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A few shots followed the survivors until they disappeared into the shadows of the rocks far above, then the mountainside was silent.
"What. . . ?" Florimel rasped. "Who. . . ?"
Paul waited, but there was no shout of warning or welcome. He sat up and cautiously looked around, trying to guess where the shots had come from, but could see nothing but the darkening mountain. "I don't know. I just hope they're on our side. . . ."
"There," Martine said, pointing.
Two hundred meters down the hillside, near a jumble of boulders that looked very precariously perched, a light was moving. Someone was waving a lantern, signaling to them. It was just a small thing, a wavering gleam still faint in the last rays of the sun, but at the moment Paul thought it looked like a glimpse of heaven.
The person who held the lantern was small, face almost hidden by a scarf and hat pulled low, and the long billowing coat also seemed too large for the slight frame, but Paul was still surprised when the stranger spoke in a woman's dear voice.
"You can just stop there," she drawled. "There are a few guns pointing at you, so unless you think you can outrun a bullet better than those things that were chasing you, I suggest you tell us your business."
"Business?" Florimel was so tired her temper was as raw as her voice. "Business? Ru
"It's true," Paul said. "And we're grateful you drove them off." He tried to think of something else to say; he was so exhausted he thought he might collapse any moment. "Just don't shoot at us. Do you want us to reach for the sky?" It was about the only thing he could remember from netshow westerns.
The woman took a few steps toward them, holding up the lantern which was now the main source of light on the mountainside. "Just hold your water for a minute while I get a look at you." She peered at Paul and his companions, then turned and called over her shoulder, "They look like real folk. More or less."
Somebody shouted something from behind the boulders that Paul could not make out, but apparently it was agreement; the woman with the lantern waved them forward.
"Just don't do anything too fast or tricky," she said as Paul and the others staggered down the slope toward her. "The boys have had a long day, but they'd be willing to kill a few more if they had to."
"Bitch talk that fenfen," T4b muttered sourly. "Don't like it, me."
"I heard that." The woman's voice had gone cold. A pale hand appeared from the voluminous sleeve, the small gun pointed right at T4b. "I don't need Billy and Titus to deal with you, boy—I'll put you down myself."
"Jesus!" Paul said. "He didn't mean it! He's just a stupid kid. Apologize, Javier."
"Sayee lo, you! Do what. . . ?"
Martine grabbed his arm and yanked. "Apologize, you idiot."
T4b stared at the muzzle of the derringer for a moment, then cast his eyes down. "Sorry. All tired, me. Those things tried to kill us, seen?"
The woman snorted. "Just watch your mouth. I may not be a lady myself, but we got a few in there who are, not to mention some young ones."
"We're sorry," Paul told her. "We thought we were all going to die down in that nest."
The woman's eyebrows rose. "You got out of one of them nests?" she said. "Well, that's something. My man will be pretty interested to hear about that, if it's true."
Paul heard T4b's intake of breath and turned a stifling glance on him. "It is true. But we wouldn't have made it without your help."
"Tell it to Billy and Titus when you go in," she said, gesturing to a space between two standing boulders. "They did most of the shooting."
Paul ducked his head and stepped through into the flicker of flames in a dark place—for a moment it was so much like the nest that he could not help fearing some terrible trick.
"A
"That is Billy Dixon," the woman said as she and the rest of Paul's friends filed in. The cavern knifed far into the hillside but was screened on the open end by an ancient tumble of boulders. Paul could see these survivors had picked their fortification well—only a few chinks between the great stones let in any sight of the evening sky. "Billy might be the best hand alive with a Sharps gun—even my man would allow that was true."
Dixon, who had a long straggling blond mustache and the begi
"And my name is A
"Nothing," a deep voice said. "No sign of nary a one of those devils, 'cept the dead ones." A tall black man with a very long rifle swung himself down from a higher spot among the rocks—a look-out post of sorts, Paul guessed. He landed beside them with a thump.
"And this is Titus, who perforated that jackalo what was jumping down to give you a haircut and shave you wouldn't have forgotten, mister," A
Paul stuck out his hand. "Thank you. Thank you all."
After a moment's hesitation, Titus took it. "You would have done it for me, too, wouldn't you? Ain't no question of skin when something like that is coming after someone."
For a moment Paul was puzzled, then remembered that this was supposed to be nineteenth-century America, where things like racial differences still meant a lot. "Absolutely," he said. "Except I don't ever want to shoot a gun again."
Billy Dixon gave a little snort of amusement and wandered off toward the depths of the cave. The other inhabitants were coming forward now. As A
"I'm glad you enjoyed the show, Henry," A
The ancient laughed and went off to get the gun. A
"Do you folks want something to eat?" A
"I think we just want to sit down somewhere," Paul said.
"Lie down," Martine quietly amended him. "I need sleep."
"Then you all better come over here and bunk down in what we call the shooting blind," their hostess said. "That way we can keep the young ones away—if you try to lie down back where everyone else is at, the little rats will be all over you." She led them up a narrow makeshift path through the tumble of stones that screened the front of the cave until they reached the flat top of a boulder several meters across. A few animal skins scattered across it—Paul guessed they were buffalo hides—made it look quite inviting; At one edge the old man she had called Henry sat staring out through a crevice between two large stones, a long rifle propped beside him.