Wild Country

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Quantrill offered the best possible reason to Jess Marrow for taking Thursday and Friday off: Sandy needed help with her cash crop. He said nothing about personally freighting that crop to the big export market at Corpus Christi. Sandy's special hybrid crop of red-pulp, chili-flavored popcorn would certainly bring top dollar around Corpus — but he would also pass very near the little town of Alice.

The fact was, Marrow took care to keep from showing too much pleasure in granting his assistant leave whenever the Grange girl was involved. If there was one thing that might tame this young hellion, it was a good woman. From what Marrow could see, Quantrill was showing signs of getting domestic. But Jess Marrow could not see all of the signs. He could not know that Jerome Garner resented Quantrill's presence on Sandy's land. Sandy shared a long fenceline with the Garner spread, but for some reason Sandy was never bothered by Garner hands paying court to her. It never occurred to her that Jerome Garner might have told his hired men to steer clear of anything he had his eye on.

Late Thursday afternoon, Quantrill ran the stitcher across the last "gunnysack" of Sandy's crimson-hulled popcorn and mopped sweat from his face. The old fiberglass pallets, roofed for the moment under Sandy's grungy chickenhouse, groaned under their loads. He had sacked three metric tons in all, a full load for any hovervan and then some, if the route covered much broken country.

The buzz of the stitcher clattered down into silence as he called toward the soddy: "Hey, sis, how about some of that cold peach wine?"

Then he heard another machine, a big one with the whistling throb of a blown diesel with fans, in the near distance.

He walked out into autumn sunlight, stretching the kinks from his muscles, pulling off gauntlets and rolling up his sleeves, and saw the flaking paint on the door of the hovervan. Sandy hadn't told him she was renting the cargo vehicle from Garner Ranch.

Sandy and Childe greeted the driver, a lanky six-footer even without his scruffy boots, with no hips to speak of and a powerful beak of a nose between deep-set eyes. Quantrill considered withdrawing into the shed, saw the man glance in his direction, then resumed his walk. Nearing the trio, he heard the man's resonant basso: "Old gentleman said tell you there's no hurry. He'd be obliged if your driver would pick up some parts from International Harvester, and he'll call it even." But now he was standing beside them, looking toward Quantrill, and Sandy turned, too.

"That's more than fair. Cam — Oh, Ted, finished already? This is Cam Concannon, Mr. Garner's foreman. My driver, Ted Quantrill." Her welcoming hug around Ted's waist said much more.

"Mr. Concannon," said Quantrill, taking the scarred hand. The thinning sun-bleached hair suggested the foreman might be past forty, but still whipcord tough and lithe.

"Quantrill," replied the man softly, with smile wrinkles at the corners of his eyes as he sized up the smaller man. "We heard Miz Grange had some hired help. God knows she can use it," he added, nodding toward the acreage Sandy had not yet cleared.

"We have some iced peach wine. Cam," Sandy offered, and Childe scampered to the soddy ahead of them. They sat inside, sipping chilled glasses of liquid the color and clarity of a partridge's eye, discussing common topics: the price of special crops, the merits of twelve-volt or "house current" tools, their mutual hopes of a warming trend with less savage winters.

Finally, with a glance at his old-fashioned pocket watch, Concannon declined another refill. "The old gentleman expects me back 'fore dark, and my old cycle ain't what she used to be." He sighed, ducking as he passed the low doorway. "Quantrill, let me get you that parts list and check you out on the van."

The two men walked silently to the hovervan, parked where its air blast would not throw dust near the soddy. "Ted Quantrill, hm?" Concannon's voice was friendly enough, but his message was something else again as he handed over a parts list from the cab. "Ten years ago, we coulda gone to Rocksprings, you and me; knocked off a few beers with the old gentleman. I think Mr. Garner and you would hit it off. But times change. I wisht we could be friends, I really do. Sorry."

"So am I. Is this a nice way of saying Mr. Garner wants me to keep clear of his fenceline?"

"Mul Garner ain't seen his fenceline in years, Quantrill. Pore old man is too sick to run things much. It's Jerome I'm talkin' about. Another year or so and I'm afraid he'll be the only Mr. Garner around." A pause, looking across the hills with a lopsided and cheerless smile. "Garner Ranch is my business. Mul Garner had his boy pretty late in his life, and never kept hobbles on him. Knowin' Jerome is my business, too." The pale, deep-set eyes found Quantrill's again. "He has his eye on this place and what's on it, if you get my drift. He's met you, and he don't like you one bit, and Jerome is mean as a pet coon."

