“Where are you going, little sister?”
The girl just stood there in front of them in the middle of an immense expanse of prairie, open except for scrub dotting the green grass, staring at Hammerhand and his Jeep Cherokee with eyes like two holes pissed in a snowbank.
“Look at her,” Mindy Farseer murmured from behind the wheel. “She’s nothing but skin and bones. I don’t think she’s been eating.”
She shook her head.
“Dark dust, I don’t think she’s even been drinking. Look how she’s shaking.”
He’d had scouts watching the whole time. They’d seen her walk away from the wreckage of Lone Calf after parting with the one-eyed man and his crew. At his orders, they’d shadowed her since, under strict instructions not to let themselves be seen.
He suspected they hadn’t had much trouble with that part. They were way more scared of her than they were of him. He didn’t blame them.
And in that whole time they hadn’t once seen her eat or drink. Even when she happened to wander in clear sight of a running stream. She just walked on alone, out into the wasteland.
“Right,” he said. “Mebbe she’ll be receptive and not just disintegrate me.”
He stuck his head out the window. “Hi. You’re Mariah, right? I’m Hammerhand. I just want to talk to you.”
She blinked, then frowned. “I know who you are,” she said in a raven’s croak. “You tried to kidnap me.”
“Yeah. Well. That was a misunderstanding, okay? I promise, I’m not about to do anything without your permission. So, can I get out?”
She nodded.
“Okay. Moving slowly, here.”
“Mebbe—I hate myself for saying this—but mebbe if she’s trying to chill herself by wandering around out here without looking for food and water...is that such a bad thing?”
Aside from the fact Trager would pitch a fit? Although Hammerhand had to admit that wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
“Do we want to trust that’ll happen, just like that, though? What if somebody else happens across her before she dies? There’s worse people than us out here, you know.”
“Like Trager’s whitecoat pals.”
“Affirmative.”
Slowly he opened the door. He maintained eye contact with the girl the whole time. Her clothes were rumpled and dusty, and even her pigtails seem to hang in defeat.
“You sure this is a good idea?”
“Nuke, no. But I never expected to die in bed anyway.”
Deliberately he stepped out into the grass. He took a step forward, leaned against the side of the wag’s snout and crossed his arms over his chest. He wore a sleeveless cotton shirt this day. It was warm, though mostly overcast.
“I’d like to take you along with us, if you’re willing,” he said.
“Why would you want something like that?” she asked listlessly.
“I want to help you,” he said.
“What do you want from me? Nobody wants to help me without wanting something from me.”
“I’ll be honest with you, Mariah. I’m not different. But I’m not pretending either.
“You’re an outcast. I’m an outcast. You have special skills. I do, too, if not exactly in the same league. I reckon we can help each other, mebbe.”
She just stared at him.
He unfolded his arms, raised a hand and made a two-fingered come-ahead gesture at Mindy. She got out of the car slowly, her brown eyes wide.
She gave him a quick you have got to be shitting me look.
He grinned at her.
“This is my friend Mindy Farseer. She’ll help take care of you. There’s another nice woman named Corn Blossom in the back. She’ll help you, too. We’ll give you food, water. Get you out of the sun.”
“I don’t want food and water.”
“How about someone to be nice to you? I tell you what. They’ll be kind. They’ll take care of you, and you can come back with us to my tribe for a few days. Then, if you don’t feel like staying, you can leave. No strings. How does that sound?”
He was gambling that she missed human company and was a sucker for a pleasant voice. And what he told her was true—mostly.
She hesitated.
“You’re lonely, right? Bet you’ve been lonely a long time. We’ll treat you kindly.”
For the first time, her face, which remained pale despite being unshielded from the sun’s burning rays, showed sign of emotion: she frowned.
“The people I was with,” she said, “they were nice, too. Until they made me leave.”
So that’s the way you turned it around in your mind, he thought. The scouts had told Hammerhand it looked to them like a mutual parting of ways. Or as much as you could tell through good field glasses at two hundred yards.
“Did they, ah, did they tell you what they wanted from you?”
“No.”
“Well, I will. I want your help. But you can be my guest as long as you like. I’m not a poor wanderer scuffling for my next meal. And you know that’s true.”
“Yes.”
“So how about it? Let Mindy put you in the wag, and then Corn Blossom will give you a nice drink. Much as you want. And honey.”
