A Jaguar in much longer furs, cut about his shoulders like a cape made of animal tails, with a spotted headband around his forehead and furry-trimmed sandals, began a rampage. With a good deal of gesturing toward the mountains behind Valentine he gave his tribesmen a dressing-down, put them in a staggered line like a top sergeant with well-trained recruits, and hustled them away with a glance or two behind.
Valentine couldn't help but turn and look at the darkening peaks behind.
"What do you know about these mountains?" Valentine asked Hornbreed.
"Some farms and ranches on the other side. Pretty well organized,
typical Aztlan stuff. There are collar towers below the ridgeline - they're easy to spot from the air".
"Collar towers?"
"Keeps the peons on their ranchos. The collars tighten if they start to stray. Top-quality Korean electronics".
"What about this side?"
"Sheep. Mud pueblos".
Had these mountains turned into a choking, deathly place according to local legend? Then why did the medicine man have to remind his tribesmen?
Hornbreed stretched out, pulled his reflective survival blanket up. "Long, bad day. I'm going to try to sleep off this headache".
"Should we set a watch?"
"You're my rescuer. If anything's going to happen, it'll happen whether we set a watch or not. They outnumber us twenty to two". He blew his nose again. "You wouldn't know it to hear me, but I am a healthy specimen. Just spring air".
Valentine watched the valley until darkness made it impossible, then admired the stars and planets. He hadn't seen them so bright since he'd been at sea in the Caribbean.
The memories that evoked turned him sour and gloomy. He slipped out of the cactus thatch - his old Wolf habit of changing positions after darkness was so deeply ingrained he did it even if it was only a shift of twenty feet or so - and listened. A distant coyote howled in the valley. Others took up the chorus, but none called from the mountains he and Hornbreed rested against.
Too uneasy to really sleep, he dozed, sitting cross-legged with his rifle against his lap, small of his back pressed up against a sun-heated rock. The air had turned cold with astonishing speed, a desert feature he was still getting used to... The moon came up, so bright it looked as though an artist had painted it on the sky with radium.
He heard Hornbreed come out of the cacti, mumble something about pinching a deuce. Valentine saw him move off into the bushes, heard him stumble, curse, right himself.
Seemingly moments later, Valentine came fully awake, though he couldn't say why. How long had it been since Hornbreed had stepped behind the bushes?
"Hornbreed?" he said quietly. He raised the gun to his shoulder and came up to one knee.
"Hornbreed?" Louder this time.
The bushes didn't answer.
Valentine touched the sword at his back, tested the slide of the blade in its sheath.
"Hornbreed!" Valentine said, coming up to a crouch.
He advanced, well clear of the bushes.
No sign of the pilot. A white packet shone in the moonlight. Hornbreed had picked a sandy spot for easier burial. Valentine studied Hornbreed's footprints, placed in the expected position to either side of his - well, with a mule deer it would be called "spoor". The white packet was a little cardboard-banded issue of "field hygiene paper" courtesy of High Sierra Paper Products.
No body. No sign of the Jaguars. And no Reaper.
Strange divots stood out in the sand here and there, like little craters. Near-perfect circles. If they were tracks, only an unusually hard-stepping big cat like a mountain lion would make them. But there were no drag marks away from the bootheels and TP.
Ten thousand dollars in gold - and more importantly, a key to the mercenary pilots of Pyp's Flying Circus - had been spirited away without a sound or a cry of distress.
Valentine felt a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the Arizona night. It occurred to him that he'd been meaning to ask Hornbreed why they called him milkman.
Something glittered in the night a few feet away. Valentine knelt, saw loose coins scattered in the rocks and sand. Valentine picked one up, a "five-dollar" piece marked AZT-CON. He'd seen them before, in plastic Baggies holding Texas Quisling prisoners' possessions. He'd been told the coin was good over much of the Southwest and northern Mexico.