As though asking something of no consequence, Quantrill asked, "Any suggestions?"

Conconnan spat. "Shit, I never in my life told a neighbor to clear out. I won't start now."

"But if Sandy Grange sticks with me, we'd best move on. Is that it?"

"It'd be healthier than stayin' put. For you, anyhow."

Quantrill released a long breath. "Did Jerome Garner tell you to say any of this?"

"No, goddammit! If he knew you was here, he'd of argued the old gentleman out of lendin' the van. Or worse. Hell, I said too much already. The Garners are like my family, and I don't sell my family out. But I can see trouble a long way off, Quantrill. You're trouble. Anybody in this country can tell you how Jerome deals with trouble, and that's about all I ever intend to say about it. I see you again, I nod. That's it."

"Good enough."

Concannon waved a hand across the dash of the van. "Anything here that looks funny to you?"

"Nope. I figure it'll get me there and back. You think I figure right?"

"I wouldn't lend a man a lame horse, damn your hide!"

Quantrill slid back to the cargo section; began to guide a rickety old hovercycle to the loading ramp. "I never thought you would, Concannon. Sorry it sounded that way. Let me help you with this."

"No, you go on back to the soddy, I don't want your goddamm help." Waving Quantrill from the cargo bay, muttering now as if to himself: "Ain't right to take help from a man you can't be seen with. I just hope the old gent lives another fifty years. Keep most of the shit outa the fan…"

Quantrill partitioned this new knowledge off and wandered into the soddy asking about supper. He wasn't disappointed; Sandy was guiding Childe through the first steps of Sonofabitch Stew. They paused to watch Cam Concannon whirr off on his old cycle, and only then did Quantrill remember the Englishman who was training his borrowed Spanish Barb over the horizon. There would be time to discuss it over a second helping of stew; meanwhile he had plenty of time to winch those pallets into the cargo bay.

By suppertime he had scrubbed down, removing the pesky hull fibers that gave a fair imitation of seven-year-itch. Childe bustled about, officious as a Park Avenue doorman in an apron that came down to her ankles, convinced that she had created the main dish alone — a dish she particularly enjoyed because it allowed her to use a word that was otherwise taboo. When she crowed, "Come get the sonofabitch," Sandy decided this had gone too far. But Ted Quantrill could not stop laughing, and Childe wallowed in her small victory.

Sawing away at a loaf of sourdough bread, Quantrill broached the subject of Wardrop's training. "If you can keep Ba'al down home here for a couple of weeks," he said, mostly to Childe, "our crazed Brit will probably give it up. He can't afford to hire scout choppers forever, and the first blue norther that blows down here will teach him who the real enemy is."

"He won't stay hid," Childe said with authority. "I'll have to stay with him."

"You will be in school in Rocksprings next week, young lady," Sandy said, brandishing a wooden spoon like a paddle. "I can keep him busy hauling mesquite now and then but he loses interest in it pretty fast. If anybody fires one shot at Ba'al on my spread, he can count on me shooting back."

Around a mouthful of succulent bread-soppings, Quantrill said, "Not Wardrop. Give the fool credit for courage; he's not even carrying a sidearm."

Sandy, perplexed: "This man has seen pictures of Ba'al, and is going to face him with a little bitty spear?" Her headshake consigned Wardrop to some heavenly asylum.

Childe: "If he's crazy, and doesn't have a gun, that's the only chance he has."

Quantrill: "Come again?"

Childe waved a hunk of bread airily. "You know how rabbits go weird in season? Jumping flips, stuff like that? Ba'al likes rabbit, but he lets the crazies alone."

"This Brit will not be turning flips or making faces," Quantrill warned. "In some ways he's a helluva guy. But if he ends up with his innards spread all over Wild Country, Ba'al may get a sure-'nough posse on his trail. The best answer is for them not to meet." The same, he realized, was probably true for himself and Jerome Garner.

"I could get him drunk as a coot on rotten apples," Sandy reflected. "But only for one day, and when he wakes up you don't want to be around here."

Quantrill thought about that and shivered. "Christ; Ba'al with a hangover! Boggles the mind," he said, chuckling as he chased a hunk of kidney around his bowl with more bread. "By the way, it's nearly eight. Sandy. Wasn't there something you wanted to see on the holo?"

"Umbrellas of Cherbourg," she said. "An old classic. A kind of opera, really. You'll see." With that promise, she began to clear the table.

