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Krysty took two deep breaths as she looked down at the helpless fladgie. The
chiseled sliver points on the toes of her dark blue Western boots had become
scratched over the long months, but they were still sharp enough for the
purpose.
She judged the distance in the moonlight, seeing a trickle of blood oozing
from the choking man's open mouth, ignoring it. She took a quick step in,
swinging her right foot like the old vids she'd seen of football kickers. The
metal tip of her boot hit precisely where she'd aimed it, beneath the
fladgie's left ear.
Krysty turned away immediately, stooping to pick up what she recognized as
Mildred's rare Czech revolver. She tucked it in her belt and strode toward the
house, leaving the dying man to his solitary passing.
IN THE MOONLIGHT, Dean spotted the glint of cold flame from Krysty's hair,
cautiously calling out to her as he and Doc emerged from the shadows of the
orchard.
"You okay?"
"Yeah. You two?"
"Doc killed three of the crazies," the boy said, his voice breaking into a
high, embarrassing squeak with his excitement. "Three aces on the line."
"I got one. Reckon there were any more?"
Doc shook his head. "There were thirteen of them in total, at my latest
counting.
Surely four of his small band would be all that the lunatic bedlamite would
have hazarded."
"I saw someone by the dry gulch," Dean said.
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"That'd be the one I got." Krysty held out the blaster she'd recovered.
"Mildred's," Doc observed. "It would seem that we would be well-advised to
make a prompt move against the remainder of the ungodly."
"Agreed," Krysty said briskly. "Their chief'll realize, when his men don't
come back, that something's gone triple wrong. And he might decide to chill
Jak and
Mildred and make a run for it."
"So, we go now?" Dean grinned.
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Krysty looked at him, and the solemn face of Doc Tanner. "Only three against
one, now. Sure. Why not?"
Chapter Thirty-Six
"Blade held low, point up," J.B. said.
Ryan nodded his agreement. "Course. Though you might do better against someone
real good with a knife if you break the rules. Go in high with the point
down."
The Armorer pondered on that for a while, picking up a dry branch of pinon
pine, snapping it across his knee and tossing it into the heart of their fire.
"Could be, I
suppose. Often works to try the unexpected."
"Not in a Mex standoff." Both of them had encountered that particularly brutal
form of frontier dueling, where each man holds one end of a bandanna, or a
short length of cord, between his teeth and fights with a knife at close
quarters. The rules say that if either of them should break away, then the
onlookers will chill
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them instantly.
"Different rules for that game, all right," J.B. said. "Remember what the
Trader used to say about close-combat blade skills?"
Ryan nodded, waving his hand to drive a persistent moth away from his bowl of
stew. "Sure. You have to be ready to give your left hand. Your left arm. Mebbe
even risk a superficial cut at your face. Let him see your blood and he thinks
he's won."
"And he gets careless."
"Right. Give up that and you can take his kidney or throat or genitals or
eyes.
Trade-off's likely the only thing to save your life."
J.B. leaned back against the padded chair, feet stretched out in front of him,
head on one side as he listened to the ferocious wind howling outside the
cabin. "Hard night," he said. "Talking of Trader, it'll be damned strange to
meet him again." He paused. "If we ever do."
"Quiet, he's coming back. Doesn't seem the sort of man to like to talk about
knife fights."
"Nor about Trader."
The shuffling of feet along the passage grew louder. "My sight might have
taken wing from my eyes, outlanders, but my ears have become rather better
than normal. If you want to talk about violence, then feel free. Whatever
turns you on, as they used to say before the long winters. You're my guests.
And about this
Trader person you keep mentioning."
THE LAV-25 WAS sixteen miles back along the side-trail off Highway 410, with
its engine burned out through a cracked piston that had sheared and blown the
whole casing apart. It wasn't the kind of damage you thought about repairing.
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The snows had been bad, and there were only five days to go before their
deadline in Seattle, somewhere around a hundred miles distant.
Ryan had spotted the narrow road off to the right, among tall, white-topped
pines, and they'd followed it upward until they reached the isolated cabin,
the home of
Al Burgoise. In his seventies, close to blind, Al called himself a meditating
hermit. "At my age meditation is about all I'm good for."
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He'd been living in the lee of Mount Rainier's 14,500-foot shadow for most of
his life. He got by with the help of a pack of hunting dogs that were all
asleep out back, and by the kindliness of the folks who lived in the nearby
small ville of
Godfrey Falls.
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