which virtually all equipment was packed.
In any self-respecting place, the breeze in mid-October would be cool and the sky overcast. But this little piece of Wild Country was hot enough to boil a man's brains, and it promised to get worse. Tomorrow it might play host to snowflakes or a tornado, but today Quantrill cursed its heat, sighed, and found a bulb of Pearl Light in the cycle storage pannier.
A careful scan of the shrubby area told him much. Those discarded bags began to degrade with the help of dry-packed enzymes as soon as they were opened, especially in warm weather. They were still in fair condition, so the bags had been opened within the past twenty-four hours or so. Several long scuff marks on the hardpan revealed where the chopper had landed. Scarcely ten meters away was a rust-brown stain on the earth, already sun-blackening and worshiped by a squadron of biting flies. The barb must have lost quarts of blood on that spot; a wonder it had survived at all.
Labels on the empty bags said someone had used a medical stapler, a hammock sling, and a hell of a lot of tape. Quantrill spotted several crescent-shaped heelmarks — Wardrop's, for the S & R crews left caulked patterns — and then, swigging his beer, let his glance slide up a nearby animal trail.
He said an ugly short word and strode forward, seeing the sharp incisions in the earth where a huge boar had spun, parried, and charged. Without any question, it was Ba'al that Wardrop had met: and thanks to his training at the hands of Jess Marrow, Quantrill had become a passable tracker. He needed little time to find where Ba'al's blood trail began, but he was encouraged; Ba'al had not been bleeding all that much. He considered calling Sandy on the cycle's VHP set to tell her the good news but did not want to risk giving away his position in case Garner's people had direction finders. He had no way of knowing that someone already had located his path and was moving toward cover near a point he would soon pass.
Briefly, he lost the trail in the creek. He found where Ba'al had entered the creek earlier, judging from the way the prints were oriented — and then dropped to his knees. A moment later he stood up, dusting off his knees and grinning.
Marrow was not as good a tracker as, say, an Apache; but he had taught Quantrill about print incisions. When running, a hoofed animal digs the fore tip of his hoof into the soil, and more loose soil is found behind the rear hoofprint than behind the front. It took Quantrill a moment to realize what he was looking at: the dewclaws at the rear of each hoof had dug in, and the loose soil was ahead of the prints. Ba'al hadn't
And if he'd taken that much trouble with his tracks, he probably was not badly injured. Silently, Quantrill lifted his bulb of Pearl aloft and toasted the unseen Ba'al.
Still, most of his findings were guesswork, and he had not come this far to let his imagination draw his conclusions. Quantrill copied Sandy's 'all clear; come in' whistle as well as he could. If he could whistle the big devil up, at least he could take back the news that Ba'al still reigned in his corner of hell.
No response. Nor in the next ravine, either, a narrow cleft so choked with brush that its real contours were hard to see. But Quantrill saw a sunglint from water between cedars, where the ravine widened some distance away, and took the cycle along the ridge for at least one moment too many. He never knew how many rounds were fired toward him in that first burst, but one slug gashed his windscreen and another shattered the engine's injector pump in the same instant. That meant several snipers, or one with an assault rifle, or both. Quantrill took the only evasive action he could.
A hovercycle's fans were designed to give gyroscopic stability and a low center of gravity as well, so they were heavy enough to continue free-wheeling for several seconds after the engine stopped. This feature was a real bacon-saver when an engine seized while the cycle was waist high over deep water or broken countryside. You came down quickly, but you had time to get ready. Quantrill needed two seconds to release his harness and a third to roll out of the cockpit. By this time the cycle was bouncing not far from the lip of the ravine, rebounding from a long limestone outcrop. Quantrill scrambled into the shadow of the outcrop as his vehicle crashed onto its side and rolled over with what seemed agonizing slowness.
Then silence, broken only by faint pings as the engine began to cool. Quantrill replayed the attack in his head and knew that the slug through his windscreen had come from his right. That meant the ambush had not been set in the ravine, but from the flat prairie above it. The ravine was a possible escape route, then — but he did not enjoy giving up the high ground and would have to cross several meters of open territory. The outcrop stretched for five meters parallel to the ravine but was not high enough to let him rise to his knees. He could not reach into the inverted cockpit to toggle the VHP set for help without exposing himself as a clear target. If only he had brought a weapon!
Well, he had, after a fashion. The Nelson rifle and its tranquilizers lay in his cargo pannier with the beer. That pannier hatch lay almost within arm's reach. He inched out from the limestone, hoping he was hidden by the inverted cycle, ducking back expecting more gunfire. Nothing.
He slid on his belly again, reached the pannier hatch, and opened it. Instantly, a distant burst of fire hammered a half dozen slugs into the cycle and Quantrill rolled back to the outcrop. Success, and fresh trouble, too; the rifle fell from the open hatch onto the ground, but now diesel fuel began to gurgle into the engine compartment and to trickle from there to the dirt. Snaking one arm out to retrieve the rifle. Quantrill saw his last bulb of Pearl near the hatch lip. Like an idiot, he had brought no other drinkables, depending on the filter straw in his survival kit for water on the open range. And that kit was still strapped into the cockpit. Like the VHP set, it might as well be half a world away.
A single shot impacted somewhere on the cycle. Now the stink of diesel fuel was rank in his nostrils, ten gallons of it at least, and if the damned cycle caught fire, he would be showered with blazing liquid when the tank blew. He shrugged his jacket off, poked the barrel of the rifle against it, then eased it forward as he crawled along the base of the outcrop away from the cycle. The jacket did not draw fire until he had crawled to the end of the outcrop, but whoever it was, the sharpshooter was quick and accurate. Quantrill reviewed his options furiously.
It was almost noon, getting hotter, and if that fuel caught fire, his next move should be a fast scramble over the lip of the ravine, guns or no guns. That might involve another scramble down the steep ravine, and it might begin with a fall; he could not tell how far. And a compound leg fracture meant a slow and nasty death. If he stayed healthy until dark, his chances of escape were excellent. But that meant lying half in sunlight for hours with no water. Quantrill knew he sweated more than most, knew also that a single afternoon in a baking sun could send him through the classic stages of dehydration. By dusk, his tormentor could simply walk up and shoot him while he lay there.
With the compressed gas cylinder and the fat tranquilizer darts removed from its hollow stock, the rifle was not too heavy to hold extended with one hand. Quantrill gripped the stock with his right hand, his chin buried in caliche dirt, and eased the barrel out to nudge that little plastic bulb of beer. The confounded thing rolled back and forth but would not drop out.
His wrist was tiring, and someone must have seen movement, for the next fire was a rapid series that sent slugs into the dirt beneath the cycle and dust into Quantrill's eyes. Then he did what he should have done first: hauled the rifle in, replaced the gas cylinder, and fired through the air space beneath the cycle. He did not have a dart in the chamber, but the sound of it was convincing enough.
He counted thirty before another round hit the cycle. That suggested his return fire, harmless though it was, had caused the sniper to duck. He recharged the rifle's plenum, poked its barrel under the cycle, and triggered it again. The next instant, he scrambled furiously to the pannier, snatched the little bulb of Pearl, and rolled away again. It gained him a pint of fluid and a conversation.
'Toss out the shotgun,' said an amplified voice in Texas accents. Those little loud-hailer trumpets could send a voice a long way.
