Half his wagons ground along almost empty. The stores and supplies within had long since been eaten up, and with the ratbits of "Batch Fiveteen" having taken better than a wagonload of quickwood to fight their own war against the Kurians, the remaining wagons were traveling light.
Leaving the Ranch was not as easy as entering it. They had fought two nighttime skirmishes against the Grogs in the borderlands and hurried into the empty lands north of Dallas and Fort Worth. A team of rangers turned southeast to confuse the pursuit, and the Batch Fifteen rodents did their best to muddle the trail.
Valentine had some of the quickwood lumber turned into spearpoints and crossbow quarrels anticipating an attack from the Reapers, but the hunt never began. They broke into the cattle-drive routes running up from Texas and into the plains without incident. Valentine put a moratorium on further slaughter of the dwindling cattle, so from a distance they might look like another wagon train bringing beef and trade north to the railheads in Oklahoma and Kansas for shipment east. The Kurians in northern Texas, never thick to begin with this close to the Free Territory, seemed quiescent.
It was as though their enemies were hibernating out the winter: they did not send patrols or Reapers to trouble them. There was a nervous day at the Trinity River crossing when some riders observed them from a hilltop. They did not stay to identify themselves, but rode away before the Rangers on
their worn-out horses could catch them. But as this area could be considered no-man's-land between the Free Territory and the Kurian Zone, they could have been anything from smugglers to robbers to scouts from some fearful community hiding in a river valley, wishing for nothing more than to be left alone.
"How are you planning to get back?" Valentine asked Zacharias as a team of Rangers went out to ride an old highway running northeast out of the ghost town of Paris, checking for signs of human habitation. Valentine hoped to find one of the Southern Command Guard garrisons or a Wolf patrol somewhere near the Red River.
"We'll head south. Hell with the wagons-there's plenty more where they came from. Ride slow down south until we hook up with the Eastern Rangers. They'll fix us up with remounts, and then we'll slip through somewhere between Houston and San Antonio. Won't be that hard this time of year. If the story of the Rangers in this century ever gets written, this'll make an interesting chapter: Bargaining with ratbits over magic trees."
"Don't forget the elephants with two trunks."
"The elephants we'll never forget."
Valentine laughed tiredly. It was good to be able to laugh again. Just a few more days to tote the weary load-the line from Gone with the Wind had been running through his mind of late. "I hope you know how much the help you've given and the risks you've run mean to the Ozark Free Territory."
"Well, young Captain," Zacharias said, from the vast age difference of five years, "you want my advice, the first thing you use the quickwood on is a campaign with us. You saddle up every man who can hold a gun and every cannon that's got a shell, and hit Dallas from the northeast. The East Texas Rangers come in from the southeast, and we'll hit 'em out of the Ranch, since the Kur no longer seem to be running things there. Once we've got Dallas cleaned up, the rest of Texas will be pieces just waiting to be picked up. Then
we've got enough country to really live. Hell, old Kirby Smith held out against the whole damn Union that way, till the surrender. I expect we could do the same."
"I'm one of the squashed guys at the bottom of the totem pole, Major," Valentine said. "The idea sounds fine to me, but it's for men and women above my rank to decide."
They watched the wagon train go by. Narcisse waved to them from the back of her horse, and Valentine moved to put himself between the trail and a fallen tree trunk. A Texan admirer of Narcisse's cooking had rigged a saddle so she could put her stumps into a pair of cut-off rifle-sheaths, and Ahn-Kha fixed a quirt to her "short arm." Sissy had turned into an admirable neck-reiner in the last month, but had developed a taste for jumping-though often she ended up plummeting to the earth despite the horse mane gripped with her teeth. Valentine wanted her to arrive in the Free Territory with neck intact.
Zacharias stripped a handful of pine needles as he rode. "We gotta start winning somewhere. This is as good a place as any." He handed the needles to Valentine like a bouquet.
"Southern Command has grown into something that's like an egg. It can resist pressure as long as it's evenly distributed from all around. But if you rap it too hard in any one spot, it cracks. Your plan would mean all yolk and no shell for us in Missouri and Arkansas. I'll tell the brass-the Lifeweavers, even-everything I can about the state of things in Texas. I'll let them know you're ready. Napole'on once made a comment that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Maybe they'll follow his advice."
"Yeah, I heard about that guy. Confederate general from out East, right? Rode under Bobby Lee?"
Valentine just chuckled again.
The scouts came back, signaling that the road was clear. The men of the convoy went about hooking up the oxen to the wagons one more time.
* * *
Valentine would always associate his return to the Free Territory with the old Shell Oil emblem. Three busted-up tankers were parked in a triangle blocking the road a few miles out from the Red River. The tankers had been turned into hollow forts, firing slits carved into the sides and sandbags mounted on the top. It was a typical forward post for Southern Command: easily created, transported, defended, and abandoned.
The watchpost stood on the reverse slope of a hill in the old highway. The road cut across the countryside; a long, straight ribbon placed over the hills and hollows as a testament to the days when engineers treated the topography as if it did not exist. The garrison must have thought them a column of Quislings, for they did not wait to greet them, but promptly retreated out, hustling down a culvert running along the road. Valentine watched five or six men run, with the bent-over stride of men keeping their heads down, appearing and then disappearing in gaps of the brush running along the road.
"So much for the valor of Southern Command," Valentine said dryly. Baltz coughed up something from deep in her chest and spat.
"If only the rest of our meetings were so simple," Zacharias said. "It would have been a faster trip. Perhaps your tall companion frightened them off. Shall I run them down?"
"No, spare the horses," Valentine decided. 'They'll be off calling on higher authority. Suits us either way. But I'd better ride ahead from here with just one or two. I hope they don't shoot before trying to identify us. Interested in meeting some animals from Arkansas, Baltz? They're a unique brand of razorbacks."
"Sure, son. I've done my job: got you across most of Texas. If I catch a bullet, it's no loss."
"Ahn-Kha," Valentine said, "better take your Gray Ones and sit in the wagons. They might take a shot if they see you."
"Understood, my David. Be cautious, I am more worried about you. Frightened soldiers do strange things. It would be ironic, but undesirable, to have all your efforts end with one of Southern Command's bullets."
The vanguard of the column reorganized itself. Valentine and Baltz, with Ranson a horse-length behind, holding a white flag, rode a half-mile ahead of the wagons. Groups of Texans rode before, interspersed with, and following the teams, with long files of Valentine's soldiers marching alongside the rattling wagon wheels, all moving at the patient pace of the plodding oxen.
Valentine looked at the rusting monument to the Texas oil industry. Weeds grew in the rotted tires; rust ran down the marred sides like red icicles. He smelled a fire smoldering inside the fort-they had caught the men at dinner, something even crackled in a pan...