Coyote Rising (41 page)

He caught the hurt in my voice. “I’m sorry, but we’re still pulling things together. That’s one of the reasons why I’m making the trip with you. It’s not just to help you watch out for the kids. It’s also because I have to . . .”

“Talk to some people. I understand.” A new thought occurred to me. “But if Shady Grove’s that far away, why don’t we just take the
Plymouth
?”

The
Plymouth
was the remaining shuttle from the
Alabama
; its sister ship, the
Mayflower
, had been left behind in Liberty, after we’d cannibalized it for every usable component. For the last three years it had remained grounded, concealed beneath camouflage covers in a field about a mile from town. Now and then Robert, Dana, and Tom had gone out there to clean it up, reactivate its major systems, and test-fire its engines, yet it hadn’t moved an inch since it was used to evacuate most of the
Alabama
party and our belongings from Liberty. It was still flightworthy, though; if you wanted to transport nine children and several adults across eight hundred miles, that was the quickest way to do it.

Carlos shook his head. “We’re not using
Plymouth
. We’d get there quicker, but . . .” He hesitated. “We’d just as soon not remind the Union that we’ve got a spacecraft. If they remember it at all, better to let them assume that it’s rusting away somewhere.”

Ah-ha!
But I didn’t say anything. “So we’re riding shags? Or are they classified as well?”

He chuckled, patting my knee. “Yeah, we’ll have the shags. As many as we need. I know Susie thinks they stink, but . . .”

“She’ll get used to it. The other children will love it.” I took his hand. “So it’s you, me, the kids . . . and who else?”

“Don’t know yet. Haven’t thought that far ahead. Maybe Chris . . . ?” He caught the look in my eye—I still had personal problems with his oldest friend—and quickly shook his head. “Chris should stay back, help hold down the fort.”

“Barry’s good with children. Maybe Klon, too.” The kids loved Uncle Klon; he made a great Santa Claus, and his pad was filled with old fantasy stories he’d brought with him from Earth.

“They’ll need both of them back here. Barry’s my second-in-command while I’m gone, and Klon has to help build the fortifications. It’s going to be hard for us to spare many people for this. Besides, we’ve only got room for four adults.” He paused. “I was thinking about asking Ben. He’s got this sort of backcountry experience.”

“If he’ll do it.” It had been nearly a year since Ben Harlan had attempted to lead the members of the Church of Universal Transformation across Mt. Shaw. He still didn’t like talking about what had happened up there; he’d lost someone whom he cared about. But Carlos was right; Ben knew what the Gillis Range was like in the dead of winter, and he got along well with kids. “I’ll ask him,” I said. “Maybe he’ll sign on.” I thought about it for a moment. “Kim should go, too. She’ll want to look out after Donald.”

“We can’t risk sending Kim. She knows how to . . .” He stopped himself, but I knew what he was going to say. Kim Newell had been the
Plymouth
’s copilot; with Tom gone, she was needed to fly the shuttle, for whatever they intended to do with it. “I think we should take Marie.”

Something within me went cold. “I know she’s your sister, but . . .”

“She’s good with a gun. And the kids like her. . . .”

“Hell they do. Susie hates her.”

“Marie’s going. I’ve already told her so.” Before I could object, he stood up, headed for the door. “It’s late. Time to go to bed.”

The caravan left Defiance two days later.

We were supposed to leave shortly after daybreak, but it wasn’t until midmorning that we were able to mount up. There were a lot of teary farewells as mothers and fathers hugged their children, made sure that they had their hats and gloves, promised them that they wouldn’t be gone very long. A couple of kids refused to let go of their parents and had to be gently prised away; others wept or threw tantrums when they were told that they couldn’t take their dogs or cats because we wouldn’t be able to feed them. I had a lot of private discussions with their folks; each one needed to tell me about their child’s personal needs, and I had to assure them that they wouldn’t be neglected.

