The jug came down. "I have no friends! Those I thought to be friends abandoned me before the town." He stabbed a finger at his chest. "Not one spoke for me. Not one offered me aid. Friends, bah!" He drank again, then stretched out his legs. "Ah, the aches ease. I never believed I could be so exhausted."
The fortune teller nodded. "It took much from you, No One." She reached into No One's pack and withdrew a wrap of cobit dough, then began shaping the cakes. She kept her gaze upon the cobit cakes as she spoke again. "You killed five bulls. Can any friendship be expected to withstand such a crime?"
No One looked down at the flames, "They killed my sister. I was right to do what I did."
"And what would your sister think of your deed, No One?" The fortune teller looked up at him. "If you could ask her now, what would she say to you?"
No One's eyes widened with horror, then he stood and flung the sapwine jug behind him—where it shattered upon the rocks. "Damn you!" He held his fingers to his temples as his face twisted with unshed tears. "Damn you," he whispered. The hands came down and he turned from the fire. "Gather your things. We leave now."
"It is almost night."
"Gather your things!" He stooped, picked up his pack, and went to where Tarzaka had been sleeping. Bending over, he retrieved his bullhand's robe and stuffed it into his pack.
The fortune teller called to him. "We both need to rest No One."
He slung the pack over his shoulder, then glanced at her. "If you are going with me, hurry." He walked into the growing darkness toward the mountain slope that would bring them down to the Great Muck Swamp.
Tarzaka quickly assembled her kit, shouldered it, then stumbled off into the dark after No One.
TWENTY-FIVE
Little Will sat upon the kraal fence, staring at the isolated grove of angelhair trees among whose roots Shiner Pete's body now rested. She swung the gold and mahogany bullhook by its handle, absentmindedly tapping the hook and goad first against one sandal, then the other. The angelhair hung from the trees in long, lazy swirls, stirring themselves only slightly in the heat of the afternoon. Around the small grove was the lowgrass growing between the rotting stumps of the timbered out forest that once surrounded Miira. In time, thought Little Will, even the evidence of the stumps will be gone.
She heard a snort and turned to see Reg pulling up trunkfuls of dried lowgrass as the bull rested from her morning's workout with Standby. Young Bigfoot would show for her turn in a few minutes. Little Will sighed. It would be another two months before her turn with Reg. She turned back to look at the angelhair grove. A figure wearing the bullhand's striped robe moved from beneath the trees. Little Will frowned and shielded her eyes from the sun. It was Dorthidear, the daughter of Great Waxy and Great Dot.
Little Will nodded. Sometimes she forgot that Shiner Pete's father was also buried in the angelhair tree grove, as well as several others—Mange, Butterfingers, Packy, Cowboy, Snaggletooth, Skinner, mere.
After Dorthidear had walked out of sight, between the houses of Miira's newly named Mange Street, Little Will came down from the fence and began walking toward the grove. Halfway down the hill, she turned toward the town and looked at the barn in which, at her instruction, a crew of bullhands attempted to clean and assemble the skeleton of the bull Gonzo. Of the five bulls Johnjay had stampeded from the cliff's edge almost a year before, Gonzo's skeleton had the least broken bones. Reg would die—some day. Then the bullhands would have nothing but May's pictures, Gonzo's skeleton, and their memories to pass down to their children.
Little Will smacked her bullhook against her leg and continued downhill until she came to the edge of the grove. Once into the shade, she noticed a figure in bullhand's robe seated by Great Waxy's grave marker.
"Dot?"
The figure turned toward her, then opened her mouth in an almost toothless grin. "Little Will? Come closer. It is you."
Little Will walked more deeply into the grove and stopped next to the old woman. "You're not well, Dot. You should be in bed."
Great Dot shook her head as she reached out a shaking hand to pluck weeds from her husband's grave. "I won't get any sicker being here. Besides the fresh air and sun's probably good for my bones." She glanced back at Little Will. "Dorthidear'll be back to haul me to my bed in a couple of hours. Can't reason with that girl."
"She has more sense than you." Little Will sat next to the old woman. She looked across Waxy's grave and saw the fresh-turned soil that covered Shiner Pete. New blades of lowgrass were already springing from it. The paint on the wooden marker at one end of the grave was already beginning to crack. Its words read: Shiner Pete Adnelli, Master of the Miira Harnessmen, Born June 16th, 2135; Died Winter 20th, YSC 32nd. Little Will felt Dot's hand on her arm.
"Child, child. Don't worry. Dusty has the rock for the headstones quarried. He promised to begin very soon."
Little Will smiled and shook her head. "That isn't it. I just can't believe Shiner Pete's gone. He was so young."
Dot withdrew her hand and resumed plucking away at the weeds. "Child, did you and Shiner talk much?"
"Of course." Little Will shrugged. "Well, we used to talk. Before Johnjay's trunk was put on the lot. Not much since then, I guess."
The old woman nodded, then sat up and rested her hands in her lap. "He would come to me and talk."
"You?"
"I was his stepmother."
"What would he say to you that he couldn't say to me?"
Great Dot leaned forward and straightened her husband's weathered grave marker. The letters were illegible. "Losing Johnjay ate out Shiner Pete's heart, Little Will. That's what killed him. The fall from the horse was his excuse."
"He didn't want to live? I don't believe that."
Dot shook her head and laughed—a laugh of sympathy, not of scorn. "Child, at times you're as thick as your old man was. I can't count the number of women in the old show that would've married that man in a second. But he just didn't know. Didn't even imagine that anyone but the Lion Lady could love him."
"You?"
Dot shook her head. "No. Not me. I had my bull." She looked at Little Will. "Do you remember Siren Sally?"
"No. The name, but I can't remember her face,"
"She was one." Dot looked across the clearing at an overgrown pile of rocks that served as a grave marker for the original troupers buried in the trench cut by Number Three. Beneath that pile was Bullhook Willy. "Maybe I was one. I can't really remember." She looked back at Little Will. "From the day Shiner Pete saw Johnjay's trunk put on the lot, he was a dying man. It just took him a while and a fall to make him lie down."
Little Will shook her head as the tears began to fall from her cheeks. "I had to do what I did. Johnjay killed the bulls!"
Dot nodded, then gestured with her head up the hill toward the kraal. "I know what bulls mean, Little Will. I pushed bull long before you were born. I was there when Bullhook Willy got his name with the old show. But Johnjay was more important to Shiner Pete. He didn't have anything else."
"He had me."
"Did he?" Dot studied Little Will.
Little Will stared for a moment at her husband's grave, then she closed her eyes. "I thought... I thought he did." She slowly shook her head. "I don't know. I just don't know." Dot lifted her arm and put it around Little Will's shoulders, drawing Little Will's head against her breast. "Dot, I shut him out. I felt he blamed me, and I shut him out!"
Dot stroked Little Will's hair. "Honey, now listen to me. You were right in what you did. Shiner Pete was right in how he felt, but you were right in what you did."
"Was I wrong when I asked the town today to let me bring Johnjay back?"