“Hell, it ain’t me or mine, mister. You want a peaceful crossing, you better just head twenny mile east or twelve mile nor’west, ’cause that fort yonder, she covers the only decent ford atween them, and them bugtits down there on them walls’ll start picking you off four, five hunnert yards away,”
Milo frowned. “They still have guns, then?”
“Damn right they has! And they knows how to shoot them and they purely hates ever living critter on earth … ’cepting maybe theyselfs.”
Milo did not doubt the stranger’s assertions as regarded the other strangers down by the river ford. There was more reason to believe than to doubt, in this case, for he had experienced many times in the last century groups and individuals who were plainly homicidal for no apparent reason.
The brief, savage nuclear exchange which its survivors had called a war had directly caused very few deaths or physical injuries among the hundreds of millions of human beings then on the North American continent; most of the calamitous losses of life had occurred weeks or months after the last missiles had struck target and had been the result of starvation, various diseases and fighting among the survivors themselves. In many cases, those who had survived to the present day were the direct descendants of men and women who had withdrawn to secure or secluded places and defended those places with deadly force against all would-be intruders. The children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren had imbibed such sentiments as “Death to all strangers” with their mothers’ milk and now could not be hoped or expected to behave other than as the rabid killers Gus Scott had described.
The encampment of the warbands was situated in a fold of ground cupping a small tributary to the river, which just there widened to the dimensions of a modest lake and lay a half hour’s easy ride from the farthest fields and pasturelands of the riverside settlement and fort. Gus Scott’s was the only one that included women, children, wagons and herds; it also was the largest contingent of warriors. All of the other chiefs had brought along just male fighters, spare mounts and a few head of rations-on-the-hoof. Lacking tents, these bachelor warriors slept in the open in good weather and in soddies—circular pits some eight to twelve feet in diameter and three to four feet deep, with rough blocks of sun-dried sods stacked in layers around the rim to bring the interior height to an average of five feet, then roofed over with poles, green hides and finally more sod blocks—on wet nights.
It was in an open space between the Scott encampment and the bachelor camp that Milo, Chief Gaib Hwyt and the other six chiefs sat or squatted in initial council with the chiefs and headmen of the various warbands.
Chef Jules LeBonne’s French—which he spoke in asides to his own cronies, never for a moment dreaming that Milo could not only understand almost every spoken word but could fill in those he did not comprehend by means of telepathic mind-reading abilities—was every bit as crude and ungrammatical as was his English. He was a squat, solid and powerful-looking man and seemed to have no neck worthy of the name; his head was somewhat oversized for his body, and the face that peered from beneath the helmet’s visorless rim was lumpy, scarred and filthy, nor had his basic ugliness been at all improved by an empty right eyesocket, a nearly flattened nose and the loss of most of his front teeth. He and his followers all stank abominably, and Milo doubted that any one of them had had anything approaching a bath or a wash since the last time they had been caught out in a rainstorm or had had to swim a river.
He lisped and threw globules of spittle when he talked in any language. “You mus’ unnerstan’, M’sieu Moray, thees we here mean to do, un affaire d’ honneur ees, also too, ees to rid thees prairie of a always dangereux. Comprez vous?”
Gus Scott, who seemed to be of at the very least equal rank and importance to LeBonne, amended, “Mr. Moray, Jules and his folks tawks Frainch so damn much ever day that he don’t alius tawk Ainglish too pert. Whut he’s trying to say is that that bunch of murderers over to the ford, they done owed us all a powerful blood debt more’n thutty year, now. And we all of us means to colleck in full, this time ’round, we does!”
“I take it that more than a few instances of long-range snipings are involved in this vendetta, then, Mr. Scott?” Milo inquired.
“You fucking right it’s more, mister!” Scott replied with vehemence. “Bit over thutty years agone, was a real bad winter—I mean to tell you a real bad winter, mister! Won’t no game here ’bouts a-tall, I hear tell, and the wolfs was all sumthin’ fierce and all a-runnin’ in bigger packs than anybody’d ever seed afore. Spring come in real late, too, that year, and the floods was plumb awful, whut with the extra-deep snows and thick ice and all.
“By the time folks got to where they could move around some, all of the older folks was all dead and the most of the littler kids and babies, too. Them critters what the wolfs hadn’t got had done been butchered and et for lack of game, so that it wasn’t no feller had more nor one hoss left and a lot what didn’t even have that one. Some pore souls had been so hard put to it they’d had to eat their own dead kin-folks, just to keep alive theyselfs.”
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Chef Jules LeBonne cackled a peal of maniacal-sounding laughter, which was echoed by his cronies. A brief scan of the chief’s surface thoughts shook Milo and left him more than a little disturbed, but Scott had ignored the laughter and still was recounting the horrors of thirty-odd years before.
“… come late spring and some dry weather, everybody was in some kinda real bad shape, you better believe, mister. Everybody, that is, except them murdering bastards over to the ford. Sassy and pert they all was; even their critters was all sleek. So, anyhow, the grandfolks, afore of us, they all went over to there and they asked just as nice and perlite as you please for them selfish, murdering bastards to help us all out some. You know, give us some eatments and enough of their stock for to start our own herds up again.
“Well, them bastards, they th’owed our chiefs out’n their fort, they did, mister. But them old boys might’ve been starving, but they still had their pride left and they rode at that fort, three, four, five times over, till it won’t enough mens and hosses left to do it no more.”
Scott paused and tugged at a greasy rawhide thong looped about his sinewy neck, then pulled up from beneath his shirt a bit of metal. Flattish it was, almost two inches across, two of its three edges rough and jagged-appearing, for all that all edges and surfaces were pitted with oxidation and shiny with the patina of years.
Milo instantly recognized the thing, knew what it once had been—shrapnel, a piece of shell casing—and he could not repress a shudder, for he had hoped that that particular horror of warfare, at least, was long years gone from a suffering world.
Scott resumed his heated narrative. “This here thing, it pierced my grandpa’s pore laig, right at the same time that some suthin tore the whole front end off of his hoss. My pa and his brother, they dragged grandpa away then, and they said that was the onliest reason any of them lived to tell ’bout it all, too. ’Cause after them dirty, selfish murderers had done shot or burned or tore into pieces all them pore mens, they come out’n that there fort with rifles and great big guns and I don’t know whatall. Some was on horses, but most was on or in big old steel wagons what my grandpa used to call ’tanks’ a-shooting faster than you could blink your eyes and throwing out sheets of fire a hunnert feet long.
“Them bloodthirsty bastards, they kept after them pore folks for twenny mile and more. They kilt every man they could and then just left their bodies a-laying out for the coyotes and wolfs and foxes and buzzards, they did.
“And ever sincet then, their riders has done kilt or tried like hell for to kill every man they come on anywheres near here. For more nor thutty year, they done been killing for no damn reason, mister. We tried to put a stop to it, too, not that it got us all anything, ’cepting for dead relatives and friends and hosses.