Valentine had to pour it on to keep up with the cantering horse, but he did so. His whole body seemed suffused in warmth, a warmth that slowly grew uncomfortable. Even a Wolf couldn't move at this rate for long. His legs filled with a fiery ache, and his heart beat like a duck's wings. The
sweating horse tired of the race, as well, and kept trying to break into a gallop.
"Cut it out, Colorado," Ranson yelled from the dust-trail. "You'll kill the damn horse or our friend."
Perspiration crusted with dust coated Valentine's face, but he kept pace until Colorado halted, fighting the urge to lean forward to catch his wind. He slowed back down to a walk matching the horse's, controlling his breath as best he could.
"Sheeet," Colorado said. "They shouldn'ta called you Ghost, it shoulda been Shanks. I never seen-hell, never heard of a man able to run like that."
Valentine concentrated on breathing.
"You done treating our ally like a bastard?" Ranson asked.
"Ally? We're taking him under guard, ain't we?"
"If them Reapers showed up, he'd be guarding us, not the other way around. Don't you know a Hunter when you meet one, you damned fool?"
"Ha! My pa used to say those Hunters were just good liars, is all. There's nothing to that story."
"Apple didn't fall far from the tree." Ranson said under his breath. But his eyes shared the joke with Valentine, knowing the Cat heard.
The Academy was easy to find. It bordered on a defunct airport whose runways now served as a rifle range. The airport's concourses and some of the hangars had been demolished, but the control tower still dominated the camp, reinforced with a pyramid of sandbags and timber all the way to the top. On the other side of the old military education campus there was a cemetery, graves arranged facing a giant statue that seemed familiar yet out of place to Valentine. "It's the model of the one that stood in Washington, Marines raising the flag at the top of Mount Surabachi on Iwo Jima," Ranson explained, and Valentine realized he had seen the photo it was based on. "It was a helluva fight in the
Pacific in 1945. The men who finally got up there and planted that flag were from Texas."
Valentine remembered it differently, but he was in no mood to discuss military history minutiae at the moment. Ranson brought him through the rows of barracks, one lot vacant like a missing tooth, and took him to the brick headquarters. Like the control tower, it was layered in sandbags and barbed wire, with hard-points guarding both entrances.
"Don't worry about washing up," Colorado said as Valentine retied his hair when they moved through the door past a sentry. 'The colonel likes to hear news first. Everything else waits, unless you're bleeding. Bleeding badly, that is."
Spurs clattering in the wood-floored hallway, they approached a reception desk. It was a beautifully carven piece of wood, like many of the items decorating the entrance hallway. Valentine got the impression every square foot of wall space was covered by a painted portrait or photograph. The only ones he recognized were Sam Houston and the Texas United States Presidents. The woman at the desk wore a cheerful Mexican print blouse and a ready smile, but Valentine saw a pistol lying right next to the phone.
"Courier for the colonel," Ranson said. 'Tell him it's Longbow Resolution. The Ghost is finally haunting us."
Another Ranger walked down the hall and out the door, saddlebags hung over uniformed shoulders. Valentine found the contrast between the rough, tanned, mustachioed men and the ornate furnishings interesting.
"Map room, second floor," the receptionist drawled, looking at Valentine from under curled eyelashes.
"Colorado, you can go get yourself fed," Ranson said. "I'll see things through from here."
The younger man took the dismissal well. He hesitated only a moment before saying, "I'll see if I can snag us some bottles of beer for when you're finished, Sarge."
"You do that, Colorado. Thanks."
"Good luck with the colonel, Shanks," Colorado said, offering his hand. "Hope there's no hard feelings over our little race."
Valentine shook it and thanked him. Ranson lead him to a white-painted staircase, and they ascended past photographs of cities filled with pavement, glass, and steel.
Valentine loved maps, and the map room captivated him. A four-foot globe stood by one wall-spanning bookcase, but the other walls were covered with maps. A long library table dominated the center of the room, placed on an oriental rug spread on the polished wooden floor. Tall windows lighted the room. Chairs stood beneath the mounted maps on the walls. One of the maps, showing the Rio Grande region of Texas, was festooned with pins and colored ribbons. Valentine walked up to an older, glassed-in map of the state, which looked to date from Texas's earliest days.
A handsomely dressed Latino opened the door and held it open for the colonel. The Colonel of the Texas Rangers, Officer Commanding the Academy, had undoubtedly been a tall man in the days before his confinement to a wheelchair. Valentine guessed he must have stood close to six five at one time, judging from how high he sat in the wood-and-metal contraption he wheeled himself around in. He was gray haired and clear eyed, and gave the impression of lively vitality from the waist up, like an alert prairie dog whose hind legs are hidden in his burrow. He wore a bronze star enclosed by a circle, pinned over a frilly white-and-blue ribbon.
"Col. Steven Hibbert, Texas Rangers," the colonel said, extending his hand. "Glad to meet you."
The Texans were devoted hand-shakers. "Thank you for your hospitality, Colonel Hibbert. My name's Valentine, but I'd prefer if you just referred to me as Smith, or Ghost, in your paperwork, if I end up being mentioned."
"We generally call him 'the colonel,'" Ranson said.
"Whatever you're comfortable with, young man. This is my chief of staff, Major Zacharias."