CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Roy Tully nodded warily to the big Afrikaner as he walked through the gardens at the rear of the Seven Oaks manor house. Piet Botha returned the gesture with a control that showed he returned the same cautious respect, untinged with anything so sentimental as liking. That told Tully something in itself: The bigger man was smart enough not to let the contrast in their sizes fool him into underestimating a possible opponent.
That is one serious badass, Roy thought. If the time ever comes, there won’t be any “Freeze” or “You’re under arrest” bullshit. I’ll just put a clip right through the center of mass—and then a couple of rounds into the head to be really sure.
Adrienne had “suggested” that he report to the stable boss, since he’d been emphatically uninterested in helping took the shocks, or whatever you called throwing parcels of wheat around. That was one advantage of not being a big muscular slab of beef like Tom: People didn’t automatically look at you and think of all the work you could accomplish. He managed to find the laneway to the stables, a strip of hoof-marked dirt under the cool shade of an avenue of pepper trees. But it was blocked by people and two horses bearing pack saddles, each carrying a pair of wooden barrels; the crowd included several kids of around ten or so and one extremely good-looking young woman in jeans and checked shirt and western hat. She was black-haired and full-figured, and leading the animals with easy competence.
“Hi!” Tully said brightly. “Looking for the stable boss.”
“You’re looking at her,” the young woman said. She transferred both leading reins to one hand and shook with the other. “Sandra Margolin.”
“Roy Tully,” he replied. “I’m supposed to report to you.”
“Thank God,” she said. “Henning’s taken all my people for the harvest and I’m trying to do six men’s work with myself and a bunch of kids. You know anything about horses?”
“They’re big and they’ve got four legs and they eat grass,” Tully said helpfully, grinning. Sandra smiled broadly herself. “Well, hell, that’s honest,” she said. “You’re the other FirstSider, right? Here. You lead one of these. We’re taking some water out to the harvest gangs, me and these imps of Satan here.”
He took one of the leading reins, holding it the way she did—the slack in the left hand, and the right close to the horse’s chin, ignoring the way it slobbered slightly. The powerful earthy, grassy smell of the animal filled his nostrils as they took a right turn onto a graveled lane that fronted the houses that stood south of the manor.
“So, Sandra,” he said, “how did you get to be stable boss?”
Yelling and spreading your tail feathers worked wonders for peacocks, but it had limitations for humans; a lot of guys didn’t realize how much women liked it when a man listened to them. He suspected that that went double for New Virginia.
Well, this is a new experience, Tom thought, leaning on his fork and watching the tractors pull away from the group of workers.
The fork was a shaft of polished ash nearly six feet long, topped by two thin, elegantly curved steel tines—the original style of pitchfork, nothing like the digging implement. The overnight fog had lifted since they returned from Rolfe Manor, except for banks that hung like drifting mystery among the thick riverside forest—perhaps the fervent prayers he’d heard, interlarded with equally heartfelt curses, had something to do with it. The sun was clear of the Vaca hills to the east and gave promise of a long, hot, cloudless day; he was grateful for the big-brimmed straw hat he’d been given. Everyone was wearing one, or a cloth equivalent; most of the women had bandannas tied around their heads beneath.
Four tractors were pulling their side-mounted reaper-binders through the ripe wheat, the first vehicle’s wheels running along a grass verge that lined the inside of the fence. The others were in a staggered line, each ten yards back from the one in front, with the tractor moving through the stubble left by the machine in front, its reaper out in the grain. The long creels turned, pushing a swath of grain backward over the cutting bar; the tying mechanism bound the straw into sheaves and dropped them in a neat, closely spaced row. The noise of the tractor’s diesel and the clattering rattle and buzz of the reaper made him suddenly conscious again of how quiet it was here—no background hum of machinery and traffic and aircraft and voices, so the sound of the harvester echoed distinct and solitary.
“Wait a minute,” he said as another tractor came up pulling a flatbed trailer with an outward-slanting frame fastened to the front and rear, ten feet high; several more followed it. “Why do you have to get all these sheaves up right away? It’s not as if you’ve got to worry about summer rains here!”
Adrienne looked up from where she was conferring with Henning. “Well, you may have noticed that we have a lot of birds here,” she said, nodding upward.
Tom looked up. There were a lot of them there, even by local standards. More waited in chattering flocks in the cypress trees that ran into the distance along the side of the wheat field, or in the boughs of the occasional valley oak left amid the cultivation: rock doves, band-tailed pigeons… Even more birds were scrambling or flying out of the path of the reapers—great explosions of ring-necked pheasant going kaw-kwak!, and even larger coveys of brown California quail, chicken-sized birds looking a little as if they’d been squeezed between the leaves of a book, the males with an absurd little feather plume dangling over their noses, and all of them going chi-CAH-go at the tops of their voices.
“And deer,” Henning added. “Nocturnal, but they can clear these fences easily enough. Ditto mule deer, elk, and a couple of those new types of antelope. There’s one not much bigger than a rabbit that’s a bigger pest than the rabbits.”
“Dik-diks, that’s what they’re called,” Adrienne said. “Not to mention bear, black and grizzly. And rabbits… The only ones that don’t like wheat are the cougars and leopards and wolves. Even the coyotes will eat grain. Not to mention grapes, but that’s another story—everything loves grapes.”
Henning nodded. “If we let the sheaves lie out more than a couple of days, we’d lose half the yield,” he said. “No way we could stand guard on three hundred acres for months.”
“Just asking,” Tom said. Seems there’s a downside to the abundant wildlife. “I suppose the ones that won’t eat grain like sheep,” he said.
“Tell me about it,” Adrienne said, rolling her eyes, and Henning grunted agreement. “And they like veal and pork, too. And when a grizzly decides that the walnuts or the cherries or the figs belong on the ground, where he can eat ’em, not on the tree…”
Then she looked over at the progress the reapers were making, nodded and waved the first tractor pulling a flatbed forward. It came up between the two rows of sheaves and geared down to a slow walk, then stopped.
Adrienne whistled. “All you first-timers, over here!” she called. “Gather ’round!”
Tom obediently gathered ’round with a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who came up to his breastbone, and several of the younger nahua, who were about the same height. An older nahua gave a running translation for the Mesoamericans.