I’d put them in the outside, right-hand pocket of Petra Dill’s burnoose, that’s what. But they weren’t there now. All I found was a packet of dental gum, a pocket-size Weatherman tool—always essential to a gunsmith—and a nail file. Oh, yes. And a couple of wadded up tissues.
My head drooped onto my curled-up knees. Now what? Strike flint? Twirl a stick? Those things were as unattainable as the matches. Maybe I should sit and cry. Or get mad. Actually, I was mad. In stories, mages make fire. It was the most elementary magical thing they learned how to do. So why couldn’t I? My power, if I even possessed any, was useless.
With blurred eyes, I surveyed the six-foot tall sagebrush with the branch leaning up its side, and the pile of tinder beneath the branches. All dressed up with nowhere to go, I told myself.
But there. An object gleaming white, almost hidden in the rest of the dry material.
I leapt to my feet, staggering as the sprain gave way. Of course. I’d used a tissue to add to the tinder. I must have dropped the matches when I pulled the tissue from my pocket. On my hands and knees now, I went over every square inch of ground. And again. Nothing
It was now seven minutes past the limit Teagun and I had agreed upon. He must be having trouble or he’d have been here by now. He was depending on me to help him. I had to get that fire started.
Although I squeezed my eyes shut and thought fire for all I was worth, in the end I had to take the mundane route. I sacrificed one of the Guardian’s shells to the cause.
After carrying the Weatherman tool around for years, I finally had occasion and the need to put it to use. Drawing the lead tip from the brass took a matter of moments using the tool’s pliers. I dumped the gunpowder from the casing onto the tissue, laid both on a flat rock and selected another stone as a hammer.
At the second blow the powder flashed, scorching through the tissue. Gently, taking every care, I blew on the smoldering paper. A tiny burst of light rewarded me. Flame spread to the dry sage foliage, climbed the leaning branch and at last, ignited the whole top of the sagebrush.
The torch flared, shooting sparks into the sky. I’d done it. I hustled off to find a place to hide.
CHAPTER 15
Sounds of several people hurrying across the open ground lent credence to Teagun’s horror of fire. There were far too many in the group for them all to be crew from the hotel. That meant a bunch of truckers, or maybe plain old sightseers, had also come to investigate, a few of them having left their rigs with the engines running up on the highway.
Their voices reached me before their bodies did. To a man or a woman they were loud and strident. Concerned. And prepared to fight the flames with the canisters of retardant they brought with them. It was beginning to look as though they’d need to use it, too, for the glowing ash, blown by fire-created wind, was floating with ominous purpose all over the place. I wouldn’t have believed there was enough vegetation to burn, if with my own eyes I hadn’t seen a clump of bunchgrass ignite.
A woman, coming up from the road, dashed over to the latest fire, her extinguisher quickly dousing the small flame. No wonder Teagun had balked at the conception of deliberately starting a fire, an opinion everyone in this country must share
Meanwhile, I’d slipped through a tumble of rocks to the site a hundred feet from the fire that I’d chosen as my observation point. I had barely settled in, counting off the outlaws one by one as they appeared, when Adainette Plover herself arrived on the scene. All six were accounted for, I saw with satisfaction. Teagun’s way should be clear.
Close up, Adainette confirmed my earlier evaluation: hard and dangerous. The firelight showed me eyes set a little too close together for beauty. The long scar on her jaw formed a raised keloid, and an expression too flat and sour to instill much confidence was fixed on her face. I could not conceive what had possessed the Dills to hire her. Frankly, she scared me half to death and had at first sight.
No. She definitely wasn’t the beauty of my original impression. And she didn’t leave anyone long in doubt as to who was running things here.
“You,” she yelled at one of the outlaws. He must not have been fast enough in plying his extinguisher to suit her. “Idiot! Point the damn thing at the base of the fire. Don’t you know anything?”
She, too, had that strange, Latino-styled accent like Teagun and Captain Hawkinson, although her name wasn’t any more Hispanic than theirs. What I found more impressive than accent was the way the “idiot” jumped to obey.
