Single Combat (35 page)

"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-ton 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?"

"In a minute." Quantrill waited for the door to swing shut; considered several questions. Instead, he said, "I tried every way I knew to find you, Sandy. If that—that boar succeeded where I failed, I'm in his debt. I know for certain he's taken out some enemies of mine so," he sighed and slapped his thigh with rueful good humor, "—I guess I have to count him as a friend." He put down his cup, grasped his traveling gear. "You have to admit this is a little hard for me to take in, all at once. But I thought I'd forgotten how to laugh until I recognized you. Now I'd better go."

He was in the doorway when she said, very softly,

"I don't want you to go, but yes, you'd better. Tell Lufo I'll send Childe out with bowls of menudo when she gets home. Wouldn't want him to think I maltreat my guests." But her smile was the real apology.

Neither of the men found the right words before dinner. They spent the time with a deck of Lufo's cards and reminiscences. At last the shadow-quiet Childe faced them, offered steaming bowls of savory tripe soup and, after studying Quantrill for long minutes, ghosted away again. With the sun down and the breeze up, they were soon lying on their backs in mummybags.

Lufo lit a cheroot. After a few puffs he offered it to Quantrill. "Some things a man
can
share, compadre," he said.

Quantrill, who disliked cigars, accepted this one for its symbolic value. Handing it back, exhaling luxuriously, he asked, "You two married?"

"No. Now don' interrupt; I have some things to say but they won' be the right ones if you push me. Okay?"

"Right."

Long silence before, "I talk too much. But I only exaggerate a little. I have three wives; since I already tol' you about that, I may as well keep on. I don' know what you two had going when she was a kid, maybe nothing, but I know how she looked when she saw you today. I know that look." Chuckling gruffly: "It was a jump-on-your-bones look, compadre. Maybe that's layin' it on some, but take it from me, she mus' have missed you a lot once, and she didn' forget you."

Long ago, Quantrill had noted the heightened sibilant TexMex speech accents in his friend at times when he was not posturing. He recognized them now as Lufo went on: "In la raza there is a code. I'm glad it isn' your code because it gives you two places to stand in this matter, but only one way to move. You could act as a brother or as the one with the horns, the cuckold. Either way you'd have some bad business with me for trifling with Sandy. Because either way, you have a prior claim. I donno, maybe it
is
your code. Is it?"

"I don't know. Not the way you put it, but I won't see her victimized. If she knows all about you and likes it that way, it isn't up to me to make trouble."

"She doesn' know what you know—and I'd jus' as soon she didn'. What my code says is, the nex' move is yours. If you don' go for my hide then I can either keep on seein' Sandy, or I can admit you have first claim and shy off. But it's your move."

Quantrill puzzled over that for awhile. Eventually he said, "An old guy named Brubaker told me everybody's got an ethic whether he knows it or not. An ethic, a code,—whatever. Yours says I'd have to act as an injured party, but mine says no; it's none of my affair if she isn't hurt. And I go by my ethic, not yours. If you go on with her like this, not telling her your ways, sooner or later she
will
get hurt. And then you and I will have what you call bad business. If you really care about her, seems to me you have a choice, and I won't try to make it for you."

"I can read an anglo's moves, compadre, but not his mind. What choice?"

"Tell her about your wives or shy off. Any other way, you'd be treating her like someone without rights."

A chuckle: "The rights of a woman? Yours is a troublesome code, compadre."

From Quantrill, a sigh: "Don't I know it."

"At leas' it gives me room to live with mine. Whatthefuck is that word? Ay, compassion. I am a compassionate man. I don' want Sandy hurt, and telling her would hurt her. I already have enough women. If I let this one go she might hurt for awhile, but I think it would be a pleasant hurt and she would recover. Unless somebody else tol' her."

"Aw, shit, why do you beat around the bush?"

"Rafael Sabado from Houston did not beg favors, and Lufo Albeniz of Wild Country does not beg favors."

"No, by God you sure don't," Quantrill grumped. "Now I know why you guys never overpopulated Texas; you kill so many of each other off! Anyway—no, I won't tell her if I don't have to. As you say, telling her would hurt her. I guess. Christ, how would I know? I haven't seen her since she was a scrubby little kid! For all I know she might be happy to squirm around in your bed with all your other women watching!"

"Hey," Lufo broke in, harsh and bellicose, "you don' talk that way about my woman!"

Quantrill's reply was a guffaw. After a moment the big latino joined in, peals of laughter resounding inside the tarp as their tensions drained away.

Sandy's journal, 2 Oct,'

AAARrrgh! MEN! The laughing embrace of Ted Quantrill
(!!)
should have made this a day to remember, yet ten minutes later I was denouncing him and Lufo. It cannot be pleasant to be compared unfavorably with swine. Still, I spoke the truth. Or did I? I have only Lufo's word for Ted's reputation. & what of my reputation? What must they think & say of me? I hear them now, hooting & hoorawing out there, I hope the woodpile falls on them both!

Ted has changed, of course. The scars, the broken nose, the sparse hair behind one ear similar to Lufo's. Some dreadful initiation rite, perhaps. But his laughing mouth & those malachite eyes are the ones I knew, however briefly, however long ago…

I remember seeing him making love with that woman on the ground, the day he
says
they searched for me. Some search! & why do I feel anger at that? He gave me only kindness & owes me nothing
.

