Wild Country

cotton fluff. With pressure of knees and the reins, he turned the courageous, frightened little barb still expecting the boar to explode into movement. Unruffled, alert, it stood and waited for him to deliver.

Briefly, insanely, Wardrop thought of hurling the lance overhand in his next pass. But in pigsticking you never let go of your lance. Never. It was as basic as honor and courage. Wardrop spurred the barb, with subtle knee pressure this time to guide it a bit farther from the quarry. Sooner or later he was bound to connect.

He had seen small boar leap backward, but never a trophy animal. He brought the lancehead in with its point a trifle high, hoping that a lightning thrust inward and down would at least draw blood.

It brought blood, all right.

Ba'al waited as if carved from limestone until he saw the lancehead arrowing down to his flesh, and then jerked backward as he flicked his head. He intended to bind the lance between his tusks and disarm this maniac, then send him packing. After all. when boar fought boar, losing was punishment enough. The winner seldom killed, and this man seemed happy to Tight in the manner of a boar. But Ba'al had not counted on the lancehead dropping so much, so abruptly.

Wardrop knew joy, and battle lust, as the lancehead entered the boar's mouth. He wrenched hard to free the point, seeing bright blood on the razor edge as he looked back; by that time the boar was behind him.

Ba'al realized the lancehead was between his jaws; clamped down; felt the steel's cruel passage through the soft flesh of his underlip. He did not release the pressure of his jaws but felt the slick, shiny steel slide from his teeth anyway. His own foamy saliva had reduced friction to almost nothing, but Wardrop was lucky to wrench the lance away without being unhorsed.

And now the boar did charge. He charged with a suddenness that put him alongside the harried little barb before it could turn, and while Wardrop was twisting from the waist to bring the lancehead around. He lowered the great head almost to the ground, flicked his head to the side, and delivered a terrible slash that could have taken Wardrop's leg off at the ankle.

Wardrop saw the move, kicked backward and up without losing the stirrup, and felt the cinch give way, sliced like cheese. In the same instant the barb felt the ivory scimitar enter its flank and screamed again, staggering. With the cinch flopping loose, Wardrop's saddle slipped from the barb like soap on tile. He managed to free himself from the stirrups, hit the ground standing, and rolled free, still grasping his lance as the barb went down.

Wardrop had seen a Masai with a four-meter assegai lion spear, using his foot to ground the spear butt against the ground to impale a lion as it leaped. Now, using his knee to secure the weighted butt of his lance, he waited for this devil to rush him.

Ba'al saw the man drop to one knee, two lance lengths away. He saw the barb and heard it, too, an agony that was not pleasant to hear, and now that he was taller than both of them he felt that dominance had been won. His sudden murderous furies of earlier times failed to take hold. Tasting his own blood and that of the barb as it ran down his right tusk, he considered the matter and decided it had been settled. Neither member of this team seemed in condition to challenge him again.

Alec Wardrop watched the huge boar bounce away, pink foam jouncing from its mouth like flecks of cotton candy, and knew that he had not seriously wounded the creature. At the moment he was damned glad of it. Ba'al moved like something on springs, in a distance-eating canter that took him out of sight. He was bleeding more than he knew, but he would know it when he had lost a few quarts of blood. Of that, Wardrop was certain. He moved over to the savaged little Spanish Barb, avoiding the forehoof that pawed pathetically back and forth. At least he still had the VHP radio in the pocket of his bush jacket.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Sandy's journal, Sun. IS Oct. '06

Childe has finally cried herself to sleep. Wish I could do that but am all cried out, mostly in anger, some of it misdirected at Ted. On lonely reflection I agree he was right not to call, but to rush straight to us as soon as that berserk Brit was airlifted to WCS with his bloodstained spear. Nothing I could have done anyway, and Ted was here for support when he told us the bad news. Can it be true that my old protector is bleeding to death somewhere on Garner spread?

Wonder where Ted is, this moment. Told me his WCS hovercycle was borrowed, but more likely he simply rustled it. Did he also borrow that vet kit with permission? An even bet that Ba'al will not allow him near enough to use it. Dam it, why did Ted refuse to let me call old Mr. Garner? Only good manners to tell a neighbor when you must follow your stock onto his land. Part of my moral code, yet I let Ted talk me out of it.

Damn our moral codes anyway, they are the razors we wield against our own fulfillments, shaving away each pleasure one thin, transparent curl at a time. If taken too far, this process leaves us jumbled and juiceless piles of severed joys, baked crisp as dry leaves in the autumn of life. I have learned, at least, to remove my code before lovemaking. Half of amorality is armor… and I would not be straying into this line of though, if Ted had made love to me last night. Perhaps the mother of invention was not necessity, but simple frustration.

Childe's mind is subtle. Or perhaps just pragmatic; she had never told me Ba'al survived poison three years ago. Claims she alone can find the old shanty and creek where he recovered out on the Garner spread. Insists Ba'al is certain to return there if badly hurt. Still, I'm sure Ted is right, he must search alone. Wild Country is no place for a little girl at night unless she is riding the neck of Ba'al.

To be out of this mess I would give everything I own, or expect to own. Still no word on reward for that stupid amulet. Ted talks vaguely of large sums, but even $50,000 would not buy a spread big enough to contain my old friend. Only consolation tonight is that Ted is no longer in gov't service and can gallivant off like this whenever he likes without mortal danger.

Will brew agarita tea and try to sleep now…

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Quantrill kept to the valleys when he could, mindful of the possibility of radar and other sensors. The hovercycle was not one of the government's stealth models with kapton plastic and special coatings, but simply the first one he could hotwire at Wild Country Safari. It was a Curran, a fast courier job with good mufflers and a recliner you could sleep in. He had left Sandy's place before dawn and crossed Mul Garner's fenceline shortly after first light, trusting the map because it was a duplicate of Wardrop's. It was one of the few things about this fool's errand that he could trust.

He couldn't trust Garner's men not to shoot him on sight. If the boar's injury was less severe than Wardrop claimed, Quantrill couldn't trust the animal not to charge him. And though he had brought the Nelson rifle with its tranquilizers, he could not trust it to deliver the right dose to pacify Ba'al without killing him. He couldn't even trust the creeks he had tried to follow. Several times this day, he had whirred down a sluggish limestone-bedded brook watching for the signs Childe had described, suddenly to find himself following a dry creekbed or even, in one case, circling a sinkhole. In South Texas, creeks around Edwards Plateau were just as likely to flow underground as above it.

Quantrill did not see deer, peccary, or anything else larger than a rabbit on this morning. He and the cycle were the only big things moving across that part of Garner land. And that made it easier for motion sensors on a nearby hilltop to follow his progress.

Now, with the late morning sun promising to blister him later in the day, Quantrill settled the cycle near a scatter of discarded plastic bags and killed the engine. Wardrop's distress call had been satellite-relayed to Kerrville, the nearest

Search & Rescue outfit, and they'd actually lifted that poor little Spanish Barb back to Marrow in a sling under a chopper. Having spent several years with S & R teams, Quantrill recognized the flimsy clear wraps in