Pete mumbled.
Iron Jaw shook his shoulder again. "Speak up, young man!"
Pete pointed at Mikey. "He called... he called Little Will a name."
Iron Jaw looked at Mikey. "What name?"
"Nothin'!"
Pete lunged again at Mikey and succeeded in landing another punch on Mikey's nose. "Liar!"
Iron Jaw pulled Pete back. "Calm down, young man, or I'll drop your drawers and tan your hide right this minute!" She glowered at Pete until he stood motionless.
Pete looked from Mikey down to the wood shavings. "He said she was a dummy."
Iron Jaw's eyebrows went up. "What?"
Pete pointed at Mikey. "He called Little Will a dummy!"
Mikey grimaced. "I... I didn't mean nothin' by it. Everybody knows she can't talk!"
Little Will noticed some of the other children looking in her direction. Tears welled in her eyes, she hid her face and ran from the dressing top.
Later that evening in the Number Three car moving to the next stand, Little Will went through the port carrousel. Among the massive white Percheron horses, she found Pete Adnelli seated on a bucket, glumly polishing a mountain of harnesses. She walked up to him and stopped. He looked up at her, blushed, then looked back at his work. "Uh, hi." He glanced at the pile of brass-studded leather at his side. "Waxy wasn't too happy to hear about me missin' parade."
She squatted down and placed her hand on his. Pete's blush turned fire-red. He grinned. "It wasn't nothin'. He... just shouldn't of said that."
Little Will smiled, removed her hand, and pulled a halter from the mountain of leather. She dipped her fingertips in the clear, liquid polish and began rubbing it into the halter's leather.
Pete kept looking at his work, but he grinned.
Little Will watched as Waco Whacko, her father and the Ssendissian, Nhissia, sat silently. Bullhook Willy and Waco sat in chairs facing Nhissia, who was hanging from the cabin's light fixture.
"Well, Nhissia, you told Waco you might have figured out something new. Can Little Will talk to me now?"
Nhissia's head bobbed around, looking first at Little Will, then at Waco, then at Bullhook. "Can you all tell what I am saying?"
Waco nodded. "I heard."
Bullhook's eyebrows went up. "Yes." He turned to his daughter. "Did you hear that?"
She nodded, then looked up at Nhissia. "I heard. We all heard at the same time, Nhissia."
The Ssendissian's head bobbed up and down. "It is as I suspected. I hoped that I could train myself to communicate with more than one human at a time. I have been trying out various combinations." Nhissia looked at Bullhook. "Waco and I have been working on this together. We didn't let you know because we didn't want to raise false hope."
The big man looked at Waco. "Thank you." He looked at Nhissia. "Thank you both."
Little Will stood up. "Can I talk to my daddy now?" She looked at Bullhook, but he only frowned. Little Will pouted. "Nhissia, I can't!"
"Have patience. Little Will. I have only learned to do this with humans myself." Nhissia looked at Bullhook. "I found that a number of the young humans on this ship have the same mind ability as Little Will's."
Waco leaned toward Bullhook. "We checked it out with Bone Breaker's records. There are twenty-six kids with the show that have the same genetic peculiarity. Bone Breaker thinks it's the war. Anyway, nine of the kids have the ability to transmit communications, but never developed it because they can talk. The rest of us don't transmit simply because we don't have the ability. But all of us can receive." The snake charmer smiled at Nhissia. "So far Nhissia has trained two of the kids to transmit by mind, and one of the two can speak directly to me."
Little Will sat back down in her chair. "Can you fix my mind to talk to others?"
Nhissia looked from Little Will to the bullhand and the snake charmer. "She asked if she can be trained." The Ssendissian looked back at Little Will. "I think so. It will take much work, but I think it can be done."
Bullhook Willy Kole looked down at his daughter...
Little Will awakened, a hand shaking her shoulder. She turned and saw Packy's outline against the almost light of the new morning. "What is it, Packy?"
"You were havin' some dream. Thought I'd step in just in case the tigers had you cornered." The boss elephant man patted her shoulder. "Okay?"
Little Will nodded and they both snuggled into the bedroll. "Packy?"
"What, honey?"
"Packy, was my daddy a nice man?"
Packy remained motionless for a moment, then shrugged the shoulder he wasn't attempting to sleep upon. "He was an elephant tramp."
High praise from Packy Dern.
SEVEN
The gang working toward Tarzak had made it to the place where the Fake Foot River cascaded down a steep cliff; forty miles from Miira, the half-way point to Tarzak. As the gang moved farther south, the thinner became the trees; and logs and planks were needed to cross the streams. Pickle Nose Porse, Number Three's porter, had established a supply and timbering point midway between Number Three and the cliff.
The cliff extended right and left as far as could be seen. A harsh, steady wind blew from the plateau where Pony's gang stood, down the face of the cliff. The rock of the cliff wasn't the shale and crumbled ledge of the Snake Mountain Gap. The face of Blowdown Cliff was solid granite. After his bull, Bandit, had been killed in a fall down the cliff, bullhand Sergeant Spook Tieras established a tool sharpening and repair station at the drop in the river which became known as the Bandit Falls. The road down Blowdown Cliff would have to be chiseled.
In the Snake Mountain Gap, seven days work went sliding into The Push when a tremor near a fault in the gap's vicinity caused thousands of tons of rock and soil to loosen. No one was killed, but boss harnessman Waxy Adnelli's left arm was crushed. Waxy was carried back to the place that everyone now called Miira, where Mange Ranger managed to save the harnessman's life at the cost of his arm.
Several nights after Packy's crew had begun to repair the damage, canvasman Goofy Joe Napoli climbed the road into the camp near the peak of the Snake Mountains. There were greetings then everyone gathered around a fire to eat and hear the news that Goofy Joe brought. Since the only radios left working were in cars Ten and Four—both in Tarzak—the gang was eager to hear what Goofy had to say.
Packy nodded at the canvasman and asked the first question. "Goofy, have the radios in Tarzak picked up anything yet?"
Goofy Joe shook his head. "And they're not listening anymore, either. They want to save the juice they have left for when Number Ten takes off. They've got the remaining fuel from the other three cars loaded up in her. Leadfoot Sina's taking it up to try and find Number Two."
Dot the Pot leaned forward toward the fire. "When does it take off?"
"It should be gone by now. While they're looking for Number Two, Leadfoot's going to try a little mapping. There's a chance he can find a route to Number Seven. So far we have roads connecting all of the cars in Tarzak. We made the bridges out of the cars. No wood to speak of down there."
"What're you doing for houses?"
"Packy, we haven't had a drop of rain since we touched down. We're building houses out of sun-dried mud bricks. Roofs are the problem. We can thatch with the long grass we have down there, but we don't have any wood for roof poles."
Packy nodded. "Once we get the road through, we can get planks, logs, and poles to you." He pointed at Goofy Joe. "You tell Tarzak that in exchange for those planks and poles, we're going to need metal. Especially another set of those core blades. We grind with them, but both of ours from Number Three are about all wore out."