Chapter Twenty-Five

 

 

The light was fading fast, and Ryan picked his careful way down the steep trail. The path wound and doubled back on itself, so that it wasn't possible to see the source of the smoke that was coiling skyward from some distance farther on.

 

A highway was just visible at the bottom of the valley. It was in deep shadow, but Ryan paused in the stillness and thought that he saw riders heading toward Fairplay. And he thought that his ears caught the high-pitched sound of a small armawag running at full throttle.

 

But he couldn't be sure of that, and the shadows grew deeper by the minute.

 

Behind him he heard the rumble of far-off thunder, turning to see the silver pattern of chem lightning streaking across the western sky.

 

Night seemed to sweep around him like a horseman's cloak.

 

The moon was obscured behind banks of cloud and he slowed to minimize the risk of taking a tumble on the rutted trail. The smell of burning grew stronger, and he thought that he could hear human voices.

 

Around the next sharp gooseneck bend Ryan finally saw the flames.

 

A Conestoga wag blazed brightly in the middle of the track, with a small group of men and women clustered helplessly around it. He was able to approach within fifty yards before anyone noticed him.

 

"They're back!" a woman screamed.

 

Ryan stopped where he was, his hand resting on the cold butt of the SIG-Sauer, holding up his left hand in a gesture of peace.

 

"I'm alone!" he shouted. "All right with you if I come ahead?"

 

There was frantic conversation, then a white-haired man moved to the front of the group. "If you're one of them, mister, then I can tell you that we flat got nothing left for you to take. Exceptin' for the poor lives of us that's left."

 

There were four men and two women alive. Only one of the men was under the age of fifty. The women were both well into their sixties.

 

Scattered around the blazing rig were eight corpses five young males, two little children and a young woman with the back of her head blown away. The muzzle of a small revolver was still clenched between her teeth.

 

The white-haired man spoke for the others.

 

"We're Quakers from back east, coming into the mountains to bring the word of God to outlying communities. Been on the road for close to a year. Had some hard times in the past couple of weeks. Provisions ran low, and we got the rig bogged down to the axles in mud."

 

Ryan had never seen such a sorry lot. All of them were gray-faced and haggard, eyes sunk in sockets of wind-scoured bone, prominent teeth and fingers crooked like claws.

 

"Then the murderers came on us like wolves on the fold. We were helpless. Sister Rosalind there chose to take her own path from this vale of tears. She also slew her own children to spare them being taken."

 

Ryan looked across the valley into the blackness. "Thought I saw some men on horseback and heard a small armawag. Was that the gang?"

 

The old man nodded. "A mix of normal men, though some looked from south of the Grandee. And several stickies among them. I had never heard of such a racial mix before."

 

"They were degenerate scum, Brother Angus," one of the women said.

 

"And they took what little you had left?" Ryan said. "Anything else?"

 

Brother Angus nodded slowly. "There were five women of a younger age. One was barely into her teens. The filth took them all and gunned down anyone who tried" He looked at the bodies. "One was my son. They took Sister Persephone, who had agreed to be his bride."

 

Ryan looked around him, stone-faced. It was a total and appalling disaster for these people. Yet it was a scene that he'd come across too many times in his life, particularly in the days with Trader. The old man had talked about wolves on the fold. Not a bad description of the callous cruelty of the attackers and the helpless vulnerability of their victims.

 

"Thee wouldn't have any food, would thee, mister?" the other old woman asked.

 

Ryan hesitated. He had one roll and one of the peaches, plus a couple of mouthfuls of milk, enough to keep him going on into the next day. It wasn't enough to even scratch the surface for just one of the starving group.

 

"No," he said. "I'm sorry."

 

"What can we do?" Brother Angus asked, wringing his hands. "Where can we go?"

 

"Best go back to Leadville," Ryan said. "Nearest place I can think where I know there'll be food."

 

"We're jack-free. They took it all. We must throw ourselves on the charity of strangers."

 

Ryan sniffed. The charity of strangers wasn't that common a commodity in Deathlands.

 

"Still Leadville's closest. You got to pick between a small chance and no chance."

 

"The Lord will provide for us," one of the other men said, falling to his knees, hands clasped in prayer. "He will provide for his humble servants."

 

"Not done much providing so far," Ryan replied, looking at the corpses and the wag, burning now to the flatbed. Another five minutes and that would be gone, and the survivors would be left in the dark and cold.

 

He hunched his shoulders, feeling the first pattering of rain on his back.

 

 

 

ONE OF THE TRADER'S most deeply held beliefs was that when you could help someone, you did. But if you couldn't help at all, then you didn't waste time on hanging around.

 

Ryan couldn't take on the job of guide for the ragged survivors of the raid. The only sound advice that he could give was to strike out immediately for Leadville. Despite their frailty, there was a chance that most of them could make it back to the township and a better than even hope of living.

 

But Brother Angus consulted with his fellow Quakers and they all agreed that they wouldn't move on under any circumstances without burying their dead comrades. Ryan's guess was that they'd be lucky to finish that chore by noon the next day. And by then their strength would be hugely diminished and most, if not all, of them would then die.

