Maybe we should have headed south through Nevada and tried the mountains there!
The creek was about a mile away, flowing from west to east and flanked by a narrow band of fields watered through irrigation channels. Most of them were dun yellow reaped grain with dust smoking off the stubble at this time of year, but the alfalfa was so deep a green that it seemed to hum, and there were fields of potatoes and apple orchards as well. Split-rail fences marked off the cultivated land, an island in a huge rolling wilderness of lava beds and gritty sagebrush-dotted soil southward, mountains to the north.
The settlement wasn't large, no bigger than a Mackenzie dun, room for twenty or thirty families if they didn't mind living tight. It had a well-kept fifteen-foot rammed-earth wall on a fieldstone base, topped with a sloping roof of timber and sheet metal, with one square tower beside a gate. Barns and sheds, corrals and vegetable gardens lay outside, but nothing higher than a man's knee rose within bowshot of the wall. The gate was open, and there were animals and people and wagons milling around before it, and herds of horses under the eye of mounted cowboys moving across pasture and stubble to the north and west.
"Get me Nystrup," he said softly, lowering his binoculars and tapping them thoughtfully on the red-gold stubble on his chin. "I don't like this. There's something wrong."
Ritva nodded. "Not enough people working. Too many horses. And where are their herds? And there should be more smoke from inside the town, too-more cookfires and a couple of smithies."
She ghosted away. A sage grouse walked past Rudi a few minutes later, pecking at a grasshopper, and overhead two hummingbirds fought a dive-and-buzz duel like ill-tempered flying jewelry before flitting off towards the river. Some sort of black-and-white insects were a haze over the creek, almost like slow-motion snow; when he brought the glasses back up he could see the silver forms of trout leaping for them now and then. The banks of the stream were green with willows and dense with reeds, and blue herons stalked through them with their beaks cocked. Ducks swam on the waters as well, cinnamon teal and mallards.
It would have been a remarkably pleasant-looking place after weeks of short rations and fear, but…
Nystrup slid into place beside him. "It's one of our settlements," he said without preliminaries. "About two hundred and fifty people, and it was the center for some outlying ranches; the last big thing to happen here was moving a bunch of people up from Pocatello right after the Change, part of our resettlement program. I don't know how it's fared just recently."
A warm breeze stirred across the land, raising dust devils. It fluttered out a flag from the pole atop the gate tower; a many-rayed sunburst, gold on crimson. The banner of the Church Universal and Triumphant. Below it was a smaller triangular flag, with three triangles outlined in white on blue-some Rancher's brand mark, the personal sigil of whoever commanded the CUT's forces here.
"Well, that answers the question as to how they've fared," Rudi said. "Not well. Ritva, keep watch."
His half sister settled in behind a clump of gray-green rabbitbrush, a tall shaggy plant that had clumps of yellow flowers and smelled like a sweaty saddle. She went still beneath her war cloak; even at only a few feet, and knowing where she was, Rudi found her hard to see.
He eeled backwards on his belly until they were well out of sight before standing. Nystrup turned and made an arm signal; by the time they were back at their cold camp most of the Mormon guerillas were there too, leaving only the minimum perimeter of lookouts.
Rudi glanced at Ingolf. The Easterner shook his head. "I passed a lot farther south than this, when I came west. Around Bear Lake."
"We can swing around them," Mary said. "Move south, then back north to cut the road again."
Rudi shook his head in turn. "We're out of food and we haven't been able to hunt much," he said. "I don't know how they've been able to press us so hard… but they have. We've spent more time covering our tracks than running, and we've been running farther north than east."
Silence fell; they were hungry, in the way you could only get when you combined not enough food with working hard. Several of the wounded Mormons had died; the hale members of their band weren't weakened much… yet.
But we don't have much time before we are, Rudi thought unhappily. And the horses are losing condition. I wouldn't like to have to rely on them if we had a running fight, or the enemy were in sight and we had to break contact. We need to get them good grazing and rest.
They might have been able to make more progress if they'd kept all the food they'd had and cut the Mormons loose immediately. On the other hand, that would probably have been bad luck as well as wrong. .. if there was a difference.
Ingolf rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, the cropped beard scritching under his callused fingers. The sight made Rudi's face itch slightly and he consciously stopped himself from imitating the gesture; he hadn't been able to shave for the past week, and the silky stubble was annoying. Plus the hairs came in white along the thin scar on his jaw, making him look ridiculously older than his real not-quite-twenty-three.
"You know, we haven't seen any sheep or cattle or horses around here. But the range has obviously been grazed. Until lately, at least," Ingolf said.
"There's stock in the corrals," Rudi said. "And a lot of horses. Hundred, hundred and thirty."
"That would mean fifty or sixty Cutter levies," Ingolf replied. "The Cutter soldiers are mainly Ranchers, or even Rovers"-which meant nomad, more or less-"not full-time fighters like the Sword of the, umm, false prophet. They get hives if they don't have at least one remount for every fighting man. It makes them feel pinned down."
Nystrup sighed. "We were always being surprised by how fast they could move, and how many men they could throw at us," he acknowledged. "It hurt us, and more than once."
"The Church calls them up to fight when they're needed," Ingolf said. "A ranch isn't like a farm-the old people and kids and women can keep it going pretty well for quite a while, at a pinch. Cowboys can make most of their own war gear, too, and their ordinary work is damned good training to fight."
"Besides the horses there were six or seven hundred sheep, maybe half that number of cattle," Rudi went on.
"Not as much as there should be," Nystrup replied. "I've never been here myself, but from the reports and the taxes they paid and the way it looks, this is good land."
Ingolf made a gesture of agreement. "I'd say what's likely happened is that a couple of ranches' or Rover bands' worth of levies hit the place just recently, on their way home. Some of them have already left with part of the stock. The ones there now plan to loot it bare before they leave-they're shorter on craft-workers than you Saints are and they're always short of tools and so forth likewise. I'd say they're about halfway through the process here in… Peekaboo?"
"Yes," Nystrup said grimly. "We counted on that, their being backwards, too much during the war, and on their absurd superstitions about gears and machinery." He looked at Ingolf shrewdly. "You have an idea?"
"Sort of. We have to know what's going on in there, and if we can get some supplies and fresh horses for your people, Captain. It would take a pitched battle to fight for them, and we're not in shape for a stand-up fight, and they outnumber us. But if we send in some people who can pass for… oh, I don't know, merchants from one of the Plains towns come West to buy up plunder, that sort of thing. There are a few places like that in the Sioux country, tributary to the tribes. Then we could buy what we need. Last I heard, the CUT and the Sioux had made peace."