She moistened her lips. “I like honey,” she said.
“You’re a smooth devil, boss,” Mindy said softly from right beside him. “Slick-talking a poor, crazy, half-dead little girl.”
“Shut it.”
But he could see Mariah hadn’t decided. There was no give in her. He found himself admiring that. It was clear she had a power of determination by the course she’d set herself. Starving and drying yourself to death deliberately took a degree of willpower he wasn’t sure he had.
“You can help me,” he said. “We’re going to bring peace to the Plains, at last.”
She stiffened.
What the nuke was wrong with that? he wondered.
“The whitecoats said that, too. I didn’t believe them. They were bad. I could tell.”
He exchanged sidelong glances with Mindy.
“Where did you happen across these whitecoats?”
“Driving. From one ville to another. This big round shiny thing like a mirror just appeared in front of us, and a bunch of men in black with these blaster things got out. Then two whitecoats got out. They wanted me to go with them.”
“And you didn’t.”
She shook her head. “I made them leave me alone.”
“I’ll just bet you did, honey,” Mindy muttered.
“I tell you what, Mariah,” Hammerhand said. “See Mindy, here? That blaster she wears by her side? She’s triple good with that. And if I do anything—anything—that makes you uncomfortable, she’ll pull it right out and chill me dead.”
He turned to Mindy. “You heard me. I so command.”
“Don’t think I won’t, boss. I’m tempted to anyway, on general principle. For getting me into this.”
“You can thank me when you’re marshal of the Northern Plains.”
Mindy made a sour noise, but then she stepped toward Mariah and held out her hand.
“I’m Mindy, like the man said. I’d like you to come with me, please.”
For a moment he thought she might actually bolt. And I’ll shoot her right straight in the back of her head, he thought. I am not letting her wander loose all over the world, with a belly full of mad and a power like that.
And come to think about it, her trying to flee would be the second-best outcome. If she decided he was a threat after all, or that she just plain didn’t like him...
The girl nodded, then she swayed. Mindy was instantly at her side, supporting her with a hand around her shoulders.
“It’s all right, Mariah,” the woman said. “Come on with me. Can you walk? I’ll help you walk. That’s right. And you’ll like Corn Blossom. She’ll take good care of you.”
She escorted the child to the rear of the wag, steering a course wide of Hammerhand. As they passed, she shot him a death glare.
“Women,” he said under his breath, as Corn Blossom, a sturdy middle-aged Arapaho woman, got out to coo over the girl.
Then he grinned. No stopping you now, boy, he told himself. Unless of course she ups and chills you.
* * *
“SO, DO YOU really think this is a good idea?” Mildred asked her friend.
“Which one, Mildred?” Krysty asked cheerfully.
They were rolling through a beautiful morning with Ryan at the wheel, down into the green Missouri River Valley in search of the ferry to take them across. Actually, it was just a raft on a rope strung bank to bank. But it would carry their wag, or so the trader-talk said, and they needed to cross the run-off swollen torrent on another courier gig.
“Hanging on around here,” Mildred said. “Instead of clearing out as fast as we can.”
Between them the bed was stacked with their packs and supplies, secured by crisscrossings of coarse hemp rope. One of their wags had not survived Mariah’s Lone Calf outburst. Or at least the engine compartment and the front part of the cab hadn’t. They could all squeeze into the front and back seats together, being as they were already pretty friendly and all. But that wasn’t comfortable. And anyway Mildred had thought it might be time for a good woman-to-woman talk with her flame-haired friend.
“I’m not sure what’s a good idea,” she said, “and not just about this. Sometimes I’m starting to feel as if it just doesn’t make any difference what we do...if we’re just doomed to wander the Deathlands forever.”
“You’re not afraid of running into the girl again?”
Krysty hesitated. “I hope to see her again, to tell you the truth. I miss her.”
“You’re not scared of her?”
“I don’t think she’d hurt me. We were close, which is why I feel so bad about sending her away.”
“Then why’d you suggest it in the first place?”
Mentally, Mildred kicked herself. That came out way harsher than I wanted, she thought. Ah, well. I always did have a lousy bedside manner.
“I was scared for the rest of you. That’s true. But more, I was afraid what it would do to us. Being with her the next time she lost control and killed a bunch of innocent people and ruined the lives of others. And the time after that. At what point do we become complicit?”
