Wild Country

Chapter Forty-Seven

Lieutenant Alec Wardrop helped fit the armored blankets to his mount, cursing the weight of each piece, admiring the work of Jess Marrow's saddlemaker. The mare accepted her synthetic hide with the patience of a saint.

Marrow pointed to the great shoulder pads that hung across a wooden railing in the tack shed. "Ted. see if you and Wardrop can adjust the buckles to fit that to the mare's breastplate."

Quantrill hefted the kapton blanket with the hard nylon plates sewn between its layers. "My God, Jess, have you weighed all this stuff?"

"About sixty kilos. Should be no problem for a draft horse. Easy, Rose," said Marrow, patting the mare as she swung her head around. Rose was a deep roan in color, weighing nearly a metric ton and standing fully eighteen hands at the withers. She was a beautiful creature with the Roman nose of a Clydesdale and the smooth, untufted fetlocks of a Percheron. A trained eye could readily identify her bloodlines as those of the "great horse" first bred in northern Europe as a draft animal. Wardrop had bought her from a circus wintering near Galveston, depending on her calm and familiarity with exotic animals for the job he had in mind. Wardrop knew the history of the "great horse"; it had carried crusaders with massive armor into battle centuries before. This one. Rose, might do it again. She had proven herself very nimble and willing when harrying smaller boars during the past few days. Wardrop felt that, this time, he had the right mount.

He also had paid for different equipment. His hardware now included a night-vision helmet, a longer and thicker assegai spear, and a saddle-mounted socket pivot for it. His saddlebags were the size of mule packs, stocked for a week's travel in Wild Country. That polymer armor, however, was the result of a blistering argument with Jess Marrow. Old Marrow would stable the mare with pleasure, sweet-tempered rarity that she was, but remained aghast at Wardrop's use of her. She was Wardrop's property, so he couldn't forbid the man to hunt boar from her back — a broad platform that seemed the size and stability of a tennis court. He could refuse to equip her for armor, though; and he did, until Wardrop took her out to flush smaller boars.

When it became obvious that Wardrop was going to put Rose up against Ba'al in any case, Marrow agreed to supervise the crafting of her armor. As he had-put it, "It'd be a shame to make this pore noble beast pay for what you got comin'." Now, with the unwilling help of Quantrill, they were making the final fit of Rose's armor pads. From knees to neck and even passing under her ample belly, Rose's armor would stop a hurled lance. It would not stop the ridicule of Wardrop's quest.

Wardrop, connecting the breastplate to padding over her shoulders, did not at first notice the bright stitching Marrow had ordered across the close-woven kapton at the shoulders of the big mare. When he did, he indulged in a deep-breathing exercise. The stitching did not say "Rose"; it said "Rosinante."

"And I," said Wardrop with a flourish but not much mirth, "Don Quixote de la Mancha. While you Philistines are falling about in glee, think of the insult you give to Rose. She's no broken-down Spanish nag."

Marrow's own shoulders were shaking with repressed laughter as he stepped back to view the mare. "Maybe not, but you realize what this will all look like? Helmet, lance, armor, that goddamn stupid kerchief like a pennant — you're a dead ringer for a throwback out of the Middle Ages."

Wardrop, coolly: "That has not escaped my notice."

Quantrill: "Has it escaped your notice that you are a throwback? You admit the woman who gave you this idea hates your guts. And she's disappeared in the bargain."

And Marrow: "Besides, if you ever told your fellow pigstickers how you got a draft horse gussied up like this, you'd be laughed out of your regiment."

"Regiment be damned. Marianne Placidas and you two, especially you, be damned!" Grunting, Wardrop lifted his new saddle, no English postage stamp but a special affair with a "tree" high enough to provide kidney support, and swung it onto Rose's back. "I've invested many a bottle of that dogsbody's whiskey, and dissolved the lining of my throat, in hearing the local opinions. You two have been entirely too much help keeping me from my goal. I know who you are now, Quantrill: a man with a certain cachet in these parts. But I know myself as well, and I tell you before a witness that if you are trying to give serious insult, I shall give you satisfaction now, or later." He tugged at one of three broad cinches under the mare's belly. "The choice of weapons would be yours. I would sign a waiver; I believe that's how it has been done recently in this barbarous place." He stood up and waited, looking from one man to the other.

Quantrill sighed; shook his head as he led the docile Rose into sunshine, Wardrop following with lance and helmet. To give an ex-assassin his choice of weapons was to give a shark his choice of bites. It was a long vault into the saddle, but Alec Wardrop made it with style. Quantrill handed him the reins with: "I don't know how you do it, Wardrop. You earn respect from people who are laughing their nuts off at what you do. No, I won't throw down on you or duel you — but I don't expect to see you alive again, if you keep this shit up."

"You've given me that warning before," Wardrop replied, snapping the lance retainers, checking the saddlebags, "and here I sit. Forgive me for that lapse of mine, Quantrill. You mean well."

Quantrill threw up his hands. "Okay, but one more thing: There's a legend says the boar can actually smell a gun — the oil, maybe, or old powder residue. If you've got one, get rid of it now. Otherwise, Ba'al will scatter your bones from here to Waxahachie."

"No guns." Wardrop smiled. "We Quixotes only use spears."

"Your hand, then, while it's still attached." Quantrill reached up, shook with Wardrop, then turned to see that Marrow stood near, thumbs in belt loops, listening and rocking on his heels. Wardrop gave an abbreviated form of Brit salute, eased Rose into a ponderous trot, and headed off for his hired horse van.

"If the Lord takes care of drunks and fools," said Marrow, "I wonder if He's put aside all His other concerns for the rest of that man's life."

"Does that mean you're for Wardrop, or against him?"

"He's a pigheaded, spoiled rich, wasteful selfish snooty cantankerous foreign-born sonofabitch of world class, but he does have class." Marrow clucked to himself. "But whatever he has loose up here" — he tapped himself over the ear—"he makes up for it in here." So saying. Marrow put his hand over his breast. "The Brit just hasn't had his good strong sign yet. How could I be against as great an ass as Wardrop? He's one of us, Teddy!"

Quantrill's smile was distant; sad. "Maybe somebody should root for the boar."

Marrow eyed his assistant thoughtfully. "Oh, I think somebody does. God knows how it came about, but I think somebody has, for a long, long time…"