Quantrill replied through his headset: "I'd think about what happened to Eve Simpson, and I'd think you're fucking loco to think what you're thinking," as he followed Lufo.
With their 'cycles hidden under the plastic tarp, they hefted their traveling gear: mummybag with spare clothing, food, and survival articles packed into the folds. It was then that the warm-eyed blonde ran to meet Lufo. Her arms were already around his nee when she glanced at her second guest. She registered shock, then something like anger, pulling back from Lufo who grinned at the way she stared.
"This is Ted Quantrill, Sandy," said her lover with pride. "He finally made it out this way."
Quantrill intended to extend a hand but saw her hands gripping each other at her breast, her mouth open in a new astonishment. Instead he nodded and smiled, trying to ignore a display he did not yet understand. Even with her jaw down, she was a hell of a looker — and not a woman yet, in years. It was his turn to gape as Lufo continued. "Ted, this is my woman, Sandy Grange."
Quantrill could only repeat her name. She gave him a quick nod, and feeling like an idiot he said it still again. A scab-kneed kid of eleven back in '96 before he joined the Army; yes, if caterpillars became Monarch butterflies, then his gamine girlchild friend Sandy could become this lush creature six years later.
He had lost her trace in Sutton County, assumed she'd been devoured— by the great boar, Ba'al! He'd even seen their tracks together; had drawn the obvious conclusion. Well, the obvious wasn't always true.
Ted Quantrill did not know that he was bubbling with silent laughter; knew only that Lufo was right. It could be a great life.
Sandy glanced quickly at Lufo, whose keen gaze was asking 'what the hell ails this pair,' and then she held out her hand. It was already shaking.
"I'm — glad to meet you, Mr. Quantrill." She was all but weeping.
Instead Quantrill burst out laughing, caught her to him, hugged her and whirled her around. "It wouldn't work, Sandy," he said, still laughing as he released her with a gesture at Lufo. "Not for ten seconds! He's not blind and he's not stupid and hell, he isn't even Lufo Albeniz. But whatever he is, he wasn't your playmate back at Sonora — and I was!"
Lufo's swarthy color hid most of his blush, but he quickly moved from anger to suspicion of some vast joke. "Playmate? You two know each other?" It just missed being an accusation.
Breathless from Quantrill's whirl, spots of color reddening her cheeks, Sandy hugged Lufo's sleeve in mock severity. "Now don't be like that, Lufo. If you weren't such a secretive bozo, and a creative speller too, you'd have told me your old friend was Ted — and I wouldn't be gawking at him like this." She linked an arm through Quantrill's, glanced at him again with a 'well-I-never' headshake; urged both men toward the soddy and walked between them.
While Sandy brewed herb tea, she and Quantrill explained their Sonora connection to the disgruntled Lufo. In the process Quantrill realized that the ribbon-chuted canister she'd salvaged from scattered aircraft debris lay hidden in the same cavern where he had once met her dying father.
"I don't think I could find the place without you," Quantrill admitted. "I was only fifteen years old then."
"Wouldn't matter if you did," Sandy murmured, pouring tea. "I stored all my treasures in another entrance — but I can find it. I'm not truly certain that thing is a bomb, you know. The war was over before I saw a holo program showing enemy munitions — but I swear one of their small airdropped nukes was identical to the thing I dragged into my cavern."
Lufo welcomed the chance to focus on the present. He could do nothing about alliances his woman had known in childhood. He asked if Sandy had ever spoken of her salvage item to anyone else. No, she said, not even to Childe; it was something she did not like to think about.
Quantrill recalled Lufo's mention of a little sister. Adopted? Again she demurred; Childe had been born two months before Sandy escaped with her from Wild Country outlaws.
Quantrilclass="underline" "You wore sandals the day you escaped toting a two-month-old sister." Not a question, but a statement of facts.
Sandy: "Why, — how did you know about the sandals?"
"Tracked you after a team of us ran those outlaws down. I was too late to help your mom. Saw some other prints with yours at a waterhole, and figured you'd made a meal for the biggest predator that ever roamed this country."
Sandy tried to change the subject. Lufo was having none of that. Until now he'd held some hope that her tantalizing hints of a protector in the brush was only a fanciful tissue. Yet Quantrill added earlier, if circumstantial, evidence. Lufo, almost sadly: "Ted, you're talkin' about a big boar hog."
Sandy said nothing, but stared daggers at her lover.
Quantrill, nodding, with a half-smile toward Sandy: "I'm talking about Ba'al. Or maybe there's more than one. Sandy?"
She searched her teacup for a reply, evidently without success. "I don't want to talk about it. I have enough trouble keeping my — human friends from each other's throats."
"That brute is a killer," Quantrill said without rancor.
"And you?" This from Sandy with much rancor. "From the little Lufo said about you, I didn't recognize the gentle boy I used to know. I expected someone like the picture of Dorian Gray! You've probably shed more blood than Ba'al, and for worse reasons — both of you! That brute adopted me and Childe. If you were hungry and hunted, would you adopt a piglet?"
"I wouldn' make it part of my family," Lufo said levelly.
"Many's the night I've stayed awake wondering, if I ever had to choose between the brute that looks after us and a human who looks in on us now and then, how I would choose. Well, now I can sleep!"
The nubile breasts rose and fell rapidly as Sandy's temper flared.
The two men shared guilty knowledge that with only a casual application of heat they had brought a long-simmering problem to a rolling boil. Sandy burst out: "I'll show you two what you came here for, and you can take it and, and, and go to hell with it and remember me as the piglady for all I–Lufo Albeniz, do you want Mayberry tea down your collar?"
Lufo had moved near her; had made what he imagined was a conciliating gesture. Blinking: "Hadn't planned on it, chica."
"Then take your hand off my butt! Lordy, but you big strong men are sure of yourselves," she snorted, as Lufo jerked the offending hand away.
Lufo's choice would have been clear to any old-fashioned macho. He could either beat the squishy mierda out of his woman, or he could retreat with the lighthearted patience of a big dog attacked by a very small dog. Any other solution — apology, or any explanation that smacked of apology — would be unthinkable in the presence of another man, especially Quantrill. Because Lufo was survival-oriented, he let himself be swayed by several facts.
If he struck her, he might have to fight Quantrill too. And Ted Quantrill was the only unarmed combat student he'd ever seen whose psychomotor responses defied belief.
If his little gringa became angry enough, she might just whistle up a half-tone cyclone of tusk and gristle that could come through a wall and survive a lot of small-caliber hits while scattering a man around a little, Lufo needed time to think. Sandy Grange didn't fit any simple pattern, and her old friendship with Quantrill muddied the problem further. He examined these facts in the space of a second or two, unleashed a dazzling smile, made a mocking bow as he backed away. "I was clumsy with desire, chica.
I'll set up my bedroll at the woodpile as penance while the light is still good." He paused at the door, traveling gear under his arm. There was a faint air of command in his, "Coming, compadre?"