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…
Well, Sandy's not exactly a guest-friend, she thought. That was a sacred bond. But I have eaten his bread and salt beneath his roof. I'd rather not do it again when I'm here with… well, sort of hostile intent. It's for their own good, really… but that won't help Sandy or any of his people who get in the way of an Associate's lance or a Mackenzie arrow or a Bearkiller backsword.
"I think I should head straight in, with this cargo," she said. "But I'd appreciate it if I could send the wagons and teams right out again and keep them on the Circle D for a little while. Prices at Pendleton livery stables inside the wall are atrocious."
"Fine, and stay as long as you want coming out," Jenson said generously.
"I'll get a permit!" Captain da Costa said. "You're right, Dona Dorothea, a load this important should go right into town! Just you wait there and I'll fetch the paperwork-"
The last was said over his shoulder as he walked back towards the barricade.
"Who's he?" Jenson asked idly, sighing regretfully.
He jerked his head at the man sitting beside the driver of the second wagon, a great hulking hunched figure with a shock of shiny-black hair.
"Oh, that's my cousin Hugh," BD said. "He's simple, but there's no harm in him, and he's certainly useful to have around when there's heavy lifting to be done. Those boxes weigh a fair bit."
At the Hugh the big man gave a vacant grin and wiped his nose on the back of his hand; there was a thread of drool slowly making its way down from the corner of his thick-lipped mouth.
"Here, Hugh!" BD said in an admonishing voice.
She handed him a handkerchief and he made a stammering cluck and used it, clumsily.
Captain da Costa returned with his form; behind him his men pushed in careful grunting unison, and the barricade rumbled aside.
"Just show this at the gate, Dona."
"And the Bossman is putting on a 'do' tomorrow night," Jenson said. "All the Ranchers and town bigwigs… Hey, why don't you come? Murdoch will be there, too."
Da Costa nodded vigorously again. "You're a public benefactor, Dona," he said. "I'm sure Bossman Carl would be delighted to see you."
"I'll be there," BD said. But he may not be delighted about it at all.
Seven miles was more than an hour's travel at preserve-the-horses wagon speeds. That gave her enough time to take in the surroundings thoroughly without making it obvious.
"Oh, my, oh, my," BD murmured, as they passed the ruins of the old State Hospital and swung south. "Ares is on hand."
There were tented camps outside Pendleton; most of them were sited so they weren't in view from I-84, but she could catch glimpses of them. Most of them were the casual affairs a Rancher and his retainers would make when they were away from home, remarkable only because there were so many. But it was getting on for sundown. Campfires showed there in the rising ground south of town, adding to the smoke-and-outhouse scent of the town in general; and some of them were suspiciously regular, laid out in neat rows, or in one case a complex system of interlocking triangles.
Pity I can't Use my binoculars, she thought. But that would be a big I AM A SPY sign.
She laughed a little sadly as they turned north on an overpass still labeled Exit 209 in faded, peeling paint, where the old John Day highway had approached town. Around them was the usual messy sadness of ruined suburbs that surrounded most still-inhabited towns; burnt-out houses or buildings torn down for their materials, truck gardens and livery stables and smelly tanyards and plain weed-grown wreck with bits of charred wood or rusty rebar poking up through it.
"Tia Loba?" her nephew-guardsman asked.
"Chucho, that underpass over there used to dump cars onto Frazier, because Emigrant was one-way."
His dark young face looked puzzled, and he pushed up the brim of his helmet to scratch with gloved fingers.
"You could enchant a road so that it only went one way in the old days?" he asked. "You are pulling the leg of me, Tia. Flying I believe, the pictures that moved I believe, but not that."
"Changelings!" she muttered with a shrug.
"Oh-ho," the man who was not BD's simple cousin Hugh said.
Traffic had thickened as they approached the gate, and slowed. Now the reasons were obvious. Chucho dropped back tactfully; he knew that "Hugh" was not as he seemed, and had carefully avoided learning any more.
Pendleton had been divided by the Umatilla River before the Change. Afterwards it had shrunk, in fighting and chaos and as people dispersed to the surrounding farms and ranches, but there had been no total collapse. Now it had four or five thousand people, in a rectangle on the south side of the river perhaps two-thirds of a mile long and a third wide. The inhabitants had built a wall with towers, out of concrete and rubble and rock around a core of salvaged girders; so much was unremarkable, although the construction was more recent and cruder than many, with rust-pitted iron showing on the surface.
What the pseudo-Hugh was looking at was a cluster of men examining the gate and its heavy valves of metal-sheathed timber.
BD had never seen the gear they wore, but she'd heard of it, and seen sketches by agents and far-traveling merchants. Armor of steel hoops and bands to protect the torso and shoulders, fastened with a complex set of brass latches; high boots; rounded helmets with neck-flares and hinged cheek-pieces and short cap-bill pieces over the eyes. All of them carried broad short stabbing swords, worn high on the right side of their belts… except for the man with a transverse crest on his helmet, who had his on his left hip. He also bore a swagger-stick or truncheon of twisted vinestock, tapping the end into his left palm. Closer and BD could see that he had a red kerchief tucked into the neck of his armor.