looking Mariah following right after.

  Ryan exhaled forcefully. “Fireblast. I reckoned we’d run across Hammerhand one of these days, what with him being the next big thing in this part of the Deathlands and all. I did not reckon on him looking for us in particular.”

  “There are more of them, off to the east,” Krysty reported from the window. “Looks as if they’re patrolling out there. Probably to keep us from trying to slip out that way.”

  She looked back at Ryan. Her green eyes were wide. “How many men does this Hammerhand have?”

  “Anywhere between a hundred and a hundred thousand, to hear people tell it,” J.B. said. “What with people’s inclination to exaggerate, and one thing or another, right around a couple hundred seems right.”

  “If he brought them all,” Mildred said.

  “No response?” Hammerhand asked. “Now, that’s not good. I’m afraid I’ve got to insist.

  “I’ll sweeten the pot. There’s fifty horses waiting for whoever brings this girl to me. That applies to the one-eyed coldheart, the flame-haired woman and the rest of that bunch, too. I’ve got no beef with you. But if somebody doesn’t trot her out, I’m going to have to take back my invitation and just flat chill all of you in the entire ville. Your choice.”

  “Speaking of not good,” J.B. said. He glanced out the window. Faces were turned toward the hotel in the streets surrounding. Even as he watched, a man pointed right to him.

  Mariah had walked over to stand beside Krysty. Her dark eyes were huge and round in her snow-pale face.

  “You won’t give me to them, will you?”

  “No way,” Ryan said.

  “Tell you what,” the voice purred. “Since I’m so generous, you’ve got half an hour. But then you’ve all signed your death warrants if I don’t get the little girl. And if your consciences are getting all tender, no, the last thing in the world I want is to hurt her.”

  “You sure, Ryan?” Mildred asked. “I mean, sorry, Mariah—Krysty. But if there’s hundreds of them, and they won’t harm her...”

  “You trust him that much?” Ryan asked. “A man who’s trying to make himself baron of the whole North Plains?”

  “Well—no.” Mildred shook her head. “Sorry. Just forget I spoke.”

  “I have already, Mildred,” Krysty said.

  “Nobody move! I’ll blast anyone who doesn’t freeze!”

  * * *

  A SKINNY MAN in a stained linen shirt and baggy canvas trousers stood in the door with a double-barreled 12-gauge leveled at the companions.

  J.B. was holding his Mini UZI, with his Smith & Wesson M-4000 shotgun slung. The machine pistol was muzzle down, but the block was locked open, ready to slam forward and open fire.

  But J.B. was no more eager to commit suicide than anybody else in the room was. He made no move to put the blaster down, but he also didn’t try to cut loose. The gaunt man with the prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down to compulsive, nervous swallowing was on a hair trigger—unlike those black-armored sec men who had appeared from nowhere a couple weeks back. It’d be complete luck if the guy didn’t blast any of them by accident.

  “Give her to me,” the man said, spewing spittle from a gob hole packed with crooked brown teeth. “I ain’t gonna die for you taints. But I could surely use all them horses.”

  “Take it easy, Mr. Harkness,” Krysty said.

  “You know this dude?” Mildred asked.

  “He introduced himself at dinner last night. You might want to point that blaster elsewhere, sir. You might hit the child, and then where would you be?”

  “I ain’t born yesterday, Flame Top. I know this here piece throws a tight shot column. I’ll hit who I wanna hit and not her. So which of you wants to catch a charge of double aught?”

  “Let’s just calm down and talk about it,” Krysty said soothingly.

  “Ain’t squat to jaw about,” the intruder said. “Just give me the girl and we all get out al—”

  His head jerked violently to his right—J.B.’s left—facing him. The words died in a gurgle. He folded straight down to the floorboards with a single jet of blood pulsing from his left temple.

  Cat quick, Ryan was across the floor, grabbing the longblaster by both barrels and forcing the muzzle ceilingward. As the man completed his transition to a lump of bones and clothes and greasy flesh, Ryan twisted the weapon expertly from his relaxing grasp without setting it off.

  Ricky’s round face poked around the door from the right. “Everybody okay?”

  “Better now,” Mildred said. Ricky entered the room, stepping gingerly over the man he’d just shot.

