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memory to come forward and be recognized.
"Skullface?" he whispered to himself, shaking his head. "Skullface?"
Ward had been right about the sky. As the last crimson glow of the dying sun
disappeared over the western rim of the world, a cold moon appeared, giving a
sharp-edged reality to the landscape.
Ryan had been wrong about how long it would take them. The trail that cut up
from the plateau to-ward the road was steeper and rougher than he'd hoped, and
the animals were now pushed toward utter exhaustion. J.B.'s mount stumbled and
fell, sliding fifty yards down the slope in a tangle of legs, sending rocks and
pebbles cascading to the valley floor. The Armorer managed to kick his boots
clear of the stirrups and step off as the horse went down, avoiding any kind of
injury.
But it slowed them.
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It was nearly midnight before they reached the blacktop, at a point less than three
miles from the ville. An added complication was the sky clouding over, shrouding
the moon, reducing visibility from a couple of miles down to barely a hundred
paces.
Ryan called a halt. "These horses are totally done. Better we leave them here.
Stops the risks of another fall, or one of them making a noise when it scents the
other animals."
They all dismounted and tied the animals to a lone mesquite bush.
"If there'd been trouble, wouldn't we have heard something?" Krysty asked,
rubbing the small of her back and trying to stretch the stiffness away.
"Not the way the wind's been blowing. Most of the time we were way too far off
from the ville to hear anything short of a nuke gren going off."
As they left the horses, one of them started to nicker, tossing its head back,
showing its teeth. For a moment Ryan thought he was going to have to put a bullet
through its head, using the built-in baffle silencer in his hand blaster.
But Jak went and gentled the animal, standing in close and blowing into its
nostrils. Ryan bolstered the SIG-Sauer.
"Good trick, Jak."
"Christina told it."
"The Ballinger woman?" Krysty asked.
"Yeah."
They started walking toward Salvation.
Ryan was regretting the way he'd ridden off on this fool's errand without giving
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enough thought to the defence of the ville. Doc had the stoutest heart of any man
Ryan had ever met, but that didn't mean that he was a great tactician in a firefight.
Similarly everything Ryan had seen of Mildred made him trust both her intellect
and her courage. But to have her trying to hold off this Skullface and his band was
too much to hope. He should have stayed himself, or at least he should have asked
J.B. to remain behind.
The Armorer was at his side. "Know what you're thinking, Ryan."
"What?"
"I should have stayed. Or you."
"Yeah. Damned right."
"Mebbe not. If they'd come at us in a big firefight, we could still have gone under.
If Krysty's right and there's been real trouble, then it could be that you and me
outside are a better bet."
It was true, and it reassured Ryan until they breasted the rise and looked down
into Salvation. The moon had reappeared, and they could see the ville clearly, see
everything the armed men, the train standing quietly on the edge of town.
Then, the memory clicked. "Fireblast!" Ryan said. "Skullface! I know who he is!"
Chapter Nineteen
THE FIRST DAY that Ryan and the others were away from Salvation was fairly
uneventful. The liveliest moment had been a baptizing in the narrow creek that
flowed past the edge of the ville. The oldest son of one of the coterie of preachers,
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named John Ridley, was in his early twenties and weighed in around three-twenty
pounds. It had been obvious to everyone on the train that he lusted after Sharon [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]