Through Darkest America-Extended Version (12 page)

"I'm here 'cause them two
brought
me here," said Howie.

Pardo looked disappointed. "Boy, I'm asking plain questions. Likely, you can come up with some plain answers to match '
em
." He pulled Howie's pistol from his own belt and balanced it in his palm. "You're
runnin
' hard, in a place you shouldn't ought to be. Carrying soldier guns. Only you ain't no soldier."

Howie looked bewildered. "You'd sure know I'm not, if anyone would!"

"And why's that?"

"Cause . . . cause you—you just would, is all!"

Pardo bit his lip thoughtfully. "Soldiers were after you. You got yourself caught, so you figure me an' Klu and Jig-
ger
is soldiers, too." He nodded to himself. "Well, it works out right, an' I can see how your
thinkin
' would go. Only you're plain wrong, boy." He grinned slightly. "About as wrong as you can be."

Pardo could read his disbelief. "Take it however you like," he told Howie. Only that don't change it none. And seeing as we don't have a lot of time for this kind of business, I reckon it'd be a good idea if you'd pretend that's the way it is. Now I'm
askin
' you again. What is it you're doing here, and why are
them
soldiers after your hide?"

"But . . ."

"But, nothing," Pardo said flatly. He looked straight at Howie. "Don't spend
no
time thinking up answers that ain't
goin
' to do neither of us no good, all right?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's not too hard to understand, now is it?" "No, sir. It ain't. I know what you're saying."

"Good. You an' me are going to get along just fine, then."

"You ain't soldiers? For certain?"

Pardo looked at him. "Boy, I
said
we wasn't!"

"Maybe you're not. I just . .."

Pardo raised a threatening brow.

"All right. I'm—from
Bluevale
. It's…

"I know where it is."

"Well, that's where I'm from."

"What's your pa do?"

"He runs a store."

"A store. What
kinda
store? Feed store, whiskey. . ." "Knives," said Howie. "Bone-handle knives. Stuff like that."

"Knives . . ."

"Yes, sir. Like the one I got. Only I ain't got it anymore, One of your men took it off me."

Pardo nodded, and scratched under his chin. "Your name ain't really Burt, is it?" He looked hard at Howie. "Don't lie to me, now."

"No, sir," Howie looked down at his hands, then at Pardo. "It ain't exactly Burt. It's
Jaimie
.
Jaimie
Walters. When I thought you was soldiers . . ."

"All right." Pardo held up a hand. "Let's do some
talkin
' about soldiers. Like why they might be spending a powerful lot of time
chasin
' boys from
Bluevale
around the country when they got a lot better things to do."

"I stole a horse from '
em
," Howie put in quickly, "ain't that reason enough?"

Pardo frowned. "You didn't have no
horse
with you . . ." "No, 'cause I run it too hard and it died on me." "Truth?"

"Truth, I swear!"

Pardo shook his head and made a face. "
Lordy
, what a waste. Horses ain't easy to come by."

"And some guns," Howie added. "I stole guns, too. That's why they was after me. They were some mad, I'll tell you, and that's why I was running so hard, and how come I had to use up the horse. I couldn't do nothing else."

Pardo studied him with no expression at all. "That's what happened, is it?"

"Yes, sir. It truly is."

"For certain?"

"Listen," Howie insisted, "You wanted the truth and that's it. I'm not lying!"

"Well, now, I never said you was, did I?" He smiled easily and got to his feet. "I never said you was telling the
truth
, either, or any big part of it,
Jaimie
—or Burt, or whichever. Most likely, you ain't neither, but I'm not
goin
' to worry over that. Pardo's a fair man, as
anyone'll
tell you, an' what I'm going to do is give you a night to sleep off the hurt 'fore we fix up that shoulder, and then I'm going to fill up your belly some; and when you're up to it, we're all going to do a little quiet riding out of here, since you ain't made it exactly
a
easy place to stay. An' after that, I'm going to ask you to think real hard about who you are an' why you're running from them soldiers. And if I don't care much for what I hear I'm going to give you back to Klu and Jigger for a couple days 'fore I cut your liver out personal." He gave Howie a wide grin. "You
git
a little sleep now,
y'hear
?"

Chapter Thirteen

T
he trail was an hour old before the sun broke over the ridge at their backs. Howie welcomed the meager heat that filtered through low branches and mottled the forest floor. Frost edged the dark carpet of fern and grayed the trunks of tall pines.

He was hungry. And cold to the bone. If his old jacket had been threadbare to begin with, it was less than worthless now. KW and Jigger had taken care of that. Nothing he had was worth keeping anymore—trousers, shirt, and shoes were near gone. But he didn't dare toss anything aside. Next to nothing, he figured, was better than going naked.

The handful of hard corn and jerky he'd wolfed down for breakfast didn't begin to fill his belly, and his shoulder was a dull ache that wouldn't go away. If there was something right with the world, he'd be danged if he could see what it was.

Pardo, riding beside him, was no help at all. "You're plain lucky that soldier was so all-fired eager to start shoot- in'," the man advised him. "It ain't a bad wound, or deep. Best kind to
git
,
s'matter
of fact. Come far enough to slow down some and straight on, so you don't have to dig all twisty-like to get it out."

To hear Pardo talk, Howie thought dismally, getting shot and near killed was about the finest thing that could happen to a person. Only it didn't feel all that good if it was your own arm doing the hurting. He was sure his whole shoulder would drop off if the mount stumbled over one more curly root.

And if it did, he'd get no help from the two brooding giants at his back. They'd as soon see his neck broke as not. Pardo wasn't more'n a hair better.