Imagine! The mere appearance of my first love-object, & I am babbling about him to Lufo's exclusion. I must not forget that men, especially men like Lufo, can be violent children. Shall I be mated to a violent child? Dear God, are they all alike?

Tomorrow we ride near Sonora in search of more destruction. Childe will be off riding with
him.
Must remind her to keep an eye on the place. Wish I had never told Lufo of that frightful device in my cave. It makes me resent the cleverness of the human race. Were it not for gadgetry, Lufo would not be gallivanting all over hell & Wild Country. (Nor would I have a holo or aspirin or a water pump!) Perhaps by making us more independent, gadgets help us alienate ourselves
.

Sorry, journal, I feel doggerel coming on. Well then:

THERE IS NO GOD OF MACHINES

This demon of persistence,

Man's technik, which berates us—

It lends us bare subsistence

While it separates us!

I would make war to exorcise

This fiend, technology

If in the ashes I could rise

And cleave to only thee.

Now then O cunning poet: who the hell is 'thee'? I doubt that I shall know before I'm an old crone of thirty.

Holo promises good weather. Must remember buckskins & parfleche of jerky , just in case. Dread this trip. MEN! AAARrrgh!

They encountered the broad shallow arroyo of Devil's River Canyon late in the morning of the next day, Sandy's outflung arm lancing past Lufo's shoulder as she recognized a rock outcrop. They passed old tire tracks in hardened mud, now crumbling with recent fall rains, and the scant shrubs were green with that memory.

Sandy, lithe in tight buckskins, was first to approach the rockfall that sealed her father's tomb. "Mom carved this," she murmured, stroking the weathered wooden cross with the legend, Wayland F. Grange 1955-

Quantrill remembered the man whose choice had been to let radiation sickness complete its ravages in the small cavern, attended by his daughter and his pregnant wife. Quantrill swept off his Aussie hat and knelt silently at Sandy's left, while Lufo knelt at her right.

Finally, "Thank you," said Sandy, and trudged away from the fallen entrance. She could not at first locate the second entrance. Lufo found it by stumbling at its lip, a sinister trapezoidal hole in brittle spongy limestone, masked by agarita shrubs that grew at the entrance in perfect camouflage.

Lufo had never taken S & R courses, and proposed to go below with only his flashlamp. Quantrill's training made him cautious. "Whoa, com-padre; let's get the rope and harnesses. And you might describe the layout again," he added to Sandy.

While they brought equipment from the 'cycles, she told them of the sloping shaft, the first 'room' with its jumble of fallen stalactites, the passage leading downward, the huge sand-floored room with its mighty treetrunk stalagmites.

"Is it still a live hole?" Quantrill asked. "I mean, does water still drop from the stalactites?"

She supposed it did. Six, or six hundred years were finger-snaps of time in a cavern. "Below the big room—I called it the church—is a pool with a slight current. You can wade in it to the next room. That's where I stored my things."

"Okay. If the cave's still alive, there's less worry about dislodging dried-out formations. Buckle this harness on and let Lufo be your rear guard. I'll take point position," he said, using a jargon Lufo would appreciate.

Their flashlamps revealed signs of animal burrows near the surface. Twenty meters inside the first shaft they encountered a room gleaming with damp pillars and fingerlets of limestone. Fallen stalactites, some as thick as a man's arm, lay among the up thrusting pillars .Quantrill anchored one end of his rope to a stone stump and paid the stuff out as he continued at Sandy's direction. No point in dwelling on the fact that they could be walking over a thin crust with a long fall beneath, but he kept well in the lead.

A bend downward to their right, then a chute flanked by solid pillars like monoliths poured from wax. By now they had passed the realm of natural light and their flashbeams showed no dust in the air. Quantrill climbed down far enough to see a phalanx of gypsum sheets, petrified draperies sparkling in the beams of light, before he heard chittering peeps nearby. Sandy was five meters behind, sliding her harness friction link along the rope. Very softly he said, "What kind of bats are down here?"

"I never tried to catch one," she replied. "There weren't many except at dusk. They came out in clouds then."

"Well, there's bagsful of 'em now," he said, and played his flashbeam toward a dome that arched away past intervening pillars. The dome seemed to ripple, but his mind refused to accept the carpet of fur that covered its surface. The powerful flashbeam swept across the black carpet, a surface that moved and flickered and then, the faint chittering silenced by the disturbing light, began to denude the dome.

A half-acre of bats left their perches on the dome and fled up the chute down which the interlopers climbed.

"Lights out. Don't move," Quantrill hissed. A second later they squatted immobile in total blackness as countless bats hurtled past them in a whisper that became a fluttering roar. Sandy uttered one tiny bleat of fear as the sound of their passage grew, yet not once did they feel a single impact. Instead they detected hundreds of feathery touches, hardly more than breaths, against hair, arms, shoulders. The experience, Quantrill thought, was exactly like squatting in a dry waterfall, a spattering fluid cascade of sound without the moisture. The tiny mammals had to be echolocating adroitly to avoid striking them, their squeaks no longer audible to the humans.