"Shut up, Jack, y'damned pup," Jed said crossly; at a guess, he was afraid his subordinate would lower prices by prattling about how much they'd gained. "You run your mouth too much."
In friendly wise he went on: "That's a nice one you picked up there, Mr. Vogeler. Lively in the bedroll? She's quite a looker, yes indeed. How much did you pay for her? Get her from someone heading home?"
"That's right. Don't know what she's like in the sack," Ingolf said casually. "Yeah, she's easy on the eyes, but she's also a good weaver, cloth and rugs both, and a cheesemaker, which is what I was looking for. Refugee ass… slave, you folks say… is cheap and looks don't last, but good cheddar cheese or cloth always fetches a price. We paid forty-five dollars for her, cash money-weighed out silver, that's easier than coin for big purchases."
He could see the Rancher mentally adding half again to that. Odard spoke up, making a sweeping gesture at the same time:
"She will go to the tipis of my people. I have spoken. Ugh."
Jesus, don't play it too heavy, Ingolf thought, but the Cutter leader nodded. OK, a lot of Sioux do talk like that. 'Cause they think people expect it, I suppose.
"As you please, Chief," Smith said. "The Dictations say a man may do as he wants with his own within the law, right? C'mon, then, you Newcastle men, and you, Chief Good Lance. Plenty of room for lodgings and I hope you'll do fine business here."
He grinned; combined with the mutilated nose and the straggly beard, it looked fairly alarming as he went on:
" We surely did!"
Picabo had been a little farming and tourist hamlet before the Change. The Mormons had walled it in, and added more buildings-settlements within a defensive perimeter were always as crowded as people could bear, to keep the length of rampart that had to be held as short as possible. Most of the buildings were homes, thick whitewashed adobe on the first story, white-painted frame covered in clapboards above, with steep-pitched shingle roofs.
Rudi noticed that they'd also added the sort of touches Mackenzies would, if more tidy and less flamboyant-window boxes and plantings of flowers, trees and bushes along the streets, a small playground with slides and swings, buildings that would have been their church and school. The village had piped water from a tank on salvaged metal legs with a whirring wind-pump atop it, but irrigation channels also tinkled pleasantly in stone-lined ditches on either side of the streets, to water the fruit and blossoms and herbs. None of the white farmhouses or workshops had burned down…
"Nothing got torched when you took it?" Rudi asked one of the Cutters.
The man riding next to the Mackenzie chieftain was about his own age or a few years younger; it was hard to tell exactly, with the weathering of their harsh climate making them all look older to eyes reared in the gentle Willamette country. Not many of the Cutters were over thirty, and half were in their teens. This one had shaggy black hair, a wispy young beard, green eyes and a missing front tooth; he cackled laughter at the question.
Jack, Rudi thought, remembering his name.
"Nope, we didn't fire a single lit-up arrow," the young plainsman said boastfully.
Even a modest wall with a fighting platform behind it could give defenders a big advantage. Picabo's had a roofed hoarding as well. If you didn't have a modern siege train, the quickest and easiest way to storm a defended town was to shoot fire arrows over the wall into the roofs and then rush the defenses while folk turned aside to fight the fire, as they must. And there was no sign of any siege equipment more sophisticated than a lariat or improvised ladder among this band of CUT levies.
"That must have taken some doing," Rudi prompted. And you like to talk, Jack, he added coldly to himself.
Jack laughed and slapped his thigh; a couple of his friends chuckled too, although a few of the older men rolled their eyes at his chatter.
"It was dead easy, friend!"
"How did you get over the wall, then?" Rudi went on.
A caravan guard was the next thing to a soldier, and the question was natural.
"That's Uncle Jed for you," Jack laughed gleefully. "Said we could get ashes and dead bones at home without the bother of fightin' for 'em, 'cause all we had to do there was ride on down to Billings and look at the ruins. So we druv a bunch of these Mormons we'd caught a bit south of here right up to the gate ahead of us, making like they was coming here for sanctuary."
Jed had been listening. He looked over his shoulder now with a slight feral smile:
"They really had been coming here for sanctuary. Which made it more convincing, you know what I mean?"
Rudi nodded soberly. He didn't like Jed Smith, but the man was no fool, unlike his nephew. The younger man went on:
"We had our men mixed in among 'em in the same clothes and their blades hid."
"They opened the gate without making sure?" Rudi said, a little surprised they'd fallen for the old trick.
"The rest of us hung back a little, whoopin' and shooting arrows and makin' like we was chasing them. We'd kept their kids so they'd play along, and they all yelled out to hurry up so's they could get inside before we caught 'em. By the time the ones inside this Peekaboo place knew the score, the gate was already open and we had a wagon full of rocks halfway through. With the wheels ready to be knocked off, so they couldn't drag it away, and then they couldn't shoot us without hit-tin' their own folks."
"That was clever work." Rudi looked around, counting households and multiplying, then subtracting because Mormon women rarely bore arms. "But there would have been hard fighting still. They should have had… what, sixty or seventy men under arms? You've a deal less than that, I see."
Jed Smith looked back at them, silently at first this time; his brows were up, and there was a wary respect in them. Rudi swore inwardly. The last thing you wanted an enemy to do was respect your wits. The older man spoke after a moment's considering stare:
"Maybe there was sixty or seventy fighting men here before the war, that would fit with how many women and kids. But I've lost more men from Rippling Waters Ranch in the past three-four years than I like, and we won. I figured it had to be a lot worse for them, and I was right. And they were surprised, and we had more men then-two other bunches were with us. It weren't no fair fight, which is the way I like it, youngster."
"I kilt three of their fighting men myself," the one called Jack said.
"In your dreams, maybe, Jack," another of the Cutters said. "Unless every arrow you shot off was guided by the Masters, personal-like, and since one nearly hit me in the butt cheek I sorta doubt that."
"Well, I kilt one for sure, Lin, which is more than you can say." To Rudi: "Uncle Jed says they thought all our troops were still down south along the Snake."
"And you took no losses?"
"Naw. Well, they killed Kennie. He got a spear in the gizzard while we were rushing the gate, he was an old guy, nearly forty, slooooow, and he never did learn to keep his shield up under his eyes, them geezers are like that."
"Watch your mouth, pup," Jed said. "I ain't going to see thirty again neither, and I can still whip you any day of the week and twice on Sundays."
"Sorry, Uncle Jed. And Dave, my second cousin Dave Throsson, not Big Dave Johnson who got killed at Wendell, he took an arrow in the leg, but we fixed him up good and poured whiskey in it so's it hasn't gone bad so far, and Tom Skinner got his ribs stove something terrible when he got pushed out of a window by this gal he was chasing-Lord-"
Jed Smith looked over at him with a cold eye. Jack cleared his throat and corrected himself: