01. When the Changewinds Blow (41 page)

"What d'ya mean, 'cut 'em loose'?" Sam responded.

"For God's sake cut 'em loose and climb up as high and fast as you can for dear life!"
she screamed. "Sam-
it's a flash flood!
Any second now!"

Sam didn't have to hear any more. "Boday-cut loose the team and climb the walls! Flash flood!"

Boday jumped down, knocked loose the pin, then made sure Sam was down and made for the walls. In back of them, they could see remnants of the train scattered all over the canyon floor, some still inside that narrow stretch that would be flushed like a toilet any minute. There was no way to do more than scream warnings as they got up as high as they could. Charley was way ahead of them, her hands holding onto a very narrow rocky outcrop. She intended to pull herself up if she could, but she turned and saw the wall of water coming and could hardly believe her eyes. The surge looked like some dam had busted.

As if in slow motion she watched the narrow end of the canyon as horses reared and started to run while others, just stick figures, turned and watched what was coming in sheer panic.

The water hit her like a brick wall and instantly she, who had gotten the highest up, was none the less in the water and being carried at high speed toward the rock wall of the narrows, back where she'd come from.

She kicked off her boots, took a deep breath, and went under, hoping to ride the center surge.

Charley came to in what seemed to be dense brush. For a moment she didn't know what had happened or where she might be, but after she'd coughed up a little water and taken several deep breaths she suddenly thought,
I'm alive! I made it!

But-to where? The top of the canyon? Not likely. Somewhere high up in that narrows section where there were lots of ledges. She got up, feeling a bit bruised in the ribs but otherwise surprisingly good. Her long hair was waterlogged and it took a lot of wringing out before it was manageable enough to forget for the time being.

It was only a few yards to the edge and she saw she was just where she thought-on some fairly wide and lengthy ledge about two thirds of the way up the canyon wall. At least the bushes here didn't drink your blood-although it probably wouldn't matter if they did right now. After that drink
they d
had, there was no way they could take any more for a while.

The water was already receding and, frankly, gave little hint of what it had been not long before. The clouds were breaking and the sun was actually coming out. It seemed good at first, but as soon as the heat and tremendous evaporation hit she began to wonder if clouds weren't better.

She couldn't see well enough at this distance to make out details, but it looked like loads of debris scattered all over the canyon floor, maybe even the bodies of drowned horses and nargas. Maybe the bodies of people, too, she thought suddenly. Sam, Boday, those really nice kids . . .

She had survived, although it looked mostly like luck. Maybe others had as well, although she wasn't at all sure how good a swimmer Sam was. Maybe that demon knew all the swimming tricks, though. It was a hope. The water level had been high enough but not so high as to wash anybody up out of the canyon, that was for sure, except maybe right at the end- and that would have washed them right into those creepy crawlies that lived there. Of course, they were so saturated that somebody might have a chance if they weren't so full of water they couldn't come around in time to get back.

Still, she knew she had to face facts. She could
hope
they survived, hope that
everybody
survived, but from a practical point of view she was alone and it was one hell of a long way down without a rope.

She examined herself. A few scratches, probably from the bushes, and the bruises, nothing more. She was oddly undressed, though. She'd been wearing one of the stretch pullover tops and that had come through fairly well, but when she'd contorted to get the boots off she'd also slipped off the pair of work pants that threatened to drag her down with their extra waterlogged weight. She was naked from the waist down, a rather odd feeling. She slipped off the top and wrung it out as best she could, then went over to lay it out on one of the bushes to dry. Better something than nothing with this sun. She was about to stretch it out when she suddenly saw a hand and gasped. She cleared away as much as she could and found a man there.

He was dead; no question about that. It was Fromick, one of the quieter crew, who had been one of the men who'd set out after the two surviving raiders. His clothes were bloodstained and ripped to shreds-he must have hit the rocks and not much use, but, oddly, his gunbelt was still on and the twin pistols still in their holsters. She didn't like touching dead men, but if she could have made use of the shirt or pants she'd have done so. She undid the belt and managed to get it off him. Most crew kept their personal stuff in the crew wagon, but these belts often had compartments, pouches, whatever, for practical stuff.

