“Far be it for me to intrude upon true love,” Zahner said sarcastically, “but don’t we have more critical items to discuss?”
“We do,” Blade agreed. “Hickok gave you his word, on behalf of the Family, that we’d be back to assist you in evacuating the Twin Cities. Well, obviously, we’re here.”
“You’re a little late, ain’t you?” Bear complained. “It’s been about two months! Two months! Hickok said you guys would come back in a month!”
“It wasn’t our fault,” Blade responded. “The delay was unavoidable. We’re genuinely sorry, but there was nothing we could do about it. There was no way we could have gotten here any faster.”
“Too bad,” Zahner remarked, gazing at the stockade and the soldiers.
“You could have saved us a lot of anguish.”
“The past is past,” Blade philosophized. “We can’t change it, but we can alter the future. We can lead you out of here and help you begin a new life near our Home.”
Bear pointed at the enclosure. “Ain’t you forgettin’ one minor problem?”
“We haven’t forgotten,” Blade assured him. “Now, before we go any further, isn’t there one of you missing?”
“Missing?” Zahner reiterated, puzzled.
“You’re the leader of the Nomads,” Blade said, “and Bear is the head of the Porns. Where’s the chief Horn? I think Hickok and Joshua said his name was Reverend Paul?”
Zahner, Bear, and Bertha exchanged strange looks.
“Reverend Paul was butchered by these bastards!” Zahner stated harshly.
“How did they capture all of you?” Geronimo inquired.
“It was easy for them,” Zahner answered, confirming Colonel Jarvis.
“One of the Porns…”
“Rat,” Blade interrupted. “We know.”
“…led the soldiers into the Twin Cities in the middle of the night, using back alleys and sticking to sections he knew we seldom used or were unguarded. They had it all planned, nice and neat!” Zahner snapped bitterly. “They set up an ambush and jumped us halfway through our meeting.”
“What meeting?” Blade asked.
“The three sides agreed to meet under a flag of truce,” Zahner detailed.
“All of us. Everybody. Except the Wacks, of course. We were tired of waiting for you guys to come back, and we were beginning to think you never would. We decided to talk it over and have a public vote on whether we would continue to wait, or whether we would attempt to leave the Twin Cities on our own.” Zahner sighed wearily. “Rat knew of the conference.
He told the soldiers, and the rest is history. It was a massacre! We didn’t stand a chance! They surrounded us and opened fire with their automatic weapons. It… was…” Zahner stopped, choked with sentiment at the gory memories, unable to continue.
“It seemed like they were firin’ forever!” Bear took up the narrative.
“Men, women, and children were droppin’ like flies! It went on and on and on!”
“When the shootin’ was all over,” Bertha elaborated, “they had us form a big circle in the field. Then they carted off all the bodies and got to work building this big fence. They had all the things they needed, like the barbed wire and such, right in the trucks. They knew what they was doin’.”
“How long ago did this happen?” Blade inquired.
“Four days ago,” Zahner replied. “They’ve been feeding us only one meal a day. I overheard some of the soldiers talking yesterday, and they were saying they didn’t think they’d be here too much longer. Evidently they’re getting set to move us out soon.”
Geronimo glanced at Blade. “I wonder why they waited almost two months to come in here. When did Rat tell the Army about us? What took them so long?”
“Logistics, probably,” Blade deduced. “After Rat told them, whenever it was, the information had to be transmitted up through the chain of command all the way to Denver and Samuel. Samuel would have needed time to formulate his plan of action, and undoubtedly additional time was required to set everything in motion. Remember, Rat was expecting us to return to the Twin Cities in a month. Maybe the Army intended to ambush all of us on the road between here and our Home. Maybe, when we didn’t come back on schedule, it threw their entire scheme off kilter.
It’s all sheer speculation at this point. If I get the opportunity, I’ll try and milk Jarvis for the information.”
“How did you know Rat led them in?” Bertha queried.
“We saw him,” Blade said, “right before they tossed us in the stockade.”
There was the sound of a commotion near the western side of the fence.
“What’s that?” Bear asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Zahner stated, and led the way toward the enclosure.
Bertha stayed close to Blade. “Do you really think White Meat will show up here?” she asked him.
“No doubt in my mind,” Blade answered. “Hickok knows we’re prisoners, and he’ll tear the city apart looking for us.”
“And what happens when he finds you?”
“Well, he’ll be as surprised as we were to discover everybody being held in the stockade. Then he’ll try and get us out.”
“What can he do against all those guns?” Bertha asked.
“Hickok against one hundred soldiers?” Blade said thoughtfully. “I’d say the odds were just about even.”
Chapter Ten
“I’m bored to tears standing around here watching this bucket of bolts,” the young guard groused.
“You’d better not let an officer hear you,” said one of his companions. “I can promise you that you wouldn’t be bored at your court-martial.”
“How long do we have to stay here?” the young soldier demanded. “It’s starting to get dark.”
“What’s the matter? You afraid of the bogeyman?” taunted his companion.
“There ain’t no such thing!” snapped the young trooper.
“Say! Who’s that?” asked a third soldier.
As one, the four troopers assigned to watch the vehicle the Warriors arrived in at Moore Lake swung around, facing an intruder who was standing twenty feet away, near one of the Nomad tents.
“Who the hell is that?” queried the young soldier.
“It’s him! He’s one of them!” exclaimed the fourth guard. “The one called Hickok.”
Hickok stood with his hands at his sides, near the pearl handles on his Pythons. He’d stashed the M-16’s he’d taken from the two tropoers earlier behind one of the other tents. The four in front of him were exchanging worried looks and nervously fingering their weapons. Two of the soldiers had their M-16’s slung over their shoulder, the third carried his cradled under his left arm, and the fourth was holding his in front of him, horizontally, at waist level.
“Howdy, boys!” Hickok greeted them. “Did you miss me?”
“What are you doing here?” one of the troopers arrogantly questioned.
“What happened to the others?”
Hickok grinned. “I’m here because I’m going to get in that contraption behind you and go for a little drive. Unless, of course, you reckon you four can stop me.”
“What do we do?” asked the young soldier uneasily.
One of the troopers, the one holding his M-16 in front of his waist, started to inch his right hand toward the trigger guard. “You know what we’ve got to do,” he told the youngest.
“Didn’t you hear what Hickok did in Thief River Falls?” inquired another of the soldiers.
“I heard,” said a third, “he beat twenty of our guys with those Colts of his.”
“Sounds like an exaggeration to me,” remarked the one with his M-16 near his waist.