Some might argue we already were, Mildred thought. But she held her tongue. She could see how torn up Krysty was about the end of her increasingly tight relationship with Mariah. And the way it had ended.
“But about staying in these parts, mostly in what was South Dakota, back in the day,” she said instead. “If we don’t bug out, shouldn’t we try to, well—do something about her? Instead of letting her run loose with all that power that seems to control her more than she does it?”
“How?”
Mildred shook her head and sighed. “Got me there.”
“Ryan’s right,” Krysty said. “This is an easy life for us. Even if it’s not exactly settled. I guess this is the best thing to do for now. Until we can’t. Or until—”
“What?” Mildred prodded after a pause that seemed likely to stretch to infinity.
“I was going to say, ‘something better comes along,’” Krysty said. “But we know that’s not going to—”
The sound of somebody slapping the outside of a wag door made them look around. Ricky poked his head out the driver’s-side rear window.
“Ryan says to tell you two to wake up back there,” he called. “Ferry’s in sight!”
Looking around, Mildred saw it, too.
Her heart sank. It was to a “ferry” what some crazy mountain man’s lean-to was to the White House. Calling it a “raft” seemed stretching the point.
“It’s not just a job, they tell me,” she said with sigh. “It’s an adventure.”
* * *
“ALL RIGHT, GIRLS,” Hammerhand said, sticking his head into the cool interior of his personal tepee. “Put some clothes on. You got company.”
“But you like us this way,” whined one, a skinny, freckled redhead.
“Yeah,” the shorter, curvier dark one said.
“Yeah, Shelley, I do. Now I want you two to put some nuking clothes on. I got a little girl for you to take care of, and I want you to treat her right. So make yourselves decent, for Spirit’s sake.”
“A little girl? We’re not babysitters,” Shelley said.
“You are now.”
“Wait, a little girl?” the brunette asked. “That’s disgusting.”
“It’s not like that, Prairie Fire. I don’t want her for her body. That’s what I have you two for.”
He backed out and turned to find Dr. Trager standing right behind him.
“You got her,” the little man stated. “Outstanding. You can give her to me now. I’ll see that she gets to my associates.”
“That’s a negative.”
For a moment the shabby, greasy little whitecoat looked as if he actually did not understand what those words meant.
“What?”
“She’s not going anywhere. Except with me.”
“But that’s ridiculous! You promised you’d get her for us.”
“I promised I’d get her. That’s a little bit different.”
“But you gave me to understand you’d hand her over once you obtained her.”
“Well, mebbe. Now I’m not doing that.”
Trager started to become visibly angry. “After all we’ve given you,” he began, “all we’ve done for you—”
“You need me bad. That’s clear. And you did before you had any idea Mariah and her little power even existed.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
Hammerhand gave him a big grin. “What you and your friends have been setting me up to do all along—take over the Plains. And when I’m done, mebbe I’ll feel nice and grateful, and turn her over. Now get out of my sight.”
“But—”
“Now.”
The whitecoat turned and scurried off. Hammerhand watched him go. He’s going to be trouble, he thought. Well, what else is new?
He turned and signaled to Mindy who sitting behind the wheel of the Cherokee with Mariah and Corn Blossom in the backseat. He had had her park the wag twenty-five yards from his tepee to give everybody a little room while he announced to his current main squeezes their new duties.
The wag was surrounded by a grim phalanx of a dozen of his most loyal followers—mostly originals from his small, scrubby-assed renegade band, or early recruits. A crowd of Bloods had gathered at a somewhat nervous distance to peer at the new passenger in curiosity and fear.
And sometimes hate. They’d lost dozens of Bloods in Lone Calf, and most of them had been chilled by the innocuous little girl sitting huddled against Corn Blossom’s soft, capacious flanks.
The wag rolled slowly toward the big tepee, which was painted with imposing symbols of power, like bears, tigers and dragons. Hammerhand had always liked dragons.
As it came to a stop, an ugly rumble came from the crowd, which had grown to north of a hundred.
“There’s the witch who chilled so many of our people!” a voice rang out from somewhere prudently back in the press.
Hammerhand’s sec team looked to him. They were eager and seemed ready to go and root out the loudmouth.
He shook his head. Instead he climbed up on the wag’s hood and held his hands up.
“New Blood Nation, listen to me,” he called in his best buffalo-bull voice. “I understand your pain. We’ve all lost someone.