Soon Quantrill had a good subdued fire of mesquite going in the fireplace, and with its flicker for a nightlight they settled down on the couch with hot mugs of coffee. Childe nestled between them, secure under her old rabbit-fur blanket, and ten minutes into the show she had begun to snore. Sandy gathered her sister up, kissed the small brow, placed Childe in the closetlike bedroom. Then she returned for some serious snuggling. She knew the power of this bittersweet old film and the tenderness it provoked even if it was in the old "flatvision" style.

A big down comforter can cover a multitude of sins. They massaged each other while watching the holo; eventually — despite her earlier decisions on the matter — made slow, careful love made more delicious by Sandy's fear of waking Childe. When Quantrill began to moan, Sandy muffled his mouth with her own. Then they lay silent, inert, and watched the ancient film to the end.

Quantrill was gently licking away a tear from Sandy's cheek when the late Deadline news began. The opening item stole their attention completely.

"… announced a breakthrough at Bell Laboratories in development of a matter synthesizer," said the announcer. "Doctor Marengo Chabrier, Bell project scientist, refused comment, but a spokesman for the Federal Recovery Administration did respond to CBS reporters. More from Denise Young."

Cut to a stunning blonde in smart tweeds who may even have understood her pitch: "Ever since the last days of the war, rumors have persisted that China developed a machine that could create many substances starting with any simple chemical."

Quantrill sat bolt upright. "Rumor, hell. Sandy, you remember that lab I trashed in Utah?" He saw her nod. "The guy I brought out with me was Marengo Chabrier. I see he landed on all four feet." But Sandy had a finger across her lips, staring at the holo.

The lady in tweeds continued her upbeat tempo: "… and only small fragments of the devices survived the blast, which leveled a secret laboratory funded by Boren Mills, the former head of IEE. Mr. Mills pulled a vesco; his whereabouts are still unknown.

"But Dr. Chabrier did survive. As supervisor of the IEE lab, he provided the one living link to reconstruction of the matter synthesizer. Under hush-hush contracts with Bell Labs, he has spent the past four years, in a phrase he has since disavowed, reinventing the torus. Chabrier would not comment tonight, but Mr. Kelvin Broadie of the Federal Recovery Administration spoke with me here in Missouri, D.C."

Flick to a taped sequence where a graying, conservatively dressed man faced several microphones with a look of triumph. "We always felt it was just a matter of time. Bell's people deserve a lot of credit; they never lost hope. Only in a dying culture can any important technical breakthrough be truly lost." A faint wry grin, suggesting years of doubt: "Or not for long, anyway. And Reconstruction America grows healthier by the day."

At this point Broadie paused to hear a question off mike and fielded it cleanly: "Not at any price, for a while. You have to realize that a synthesizer is about the size of a bread-box; in theory we can make them smaller, but not larger; and the yield is rated in kilograms a day. We have a few of them now at Sandia National Labs, producing exotic metals."

Another unheard question, and a cautious gnawing at his lower lip before Broadie replied. "I doubt it. We might synthesize living tissue one day, but that's a tall order. Right now we can use air as input and select cobalt or a passable bourbon as output, and" — a grin creased his face—"what more could you ask for a few cents' worth of electricity?"

Cut back to the tweedy Miss Young, whose doubtful smile faded as she showed, to millions of investors, the other side of this coin. "Trading on the Columbia market was heavy and mixed as the news broke this afternoon. Bell stock showed a sharp upturn, but firms engaged in the production of rare metals and Pharmaceuticals did not fare so well. Trading in stocks of both Teledyne and McDonnell Douglas was suspended by closing time.

"The FRA's news release hinted that this amazing device will not be used to compete against private enterprise. But as of tonight, the matter synthesizer is no longer legend or rumor. Now back to you. Matt."

In the soddy, Quantrill sipped cold coffee and stared at the mesquite embers. "Jesus freeze us," he muttered, ignoring the rest of the news. "I thought that thing was dead and gone."

Sandy snapped off the holo, leaned back, worried at a cuticle with her teeth while she watched her lover. "Dead, maybe, but not gone. It's been haunting me for years." She saw his puzzlement and tried to smile, but it was a rickety construction that collapsed into silent pleading. She had to tell him now; not "someday," and not tomorrow, but tonight.

She rose from the couch and rummaged on a high shelf near the kitchen, among her few keepsakes, for the only existing miniature of a matter synthesizer.