Ted Quantrill frowned, cocked his head at her, then grinned. "Nah. Where d'you get those crazy ideas?"
And then he took her to the dance.
CHAPTER 71
Sandy's journal, 5 Oct.'
My first real take-out date! What if I did have to coax Ted into it? Must be near 1 A.M. as my dance instructor snores softly in his mummybag & wanton creature that I am, I yearn to slip myself in with him. Intuition says I must not; it does not tell me why.
I felt a guilty thrill when Jerome Gamer, the swaggering bravo who will one day run Garner ranch, jostled us on the dance floor. I know it was deliberate & his sidelong gate made my dress transparent. His request for apology was really a challenge. Somehow Ted's open smile & his cordial, "Why sure, hoss, I beg your pardon,' conveyed to us all that he perceived no threat worth his notice.
Childish of me to mutter into Ted's ear (while standing on his toes!) that he was free to do some jostling of his own for all I cared. He implied much about his recent life by replying that at last he was free not to. If that shamed me, why am I not scandalized by easy allegiances to first one man, then another?
Perhaps because Ted is not just any man. Too, there is a difference between being in love & being in sex. Lufo, good luck to him, has taught that to me more surely than all the books I have ever read. Perhaps after all I shall find in Ted a kissing cousin of sorts. I am not dismayed by the prospect. Am I?
Childe brings a disturbing report. Men are his enemies though he kills only if, as Childe puts it, 'madded'. How to be certain Ted will not 'mad' him? Mystery!
No mystery about that necklace. Sipping the muscular punch of the Rocksprings grange ladies, Ted confided that a synthesizer may be a Pandora's box that no one, and no government, should unlock. So what am I to do? One decision, at least, which I can defer. But Childe will not wear it again!
Fingertips raw from sewing, but what an effect that deerskin has below those green eyes.
Rocksprings girls would have swallowed him like a gingerbread man.
CHAPTER 72
By Monday, the synthoderm had done its work so well that Quantrill scarcely felt his abrasions. He used the microwave scrambler link on his 'cycle to contact Indy Base and, for an anxious few minutes, felt cast adrift when three successive listeners failed to identify him.
To the fourth, a suspicious knave with a New England accent, he said, "Just pass the word to Lufo or Ethridge that I'd like to know if our, ah, little canister from Sonora was of any use. And ask the Governor if he'd like me to accept a job at Schreiner ranch."
After too many minutes the knave was back, no longer suspicious but not very helpful either. Ethridge was in briefing but sent word that the canister would make a fine suppository for someone named Control. Neither Lufo Albeniz nor the Governor were available. If the Gov wanted Quantrill at Schreiner's spread, seemed like plain yankee horse sense to get on a payroll. And don't bother Indy Base again for a few days; they were busier than a one-armed man in a bull-milking contest.
By mutual consent, Quantrill and Sandy passed up lunch, forearm deep in a lime-and-'dobe mess with which they plastered crannies between the upper logs of the soddy walls. When the blue northers swept down from Canada, she warned, the wind would chew up his spine with icicle teeth. With Mex heating oil so expensive and mesquite so damnably plentiful, the provident settler built ricks of mesquite firewood near the North side of a dwelling and hoped part of that windbreak remained for spring barbecues.
Child came frisking into the clearing near dark. Quantrill knew better than to ask her about her playmate; if and when they were ready, he would know. He knew on Wednesday.
He had worn through a pair of work gloves cutting mesquite and stacking it on Tuesday. Wednesday morning, he paused with a tender biscuit halfway to his mouth. "It just occurred to me," he said in puzzlement, "that you don't have any vehicle big enough to pull all those damn' mesquite trunks into the clearing. How'd they get here?"
Childe exchanged glances with Sandy who smiled, "Don't believe the old saying, 'pigs is pigs', sometimes pigs are trucks!"
He took a bite, thinking of the heavy red-hearted tree trunks, some as thick as Childe's body. "Good God," he said.
"You ought to be glad he can use those tusks for peaceable chores," Sandy replied. "By the way, do you mind if Childe takes that shirt you're wearing? You can wear the new one instead."
To Quantrill's puzzled glance, Childe piped, "He wants your smell." The earnest little face said that the request was no small matter.
He exchanged shirts slowly, almost reluctantly, muttering about the unbelievable hocus-pocus a man had to undergo, just to get on good terms with a hog.
Sandy: "Quit complaining; your smell is your personnel file. If you'd rather not meet him today, I can—"
"No, the sooner the better." He handed the shirt to Childe who performed her usual limber disappearance. "I want to know where I stand with Ba'al before I leave — and that might be any day now."
"But you'll only be in the next county."
That depended, he said. "If something goes wrong with the Indy plans, I might, um, have to disappear into Mexico for awhile." He did not add that Mexico would be only his conduit back to Eureka for a singleton mission on his own. It was all very well for Jim Street to talk of bloodless surgery against a secret police system; but if Ethridge failed, Quantrill would wield a deadly scalpel until they caught him.
"You don't fool me, mister," Sandy said. "You're just looking for an excuse to get out of cutting firewood."
To disprove that charge, Quantrill spent his next hours among the gnarled mesquite. But he worked slowly. He was not going to tire himself when he might need all his energy later.
Late in the morning he heard a familiar whistle. He turned, surveying the scrub, and then laid the saw aside as he saw Childe above the brushtops seventy meters away. She towered over the shrubs, his shirt slung over her thin shoulder, and with one hand she gripped the neck bristles of the demonic Ba'al. For one stunned moment Quantrill considered calling the whole goddam thing off.
Ba'al stood quietly, his enormous bristly shoulders aimed at the soddy, head turned in Quantrill's direction. Downwind, of course; oh yes, Ba'al knew where Quantrill stood. The long muzzle lifted, the tip of the snout flexing as it tasted manscent, the flywhisk tail switching impatiently. Childe whistled again, a subtly different tune. Quantrill estimated the great beast's weight at a full five hundred kilos, most of it forward of the sloping hindquarters. Childe actually sat astride his neck, feet hooked under his chin.
As Sandy strode outside, Quantrill saw the vast bulk suddenly trotting toward her, grunting, Childe leaning forward in effortless unconcern as she waved. Quantrill watched the movements of her huge steed with wariness, noting how suddenly those little hooves could accelerate such a massive bulk. Little? Well, only when compared with Ba'al himself. Quantrill was more concerned with the great head, as big as a horse's, and the twin scimitars that flanked the snout.
From long practice, Quantrill assessed the strengths of the boar, and wondered where weaknesses might lie. Such an opponent could accelerate like a big cat; would probably lower its head to bring those tusks into position for goring — and eviscerating. For all its thickness, that grizzly neck could twist sharply, directing the ivory tusks in any direction. The hooves would be murderous, and the brute was anything but stupid.