"Yes, sir," Harper answered. "The fourth will carry the mail and some oats. Or if we lose one, it'll be a remount."
"So a third man is going, sir?" Valentine asked. "Who will that be?"
LeHavre patted Valentine on the shoulder. "Take who you want, Valentine. Except for Patel. I need him, and he's too old to cover forty miles a day for long stretches anymore."
Valentine mentally ran down the list of Wolves in Zulu Company.
"I'll take Gonzalez, sir. He has the best nose in the company, and he's first-rate with his hunting bow."
"Take him with my compliments, Lieutenant. Let me know your needs. I realize the company wagons haven't caught up with us yet, but I can probably scrounge you up about anything. Questions?"
The only questions that came to Valentine's mind implied evading responsibility, so he remained silent.
LeHavre finished his coffee. "You two get together with Gonzalez and talk it through. I know you've made the trip a couple of times, Harper, so tell as much about the route to the other two as you can, just in case. You leave at dawn."
Harper accepted the possibility of his death, suggested by the just in case, with the same sunny smile. "Gladly, sir."
That evening, Gonzalez joined them in an informal camp-fire conference.
"Seems like a lot of effort to deliver a few letters. How often do you do this?" Gonzo asked.
"Two or three times a year. Southern Command tries to stay in touch with the other Resistance pockets, at least the big ones. This is information we don't want to broadcast on the shortwave. That's why if it looks like we're going to be taken, you need to pour the fluid in the flasks onto the dispatches and burn 'em."
"If the Reapers are closing in, I'm going to be too busy to start any fires, Sarge."
Valentine mopped up his stew with a slab of bread. "How long are we going to be gone?"
"Depends on the horses, and then the sailors. If we can come up with feed now and then, about two weeks per leg. But there's no guarantee the ship will be in WhitefishBay on time. The Lakes Fleet has troubles of its own. Luckily the Kurians don't pay much attention to the ships, unless they get too close to a city they care about. We'll just have to wait if they aren't there."
"Ever had any problems running the mail?" Valentine inquired.
Harper's smile returned. "A few close shaves. We should keep toward the Mississippi until the Wisconsin border or so. About all you have to worry about there is border trash, but they're mostly scared of everything. Wisconsin has the real Kurian lands we have to cross. Their pet humans farm that area pretty good, and of course the Reapers farm the humans. The shortest route would be up through central Illinois, but that's thickly settled, and unless you have a death wish, you'll want to keep away from Chicago."
Valentine and Gonzalez bade farewell to their company in the predawn gloom. LeHavre offered a final word of advice to his junior lieutenant.
"Keep your eyes open, Mr. Valentine," LeHavre said, solemnly shaking his protege's hand. "We never know enough about what is happening in the Lost Lands. Try and pick up any information you can, even if it's just impressions."
"Thank you for the opportunity, sir."
LeHavre winced. How many young men have you sent to their doom with those words on their lips? Valentine wondered.
"You can thank me by coming back, David."
The three Wolves mounted their horses, the excited animals stamping and tossing their heads in their eagerness to be off, and rode into the misty dawn.
During the first leg of the journey, they kept to the rough terrain of the MississippiValley. They conserved the strength of horse and rider, walking their mounts and stopping often. On the second day, they crossed the Mississippi in a hollowed-out old houseboat, well camouflaged with dirt and plant growth on its battered sides. The trio of old Wolves who took them across laughed as they listened to the secondhand story of the Battle of Hazlett over the labored putting of the aged diesel engine.
"That'll learn 'em," one of them cackled as he brought the houseboat out of its hidden cove and into the current at the "all clear" signal from his observer. "Hank and I, we've been puttin' up signs all over the west bank for miles readin' 'Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted' and 'No Solicitors Invited," but them Grogs don't read too good."
Once in no-man's-land, the Wolves traveled cautiously. They camped for the night when they found the right spot, not when the sun set. Daybreak never found them in the same location in which they bedded down. Each night Valentine ordered a camp change of at least a half-mile, and lost sleep was made up with a siesta each afternoon during the worst of the late summer heat. They set no watch, but relied on their senses to rouse them from their light slumber in the event of danger. They always cooked their meals before dark, knowing better than to call attention to themselves with the light of a campfire.
By the third night out, they were swapping life stories. Valentine had heard Gonzalez's before, but listened again to his scout's words as he lay in his hammock under a cloud-masked moon.
"I was born in Texas in 2041, out there in the western part. My parents were part of a guerrilla band called the Screaming Eagles, which my father told me was an old army unit and my madre said was a music group. They used to do a war cry... I would do it, but it's too loud for these parts. Too loud for the Ozarks, too. I don't remember much fighting when I was young. I think the Eagles stole cattle off the Turncoats. That was what we called the Quislings out there. Sometimes in the summer we went as far north as Kansas and Colorado, and in the winter we would be in Mexico.
"I was about twelve when the Turncoats got us. It was in Mexico. We were in this kind of bowl-shaped valley, a few old buildings and tents, with the cattle all spread out. They got some cannon up in the hills somehow, and pretty soon there were explosions everywhere, with men on horseback pouring down from the mountains. My father fought them, but I'm sure he was killed with the rest. There were just two passes out of the valley, but they had hundreds of men with guns hidden in the rocks. I don't think anyone made it out that way. My madre got me and my baby brother out over the hills. One of the Turncoats caught up to us. He attacked her, but I picked up his gun and shot him in the foot. He grabbed the gun out of my hands and was going to shoot me, but my madre brought a boulder as big as a football down on his head and killed him. God knows how she found the strength to lift it; she was a small woman."
Gonzalez fingered a small silver crucifix around his neck.