Wild Country (41 page)

I was simply flabbergasted to learn, over twice-spiked, punch in the central lodge, that the mysterious buyer of the northern Garner parcel was MY HUSBAND! My cup erupteth over! I swear Ted seemed more apprehensive than proud, and I'm sure my tears did not reassure him. I hope the kiss did. I know it provoked applause from Childe (winsome but ill at ease in her first white frock), who did not yet know what I had just learned. When she did, she flew to Ted and tried to imitate my embrace. I know very well what the little stinker was thinking: another twenty square miles for her and Ba'al to safely roam.

Must ask Ted the identity of the woman who pressed that tiny package into my hand without a word before leaving the lodge. I know Ted saw her, though they never spoke. Wonderful proud bearing despite those thin facial scars I could see through her makeup. And a lovely body of which I should, I suppose, be envious. She must be a conduit to Lufo, for only he would know where in Mexico to locate the Ember of Venus. Nearly swallowed my teeth when I unwrapped it, now that I know its value. I hid it in my cleavage; chilly little critter. If I know L.. he stole it! I could never wear it in public but with some simple setting, may wear it at my throat some night for MY HUSBAND when I am wearing nothing else.

Childe is much too sophisticated since she started school, for she positively demanded to spend these next few nights with a schoolmate in Rocksprings. Not because Ted and I would be gone from here at the soddy, but because we won't be! Where do they learn these things?!

I have taken too long with you, journal, delaying until the effects of that punch wore off while poor Ted waits, ferociously patient, pretending to be interested in his holo program. I know what he is really waiting for, and I intend to be thoroughly alert when I wife him through this night!

Today's entry may be declasse with its fulsome sprinkle of exclamation marks, but this Valentine's Day has earned them. I feel valentiney all over, and it is my pleasure to sign myself…

Mrs. Sandra Quantrill

February and then March slipped by before the Quantrills made a decision on their new homesite. The soddy would be their retreat, but they could not run cattle or sheep from such lodgings. Sandy had a horror of credit and said it was her right to pay cash for a house.

Their choice of the site was half by accident, really, on a bright April day as they whirred Sandy's hovercycle at half speed over their new spread. Sorel's van and its contents had long since been airlifted away, and both Reeve Longo and the hapless Billy Ray would remain guests of the government for years to come. But Ted Quantrill had only a sketchy idea where, on his new property, that shed had been erected.

It was Sandy who saw its remains, like a huge box now flattened among the oaks. "Some people don't care how they litter," she complained, splendid in her sun-yellow blouse and deerskin trousers as she walked to the edge of a shallow valley nearby. She shaded her eyes and peered down the broad depression. "Where do you suppose Ba'al went to?"

"He was right behind us," Quantrill replied. "Maybe we went too fast for him." There were ways to deal with a pet dog that followed your car, he reflected; but when your half-ton boar took a notion to accompany your cycle, you might think twice before you spanked him.

"I see him. He's getting a drink at the creek. Ooh, Ted," she breathed, and stretched out her free hand. "Come look."

Hand in hand, they gazed across a depressed meadow blue with the blooms of that brief annual glory, the Texas Sunbonnet. Millions of the little lupines waved in unison, a soft breeze-borne undulation of softest sky blue across the meadow. A hawk patrolled the blue above, nearly motionless. Somewhere a mockingbird was defying nightingales. "That little creek must run all year," she said, speaking low to maintain the stillness.

In the near distance, Ba'al waded into a shallow pool, flicking an ear, whisking his ridiculous tail. Above the pool the stream turned abruptly, flowing in a broad sheet over a lip of stone. "Our own waterfall," Quantrill said. It might be only knee deep, but it must be dependable. It hadn't rained in weeks. "You suppose the water's drinkable?"

"I don't care. We can treat it if we have to, honey. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"If you're horny—probably," he said.

"Naughty man. Maybe after lunch. See that level area up there above the falls? We'd only have to cut down a couple of trees."

He studied the curves of the land; nodded. "Just above that old fig tree. We won't want to build too close to that waterfall, the noise could drive you nuts."

"There's one way we can find out, love. Did you ever see a better spot for a picnic?"

They spread an old blanket near the waterfall and shared the beer and barbecue sandwiches. Ba'al came ambling over, grunting lazily. "Mighty casual for a moocher," Sandy observed, and reached into the wicker hamper. "Here, I brought this just for you. Watch this," she added to her husband, offering a thick peanut butter sandwich to the boar.

Quantrill could not drink beer and laugh at the same time, but he tried. If there was one thing more crammed with solemn imbecility than a cat with a caramel, it had to be Ba'al coping with peanut butter. He snuffled, turned his head this way and that, lining his tongue at the stuff clinging to the roof of his mouth, then sat down and tried to scrape it out with a forehoof. When he had finally got rid of the stuff, naturally he applied for more.

The Quantrills lay on their backs gasping. "He's hooked, by God," Ted insisted. "Woman, you have no pity for a poor dumb beast."

"Him, yes. You, no." She tried to finish off a bulb of Pearl but saw the reproachful look of the boar and was taken by laughter again. "Oh, fiddle," she said as beer streamed down her wrist.

Ted watched Sandy heading for the stream, sat up, and made a scratching motion to the boar. Ba'al remained carefully clear of the blanket and Ted walked to him, scratching him around the ears, leaning against the animal, venting an occasional chuckle. It had not escaped him that Ba'al no longer cared which of them stood taller. He had suggested a leather collar, a clear sign that the great boar was domestic and not wild game, but Childe had found that her friend would have none of it. A pennant tied to his ruff, perhaps. He thought of Alec Wardrop and smiled.

