A small mustache of the type Pendleton men favored was fiery red as well, naturally so judging from his milk-white-and-sunburn complexion. He took the letter and read it through slowly, moving his lips, then went and examined the opened box in the wagon.
"All right!" he said. "Fan-fucking- tastic. Go right on through, ma'am! I'll report this to the Bossman's House. No, you fool," he went on to the clerk. "Weapons imports are duty free for the duration of the emergency."
The Boise centurion looked up from a sketchbook. "Weapons?" he said.
Strolling over he looked into the crate and took one of the swords out. It was a straight longsword in a plain sheath of black leather over wooden battens, with aluminum at chape and lip; he drew the thirty-inch blade and looked down the edge, then hefted it to test the balance.
"Not bad. This is well-made equipment, for its type."
"Yeah, it is," the Bossman's guard said.
He didn't bother to keep the hard note out of his voice. There was a badge on his shoulder that had three intertwined capital R's, but despite the appearance it wasn't a Rancher's brand… exactly. That stood for Registered Refugee Regiment. Technically the man was a Registered Refugee, roughly equivalent to a slave in Pendleton, except that the men of the Regiment belonged to Bossman Carl Peters. Who had either come up with the idea on his own or gotten it out of some book on Middle Eastern history; its members had privileges ordinary freemen could only envy, and were correspondingly unpopular with townsmen and Ranchers both.
They were fanatically loyal to their benefactor and the two hundred of them were a major reason the current incumbent had managed to survive and hold on to power far longer than any previous overlord here.
The young man went on: "And they're for the Bossman. Our Bossman, His Honor Carl Peters. Any problem with that, straight-leg?"
"None at all, Lieutenant, none at all," the centurion said; he didn't seem at all put out by the unflattering term for a regular. "Our leaders are all in alliance to serve America, right?"
Which would have been more tactful if he hadn't used the tone a man would humoring a boy. BD left them talking with strained politeness as they went through into Pendleton proper. It was darker inside the walls; the streets were straight and fairly wide-especially Emigrant, down which they traveled-and the potholes had been repaired with packed gravel or remelted asphalt. But the town had been built up, two-or three-story structures of adobe or salvaged brick and wood frame standing cheek by jowl with others that had been kept unaltered for a century or more to preserve Pendleton's Old-West atmosphere before the Change. And…
"Hugh" was up walking beside her wagon now; his six foot seven was tall enough that they could talk quietly even with her sitting on the driver's seat and him hunched over and lurching. You tended to forget how tall he was until he came close, because he was even broader in proportion, built like an old-time high-rise, square from shoulders to hips.
"Lot of men in town," he said, in a voice with a soft drawling burr.
There were; young men, mostly. Many of them were ordinary cowboys from the ranches of Northeastern Oregon, but some were in uniforms of mottled sage-and-gray cloth, or coarse blue-green. Every second building seemed to house a saloon or eating-house or some combination on its ground floor, or to have been converted to such; the air was thick with the smell of frying onions and grilling meat, and sweat and horse manure and piss and beer and the sour tang of vomit, loud with raucous guitars and pianos and voices singing or shouting. And every building had the Pendleton flag flying, which was unusual.
As the sun dipped below the walls behind them the dark grew thick; Pendleton didn't run to streetlights, even lamps at crossroads like Sutterdown's, much less the sophisticated methane gaslights of Corvallis or Portland. The yellow glow from windows made it possible to steer the wagons without running over anyone… if you were careful of figures collapsed half off the sidewalks.
They came to their destination, a compound taking up half a block, with a discreet MURDOCH AND SONS, IMPORTERS over the main gate and a blank twelve-foot wall all around the perimeter, not quite a fortification, but a real deterrent in the sort of factional squabble the city had had before the current Bossman took over.
The building just before it had a large sign reading WORKING GIRLS' HOTEL, and it was in the ornate stone and terra-cotta style of long ago, a century or more before the Change. Some of the girls were leaning out of the upper windows wearing very little, and shouting invitations that sounded more than usually tired and frazzled. Just as the Plodding Pony wagons passed, a figure catapulted out through the swinging doors and sprawled in the dirt of the street with a thud. He'd come with a boot in the buttocks, and lay for a second sobbing with rage and frustration and the raw whiskey that made his movements vague and tentative.
"Whoa!" BD shouted.
Her not-cousin grabbed at the team's bridles. Together they kept three tons of Conestoga and sixteen hooves from rolling over the prostrate figure.
The man tried to get up again; it was Rancher Jenson's cowboy George. He lay for a moment with horse dung in the fuzzy sheepskin of his chaps, and then rolled aside to dodge the saddle, saddlebags, bedroll, quiver and cased recurve bow that were tossed after him. He clumsily scooped the arrows back into the quiver and used the saddle to push himself partially erect.
"I want my money back!" he screamed from one knee, fumbling at his belt for his shete. "And my horse!"
A thick-set woman in a sequined dress came to the doors and leaned out. A massively built man loomed behind her, a classic whorehouse bully in a tight crimson shirt and expensive blue jeans, belt with a silver-and-turquoise buckle and tooled boots with fretted steel toe caps, his eyes flatly impassive and an iron rod in one fist. He pointed with it, and the cowboy let the hilt of his blade go. It was the woman who spoke, in a harsh raw voice:
"Kid, at your age if you can't get it going after twenty minutes with the Buffalo Heifer, you need a doctor, not a whore."
There were grins and laughter up and down the street as she went on: "And you didn't have enough money to pay for what you gambled anyway. Be thankful we didn't keep the rest of your gear for kickin' up a fuss. Next time leave the sheep alone for a while before you come into town, rube."
The young cowboy staggered on past, the saddle flung over one shoulder. BD caught his gaze for an instant; it was sick with an unfocused rage that must be eating at his soul like acid, and she winced slightly in unwilling sympathy.
And some of the strangers were looking around them entirely too alertly for soldiers whooping it up before action. The crawling sensation between her shoulder blades didn't go away until they'd swung the wagon train into Murdoch's courtyard.
"Welcome, BD!" Murdoch said.
He was a middle-aged balding man, heavyset in a way rare nowadays, with thick brown muttonchop whiskers whose luxuriant curls compensated for his bald spot. He also wore what Pendleton currently regarded as a respectable businessman's evening dress-a good imitation of pre-Change copper-riveted Levi's tucked into tooled boots with pointed toes, fancy belt with ceremonial bowie knife, ruffled white shirt, floppy string tie, a cutaway tailcoat in good brown homespun, and a waistcoat embroidered in gold thread, with a watch and chain as well. The formal felt Stetson with its band of silver conchos was in his hands, and he looked as if he was not crushing it with an effort of will.
"Good to see you, BD, good to see you," he burbled. "Let's get the cargo into place!"
Grooms had led the teams away. Workers appeared and began unloading the wagons, and a steward led the Plodding Pony employees to a bunkhouse. BD stopped her chief guard with a hand on the arm.