It was well worn; a veteran's gunbelt, but it was also very well made. She examined it, felt it-it felt heavy and looked a bit too thick. There were also some pouches which she opened and checked, knowing that they were supposedly waterproof.

Some money-the hell with that. What good would it be here, anyway? A silver-plated cigarette case containing fifteen cigarettes and a small flint-activated lighting stick. That might come in handy. The cigarettes were dry; the odds were she could build a fire if she had to. A partly eaten bar of dark chocolate-
that
was a godsend. A tiny, toy-like penknife. And, all along the lining in a clever series of folds, bullets.

She examined the pistols. They were nicely balanced, if a bit strange to look at. No barrel. Somebody could make machine guns with thirty-caliber copper-clad ammunition, but nobody official had more than a single-shot weapon. Weird. Surely these people could figure out the principles involved. It was like there was a law against repeaters or something.

And, of course, she realized that this must be it. It must be, in fact, the explanation for a lot of crazy things like people with flush toilets, electric ranges, and elevators, who
didn't
have cars or trains or telephones or even telegraphs and whose guns had single shots so their swords wouldn't be obsolete. It was like a code. If the Akhbreed controlled everything, they also controlled what knowledge was permitted to get out and what could be made in the colonial factories. No repeaters. Not honorable or something.

But you didn't make fancy machine guns and the kind of ammunition they used without big factories, machine tools, standardized parts, lots of supplies. Either some king himself was with the opposition, which seemed improbable, or else that gun came from the same kind of place she did- somewhere else. If people dropped down now and again, then maybe machine guns did, too. But with bullets? Enough to make it worth toting around and using? It was still not making sense.

She ejected the bullet in the chamber, then stuck a dry one in and snapped it closed. Not bad, she thought. The shells were man-stoppers, more like forty-fours than police specials, but it
was
nicely balanced. She had-let's see-twenty-four bullets now. When the leather dried out, she had at least a weapon and one she felt she could shoot. Just like on Cousin Harry's ranch back home.

That sun was really mean, so she went back a bit until she had some shade from the canyon wall itself. The evaporation was so intense she felt like she was trapped in a steamer, but there was nothing to do except wait it out and try not to cook. She settled back in the shade, put the pistols beside her, and worked with the penknife on the gunbelt until she had a little if not very neat-looking hole where she wanted it. She tried it with the belt buckle-one of those fancy green stones that looked like a design cut to oval shape and mounted in a big, fancy brass setting sort of like the truck drivers wore back home-and it fit and seemed to hold. She got up and tried it on and it worked, although, of course, the belt was
way
too long after the hole and it was still a bit wide, although it hung nicely at an angle on her hips.

She was suddenly struck by how she must look, stark naked with a wide gunbelt and holsters with twin pearl-handled single-hot pistols and nothing else. It seemed at one and the same time the most erotic and damned stupid silly vision she could think of.
Watch out, Akahlar!
she thought crazily.
Here
comes the Butterfly Kid and she's hot to prowl!
She needed something silly to think about right now, and she laughed about the vision, then took off the belt, cut some of the extra length off, removed the pistols and kept them with her, then stretched it all out to dry just beyond the shadow where the sun would be right on it. Then she sat against the rock wall and just tried to get some rest and eventually, in spite of herself, she did nod off.

She awoke what had to be hours later because the shadow was now very thin and even her legs were in sunlight; she started, and looked around. There was a strong wind up now, and a dry, hot one. It no longer felt all that humid but it still felt like an oven. She'd simply traded the steamer for the bakery. She was hungry and thirsty but there wasn't much she could do about the thirst right now and she didn't want to eat the chocolate for fear the extra dryness it might bring would drive her mad for a drink.