 

Before leaving them to their own devices, Ryan found out what he could about the gang.

 

It seemed that there had been between twenty and thirty of them. About a third had been stickies. Proof was marked on two of the bodies, which showed where the suckers of the stickies had ripped away patches of skin and flesh.

 

None of the Quakers was any help when it came to the weaponry of the gang, though one of the old women had noticed that the armawag had been towing a small trailer that she thought probably held cans of gasoline.

 

"You don't know where they were based?" Ryan asked. "They didn't mention any names?"

 

Brother Angus shook his head, his face a pale blur in the streaming darkness of the rainstorm. "Wasn't like we'd have heard, friend. Too much yelling and cursing and chilling. Like something from hell."

 

The brighter of the old women had been standing at his side, listening. "From hell! Truly said, Brother Angus. From the deepest circle of icy, fiery hades they came, grinning and shooting and slashing. Devils from hell."

 

There was nothing more that Ryan could do.

 

It seemed more than likely that it was the same gang that he and his friends had been hearing about since they arrived in Colorado, the gang that was reputed to have its headquarters somewhere farther up the valley to the southeast.

 

Up beyond Fairplay.

 

Toward the ville of Harmony.

 

 

 

THE RAIN CAME DOWN ceaselessly, and Ryan was quickly soaked to the skin. There was a great deal of thunder and, for about an hour, a ferocious chem storm with violent shocks of pink-purple lightning. Out on the exposed flank of the mountain, with a rifle slung across his shoulders, Ryan felt vulnerable and quickly sought cover, ending up crouched among the blue spruces that lined the trail.

 

While he waited out the storm, he tried to guess whether Krysty and the others were ahead or behind him. The odds seemed to be that they were behind, which meant there was a temptation to hole up for a day or so and wait for them. Perhaps when he reached the little ville of Alma that was marked on his mental map?

 

But if they'd shortcutted him and got ahead, then every hour he waited would be another hour he'd fall behind.

 

If they were behind him, then they should be safe from this killing gang. If they were ahead, then they could easily run into them. Despite J.B's firepower-aided by the othersthey would still be vulnerable to twenty or more armed killers.

 

Ryan felt the hairs standing on his nape, and he crouched lower, laying the rifle flat in the pine needles. He smelled ozone moments before he experienced a flash of lightning so close that it blinded him for several seconds. The thunder was on top of the lightning, making the marrow of his bones vibrate and the ground tremble beneath his boots.

 

"Fireblast!" he whispered, his voice sounding faint and far away.

 

It took him a few moments to collect his scattered, shattered thoughts. Krysty and the others. The gang. One other possibility was that the gang had split into two or more parts in order to raid a larger area.

 

But that made the range of imponderables so vast that it was a waste of time thinking about them.

 

As the rain eased a little and the storm passed across the valley, Ryan shouldered the rifle and set off down the slippery trail.

 

 

 

DAWN COINCIDED with his reaching the end of the track, down at the valley bottom, with the highway leading left to right in front of him. His path lay to the right, to the south, more or less toward the rising sun that was just showing behind the high peaks.

 

Eight miles would take him to Alma, and a further six or seven to Fairplay.

 

But it was going to be steep walking, and he figured he'd do well to cover the distance to the top before the middle of the afternoon. He finished all his food and the last swig of milk, then filled the canteen with fresh meltwater from the river that crossed his trail.

 

Before going on he glanced up and behind him, trying to trace the track down from the head of the pass, among the dense blanket of spruce. He wondered if he might catch a glimpse of Krysty and the others, but knew what a long shot that was.

 

Ryan turned and began the haul up the road, which glistened wetly in the dawn light.

 

 

 

ALL THE COMPANIONS were well filled, and J.B. had ordered some trail food for the hike.

 

Outside the steamed-up window of the diner, the morning looked bleak and miserable. There was no sign of any letup in the grim weather. Rain streamed from a dark sky, forming rivulets along the blocked gutters at the edges of the highway through Leadville. It had poured all night with spectacular thunder and lightning that had awakened all of themexcept Doc, who claimed that he would have slept through the San Francisco earthquake.

 

"Could have caused some double-bad damage out on the high trails," Carl said worriedly.

 

"Ryan can look after himself," J.B. said. "If anyone can."

 

"Don't tempt Providence," Krysty touched the wooden leg of the table for luck.

 

"Sure he can." Jak spoke through a mouthful of sweet roll, splattering the table with crumbs.

 

"Wish him all the best, when you see him," Joanna said, leaning on the serving counter. "And if any of you ever pass this way again, you'd be rightly welcome."

 

"We will. And thanks." Krysty looked out at the dreary morning. "Let's go."

 

 

 

THE FRESH PAINTED GATE swung silently to and fro on its greased hinges as they passed the house at the edge of Leadville. Krysty turned as they walked by and caught a glimpse of a round face peering at them from behind lace curtains. She lifted a hand to wave, but there was no response.

 

In less than a quarter hour, the township had vanished in the driving rain and the five friends headed into the high country, toward Fairplay.