“Kirsten,” she continued, “stay with Duncan. Don’t wander off. There are snakes in the rocks.”
The woman she spoke to, yet another dark-skinned person with silver-blond hair, said, “Eeww,” and huddled closer to the short, massive man I’d seen with Adainette at the hotel gates. He didn’t object when she clutched his arm, although I fancied I saw protest on another man’s face. Kirsten’s man, I suspected. The one she’d arrived with at any rate. If he felt like objecting to Adainette’s order, he decided against it, for as his boss directed him toward an errant spark fallen farther from the burning sage, he did as she demanded.
Most of the motley gathering, seeing neither runaway range fire nor imminent danger, left the firefighting effort to the locals. Several were already leaving. I should join them, I decided, as the hotel crew was on top of the fire. If anyone saw me, I’d be another nameless body in a crowd. After I rounded the bend, it should be easy to drop out and go meet Teagun who must certainly be at the rendezvous point by now.
If he hasn’t been caught, an insidious little voice said.
Anyway, my intent to slip away was thwarted when, with a jerk of her head, Adainette called the short outlaw over to join her. He detached Kirsten from his arm casually like a troublesome insect and went to join Adainette. They strolled slowly, watchfully away from the others until they came to a stop no more than ten feet from me on the other side of my rock. I could see them both by merely craning my neck a bit.
“Look around, Duncan,” she said. “What do you see?”
The man, Duncan, swiveled watchful eyes without ever turning his bullet-head. His thick neck looked incapable of moving. He, too, was scarred with the botched removal of a prisoner’s tattoo. Did they all have the same cosmetician, I wondered, or was there a chemical built into the tattoo ink that caused the terrible reminder? If so, Duncan must have ignored the warning because the length and breadth of his scar suggested a double whammy.
His voice rose from his chest, deep and hoarse.
“Set up,” he said. “This fire is no accident. And I ask myself, why? Why would you start a fire, Adainette?”
Adainette tilted her chin, her lips thinning. “Only one reason. To make sure someone is where I want him. Watch the people, Duncan. Whoever set this fire is still here, close. I can smell him. Catch him and we’ll ask what he wants.”
Her statement sent a chill through me. Could she really smell a fire starter? I had no idea if her words were a figure of speech or if human olfactory glands had evolved to such a point. But even if she could smell an adversary, she didn’t know everything. She didn’t know I was female or that I was practically under her nose.
Duncan picked up on the gender thing as well. “Him? Who do you think it is? Petra Dill’s kid?”
Well, that answered one of my questions. They hadn’t caught Teagun. Yet
Adainette silenced him with a finger to her lips, drawing him farther from the crowd, and a few steps closer to me. I could have done without the proximity.
“Quiet,” she said in warning. “A number of these people are old friends of that kid and his precious mother. I’ve told part of them he is dead. Others that he went away.”
“I say he is dead.”
“If he were dead, Villanova and the others, at least a few of the others, would have come back for their bonus. No, I believe it is he who has been hunting my men. Who else would have started this fire? He’s not such a kid as you think.”
He didn’t find argument with
this. “Then it is he who will now be hunted, and he who will soon be dead. This I, Duncan Ajube, swear to you.”
Dryly, she said, “You’d better be as successful in discovering the whereabouts of the six men we have lost, Duncan Ajube. I, myself, had thought of Teagun Dill as young and inexperienced. He was quiet and I ignored him, thinking Petra was our only threat. I should have known better and now I’m telling you. Don’t discount him. When you catch him, Duncan, watch him closely. He has claimed his share of bounty in the past. And who else can have taken our men and not left a trace?”
“He has help,” Duncan stated with certainty. “So there will be at least two of them.”
“Yes. I feel you are right.” Adainette lifted her head to stare into the night. Only a smoky haze remained of my fire. “And that troubles me.”
Duncan shrugged. “Why? Because there is a person fool enough to help him?”
“No. Or not only because he has an ally to help. What I want to know is where did he find this person?”