  Most “silenced” blasters were anything but. They produced a sound not triple quieter than an actual gunshot, but not so sharp and harder to pin down as to direction.

  But Ricky’s reproduction of a World War II DeLisle carbine, lovingly handmade with the help of his Uncle Benito, was an exception. Firing from a closed bolt action, shooting a subsonic round—the same .45 ACP cartridges a Colt 1911 used, as well as the rechambered Webley revolver Ricky carried—the weapon sound was only a little louder than a cough. In the excitement, J.B. hadn’t even heard the longblaster go off just a few feet down the hall.

  “So he’s not part of the Spotted Elk family?” Ryan asked with a poke of his chin in the direction of the chill huddled in the doorway.

  “No. He’s a drummer for Old New San Antonio,” Krysty said, “recruiting people to move to his ville.”

  “That was a long way to come to die.”

  “No doubt that fact played a role in his decision to act as he did,” Doc stated.

  “Got news for us, Ricky?” J.B. asked. He had left the boy on the top floor, keeping tabs on Jak.

  Ricky nodded. “There’s a whole bunch of wags, horses and people on foot in the hills west of town. Jak says they haven’t gotten closer than fifty yards from the outskirts, but they’re spread out and look ready to roll.”

  “Right,” Ryan said. “Gather up your gear, people. We’re—”

  A figure loomed in the doorway. It was small and scrawny, like the late Mr. Harkness of Old New San Antonio. It held an ax over its head in both hands.

  “Ahhh!” the newcomer shouted and leaped over the chill.

  Ryan raised his handblaster and put two rapid shots through the center of his chest. Red blood stained the front of the canvas apron. The latest intruder fell back over the cooling body of the first.

  “Anybody know who this was?” he asked.

  J.B. stepped up and thrust the two bodies out into the corridor with his boot. Then he stationed himself just inside the doorway with his shotgun at the ready, keeping watch both ways to keep some other treasure hunter from running in on them unannounced.

  “I saw him working in the kitchen,” Mildred offered.

  “Means he’s related to Helga, most likely,” Krysty said.

  “She’s not going to be happy with us, if that’s the case.”

  “She and we both have to come through this without dirt hitting us in the eyes for that to matter,” Ryan said. “Like I was saying, gather up your gear. We’re going to secure the top floor and make
our stand from there.”

  “We’re not going to try to make our way covertly out of town?” Ricky asked.

  “Even if we ditch the wags, which I’m willing to do, we’d never sneak out past a power of riled-up locals. To say nothing of the Blood patrols watching for us to try just that.”

  “The guests upstairs won’t be happy about getting chased out,” Krysty said. “Even if they don’t decide to claim the reward themselves.”

  “We’ll ask them nicely,” Ryan said. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll ask them not so nicely. All right, people. We’ve got a purpose. Let’s move like it!”

  “But are you sure it’s smart getting ourselves trapped on the top two floors?” Mildred asked. “What if they set the hotel on fire?”

  “And risk roasting their prize?” J.B. said from the door. “What do you think Hammerhand would do to them once he got here?”

  “You’re right,” Mildred said. “That was stupid of me. Okay, let’s go play king of the hill.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Time’s blood, people,” Hammerhand’s voice echoed across the prairie. “Ten minutes and counting.”

  The breeze from the west had freshened into a wind, and it was chill. This was not shaping up to be a warm day. But Ryan had been through worse. This was nothing to hinder him climbing up onto the pitched roof of the Bodacious Trading Post and Hostelry’s top story, much less threaten to knock him off.

  “Be reasonable, Cawdor,” another voice boomed. This was louder, was feminine and came from the street directly below. “Try to see it from my perspective. Didn’t you ever hear that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?”

  “Never did buy that line of shit,” Ryan muttered. A shingle with dried old pine bark still on it came free right under his palm. He managed to hold on to the roof with the other as the loose shingle slid down and off the edge.

  It was a long fall.

  “What about your reputation for hospitality, Helga?” Krysty called from the room immediately below. It was on the east side, where they had spent the night, and happened to be the front of the establishment. That was the one side that didn’t have one-story annexes built out from it. “You go giving up your guests to coldhearts who happen to ask, that might not help your business.”