"Good luck to you, Mr. Lawson," Valentine added.

Lawson began barking out orders, and his men hurried to comply.

"Nice diplomacy, Smoke," Valentine said as they left the wagon with one of Lawson's riders. "Never would have guessed you had it in you."

She squeezed his hand. "You'd be surprised at what I've done with my mouth, if it gets me where I need to go."

They rode out at nightfall, heading northwest. Valentine's stomach sometimes got ahead of his brain, and his insides were doing flip-flops from fatigue. And he had a new worry. When they dismounted from the improvised, blanket-and-rope saddles to walk the horses for a while, Valentine's concerns finally made it to his voice box. "I don't get it, Ali. How does he know so exactly where the Eagle's Wing camp is? They camp in different spots every year, don't they? You said Bar Seven and the Eagles aren't even friendly."

She stopped for a second, then shook her head.

"Valentine, their horsemen range pretty far. Hunting, rounding up strays. Sometimes looking for other Trekkers' strays, if I know the Bar Seven. He gave us the horses, didn't he? If he were in cahoots with the Twisted Cross, which is what you're suggesting, why not just hand us over to them, dead or alive? They had a good twenty guns hanging around those wagons, and their men know how to use them. We wouldn't have had a chance. Stop being paranoid. The Bar Seven are on the shady side of the line, sure, but I've never heard of one group of Trekkers betraying another. Every other Trekker brand would come down on them from every direction but up, and they'd try that if their horses could jump high enough. It'd mean the death of-"

"Enough. You win. You get hold of a man's ear so he has to chew it off to end the arguments."

The hard miles crossing the Dunes left Valentine's brain swimming. He finally convinced himself that the disquieting feeling he had from the Bar Seven came from lack of sleep.

They cold-camped for a couple of hours, deciding rest was more important than hot food. Duvalier kept his spirits up by promising him a sizzling steak on their finding the Eagle camp. While the horses cropped grass, they shared a soda-cracker-and-cheese meal that brought them back to their first journey together.

At noon the next day, they caught sight of their destination. Lawson was not kidding about the ridge. The grassy monster loomed like a tidal wave over little lines and clusters of trees at its base, following the eastward-flowing stream he described. Herds of cattle were scattered on the floor of the valley and the steep slopes of the dune.

Valentine traced the base of the hillside with his binoculars. At last he spotted it, an irregular triangle of wagons parked on a hummock at the base of the hill. The base of the triangle spread out as a concave arc, and the peak trailing up the hillside. On top of the ridge, like the mast of a ship, an observation post stood on a single trunk of timber. He whistled in appreciation.

"You don't know the half of it, Val," Duvalier said. "They've got other herds we can't even see. Counting all the families, there're over sixteen hundred people in this traveling circus. There's about a five cows to every person."

"What about that steak," Valentine said, training his binoculars across the red and red-white herds.

"Coming right up, sir," she said, touching her heels to the horse's sides lightly. Their horses broke into a trot, catching the smell of their kind coming from the three-sided enclosure.

On closer inspection, the wagon laager was even more impressive. Hundreds of wagons made a wall centered on the little spring in the hummock.

"They have three kinds of wagons," Duvalier explained as they cut through the herds. A bull or two stared at them, but most of the cows took no notice. Valentine noticed a lot of calves-a few still knock-kneed newborns-dutifully trailing behind their mothers. "Most of them live in little house-wagons, which they told me are based on Gypsy wagons, whatever Gypsies are. No, I don't want any history lessons, Val. Those are drawn by horses. Then there are the supply-wagons; those are the ones with the big rear wheels and the small front ones. They take oxen because of the heavy load, sometimes as many as sixteen. Most of what you see on the walls are those or the long battle-wagons. The battle-wagons are drawn by draft horse teams, and when they stop anywhere for longer than a day or so, they fortify. The battle-wagons have sheets of metal that they put on the outer face, joined kind of like double-paned windows, with rifle loopholes. They fill the space between the aluminum sheets with sand. The kids even help with this. They have little shovels and buckets they carry. In the space of an afternoon, they can build a pretty substantial wall by hooking the wagons together, and within a couple of days, they have trenches dug and the walls filled in."

As they grew closer, Valentine saw the battle-wagon scheme in practice. The triangular fort even had little mini-forts at the corners, clusters of four wagons projecting out like towers at a castle's corner, covering the main gate.

"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."

Tags: E.E. Knight Vampire Earth Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net