"Sir, please turn around and put your hands behind you."
Valentine's heart fired like a triphammer. What the hell?
"What's this about?" Valentine repeated, sounding a lot less like a major this time.
"You're under arrest for murder," Goebbert said.
"Murder?" Valentine felt sweat everywhere.
Goebbert grabbed him firmly by the wrist. "Sorry, Major, orders."
They patted him down. Valentine winced as the hard hands traveled over the old scar tissue on the backs of his legs.
"David, what's going on?" Molly asked from her porch. She held Edward sideways, putting her body in between her son and the four strangers.
"It's got to be a mistake," Valentine said, looking again at the Wolf. Hammond, that was his name. The other young Wolves called him "Lightning" because he had a little tuft of blond hair in his brown.
"Might be," Goebbert said. "But we have to take you to court. Okay, Jim, he's in custody. Make a note of the time."
"Hammond, what is this?" Valentine asked.
Hammond might have smiled-his walrus mustache changed shape-though Valentine wondered why he would look pleased to be recognized by someone being arrested for murder. "We just got orders to make sure you come in. These boys were scared you'd get wind and take to the hills."
Molly had doubt in her eyes; she squinted against it as she might protect herself against dust.
"Molly, I'm not a fugitive. I wasn't hiding with you."
"Enough, Major," Goebbert said. "We've got to get you away. Help him mount, Hammond."
"Put him up backward. Fugitive mount," Uneven Ears said. "They say he's tricky."
The Wolves helped him mount. Sitting backward on the saddle made the night even more surreal. "My gear's in the barn-"
"It'll come along," the other Wolf put in.
"Where are you taking him?" Molly blurted, perhaps too emotionally, for Edward started to cry.
"Crowley Garrison Station, then on to Fort Allnutt, ma'am," Goebbert replied. Valentine craned his neck around and saw Goebbert shaking his head at his fellow Rounder.
David Valentine rode out of Quapaw Post backward. The soldiers came out of their cabins to see the "rogue parade," wondering faces glowing in the moonlight like jack-o'-lanterns.
They showed their paperwork at the gate, and carried out his gear on the Wolves' horses. Valentine, facing backward on his mount, carried only the memory of the fear in Edward Stockton's eyes. And the doubt in Molly's.
ey's Ridge, Arkansas: Running southwest-northeast through the eastern part of the state, straight as though drawn on the map with a ruler, Crowley's Ridge varies from about two hundred to five hundred feet high, up to a dozen miles wide, and several hundred miles long. Once the next thing to terra incognita in Southern Command, with only a few precariously placed settlements hugging the Saint Francis, it is now considered the "civilized" eastern border for the defenders of the freehold.
The northeastern part of the state suffered literally earth-shattering devastation in the New Madrid quake and never recovered. Now the expanse between the Ridge and Memphis is a tangled floodplain for the newly feral Mississippi and its tributaries, like the Saint Francis, briefly bridged by a few pieces of road and a railroad line during Solon's tenure in the Ozarks.
Solon intended for Crowley's Ridge to be his eastern border and set up the outposts, along with a road and rail network to serve them. Southern Command's Guards were only too happy to assume their upkeep when Valentine's Rising and Archangel put Solon's incorporations into receivership. Now this series of Guard Outposts holds the line here, supplying smaller Hunter formations that explore the flat lands extending to the Mississippi and beyond.
Perhaps no area is more patrolled and contested than the corridor that runs along the old interstate that once linked Memphis and Little Rock. A few Kurians maintain their towers on the west side of the river within sight of Memphis, sending their Reapers into the wilderness to hunt refugees, smugglers, or out-and-out brigands, while Southern Command sends Cats and Wolves into the corridor to hunt the Reapers.
* * * *
You're not doing this in order to see her, David Valentine told himself for the umpteenth time. She's smart, a good observer. Perhaps Molly even knew Gail.
No, her letters trickled off and you want to know why, a more honest part of Valentine said.
Shut up the both of you, someone whose name might be Superego interjected.