The gunbelt had flipped over and actually been blown several feet; the wind up here was pretty good as the climate returned to its former state with all deliberate speed. She retrieved the belt and then went over to the swaying bushes to discover that Fromick was getting very gruesome and very smelly and her top had blown away someplace.
Great,
she thought.
My only protection, such as it was, from this damned sun.
She briefly considered undressing Fromick and making what she could from his tattered clothing, but the look and the smell were just too much. She couldn't bear to touch that body, not for anything.

The noise the wind made blowing through the narrows made it next to impossible to hear anything else; no use listening for people or cries or whatever now, and she was too damned nearsighted to tell even if there had been an ice cream wagon in the canyon.

She checked the sun. Might not be long until it was beyond the other wall, and when it was it would get dark real fast around here. If she had any chance of getting off this place without help, now was the time to explore. The Butterfly Kid was on the prowl for sure.

The ledge or whatever it was was larger than she thought, and followed a curve around the rocky wall. Just beyond there was another bushy outcrop and it looked recently occupied.

She drew one of her pistols and walked cautiously to it, then knelt down. Shells. Hundreds of them. And several spent cartridge belts as well. She suddenly tensed.
This was the ambush spot!
But there was no mysterious lady changeling, whatever that was, around now, and no machine gun, either. The fact that the assassin wasn't there was not unusual, since somebody from these parts could be expected to have some abilities to get around here. She got
up
here, after all. But machine guns-this wasn't the Al Capone type, this was the Army type. They were bulky and heavy. If this mystery bushwacker could have levitated a machine gun she wouldn't have needed one. And she and it hadn't washed off-not if the shells were still on the ground. That meant there might be some way off this place!

She followed the rock wall along very closely and it didn't take long to find it. You don't expect to find a wide, flat piece of wood around this area. Two ropes secured it, nicely tied off to make an effective scaffold.
Hot damn!
She didn't even consider that there might be danger at the top; if she didn't get off here it didn't matter, and if they came back later and took this all away she'd be stuck anyway. She bolstered the pistols as tight as she could, grabbed on to one of the ropes, and with a lot of effort started up the cliff.

She was amazed when she made it to the top. She never would have believed that her arms had the strength for it, but, then, she had a lot of motivation as well. The arm muscles hurt like hell and she felt exhausted, but she was up and out.

It was a crude wooden winch at the top, anchored by steel pins driven hard into the rock, but it was more than enough to haul up a machine gun, maybe all in one piece, and definitely pull up a person, too. That meant at least one, probably two people up here as well, most likely very big and very strong. Of course, it may have been the pair who escaped come back to rescue their boss, but Charley doubted that the brain behind this would trust to ones like them.

She surveyed the terrain. It was pretty jagged and some of the connections between sheer drops were pretty damned narrow, but she would have no trouble with it-if the light held. At least she had more of it up here, maybe an hour or more additional. It was like following a maze to get all the way to some safety, but aside from being pretty hot on the feet it was also easy. The right route wasn't that hard, either. They apparently hadn't taken or risked horses or other pack animals in here, but tracks of a small, narrow, wheeled cart or something were easy to make out wherever the rain had softened fill or dirt. It wasn't a continuous track, but it wasn't hard to spot, either. Probably the mount for the machine gun. And there
was
a trail of sorts, worn right into the rock. Clearly this was a favorite vantage point to look down on the road and not be seen.

Here and there, too, were hard natural rock depressions in which there was still collected rainwater. The rock was too solid for seepage and the depressions just a bit too deep to be evaporated in one day. She eagerly went to one, then carefully tasted it. It tasted like rocky rainwater, so she drank, and even took some and rubbed it on her body. The wind evaporated it quickly, but it felt good and at least she wasn't gonna die right off of thirst. She celebrated with two bites of the now nearly liquid candy, then reluctantly continued on. Light was failing and you couldn't afford a misstep in
this
country.