Jenson turned in the saddle and extended a finger into the skinny youngster's face.
"George, it's a free country and you can take up that half-baked stuff if you want, but if you feel like preaching, you do it on your own time, understand? And not on my land. I'm the Rancher here on the Circle D, and I happen to be a Presbyterian, which I'll thank you to remember."
"All right."
" What did you say, boy?" he barked, raising his quirt. "Let me hear that again."
"Yes, sir, Rancher Jenson, sir," he added sullenly.
"That's better. Now apologize to the lady."
The young man stared at the horizon. After an instant he ground out: "Sorry, ma'am."
Jenson nodded. "You get on to Pendleton and see about those horseshoes I ordered. Git."
He turned back to BD, ignoring one of the older hands cuffing the young man on the back of the head and muttering a curse.
"Sorry, BD. We've had some odd preachers coming through past couple of years. George there never did learn to look in a horse's mouth before he bought it."
"Hell, Sandy, if he can get excited about my flauntingly shameless old legs, and in these saggy-assed pants at that, either the boy's not getting enough or I'm really flattered."
The Rancher relaxed with a grin, and several of his men laughed; George flushed under his tan and hunched in the saddle, turning his mount and flicking the end of his long reins to either side. The quarter horse took off in a spurt of gravel.
"Did you hear anything about an invasion, BD?" his employer said.
"Not offhand, but I've been on the road for weeks; I'm out of Bend this time. It doesn't sound very sensible to me, though. Nobody's bothered you all this time, why start now? And usually the Meeting can't agree on the right time of day for dinner, much less invading hither and yon. What would be the point? To steal your oh-so-rare and valuable wheat?"
Actually, I got off the railway in the Dalles only three days ago, she thought. Special express pedalcars. And for once the Meeting did agree on something, and without talking about it forever plus three days, either.
None of that showed on her face; a trader and a Priestess both had to learn self-control.
Jenson took off his helmet, which had a llama-hair crest, and scratched at his scalp.
"Nothing personal, but from what I remember and what Dad said, you people left us to rot back when, with everyone against his neighbor and gangs of refugees from the cities and whatnot," he said.
"Hard times all over, the first year or two," BD said shortly.
And a hell of a lot harder for me than you, Sandy, she added behind a calm face.
At 6:15 P.M. Pacific Time, March 17, 1998, BD had been driving southbound on I-5 in Portland, a mile and a half north of the Terwilliger exit, and she'd been pushing forty. Jenson had been a child, and a child on a ranch with more cows than people, far enough from the cities that they had enough food to take others in, rather than fighting over scraps or shivering with cholera as they lay dying in a ditch.
More than half the human race had died in the year after the Change; in North America it had been closer to nine-tenths. But this area probably had more people now than it had then-certainly it did outside the city of Pendleton proper.
Jenson went on: "Then that son-of-a-bitch Arminger comes and tells us he's going to pacify the place, which meant handing the ranches out to his cronies here and his gangbanger thugs from Portland. I do remember that. Then you make his troops leave and we had another round of fighting. Thank God that Bossman Carl finally got things under control."
BD restrained herself from arguing with the spin he put on the past twenty-two years of local affairs; getting into a political dispute was never good business… particularly if you were spying. Though Bossman Carl Peters wasn't as bad as he might have been-for one thing, nobody could exert enough control here to be a real tyrant.
"Look, Sandy, can I do business here or not? I've got my expenses to meet, you know. If I have to turn around and go home, the sooner I find out the better. And I'd appreciate a letter from you telling me to go home, so I can claim act-of-the-Gods and not have to pay nondelivery penalties to the shipper."
Jenson looked harassed. "Hell, BD, I know you… but you are from Meeting territory and… well, you've got armed guards with you."
"Well, by the Gods, I should hope I do!" she said, letting a little temper show. "You know as well as I do how many Rovers and road people and just plain old-fashioned bandit scum are running around between here and the Cascades. I travel with this many guards in CORA territory, too, when I've got valuable cargo-and I don't do bulk freight."
At his bristle, she went on: "Come round and look at my load and then tell me if I'm hostile to Pendleton, Sandy. Yeah, and those pikemen are from the Bossman's townee militia, aren't they? Have one of them over too."
He dismounted-a bit of a concession, since interior ranchers and their followers generally saddled up even if they were just going from their front doors to the outhouse. The townsman in the steel-strapped leather breastplate and kettle helmet came over as well; his round dark face was frankly hostile, and his little black mustache twitched.
Both their faces changed when she pulled out a claw hammer and opened the first of the flat crates that made up half her cargo. The lid came up with a screech of nails, and…
"Jesus!" the Rancher said, taking up one of the swords and giving a few expert cuts that made the cloven air whine. "Now, that's the real goods!"
"Yeah, I'm delivering them to Murdoch and Sons, on consignment from Bend," she said. "See the Isherman stamp on the boxes?"
The WSIS -for Weapons Shop of Isherman and Sons-was branded into the cheap pine boards.
She waved an envelope. "All the paperwork's in order. Now, if I was a spy for someone trying to attack you, would I bring weapons in that your Bossman can buy?" she said reasonably.
I might, just to disarm-snork, snork-your suspicions, she thought. And there aren't enough in these wagons to make much difference to an actual war. It's not as if I'm hauling in a battery of field artillery, after all. You guys are short of that stuff.
"And the barrels have mail-shirts, by the way," she went on. "Good light stainless steel with riveted links, none better, in the usual assortment of sizes. Plus helmets… it's all in the invoices."
Even the militia officer was impressed; Pendleton had never developed the sort of semi-mechanized arms shops that were common farther west, where water power was easier to come by. Mail-shirts were expensive everywhere, but more so here.
"The Bossman will be interested," the militiaman said. He extended a hand. "Captain da Costa, Carlos da Costa."
"Beatriz Dorothea," she said. "But everyone calls me BD."
BD shook with a firm squeeze and met his eyes squarely-also tricks of the trade. She'd heard of him, if not met him before; his family had a tannery and saddle-and-harness-making workshop. She told him:
"Tell Bossman Carl to talk to Murdoch; I'm just hauling this stuff for a fee plus commission."
Then she hesitated, as if making a painful calculation. "If you need some yourself, Sandy, I suppose…"
The Rancher looked tempted; a landholder out here always had to be ready to skirmish with his neighbors and outfitting his cowboys well was important in keeping them loyal. Under the militia officer's eye he shook his head.
"No, thanks. I can afford what we need, and we make most of our own gear on the ranch anyhow. But you're doing us all a good turn, BD, and I appreciate it. Want to stay the night at the ranch house and have a steak dinner, and huevos rancheros and a shower before you head in tomorrow?"
He looked hopeful. Without any prying eyes but his own sworn men he might well "accept" a gift she could write off as a cost of doing business. BD caught his eyes and let hers slide a little towards the militiaman; that would be excuse enough. And…