"Keeping the fires going, that's the teenagers' job," she continued. "Whenever I tell this story to people with kids, they laugh. The Trekkers don't cut down trees for firewood unless it's an emergency-they use deadfalls and trim branches, sure, but when the wagons first used to roam, they'd cut down too many trees and screw up the whole area for everybody. So they conserve wood. They use the cowshit. They mix it with grasses and twigs and leaves and press it into dried bricks. It makes a good fire, practically smokeless. Gathering the droppings and turning them into fuel is how you spend your youth from twelve years old to sixteen, or whenever they allow that you're ready to get your own horse and gun.
"Wherever they stop in a camp, they plant, potatoes, tomatoes, and peas mostly. They mark the crops with stakes before they move on if they can't harvest themselves. It's called 'leaving something for the future.'
"The Eagles have some allied brands, groups of families that have split off to form their own brands. It happens every generation or so. These wagon trains can only get so big before they become impossible to feed and water without permanent digs."
Valentine noticed that no outriders came up to ask them their business; the men watching over the cows just looked at them from under the brims of their felt hats. Presumably some sentry in the observation tower signaled strangers coming in long ago.
The wide gap in the wagon wall that served as the gate was also the outflow of the spring that watered the camp. It splashed down a rocky watercourse to meander into the trees to the east. They dismounted and led their horses up the final slope to the camp. Valentine expected it to reek of burning dung after Duvalier's travelogue, but he smelled only people, cooking food, and cattle. He eyed the layout of the camp, the trench and fortifications, with admiration.
A lanky man with a thin beard and a dusty top hat waved and came out to greet them. He recognized Duvalier with a smile.
"Glory be!" he said, stamping his foot and tossing his head like a horse. "If it isn't Little Red outta Kansas. It's been nigh on three years, sister."
"Hi, Deacon. I see you're still in the baptizing business. I've brought in another stranger from the south. This is David Stuart, out of Minnesota originally. We've traveled hard and ask your hospitality."
"The Eagle's Wings grant it to both you and the brother. With pleasure, Little Red, with pleasure."
"We're also going to need to speak to you, the Wagon-master, and anyone else concerned with the Common Defense."
"This has anything to do with that plane that's been passing overhead?"
"Yes, Deacon."
"I knew that machine was a bad omen, soon as I saw it. We'll talk later, woman. Why you're thin as a rake! Let's get you into camp and get some food into you. Boy, come here!" he hollered at a scrawny kid gaping at the new arrivals. He spoke a few urgent words to the youth and sent him running into the camp.
They passed through the wagon barricade. An inner ring of wagons, a mix of the house-wagons and larger supply-wagons, formed a second wall within the first. A corral held a reserve of horses with saddles draped on the trek-tow fence. Valentine guessed the camp could mount a hundred men in a matter of minutes. Another wide loop of wagon wall sheltered a mass of oxen downwind, and more could be seen just outside the walls, grazing. "Animal husbandry must be second nature to you," Valentine remarked.
"We live and die by the stock," the deacon agreed.
They made their way past women washing clothing in the stream, lines of laundry drying on ropes stretched between the house-wagons cracked in the fresh breeze. At the center of the second circle of wagons, another pole-mounted crow's nest held a sentry, and above him a flag with the symbol that looked like a thunderbird-or perhaps a set of United States Air Force wings.
A train of dogs and curious children followed the deacon and the Cats as they walked their horses into the center of camp. The children were dressed in the final tatters of hand-me-downs, but they looked healthy and energetic.
"The widow knows you're coming in," Deacon said. "Since a fever took Mr. Hendricks, rest his soul, last April she's been running things. They had a son and a daughter, if you remember, Red, and Josh and Jocelyn have both grown into fine people. Good woman. Those were some big shoes to fill, but no one's missed the old Wagonmaster except in their hearts."
Mrs. Hendricks did not look like a Wagonmaster to Valentine; she looked like your favorite aunt who always bakes a thick cherry pie with a perfect lattice crust. She wore a simple dress with an apron containing everything from pen and notepad to scissors. Her sun-streaked hair was tied back into a bun, and she had meaty, work-reddened arms, well-padded hips, and cherubic cheeks. The only thing hard about her was her eyes.
Seeing the deacon and the visitors, she waved over some young women with platters from the cooking pits. A long table with a blue-and-white checkerboard tablecloth was filled with still-sputtering food, joining tall pitchers of water and prairie-herb tea.
"You poor tired things. We're in the middle of calving festival, so I want you to try this rib roast and tell me what you think. Doris, what's keeping those peas?" She turned back to her guests. "Now, clean up in the bucket over there, don't spare the soap, and tell me what brings you in. Red Alice, I remember you from a few years back, but this young man is new, isn't he? Have you taken a husband?"
"Some days it seems like it," Duvalier said, freckled skin going a trifle redder. "Other days it's like I've had a son. Questions all the time."
After washing his hands, Valentine swung a leg over the bench when the woman motioned them to sit. He reached for his knife and fork, mouth overflowing with saliva, when Duvalier grabbed his hands and thrust them in his lap. The deacon had just bowed his head at the end of the table.
"Heavenly Father, for what we are about to receive may we be made truly grateful." He raised his head. "Lord, that looks good. Let's eat."
Valentine could not have agreed with him more.
With supper cleared away, the dinner table became a council of war. The hot meal had left Valentine sated and sleepy. Through some internal resource, Duvalier was as bright as ever. Valentine struggled to imitate her.
"Red Alice" summed up the threat in a few concise sentences, giving her experiences with the Twisted Cross in Oklahoma, and their supposition that the Dunes were on the list to be cleared out.
The Hendricks woman listened impassively, shaking her head in sadness when Duvalier described the dead Calta-girone and his Wolves and the massacre in Colorado. Her son, Josh, and her daughter, Jocelyn, joined them at the table, mostly listening. Waldron, the Camp Engineer, who looked as though he had a bit of longhorn in him, asked sensible questions. The leader of the outriders, an almost baby-faced young man named Danvers, who proudly claimed he was eight years old on the ground and eighteen years old in the saddle, wanted to know details about the Twisted Cross weaponry.
Around the tables, many other members of the Eagle's Wings Brand stood, squatted, and sat, all listening. The Wagonmaster was not one to hide her doings and decisions behind closed doors. The others kept a respectful silence, allowing the words to carry, and the few who asked questions held up their hands and waited to be called on like disciplined schoolchildren.
"I wish we had a better idea about what you're facing," Valentine said in answer to a question from Danvers.