“But let’s all try looking at this square, shall we? We tried to kidnap her. We did. I should know. I ordered it. She fought back, the best way she could. And yeah, it was effective. But honor to both sides.”
“Is that really how you see it, boss?” somebody called.
“It really is.”
That won a chorus of assent, if not as full-bodied as he’d like. He decided to press on.
“This is not the first time we have welcomed into our clan those who have fought against us, who have fought well and chilled some of us, even. You, Iron Bear—you chilled three of our people when we fought your Ka’igwu raiding band of the Missouri River. And I myself saw you, Xunyi, kill four at Coyote Springs, including a warrior in hand-to-hand battle. You fought bravely until overpowered.
“And did we seek vengeance? No. We welcomed you with open arms.”
He spread his arms wide, open palms toward the sky.
“Because you joined us, of your free will, you have become our blood. True Bloods. It is only those who betray us, or those who defy us, who feel the Hammer.”
He raised his right hand and clenched it into a fist.
“So it is that, when this girl asked to join us—” he had to hide the truth “—I agreed to take her in and let her earn her place among us. And you all know what power she has to offer our Nation.
“And it’s how it’s going to be. Make no mistakes, my brothers and sisters, this girl is under my protection. And if you lift a hand against her, I will remind you that I am not called ‘Hammerhand’ for shits and giggles!”
This time the cheering was widespread and lusty enough that, as Hammerhand turned left and right, luxuriating in it, he gave Mindy a nod and a wink through the windshield. She opened the door and called to the chief of his sec detail, a sandy-haired young man called Travis Sweetwater. He quietly formed his crew into a perimeter between the crowd on one side and the wag and lodge on the other just in case.
Corn Blossom opened the rear door and got out holding Mariah’s hand. That still brought some hissing and catcalls, but Corn Blossom was widely respected as a healer, which helped. Mindy squired them both quickly inside the tepee.
He gave the brethren and sisters a bit more of a rousing rah-rah speech—cracking jokes about where they had all come from, what outcast outlaws they were and, of course, their victories, of which there were many. He had fun with it, and they ate it up. That was nothing new, and he felt fully comfortable with it.
He’d always been persuasive, and once he found he liked talking to crowds, he quickly made himself good at it. That more than anything had caused him to get the boot from the Kainawa band: not just that he was considered subversive to their holy tradition, but that he was so rad-blasted good at swaying others from it.
He left them laughing and calling for more, just the way he liked to. They chanted his name as he ducked into the tepee.
“I want to see how you’re—” He stopped speaking abruptly.
His two female companions had Mariah ensconced amid a pile of furs they used as a bed. Prairie Fire had put on a doeskin dress. Shelley had more or less draped herself with a buffalo robe instead of actually getting dressed. But it was a gesture, and despite the flashes of pale freckled skin that kept coming out when she moved, Hammerhand was willing to accept it as a start.
The pair already had Mariah’s night-black hair unwound from its tight, skinny pigtails and were combing it out and cooing over her. The girl looked a little nervous, but she was staying put and seemed to be relaxing and enjoying the attention.
She ignored him, which suited him fine.
“Why didn’t you tell us she was so adorable?” Prairie Fire asked.
He shrugged. The black-haired woman gave him a how-like-a-man sniff.
You didn’t see her siccing her pet devil tornado on our people like a rabid dog, he thought, and rubbing out most of the ville she was in in the bargain. He did not say any such thing.
Mindy scowled and was clearly about to enlighten the pair. Hammerhand caught her eye and shook his head.
She shot him a spear-tipped look, then she wheeled and stalked out.
Fine ass, he thought as he watched her go. Shame she’s so tight with it. But it was the right of every Blood to sleep with whom they chose. Rape was a chilling offense and not reluctantly enforced. No skin off his ass. His problem wasn’t women telling him no. It was having to tell so many no. Or he’d never get any conquering done.
The mission came first. Always.
And his current mission seemed well accomplished. Even if it took longer and cost more than he’d ever dreamed.
He nodded pleasantly. “Well, I’ll leave you ladies to it. Treat our new member well. Welcome home, Mariah.”
She looked at him but gave no other sign.
“Wait,” Shelley called out as he turned to go. “Have somebody come up with some decent clothes for her. This dress she’s got on smells like the hide of a two-days-dead goat.”