Valentine's Exile (29 page)

“There's only three of you.”

“The Grog's got a big appetite.”

“We've only got goat. No spitted youngsters,” the man called Earl said. Valentine didn't like the way he kept his hand near his open-topped holster.

“You won't even get goat if you keep that up,” the bartender said. “Greta hospitalitied them herself.”

Valentine walked away.

“Hey, tag!” Earl called as Valentine walked away. The bar went quiet. “Tag!”

Valentine went out the door, glad to have the pile of sandbags and a cedar wall between himself and Earl.

“I think we'll spend tonight on the porch,” Valentine said.

“See you in country, tag,” Earl bellowed.

“Hey, Earl!” someone inside called. “Come over here and roll one. Calm down.”

“Everready should have hooked us up with guerillas,” Duvalier said.

“They're up in the mountains east of Nashville, for the most part,” Valentine said.

“It's a place to get across this river,” Ahn-Kha said. “Perhaps there are no Kur this near. Even a Reaper would have trouble with the crowd inside.”

The crowd inside chose that moment to spill out the door. The two turkey hunters and Earl came out of the bar, pistols drawn. Duvalier made a move for her shotgun.

"Hold it,” a voice barked from the repaired section wall. “I've got two barrels of buckshot on you.”

Valentine stood up, hands up and away from his weapons. “Now hold on. I don't want—”

“You got a warrant on you, tag,” Earl said, a flashlight clipped to his pistol shining into Valentine's eyes. “You and this lady here.”

“Mister and Missus David Rowan,” the turkey hunter read, despite his sunglasses. “He's even got that scar. It's two-year-old paper out of New Orleans, but a warrant's a warrant.”

Other bounty hunters came out of the bar, forming a rough semicircle around the porch. They didn't pull their weapons.

“Fifteen thousand dollars Orleans each, it says,” Sunglasses continued. “Five thousand per bonus for live delivery. Payable at any Coastal Marine station. There's one in Biloxi!”

Valentine did a quick count. There were sixteen men around, if he counted the one covering them from inside.

“That's real good money,” one of the leather-clad bikers said.

“Forty thousand dollars is,” Valentine agreed. “If you're in New Orleans. How many of you have been there?”

None of the men said anything.

“Okay, you've got us. Let's say you take us to Biloxi, and collect your two thousand five hundred each, barring any bribes you might have to pay.”

“Shuddup and face down, tag,” Earl said. “We ain't all collecting this.”

“Says who? Let him talk, Earl,” one in the semicircle said, his hand resting on his gun belt.

Valentine continued. “Let's say you get us down there without soldiers hoping for a promotion taking us away from you. Biloxi'll pay you alright, in New Orleans dollars. They print that stuff like toilet tissue. It can only be spent in New Orleans, unless you want to trade it into a hard currency exchange at a third of the value. Boat fare Biloxi to New Orleans was four hundred dollars when I was down there. A bad bottle of Orleans gin was sixty dollars. A room's over three hundred, if you don't mind cockroaches. How far's that two thousand five getting you now?”

“It's not getting shared sixteen ways,” Earl said. “Now—”

A gunshot from just behind the doorway interrupted him.

Greta stood in the door, her shotgun pointed to the sky. Valentine's ears rang from the shot, and he wondered what it had done to Earl's hearing.

“Earl, you owe me one shell and these people an apology. Nobody serves papers at my Shack. Nobody.”

“They ain't warrant-men,” Earl said.

“He's right, Greta,” one of the spectators said.

“I knew that when I gave them my hospitality.”

Greta lowered the gun and placed it against the back of his ear. The turkey hunters got out of the way of the potential blast. “Earl, holster your piece and say your good-byes. You're off my peninsula permanently.”

Earl put away his gun. “I'll pay up and go.” He stared at Valentine. “But you three can't retire here.” He raised his voice. “Any man wants to call himself a warrant-man, kill the Grog—he ain't subject to hospitality. Later we'll track down these two and share the reward. Meet me at the old county sign.”

“You just do that, Earl. You just do that,” a deep voice called from the darkness. Hoffman Price stepped forward, his Kalashnikov tucked under his arm so his hands were free to work his pipe. He got it lit and sent out a puff of smoke.

“And another Grog-lover sounds off,” Earl said. “You throw down on me, you skunk, and Charlie'll blow you in half with his ten-gauge.”

“Bee!” Price called.

Valentine heard wood shatter and turned to see a warrant-man crash headfirst through the repaired section of wall, ten-gauge bent around his neck like a dress tie. Bee swung out through the hole, treading on the unconscious Charlie, and extracted a pair of sawed-off shotguns from her boot holsters.

“Earl, you better shut up before I've got your whole rig for damages,” Greta said.

“Didn't you hear, Earl?” Price said. “These folks hired me for a little trip to Chattanooga. They're under my protection. ” He raised his voice. “Any man comes to serve papers on them will interfere with my ability to earn my fee. Bee's my accountant when I'm in country. I refer all financial difficulties to her.”

“Let's everyone calm down. We're leaving right now,” Valentine said. “Pretend none of this happened.”

Greta lowered her shotgun. “You ordered four meals, Black. You and Red and your big friend eat first, then you can leave. You might as well—Earl's picking up the tab.”

The warrant-men, save for Earl, trickled back inside.