This got Duncan’s attention. “What do you mean? Spokane isn’t so far. Neither is Seattle. He may have gone to one of those places and hired a freelance. We’ve run into that situation before.” He fingered his scar.
Adainette closed her eyes and acquired a dreamy, faraway look, becoming almost beautiful again. “Ah, but our young adversary may be able to do a thing or two you or I cannot. Haven’t you heard the way Petra sometimes talks around things? How careful she is when she speaks of her son?” She laughed a little. “Even when she is being, shall I say, encouraged.”
“You mean⏤”
“I mean,” Adainette’s smile bit like a premature gnash of an attacking shark’s teeth. “I wonder how Ms. Dill would like a visit from the Federal Commission of Paranormal Studies asking about her boy?”
Duncan smiled, too. “If she lives so long—which I doubt.” He paused. “Do you think Teagun Dill conjured this help he’s getting? Invented it out of thin air.”
“Umm. Maybe invented. Or perhaps I would say, imported it out of thin air.”
I may have made an involuntary movement, startled she came so close to the truth, because she cocked her head as though listening for a message from outer space.
“Did you hear something?” she asked, blundering forward toward me over the rock pile and almost falling as stone rolled beneath her foot. She bore a laser tube in her hand. “Damn.”
But as she recaptured her balance, a woman, I think it was Kirsten, began hollering her head off. Everyone, Duncan and Adainette included, ran toward a racket loud enough to remind me of World War I when the German’s invaded that little French hospital town. I heard the word snake repeated several times.
By now everyone was ready to head out, what with the last of any possible fires eradicated and an inborn fear of snakes revived. The hotel group went, too, perhaps to pour drinks for a few thirsty fire fighters.
I don’t know; perhaps I could credit Petra’s cloak and its chameleon color scheme with hiding me, though the outlaws were near enough for me to smell their sweat. I guess I might claim a little of the credit, too, for not letting myself be spooked into making a run for it. Maybe willing myself to be invisible had done a little good as well.
But I think the most important thing I learned on this night was that for all her vaunted ability to smell out an adversary, Adainette hadn’t sensed me when I was practically under her feet. Neither she nor her gang were omnipotent. They could be beaten.
TEAGUN COULD HAVE BEEN MODELING for a picture of stereotypical, impatient manhood when I arrived at our prearranged meeting point about a half-mile from the fire. He met me before I got to where we’d buried Villanova ignoring that I was limping badly and a little late.
“Where have you been?” he asked—no, snarled—unpleasantly. “I thought sure you must have been captured.”
“Captured! Me?” If he could snarl, I could certainly snort. “This bunch are charter members of the shoot-first-talk-later gang as you well know. If they’d found me, I suspect I’d be dead as a doornail by now.”
He took me by the arm, hauling me forward faster than my weakened ankle liked or could tolerate.
“Hey,” I protested. “I’m glad to see you, too, but may I remind you, I am not a rag doll. Quit dragging me.” By the time those last words were out of my mouth, I was seething, though smart enough to keep my voice low. “And I’m walking all humpty-dumpty like this because a certain individual we both know failed to confine his prisoner and I got hurt, not because I think it looks cute. So could we please lose the manhandling thing and slow down?”
He didn’t relent. “No. You’ve got to hurry, Boothenay.”
“What is the rush?” Sweat broke out on my forehead as he urged me on. “Jeez, Teagun, at least fill me in on what’s happened, won’t you? Did you find your mother? Is she okay? Can we bust those outlaws loose?”
His shoulders rolled, throwing off my questions. “There’s a person I want you to meet.”
“You mean your mother is here? You got her to come out?” Relief made me weak. “Why didn’t you say so, you buffoon? Now I can go home.”
But the woman who stepped from the shadows was not Petra Dill, although I did know her name.
“Maganda,” I whispered in surprise.
Teagun stiffened. “How⏤ You know each other?”
“I told you about her, remember? This is the woman who helped me that night at the hotel. I don’t want to be rude, but what’s she doing here?” I smiled at the dark woman, hoping to take the sting out of my words.