The heads of man and boar jerked around in perfect unison at the urgency in Sandy's call: "Come here!" They did, Ba'al charging up first, tail erect. She was squatting on the stream bank, just above the falls, and patted the fearsome muzzle of the boar to calm him. She pointed into the water several paces from the base of the falls as Ted hurried to her side. "Is that a robin's egg? A button?"

He saw the image wavering in the water, a smooth oval object of a deeper hue than bluebonnets. "We'll soon—know," he grunted, hauling his boots and socks off, then rolling up his trousers. The bottom was limestone and it was too early in the season for algae that made it slick. He waded over, pleased that the water was not all that chill. This creeklet, like so many others in Wild Country, probably ran aboveground for only a brief distance before plunging back to where it belonged: the measureless caverns of Edwards Plateau. Its temperature would remain fairly constant throughout the year.

He scrabbled for the thing, stood up, displayed it between thumb and forefinger, and then flipped it to Sandy. She was turning it over as he waded back. "It's one of those Mormon fifties," he said.

Briefly, after the war, the Young administration had done the best it could to make up for the loss of U. S. mints in Denver, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. The so-called "Mormon fifty" was a coin the size of an old silver dollar, minted in Ogden. Like the Susan B. Anthony dollar before it, the coin had not been a success. For one thing, its alloy was of little value—but Amerinds in the west found a partial solution. Navajo silversmiths embedded softly rounded turquoise ovals in the centers of the coins. Some were irregular, and none would have fitted a coin slot. They had been accepted at face value and were now worth twice that as rarities.

Sandy held it up. "How do you suppose…" she began, pushing aside a broad fig leaf that was teasing at her hair.

A gritted phrase by a dying man caromed through his mind: ". .
.faithful, under a ledge at the fig tree
." He hurried back into the water, waded up to the base of the sluggish little waterfall, then plunged his hand through the sheet of water. Sandy was gaping at him as though he had gone mad, but her mouth fell open as he pulled his hand back. Several coins plunked into the water at his feet. He held a score more in his hand: Krugerrands. gold Mexican thousand-peso pieces, more of the reworked Mormon fifties. "I can feel hundreds of 'em in here," he said.

Sitting on their blanket, he told her of the message Cam Concannon bade him give to the old rancher. And of Mul Garner's insistence that the money belonged to no one. In any case, one Ted Quantrill now held mineral rights to that property. "And if gold isn't a mineral, what is?" he crowed. "The name of this creek is 'Faithful,' then. Must run the year 'round, honey."

They kept that solitary coin and returned the rest to the deep slot beneath the ledge, inside the falls. They didn't need the money now. Sandy pointed out, but one day they might. If Ted continued to refuse money for advertising endorsements, his name might soon be forgotten.

"God, I hope so," he said. "But even if nobody pays a dime to go up against that android this summer"—he would never call the game by its name because it was
his
name—"now we have something to fall back on."

"Maybe there is such a thing as security," she said.

"Nope. Just varying degrees of insecurity," he quoted.

"All the same, I like the idea of hearing that water from my kitchen window, and knowing what it means."

"You're pretty set on this location, I take it," he said.

"Well, not unless you are."

"I'm set, sold, and incidentally your slave. Sandy." He kissed her beneath her ear, the kind of gentle caress that implied a belly too full for stronger stuff, and then moved over to the edge of the blanket where Ba'al lay basking in the April sun. "Call me only if you find more treasure."

What if she told him, here and now, about Lufo's return of the Ember of Venus? No, she'd already decided how she was going to present that to him as soon as she found a set for it. A phrase from an old song popped into focus: "I can't cook, but you won't care," and she decided that her options were rape or active diversion.

She wiggled her fingers at him, stood up, then began to pace around the level region above the fig tree. She found stones to place at likely corners, laid a few dead oak branches down to further sketch out her imaginary foundation lines. It took her a half hour to decide where the kitchen would go. The individual rooms, modem reinforced plastic modules, could be brought in by chopper. But could they pour foundations without bringing in complete strangers? She wanted that very much.

She turned to ask him and saw that he lay with his head against the belly of Ba'al. They were both snoring. "And the lion shall lie down with the other lion," she told herself.

Which naturally directed her to think of herself lying down with her lion, with all his parts still intact after a world war and his fight to survive its aftermath. She said to her distant man, knowing he could not have heard thunder over the rumble of those snores, "You're only a man for all that, with a little edge in your reflexes. You weren't my first, and there are smarter men around, and you may not be any whiz as a sheep rancher. But you suit me right down to the ground. I don't care what they do with that silly android; turn it out to stud for the ladies, for all of me. I've got the original Ted Quantrill. And I want it now."

She tiptoed to him, shook his toe until he was blinking at her, and beckoned with a slowly curling forefinger. He rose without waking Ba'al and followed. She traced the foundations of the house with gestures, then moved to speak in his ear. "You may not know it, but I am now taking you down the hall to the master bedroom. Take off your jacket," she added, insinuating her hip against him, moving it suggestively. "Come with me."

He came with her. More than once. If the boar waked, he was too wise to show it.

Lufo's alliance with Marianne Placidas. The New Israeli hit man who finds her smudged prints in Oregon Territory.

Quantrill pitted against his android copy; the nature of the android's terrible malfunction, which programmers might have foreseen.

Billy Ray's escape from prison. His search and eventual romance of Mul Garner's dim-witted sister. Garner's south spread.

The worldwide economic panic after synthesizer theft by Brazil, and devaluation of gold as a common metal.

Childe's teenaged jealousy and ruse: separation and reconciliations.

Mating of Ba'al.

Death of Ba'al.

Assassination of Jim Street, and Quantrill's choice.