They ate at the riverside. “Lots of bad blood gets built up in this business,” Price said. He posted himself downwind of Valentine and Duvalier, but it didn't help much.

After some head bobbing and a mutual dental exam, the two Grogs sat down next to each other. Ahn-Kha ate a few bites of his stew, then passed her the bowl.

“She speaks northern slope dialect,” Ahn-Kha said. “I only know a few words.”

Duvalier was already mopping up her remains with a biscuit. Valentine marveled at her appetite. “You really taking us on, or was that just show?” she asked Price.

“I'm taking you.”

“Not through Chattanooga, I hope,” Valentine said.

“That was just in case Earl gets the second big idea of his life and goes to the authorities, such as they are.”

“What changed your mind?” Valentine asked.

“I got to thinking that I don't have too many more years in me to pay Everready back. If I have to step off, I'll do it clean. Plus Bee got a look at your big friend when he came down to the river to hit the shitter. She got excited. Bee gets lonely for her own, I think.”

“I've had my mating,” Ahn-Kha said. “She is dead. Besides, we are not dogs. Our strains do not mix.”

“But you share some customs, looks like,” Price said.

“I've been among her kind. Do not misunderstand me. She is well formed and agreeable.” Ahn-Kha broke a biscuit in half and gave it to her. “I just could no more be a male to her than you could.”

“I want to put a few miles on across the river before dark,” Price said. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth three times. “I have a mule. Bee and I will go load him up.”

Valentine kept the food close to his nose as he ate his stew. “Is there a chance that you'll take a bath before we set out?”

“What, and spoil my camouflage?”

Duvalier looked up. “You're hoping to pass as a feral hog, perhaps?”

“No. Everready explained it to me years ago. I never could hide lifesign for shit. All the critters interfere with the Hoods. I don't read as human at any kind of distance.” He walked up to the back doorstep and returned his plate.

“You want your other biscuit, Val?” Duvalier asked as Price disappeared into the stable.

“You got used to him faster than I did,” Valentine said. “How did you keep your dinner down?”

“Greta in there gave me a bottle of clove oil. It's good for more than mosquito bites. A dab'll do you—provided you put it under your nostrils.”

CHAPTER NINE

Poa pratensis
arrived in Kentucky by accident, used as padding for pottery on its way west to be traded to the Shawnee. Once thoroughbreds thrived on it. They have been replaced.

“I've never seen growth like this before,” Valentine said.

“You're looking at snake trails,” Price said.

They stood in southern Kentucky, on a little knob of a hill looking out over a meadow. Price knew about moving cross-country. Bee usually took the lead, walking with her eerily careful grace. Then the three humans, taking turns with the compass and map to avoid getting trail-stale, followed by the mule. The mule was unusually cooperative for its breed, perhaps owing to a jaunty knit Rasta cap it wore, complete with fly-scaring dreadlocks. Valentine didn't dare look to see if the dreadlocks were simply sewn in or if they were attached to a scalp, and the mule wasn't telling. Ahn-Kha brought up the rear. At least once a day they zigged on a different course, heading north the way a sailing ship might tack against the wind.

What caught Valentine's eye about this particular meadow was the strange furrowing. Lines of thickly weeded earthen banks meandered across the field like a drunken farmer's tilling. The banks were perhaps a foot high at most, ran down little open spaces clear of smaller trees.

“That's sign left by legworm feeding.”

Tchink tchink tchink . . .
Behind them Duvalier knelt over a spread out
Byrdstown Clarion.
The newspaper, a weekly melange of property and equipment for sale and lease, with a few stories about the achievements of local NUC youth teams, wasn't being used for the articles. Duvalier was pounding together two ancient red bricks pulled from a collapsing house, collecting the fine dust on the paper to be poured into an envelope and used as foot powder.

Bee snored next to her in the sun, her short-but-powerful legs propped up on a deadfall. The mule, a cooperative beast named Jimi, cropped grasses and tender young plants.

“I've known ground like this,” Ahn-Kha said. “Older, though, more evenly grown up.”

“You see, Val,” Price explained, passing Valentine's binoculars back. His odor lingered on them, but Valentine pressed the sockets to his eyes anyway—after a critter inspection. “Legworms move in small herds; I've never seen over a dozen together. They pull up the sod with their mouths. They eat everything, leaf, stem, and root, and of course mice and voles and whatnot that get pulled up, then they crap it out the other end more or less constantly. The waste is pretty sweet fertilizer, and their digestive system isn't all that thorough, quantity over quality, so in the wormcast there's a lot of seeds, living roots, stuff that comes back. It grows extra lush and you get these little walls of vegetation.”

“They don't mess with big trees,” Valentine observed.

Price pointed at a thick oak. “They'll climb up and take some low branches. That's why some of these trees look a bit like umbrellas.”

“Those trails will lead us to them, if we find fresher leavings, ” Ahn-Kha said.

“Sure,” Price said. “Except with legworm tracks it's hard to tell which direction they're going. If you're lucky you'll come across a partially digested sapling. The way the branches get pressed down makes it like feathers in an arrow, only reversed.”

Valentine wondered if it would be like Nebraska, with different “brands” sharing the same area. “How do they feel about trespassers?”

“Depends if they can make a profit off you,” Price said. They cut fresh worm sign two days later. After picking at the less-digested branches and shrubs, everyone agreed that the wide end of the cone was heading northeast.