I’d half expected Ben Harlan to refuse to join us, so it came as a surprise that he didn’t. He still walked with a limp from having lost two toes to frostbite during his ordeal on Mt. Shaw, and he warned me that he couldn’t do any serious hiking, but when I told him that we’d ride most of the way, he was willing to undertake the task. He liked the children, and besides, he’d lately graduated from herding goats to minding the shags. And, although he didn’t say so, I think he privately needed to confront the mountains again, if only to exorcise the memories of what had happened to him the year before.

The saddest moment came when Kim Newell said good-bye to Donald. They’d been through a lot in the last forty-eight hours; first Tom’s burial, now this. She would have preferred to go with us, but she also knew that she was needed there, so she clung to her son until we were ready to saddle up. When I looked back, she had her head against Robert’s shoulder, weeping as if she’d never see her son again.

We had five shags: four to carry adults and children, and one to haul all the food and camping equipment. Susan and the four other older children—none of whom was more than ten Earth-years, with Susie the eldest—were able to sit upon saddles along with the adults, although we made sure that they were secured with harnesses so they couldn’t fall off. The four youngest children were little more than toddlers; for them, we’d fashioned papoose bags that were slung over the sides of each animal.

We gave names to the two groups, taken from the Prince Rupurt stories—the older kids were called Scouts, the younger children Dauphins—while the grown-ups were referred to as High Riders. The arrangement worked out well; at any one time, each shag carried a High Rider, one or two Scouts, and one Dauphin. Susan was designated Chief Scout for as long she chose to serve. I whispered in her ear that, at some point, she might have to share that title, to which she agreed, albeit reluctantly.

The shags were well suited for the trip; their coarse fur was warm, their elephantine legs tramped through the snow as if it were nothing more than soap flakes. The children were still upset, so again we tried to make the best of it by giving the Scouts the privilege of naming the shags. After much discussion, they settled upon Achmed, Zizzywump, Sally, Old Fart, and George the Magnificent. Go figure; it helped cheer them up a bit.

We made good time; by early afternoon of the first day, we reached Johnson Falls, where Marie and I dismounted to lead the children across the rope bridge over Goat Kill Creek while Carlos and Ben took the shags through the shallows upstream. We gave the shags a few minutes to shake off the icy water—which the kids loved, since it reminded them of big, grunting dogs—then we climbed aboard again and continued making our way on the trail leading us up the northern side of Mt. Aldrich.

I knew the kids pretty well because Kuniko and I had seen them troop through the infirmary at one time or another with the usual childhood bruises, fevers, and earaches. Susan, Donald, Lewis, Genevieve, and Rachel were the Scouts; Lilli, Alec, Ed, and Jack were the Dauphins. Every one of them had their own personalities, with which I was familiar, and before long the High Riders were known to them as well. Carlos was our undisputed leader—whatever he said, that was the rule—and they looked up to him with reverence. I was Dr. Gunther, the surrogate mother who made sure their caps were on tight and their harnesses weren’t too loose. Ben was the easygoing chum who told jokes, tended to the shags, and made sure that we’d stop whenever anyone needed to pee.

But Marie . . . they didn’t know quite what to make of Marie. As a teenager, she was the youngest of the High Riders, and the children immediately realized that she wasn’t that much older than they. Yet she remained aloof from them: sitting stolidly upon her saddle, rifle never leaving her hands, eyes constantly searching the mountainside as if expecting Guardsmen to emerge from the woods at any moment. Donald rode with her until we reached Johnson Falls; after we crossed the bridge, though, he insisted upon riding with me, and almost threw a fit until Susan, in her role as Chief Scout, volunteered to take his place.

It wasn’t just Marie’s inability to warm up to children that made me wish we’d left her behind. She hadn’t been very much younger than Susan was now when the
Alabama
reached Coyote; since then, a certain hardness had entered the eyes of the little girl who’d once splashed around in Sand Creek and giggled whenever she saw Carlos and I sneak a kiss. Over the course of the last couple of years, she’d changed into a person whom I barely recognized—cold, tough, cynical, and on one notable occasion even bloodthirsty. Only a month ago, she’d shot an unarmed Union soldier in cold blood, and smiled about it as if he’d been nothing more than a swamper caught prowling through the garbage.

