169 Rebels around you, ain’t you, General?”

“Never varies,” Ben muttered.

“What’s ‘at you said?” Hugh asked.

“I said you’re a dickhead, Hugh baby. An unwashed, foul-smelling, semiliterate, smart-assed bully.”

“Huh!” Hugh shouted.

Ben handed Coop his M-16 and unhooked his battle harness, handing that to Beth. He removed his pistol belt and tossed that to Tomas, standing by with a worried look on his face.

“No interference,” Ben said, looking around him. “From either side.” Then he stepped forward and busted Hugh smack in the mouth with a gloved fist.

The blow bloodied the man’s lips and brought a roar from his throat. He charged Ben, both fists swinging, and Ben ducked under and planted a right into the man’s belly. The air whooshed out and Hugh backed up, gasping for breath. Ben stalked him, giving the man no time to recover and get set.

“Stomp his sissy guts out, Hugh!” a man hollered.

“That’ll be the day,” a Rebel said.

Hugh, screaming wild curses, charged Ben and ran into him, the force of the collision knocking him to the ground. Ben rolled away from a vicious kick aimed at his head and jumped to his boots.

“Now I know the rules,” he told Hugh. “And now I’m going to kick the snot out of you.”

Hugh swung a looping roundhouse and Ben sidestepped and planted a fist onto Hugh’s kidney. He followed that with another vicious blow to the other kidney and Hugh screamed in pain. Ben stepped forward and drove his closed fist down into the center of the man’s back as hard as he could. Hugh screamed and fell to his knees, all the nerves in his body shrieking from the blow to his spinal cord.

170 So far he had not landed a blow to Ben.

Ben backed up and let the man slowly rise to his feet. Hugh’s mouth was dripping blood and he was breathing hard. He cursed Ben as he walked toward him.

Ben stood silent, waiting, his fists raised. Hugh tried to fake Ben out but Ben wouldn’t take the bait. Hugh shuffled and Ben noticed that when he did, his left dropped about six inches. The next time he shuffled, Ben plowed right in and hit the man a combination of lefts and rights that smashed Hugh’s nose and pulped his already-battered lips. Hugh backed up, shaking his shaggy head. The blood flew.

“Bastard!” Hugh pushed the word past his swollen lips.

Ben’s reply was a right fist to Hugh’s nose. This time the nose spread out some. Ben snapped a left and further broadened Hugh’s honker. Ben bore in now, slamming lefts and rights to Hugh’s body and face. Hugh backed up, reached down, and jerked a knife out of his boot.

“Steady now!” Ben shouted, moving close to Jersey. “This is my fight. Give me a blade, Jersey.”

Jersey handed him her long-bladed Bowie knife. “Gut him, General,” she said.

Victoria and Maria both noted the expert way Ben held the knife, blade held to the side for a slash or a gut-cut, and the way his left hand never stopped moving, distracting Hugh.

“I’m a-gonna kill you, Raines!” Hugh spat blood with the angry words. “Nobody tells me what to do. I’m an individualist.”

Ben laughed at him. That was probably the longest word he knew. And he couldn’t even pronounce it correctly. “I’m sure you were, Hugh. A beer-drankin’, snuff-dippin’, honky-tonkin’, woods—

171 roamin’, coon-huntin’, Saturday and Sunday afternoon armchair-quarterbackin’ rugged individualist. And put all that together and you come up with a pile of shit.”

“I hate your slimy guts, Ben Raines! I’m a-gonna cut ‘em out, too.”

“Well, come on, Hugh baby,” Ben urged him. “Come on!”

With a snarl and a curse, Hugh came. He slashed wide, opening himself up, amd Ben buried the blade in his gut, up to the hilt, and then ripped up, the blade slicing through and stopping when it caught on the V of his rib cage. Ben pulled the blade out and stood watching as Hugh dropped the knife and fell forward on his face. He screamed as the pain hit him and rolled over on his back, staring up at Ben.

“You see, Hugh baby,” Ben told him. “All Rebels go through extensive close-combat training. They spend weeks just learning how to use a knife.” He smiled, a hard curving of the lips at Hugh. “We do a lot of close-in work.”

Hugh groaned and closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them and stared up at Ben. “Ain’t you gonna let your medical people fix me up, Raines?”

“We don’t provide medical service for people who do not subscribe to the Rebel philosophy,” Ben told him very bluntly.

“You the hardest goddamn man I ever seen in all my life,” Hugh said.

“Which is growing shorter much more rapidly than you would like, I’m sure.”

“You a devil!” Hugh gasped very weakly.

Ben wiped the blade of Jersey’s knife clean on a rag Coop handed him and returned the Bowie to Jersey. Hugh was jerking around on the ground making all sorts of disgusting sounds.

172 The others in the squatter camp stood silently, shocked by the ease with which the commanding general of the Rebel army, several years older than Hugh, had whipped the man.

“Let’s go,” Ben said, after slipping into his battle harness. “I’m rapidly developing the monkey-and-the-skunk syndrome about this stinking place.”

“The monkey-and-the-skunk syndrome?” Victoria whispered to Jersey.

Jersey grinned, and whispered in her ear. The two women fell in behind Ben and walked off laughing.