The man in the robe the color of dried blood shrugged and nodded, smiling.
"Shit, shit! " Ingolf Vogeler said. "We can't stop, not here. It's bare as a politician's lie!"
Mathilda looked at him wide-eyed. "He… those arrows have to come out. He's badly hurt. But-"
Father Ignatius nodded without turning as his fingers worked. Ingolf looked around; the Mormons were getting ready to leave, turning north into the mountains or southward to the Snake River sagelands. Edain Mackenzie sat by Rudi, elbows on knees and face buried in his hands, his dog pressed against him and whining softly as she stared up into his face.
Epona was a little distance off, giving soft snorts of equine distress. He'd thought for a moment he'd have to kill the mare before she'd let them pull Rudi off her back.
"I'm sorry," Nystrup said, at his own horse's head. "You've done well by us, but I have to get my people out of here. We'll scatter, and that will draw some of them away."
"Not if their scouts are as good as I'm afraid," Ingolf said, beating his right fist into his left palm. "Shit!"
Nystrup winced. "Goodbye… and we'll pray for him. For you all."
Ingolf took a deep breath as the guerilla leader mounted and legged his horse southward; the others were looking at him anxiously, and you had to show willing. Nothing broke men's morale faster than the leader showing the flibbertigibbets.
The problem is that if this had happened during the Sioux War and he was one of my troopers, I'd give Rudi the mercy stroke and we'd run like hell to save the rest of the outfit, he thought. Not exactly an option here!
"Father Ignatius?" he said.
The cleric finished his examination. "I don't know how much damage the arrow in the shoulder did, but moving him will make it worse. The one in the small of the back is a more immediate danger. The point turned when it broke the mail-links. It is lodged at a slant and it is far too close to the liver and to several large blood vessels; motion may work it inward. And four ribs were broken, and there's soft-tissue damage. But if I operate now, he cannot be moved at all for some time or there will certainly be fatal bleeding."
"He'll certainly die if we stay here until the Cutters arrive," Mathilda said; her face was drawn, but her mouth was firm and her brown eyes level. "Their guardsmen, the…"
"Sword of the Prophet," Odard said neutrally; he was watching Rudi with an unreadable expression in his narrow blue eyes.
"The Sword of the Prophet, they'll be slow, from the state their horses were in. But the other one, this Rancher Smith could come after us quickly."
"If he wants to," Ingolf said. "He doesn't know we've split up. If he did want to chase us, he'd be here already. But someone will come after us, and sometime from the next fifteen minutes to the next couple of days."
"We could move a little north and find a place to hole up, then tend Rudi," Odard said. "I don't like to risk moving him more than absolutely necessary."
Mathilda nodded anxiously, and clasped his hand where he rested it for a moment on her shoulder.
Ingolf looked around, drawing on the maps in his head. They were several days out of Picabo-call it a bit over a hundred miles eastward as the crow flew. The mountains had been closing in from the north for a while, but there was still open country to the east north of Idaho Falls. It would be crawling with Cutter patrols… but probably with Mormon guerillas, too, and if they could "No, we're going to head east, fast," he said. "This is too close, too easy to saturate with men once they get organized. We've got to break contact. The only part of Wyoming the CUT doesn't really control is thataway. And the mountains start well west of the old state line. We'll have to chance it. When we get to the mountains, we can tend to Rudi."
They all looked at him, then at the wounded man, and most of them looked westward as well.
"Cross-country," Mary-or Ritva…
No, that's…
"Right, Mary."
Her troubled face gave a brief flash of pleasure as he used the right name.
"You and your sister are going to have to cover our backtrail."
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER NINE
"And I though our political speeches were dull," BD said quietly. "Shhhh!" Murdoch said.
They'd gone on for hours, in the great oval amphitheatre where the yearly Round-Up was held. At least they were over, and the VIPs and their families had shifted into the Bossman's house with the coming of sunset. She could hear the fiesta for the commons going on outside, a surf-roar of music and voices in the distance.
The Bossman's residence was a compound rather than a single building, out at the northwestern corner of town at the edge of the river and surrounded by its own strong wall. Within were barracks and storehouses and workshops, as well as the patios and gardens around the actual house, a rambling two-story structure with a red-tile roof and arches upholding balconies with wrought-iron grills. Strong yellow light spilled through the tall windows of the house, and torches on the pillars and walls round about lit the brilliantly clad couples, the servants in their white jackets and bow ties, and the charro costumes of the mariachi bands who moved about.
Long tables were set out buffet-style, with chefs in white hats waiting to carve the roasts and hams; whole yearling steers and pigs and lamb roasted over firepits behind them, the attendants slathering them with fiery sauce wielding their long-handled brushes like the forks of devils in the Christian hell. The rich scent of roasting meat drifted on the air, and the little spurts of blue smoke rose in the lantern light.
Interesting assortment of costumes and uniforms, BD thought, accepting a glass of wine.
She wasn't wearing a peplos tonight; no point in hanging out a notice. Instead she'd opted for a long denim skirt embroidered with geometric patterns around the hem, jacket, belt with silver-and-turquoise conchos and tooled-leather boots… what a Rancher's wife or mother would probably wear here. The owners of the big herding spreads were the most numerous element, many of them getting a little boisterous as they talked about what they'd do to any invaders of the sacred soil of Pendleton; those that weren't feuding with one another, of course.
When the hour came, her job would be to stick close to Bossman Peters. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and with the beginning of a paunch straining at the buttons of his embroidered waistcoat. His dark brown hair was thinning on top, and his bushy muttonchop whiskers were going gray, but his laugh boomed hearty, and the little eyes were shrewd.
Estrellita Peters was beside her husband, in an indigo dress with a belt of sequins, and ivory-and-turquoise combs in her high-piled raven hair. She was seven or eight years younger than her husband's mid-forties, slight and dark with a face like a ferret, albeit a pretty and extremely cunning one. Rumor said that she was rather more than half the political brains of the family business. Two sons in their teens followed dutifully behind their parents, one rather heavyset in a way that only the families of the rich could be nowadays, the other lean and quick.
Not time to get close to them, BD noted, swallowing past a dry throat and covertly drying her palms on her skirt. Just keep an eye on them. And in the meantime, look for anything unusual.
The foreigners were gathered together in two clumps, on the tiled veranda near the broad iron-strapped wooden doors of the house proper. BD sidled closer.
One group was in blue, or long robes of a dark reddish brown color. The Church Universal and Triumphant, she thought.
They all wore neat little chin-beards; the soldiers in blue-green had their hair cropped close, the robed priests-Seekers, she'd heard they were called-were shaven-pated. The priests were glaring at any number of things; some of the guests were smoking tobacco, which their faith forbade, and there were women with uncovered hair, or some wearing pants, and mechanical clocks. All of them maintained a disciplined quietness, except their leader.