Marie was scary, and she made the children nervous, yet Carlos insisted that we bring her. “I don’t want to leave her here,” he’d said when we argued about it the day before our departure. “Lars and Garth are a bad influence, and I’d like to get her away from them for a while. And since I’m putting Barry in charge of the outfit while I’m gone, I don’t want the three of them getting together to pull something behind his back.”

It was difficult to argue with that. The Thompson brothers were stone killers, no question about it; Carlos had recruited them to join Rigil Kent shortly after they moved to Defiance along with their uncle and aunt, on account of the fact that they’d fought the Union Guard before. It wasn’t until much later that he realized just how merciless they could be. Marie had lately been spending a lot of time with Lars, and not just to trade tips on how to keep their rifles clean. That worried him, too, even though he tried not to pry into his sister’s personal business. Lars and Garth might not be able to conspire against Barry, but if they had Marie on their side . . .

So there were good reasons why Carlos would want to keep his sister close to him. Besides, she was good with a gun, and we’d be on the trail for four weeks. It was still winter, so the boids were in their migratory grounds on the southern coast of Midland, but there was no telling what else we might run into out there in the wilderness.

All the same, though, I privately vowed to keep a close eye on my sister-in-law. We might be kin, but I didn’t want to leave her alone with the children for very long.

Fortunately, the journey to Shady Grove was largely without incident.

We spent two days climbing Mt. Aldrich and coming back down the other side. In terms of geography, that was the hardest part, because there was no clear pass over the mountain and we had to spend a cold and windy night on a ridge below the summit. But we set up the tents so that we were all together, and after dinner that night Ben began telling the kids about Prince Rupurt, a story they’d never heard. It wasn’t something Leslie Gillis had written. Indeed, Ben would later tell me that he’d been making it up as he went along. But the children were fascinated all the same, and that night he ended with a cliffhanger that made them want to hear more. “Tomorrow night,” he said, “and only if you’re good.” Then we put out the lights and went to sleep.

And that pretty much set the pattern of our days for the next two weeks. Shortly after sunrise the High Riders would get up, stir the ashes of the campfire and get a fire going again, then start making breakfast while we woke the children. A bite to eat, then the Scouts would disassemble the tents and help the Dauphins into their papooses, while we reloaded everything on the shags so we could start making our way north along the southeast side of the Gillis Range. Once we descended from the mountains, the forest occasionally gave way to lowland marshes, which were still frozen over, so the shags had little trouble going through the swampy areas. On good days, we’d make fifty miles or more; at our worst, when we’d encounter a ravine that we’d have to skirt, only about forty. But, aside from the occasional snow squall or
having to stop to retrieve something valuable that someone dropped, we made good time.

It wasn’t always easy. The children got homesick, and it passed like a virus among them, with a lot of crying jags, until they finally got over it. Lewis and Donald got into a nasty fistfight one evening over whose turn it was to wash the dishes, and days went by before Genevieve would talk to Rachel again after a feud over something about which I never learned. Lilli got diarrhea, and Ed and Alec came down with colds, so I had to tend to them. Jack demanded that he become a Scout—and indeed, he was the oldest and largest of the Dauphins—so after considerable discussion we decided to make him a Scout Apprentice, with all due privileges: now he had to wash dishes and help the older kids forage for firewood. Two days of that, and he wanted to be a Dauphin once more. Yet every night, all their differences were put aside as they curled up against each other and waited for Ben to continue the further adventures of Prince Rupurt. I think Ben spent most of his time trying to figure out how he’d get Rupurt and his friends out of the latest peril he’d put them in the previous night.

We had other ways of having fun. Every few days, we’d choose a new Chief Scout. Carlos taught the Scouts how to make a fire with damp wood, how to determine location from the position of the sun and stars, how to guide a shag with little more than a slight tug of their reins, while I showed the Dauphins how to make snow angels and tie square knots. One night, we sat up late to watch a rare convergence of Coyote’s sister moons Dog, Hawk, and Eagle against Bear’s ring-plane.