"They don't care for strangers too much, but I got to know them when they were running stock to Denver. I ended up riding scout for two cattle drives. Good days. Learned a lot about the land between here and the Rockies. The area between the two Platte branches is real anything-goes country. A couple Kur ranching settlements, bands of Jacks riding for the Kur, Crow Indians trying to live on the Pawnee, and a few little villages just trying to keep out of everything."
"So you've been to Denver?"
"No, the Denver Outriders would meet us outside the city. I always wanted to go, though. See a city. Of course, they tell me it's pretty empty, just like everywhere else. A fair amount of damage, but it's still free soil, and that always feels good."
Valentine watched Harvard Station disappear into the distance behind them.
"So you think they're going to clear out these Trekkers?"
She nodded. "It kind of fits the pattern. That other Lifeweaver, Ura, she mentioned that a couple of small Freeholds got torched by these guys. Maybe they're training before taking on bigger game, like us or Denver."
"If Denver depends on these people for food," Valentine theorized, "could be this is a step in a campaign against them. That might go a long way to explaining the attack on Fort Rowling. It was a probe."
"This will be a chance to see how they operate," Duva-lier said. "We can see how they organize, scout, prepare for a battle. Find out about these Reapers with guns. Do they have artillery? It looks like the Twisted Cross has an air force, even if it's just one plane. Southern Command will need to know what's coming."
Valentine felt another, more important battle coming on. His duty and his humanity, his conscience and his code silently warred within. It wasn't much of a fight this time. Too many lives at stake.
The wind at the top of a rise pulled at his hair. He pulled it back into place, and as he did so came to a decision. As if a yoke had been lifted from his shoulders, he straightened.
"Ali, that's exactly what we should do. But first we've got to warn those people."
They jumped from the train as it slowed to climb a hill east of Ogallala. Rather than leaping immediately into the bushes, they waved at the railroad men watching from the caboose. The railroaders waved back, smiling.
"That's always fun," Valentine said, pulling a teasel weed's prickly head out of his hair and picking up his pack. "You okay?"
"Did it knock some sense into you?" she said as she changed back into her stained traveling clothes. At least she was speaking to him again. They had argued briefly, until she quit talking to him after he asked her if she could just watch her friends from the Denver cattle drives die.
"Not yet. Ali, I didn't say that you had to come. I didn't even suggest it. One pair of eyes can see as much as two. You can keep an eye on the Twisted Cross, and I'll try and get the word out to the people in the Dunes."
"You did suggest it. You said, 'We've got to warn those people.' We is plural, Mr. Professor."
"Okay, I hoped you'd want to come with me. After all, you're already known to them."
"Irresponsible. What we're doing-recon-is really important. As far as Southern Command is concerned, the Twisted Cross is just another gang of Quislings. I wanted to take you on because after reading your reports, it seemed like you were just as worried about them as I was. But you want us to go up into the Dunes, where all that's going to happen is we'll be on the receiving end of their attack, instead of evaluating it and learning about their numbers and methods."
Tears trickled down her face. "I liked those people, Val. They're good people, as good as I've met anywhere. There are families in those wagons, Valentine. They're going to be dead in a little while, and there's not a thing we can do about it-and it's killing me. Now you just want to throw our lives away, too.
"Our duty is to Southern Command. What about warning them? Didn't you take an oath when you became an officer, or a Wolf or whatever they put you through when you joined up?"
"Maybe if I can warn them they can hide the kids. We, or I-whatever-I just have to let them know about what's coming." He tightened his pack. "I'm going in there. Unless you want to try to stop me."
The stare-down was brief.
It ended when Duvalier looked at the dirt beneath her hiking boots, poked the loose soil with her walking stick. Then she gripped it firmly by the middle, and for a second Valentine thought she was planning to knock him out with it. But the tears disappeared.
She even looked a little relieved.
"Okay, David. We warn them. But that's all."
* * *
The Cats decided to risk crossing the North Platte River during daylight, starting as early as possible in their race against time and death.
It wasn't hard; at this time of year, the brown-streaked river was at its lowest point. They crossed into the Sands at the wreckage of the Kingsley Dam, passing a sign that read
UNSECURED TERRITORY. TRESPASSERS SUBJECT TO SUMMARY justice. Although the road had been destroyed, a drift of sorts existed, allowing them to make the treacherous crossing without wetting anything below their knees. A few anglers, perhaps out of Ogallala, plied their rods from the banks. If hidden border sentries also watched the pair, Valentine's Trooper vest perhaps confused the guards enough to keep them from shooting.
Rather than disappear into the Dunes right away, which would look more suspicious to a stillwatch, Valentine decided instead to walk up the banks of the Platte among the birches and poplars of the floodplain.