Chapter Seventeen

 

 

 

One of the things that life in Deathlands had taught Ryan Cawdor was to always try to look for the positive factors in any situation.

 

He and Krysty had been allowed to get dressed again, but their hands had been tied behind their backs with a brutal efficiency.

 

The best thing to weigh in the balance was the fact that they were both still alive and relatively uninjured.

 

The blood from the torn skin on Ryan's left arm had been seeping to such an extent that Charlie had eventually had to order a stop and have it bandaged with a strip of material torn from a shirt.

 

The pair wasn't entirely without a weapon. Ryan had casually draped his white silk scarf around his neck as he finished dressing, and none of the stickies had made a move to take it away from him.

 

No one had noticed that both ends were weighted, making it into a lethally effective garotte.

 

As Ryan and Krysty stumbled on, the barrels of the muskets jabbing them in the small of the back, Ryan tried hard to tick off some more positive factors about their position.

 

Jak was alive, and he'd quickly get news of their predicament to J.B. and Mildred. The Armorer would send Mildred down the trail to Christina, Doc and Dean and bring them back at double time.

 

And J.B. and Jak would be coming after them.

 

After that Ryan ran out of good things to think about.

 

 

 

STICKIES WERE NOTORIOUS for having great physical stamina, and this group was no exception. They pushed westward, up a snaking trail that crossed over a bare crest of sunbaked rock, pausing briefly by a stream that dashed itself down a wall of undercut stone, falling in a rainbow spray.

 

Ryan and Krysty stood below it, faces upturned, drinking the icy water. Both took care not to take in too much.

 

During the late afternoon they stopped again, by a rotting wooden bridge with rusted supports.

 

"Sit over there," Charlie ordered. "You get some jerky."

 

"Much farther?" Ryan asked.

 

The mutie's toothless mouth stretched into a smile. "That's for us to know and you to find out, Cawdor."

 

He wandered off and sat with his men, joining them in a detailed investigation of the weapons that they'd captured. Ryan's pistol caused most interest to the group.

 

Charlie turned with the blaster in his hand. "What can you tell us about my new blaster, Cawdor?"

 

"What do you want to know?"

 

"Everything."

 

Ryan shook his head to disturb the horde of tiny flies that were buzzing around his face.

 

"Model P-226, 9 mm SIG-Sauer."

 

"Fifteen rounds?"

 

"Push button mag release. Baffle silencer's built-in, but it's getting past its best now. It weighs a touch over twenty-five and a half ounces. Overall length's a little under eight inches. Barrel close on four and a half inches long. Anything else you want to know about it?"

 

The stickie laughed. "You know your blaster, Cawdor. Heard word of you over the years. You kept rising to the surface like a dead fish. All over Deathlands. I knew our paths would cross one day. Knew it. And I was right."

 

Ryan didn't reply, and Charlie turned back to his men.

 

Krysty leaned close to him. "If I used the power I could easily break the cords."

 

"Then what?"

 

"Free you."

 

He looked at her. "Both be dead. Have to wait, lover. If they leave us tonight or at their camp. Mebbe risk it then. But you know that using the power leaves you drained for hours."

 

"You might make it."

 

"Forget it."

 

There was a long silence between them. One of the stickies brought a handful of the dried meat and dropped it in the dirt, giggling as they had to roll on their stomachs to gnaw at it.

 

After he'd rejoined the others, Krysty spoke quietly, mumbling through a mouthful of beef.

 

"Jak and J.B. must be after us."

 

"Difficult."

 

"What?"

 

"Difficult to track us. This skinny bastard is good. Taken us a quarter mile or more over bare rock. Won't leave much of a trail. Crossed the same stream three or four times. Walked along through the water for a ways. I figure that they'll have a triple-hard time trying to follow us. And they'll be real slow, having to keep backtracking and checking all the time. No way they'll move as fast as us."

 

"But they'll find us in the end."

 

"Course they will."

 

The pause was so minimal that an outsider wouldn't have noticed it. But Krysty did.

 

"Try again, lover. Fails to convince."

 

"Fireblast! Odds are they'll find us, but it could be way too late."

 

Charlie and the stickies were standing, ready to move on again.

 

 

 

MILDRED POURED a pitcher of water over her head, dropping to hands and knees, exhausted by the run back to the main camp.

 

Dean was already pacing nervously around, eager to start off in pursuit of the stickies that had taken his father.

 

Christina had merely nodded as the black woman panted out her story, sitting and waiting patiently until she'd finished.

 

"Knew this would happen," she said. Her voice was flat, bitterness coming dry and hard from every word. "Soon as Ryan Cawdor came back here. Things were good until then."

 

Doc had been leaning silently against the trunk of a sun-warmed spruce, shaking his head at the gravity of the news. But at Christina's anger he stood, stamping the ferrule of his lion-headed cane in the dirt.

 

"Forgive me, my dear, but I fear that your concern has made you less than fair."

 

"What?"

 

"I concede that your life with the young man has been one that has paralleled Shangri-la itself. But you can hardly blame Ryan for the misfortunes that have struck in the past couple of weeks."

 

"Oh, yeah? Wrong, Doc. I can blame him. Just watch me."

 

"These stickies did not come to New Mexico to hunt down Ryan, did they?"

 

She looked down at the ground, moving the surgical boot she wore against a tiny yellow-and-white flower. "Things were good with Jak and me until he came again."

 

"And they'll be good again," Mildred said. "Course they will."

 

"Ryan Cawdor," Christina grated. "Jak thinks he's like something between an angel of death and a substitute father. The best thing the Good Lord made since he invented the chambered revolver."

 

Dean was shuffling his feet anxiously. "Dad does good," he said.

 

"Sure. Count the men he's chilled good. Women he's widowed good. Little ones that he's orphaned real good. Houses burned good."

 

Doc pointed the sword stick at Christina. "Allow me to remind you of the somewhat selective nature of your little speech, Miss Ballinger. Or, Mrs. Lauren. Cast your mind back to your life with your sweet-natured father and your fine brothers."

 

"All right, Doc, all right." Her face showed her remembered pain.

 

"Ryan chilled them good. Liberated you good. Risked his life good. And in the time I've had the honor of knowing him, he has done a very great deal that is undeniably good."

 

Christina hauled herself to her feet and nodded, lifting her eyes to meet Doc's. "You're right and I'm not. But I'm pregnant and you're not. And my husband might come back dead."

 

"We'll all go together, my dear," Doc said, his voice now gentle.

 

"Sure. Yeah, sure."

 

 

 

EVEN AFTER THE BETTER PART of a day with them, Ryan still found it hard to reconcile himself to the idea of there being intelligent, capable, organized stickies.

 

The sun was setting, and they'd covered about fifteen miles over tough terrain. And Charlie had constantly been taking precautions to ensure that any pursuit would be slow and laborious. Again and again they would detour to walk over exposed granite, avoiding the softer paths.

 

Each time they came to water they would deliberately try to pick their way along the center, sometimes altering the direction they were moving in to ensure that anyone trailing them would waste a lot of time.

 

Once Ryan pretended to stumble, hoping to leave some clue for Jak and J.B.

 

Charlie took him by the arm, gripping him by the elbow, suckered fingers digging in with frightening power.

 

"Try that again, Cawdor, and I'll use my hands on the woman's breasts. Think she'd look as good without any nipples?"

 

Ryan didn't try it again.