It wasn’t light enough to actually see Teagun color-up, although I suspect he did.
Maganda could, and did, speak for herself. “I am on my return trip west, Miss,” she said in her soft, accented voice. “I saw the fire and stopped to help. Then I saw Mr. Dill cross the road in front of me. He wasn’t going to the fire, so I wondered, why isn’t he? And at once I knew, because of the way the hotel is lately and because I remembered you, that there is trouble here. Something is very wrong.”
“I’m surprised Teagun waited to speak with you,” I said, glancing again at Teagun.
At this, Maganda did grin with wicked glee. “He didn’t wait. I followed him.”
I made a clicking sound with my tongue, wondering at the same time if Teagun hadn’t deliberately let himself be followed. He could be devious. I knew that for a fact.
The implied derision of my clicking tongue didn’t faze him, I noted.
“I knew I could rely on Maganda,” he said, complacency in every syllable.
My anger flared. Oh, not because he admitted to being friends with Maganda, a little belatedly, I might add. I was glad he had a friend— maybe more than a friend. Only now, at this late date, I was seeing at least two people he had to rely on, Maganda and Clive Hawkinson, and I had to wonder, why me?
“Teagun,” I said, proud of keeping my voice cool and my exterior calm. “If you don’t mind me saying so, I believe you could get along fine without my services.” I let my eyes drift longingly to the Weatherby poking up over his shoulder. “In fact, I’m not quite sure why you ever thought you needed me.”
I could see he didn’t want to talk in front of Maganda. “You saved my life,” he said.
That’s true. I had. Although the incident might never have happened if he hadn’t brought me to this time. “Aside from that—”
“You have other talents,” he interrupted, not naming them though I knew which ones he meant. “It was necessary for you to come.”
Maganda’s dark eyes bounced from Teagun to me and back again. Her idea of what my other talents might be was written on her face. And she was wrong.
I spoke directly to the woman. “I’m a gunsmith. Teagun . . . asked . . . me to fix a couple of guns for him and to help him with a shooting problem.”
In the end, I stopped short my complaint of being kidnapped and coerced, terrorized and threatened. I guess I didn’t want to answer a bunch of awkward questions an
y more than Teagun did, and I had no idea how much we could actually count on Maganda to keep our secrets. More importantly, being party to condemning a person to a lifetime of incarceration, for that’s what attending the Federal Commission of Paranormal Studies School sounded like to me, was more than I could stomach. Especially since I was in the very same danger of incarceration if Teagun wouldn’t, or couldn’t, help me go home.
He didn’t know how lucky he was, came the bitter reflection. To be able, with apparent ease, to stop time and to move himself within its parameters.
Maganda broke into a series of questions. I knew they were questions by her use of the interrogatory at the end of the sentences. She was speaking in that language I always felt I should be able to understand. They finished before I could decipher anything meaningful out of the conversation and she turned to me.
“I think Mr. Dill is lucky you came,” she said. “Most professorettas would not travel to the Great Empty, even for the prospect of employing their specialization.”
“He made me an offer impossible to turn down.” My dry sarcasm went over their heads, my wit unappreciated. Apparently I’d been elevated in status to the equivalent of PhD. Lofty ideals to a mere gunsmith, especially one enabled by bogus credentials.
Teagun’s hand swept down in a cutting motion. “Enough. We have much to discuss without all this yap-yapping.”
I caught Maganda’s eye, sharing a totally silent laugh with her as we regarded his discomfort. “You’re right. We do,” I said to him, relenting. “For instance, I want to hear your plan for what we’re going to do next. I guess you must not have been able to find your mother.”
He glanced at me in surprise. “Of course I found her. She . . . she’s been hurt, but it’s nothing to slow her down much.”
“Hurt?” My fingers went involuntarily to the cut on my jaw. “If you found her, and she’s hurt, where is she? Don’t tell me you left her there.” With dawning horror, I sensed this was what he’d done.
Crossroad (The Gunsmith Book 3) Page 18