Wild Country

Chapter Three

The unlucky rattler wasn't even coiled, merely stretched out enjoying a recent meal, when Quantrill spotted him. Moving quickly in the late afternoon heat, the ugly brute coiled a good honest warning to this interloper. Quantrill's ventilated boots and brush trousers were snakeproof, with leg panels that served as chaps; but his primary defense against rattlers was a combination of reflexes and untrembling control. That combination had stunned U.S. Army medics when they'd first tested him for lethal skills.

Once in a human generation, a specimen with Quantrill's natural gifts might occur. Those gifts had been viciously misused until Quantrill turned rebel, pitting himself in single combat against his masters. Now that the rebels had won — and despite the best arguments by Sandy Grange — he still used his gifts in combat. He took them as much for granted as the rattler took its heat-seeking sensors.

For another man, Quantrill's rapid right-handed pass before the snake might have been bravado, but for the deputy it was only a way to coax a snake into straightening out. The rattler lashed his triangular head forward, the S-curve of neck and one coil now the size and rigidity of a baseball bat. And now the yellow-white fangtips lanced for the tempting target, but now too the hand flicked out of range, which was roughly two-thirds the length of the rattler.

And one-tenth of a human heartbeat later, the rattler hit caliche dirt, pinioned there by the treacherous hand while Quantrill's left hand grasped the rattler behind its anal opening to keep that cylinder of muscle from whipping around his arm.

Vaqueros, locally teased by the term "buckaroos," had first learned the trick of whip-cracking a live rattler to remove its head. Once a Mexican cowpoke showed that trick to his Texas neighbors, it became a well-known sport. Some said it separated the men from the boys; some said it separated the smarts from the plain stupids. Quantrill did it because it separated the snake from the sting, and he would not do it while anyone watched. Long ago he'd learned to avoid displays of his quickness. Why put an unknown enemy on guard? Word got around too soon as it was.

A moment later, Quantrill hefted the headless rattler, smiled to himself. Sometimes he brought a toy for Childe, or a spray of wildflowers for Sandy. But this time he curried favor with Ba'al, an enormous Russian boar bred to Texas proportions by Texas A&M researchers before the war. One day when Wild Country was tamed, there would be no room for such a monster, a full five hundred kilos of tusk and gristle, standing tall as a Mex pony and bearing the scars of many encounters with men. It was hard to say if Ba'al accepted Ted Quantrill as a friend. The great animal loved Sandy and, especially, Childe; but Quantrill's odor was the hated mansmell, and the two males had never faced each other without a soothing female presence.

If Ba'al loathed anything more than man, it was a live snake. A recently dead snake was something else again. His forelegs and snout were scarred from rattler punctures, and the boar dined as often from rattler nests as from wild goat, tender shoots, or stray animals from the nearby preserves of Wild Country Safari. Quantrill hoped that this quivering rattler carcass would be the equivalent of a sherbet for Sandy or a praline for Childe. If not — well, whatthehell, he'd tried to pacify the surly bastard…

Less than an hour later, a few kilometers from Rocksprings, Quantrill topped a rise in view of Sandy Grange's soddy. He tried to deny the sense of relief spying the long, semisubmerged dwelling with its grassy sod roof and spiky agarita shrubs planted on the earth berm. Too many times he had seen roofs caved in by concussion grenades, smoke curling from burnt hulks, well-tended gardens ribboned to mulch by cimarron gangs hostile to settlers.

But Sandy's corn stood high and golden, now with a deeper glow from the saffron sun far to the west. Over the years, sunsets were beginning to lose the psychedelic glows brought on by thousands of nuclear blasts during the war years. Atmospheric dust and smoke had brought depressed temperatures and poor crop yields until recently. Quantrill tried once more with his VHP unit, and this time Sandy heard the beeper, complaining that she would not have time to freshen up before he arrived. He thought it better to avoid mentioning his cargo; Sandy tended to get squeamish about such things.