The whole business puzzled Howie more than a little. They'd saved him from the soldiers, patched him up, put a little food in his belly. And for what? They weren't the
favorgiving
kind, for sure. Whatever they had in mind, he 1 probably wasn't
goin
' to like it. It seemed better to be alive than dead, and feeling another morning when you didn't figure to. But you couldn't trust that kind of thinking. He'd already learned plenty of things could come along to make you
wish
you were
deader'n
a stone. A couple had already.

Just before noon, Pardo stopped and motioned him forward. "Down there," he pointed. "Just to the left of where the river makes that little bend. You see it?"

Howie wasn't sure what he saw, but he saw something. There was a break in the trees where you could look down on a muddy ribbon of water in a far valley.

"It's Old Chattanooga," said Pardo. "Where you was when
them
soldiers got you." He gave Howie a smug grin. "Didn't know the name of it, did you?"

"I might of heard it some time," Howie admitted, "but I don't reckon—"

"
Hearing
'bout something and knowing what it is
is
two
different things," snapped Pardo. "Two different things, boy." He flicked his eyes away and kicked the horse forward, leaving Howie to watch his back.

Pardo was a hard man to figure. He talked enough when he had a mind to, but mostly about stuff that didn't matter much. When it came to something you
wanted
to know, he was about as wordy as a stump. You might as well be talking to Klu and Jigger.

Pardo was different, though—most of the time, anyway. Klu and Jigger were big, lumbering oaks; Pardo was a tough, gnarly pine. His small frame had been twisted and hardened in the raw winds; his face shaped by hungry winters. There was a power in the man, but it was a thing that came from inside somewhere. The eyes told you that. Klu and Jigger knew it, too. Either of the two could snap Pardo in half like a twig, but Howie was certain that would never happen. Like as not, Pardo could stare down the Devil himself if he took a mind to.

When the sun was straight up, they stopped at the edge of a high meadow and let the horses graze on short grass. There was a hurried meal of bread and jerky, and time to see to your business if you wanted, then they were back on the trail again.

Howie gave up trying to pry answers out of Pardo. Where were they going, exactly? What had really happened back in the City? Pardo replied with interesting facts like what kind of berries you might find near a creek or the best way to tickle a catfish. Still, Howie had guessed a lot on his own, by looking and figuring.

Wherever Pardo was going, he was taking a care about getting there. He sure wasn't looking to be seen, or followed. There was reason enough for that, of course, with two dead soldiers back there in the river. But Howie was sure there was more to it than that. These three had been up to something long before
he
came along.

He'd pieced most of the business at the river together and guessed the rest. Klu and Jigger had been watching him some time before he made that dumb move with the frog and let the soldiers spot him. Why, was easy to figure. They'd made
that
clear enough back at the cave. As to the terrible thing he thought he'd imagined just before passing out in the shallows, that had bothered him more than a little. He didn't see how it could be, though it'd seemed awful real at the time. Well, he had two vivid answers, now. They dangled from
Klu's
broad belt—long hanks of hair still attached to raw, bloody flesh.

Pardo hadn't been happy about that and he'd let Klu know it. Soldiers got killed all the time, that being part of the trade, he said. A man could lose his life and his horse and his weapons and no
one'd
think much about it. But a man's companions didn't view trophy-taking too kindly. It made them look all the harder and that wasn't exactly what Pardo wanted at the moment.

Howie shifted on his mount and stretched his sore shoulder. The day was just half over and he was already tired to the bone. He remembered something Papa had said, when he was maybe ten or so.
Lordy
, could he ever have been
ten
? Papa said men were peculiar creatures to be as smart as they thought they were. The seasons feel the same every year, Papa said, and a man knows this as well as his name, but he gets fooled every time. He welcomes each season for the good it offers and never thinks about the bad. But before it's half finished, he's itching to see it go, ready to take on the next one!

It was true as it could be, Howie told himself. Look at where he was now. Safe from the soldiers after running his heart out—near gettin' killed a hundred times or so. Compared to that bunch, Pardo and Klu and Jigger were almost family! If you could imagine such a thing.

More'n likely, though, what he'd done was just what Papa said: traded one set of troubles for another. He wasn't as bad off as he could be, but that didn't mean it wouldn't get that way soon enough. And he sure didn't plan on sticking around long enough to find out.

Just before sunset Pardo left the others to make camp and disappeared into thick woods. The trail hadn't changed all day. Pardo kept them to the deepest part of the forest; the high ridge to their left, the valley a half mile or so below. The foliage was so heavy here the woods were near dark at noon and the fern beneath the animals' hooves buried all sound in thick blankets of green. A good tracker might have found them—if he knew where to look. But he'd have to be
quieter'n
breath to do it without ending up under
Klu's
big belt.

Howie would have bet on any of the three. They were all natural woodsmen and they could sniff out sign in a rainstorm
better'n
most men could count their toes in bed. It was something Howie could understand, and appreciate. He already knew staying alive in the wilderness was no easy business.

It was dark before Pardo came back, walking and leading his mount. Both Klu and Jigger knew he was coming; their noses came up and their dark eyes switched about. To Howie, though, he appeared like a ghost in the clearing. He looked about once; searching out the shape of things, then gave his mount to Howie and squatted down with Klu and Jigger.

Howie didn't even try to listen. Catching talk from those three was like overhearing the grass sprout up. Later though, after a cold meal, Pardo wiped a sleeve over his mouth and stalked out of camp, telling Howie to follow. He was glad enough to go; most anything was better than riding or squatting. And sitting around with Klu and Jigger made him itch all over. They hadn't tried anything since
Pardo'd
caught '
em
, but that didn't mean they wouldn't if they got a chance to.