Wild Country

CHAPTER 4

Thaisday, Sumor 26

Parlan Blackstone sat at one of the tables in the executive car, playing solitaire and ignoring the looks from the men who were playing poker at another table. He wasn’t sure they knew who he was when they’d invited him to join them, but he’d had a bad feeling about two of the men and had declined, claiming he didn’t have much of a head for cards.

They hadn’t believed him, but no one was drunk enough—yet— to call him a liar.

At the next stop, he’d leave the executive car and retreat to his private car. He’d hoped to play a few games during this stage of the trip to balance the rising cost of train fares, but the men in the car . . . They wore expensive suits, but they were still thugs.

The Blackstone Clan might be gamblers and swindlers, but they weren’t thugs. Not that he was opposed to hiring muscle who liked the sort of work that required brass knuckles—or guns—but the Blackstone name was never associated with those activities.

Parlan didn’t look over at the other men, but he sensed a change in their intentions. There was no one else in the executive car. From the perfume scents in the washroom at the back of the car, he knew there had been one or more women with the men before the last stop. Since the women weren’t in the executive car now, they’d fulfilled their purpose and were no longer wanted.

He wondered briefly if they’d been left at the last station or had been tossed off the train. He had a feeling at least one of those men would find tossing a woman off a moving train amusing. Or expedient. And he had a strong feeling that they were considering doing the same to him after relieving him of his wallet and a few of his teeth.

Not that they would have a chance to relieve him of anything.

One of the men shifted on the padded bench seat. Parlan ignored him; didn’t reach for the derringer or the knife he carried because at the same moment the man stood up, the door of the executive car opened and two men walked in from the regular passenger car.

The first man didn’t look at the four men, but Parlan knew he saw all of them. Those men might be thugs, but this man was a stone-cold killer who truly enjoyed his work.

The man nodded to Parlan before taking one of the leather seats behind Parlan’s bench seat. He chose the aisle seat, where he could see the other men, who no longer found Parlan interesting.

The second man stopped at Parlan’s table. “Not your usual game.”

Parlan looked up and smiled. “Hello, Henry. Have a seat.” After Henry Hollis settled in the bench seat opposite him, he gathered the cards and shuffled. “I wasn’t in the mood for my usual game. What about you?”

Henry took out his wallet and laid a hundred-dollar bill on the table. “A farewell game.”

That was all Hollis was going to wager? Parlan looked at the bill and wondered if Henry had fallen on hard times. “Farewell? You going somewhere?”

“I’m giving up the life.”

He looked at Henry in surprise. “What’s this?”

“It’s time to quit.”

Parlan was aware that the four men had noticed the bill Henry had put on the table and sensed they were wondering how much Henry might be carrying. Then they looked at Judd McCall sitting quietly behind Parlan.

As long as those men were the first ones off the train, Henry would be safe. No one but a fool tangled with Judd.

“Why quit?” Parlan asked. He dealt two hands of blackjack. Henry hit and busted. Parlan deliberately took a card that also put him over twenty-one.

“Have you tried to do much traveling in the past month?” Henry glanced at the cards. “Stay.”

Parlan took a card and won that hand.

“The Northeast and Southeast didn’t get hit as hard as other places, but the bigger cities in those places surely did,” Henry continued. “I’ve heard at least one-third of Toland is nothing but rubble and corpses. A couple of the big cities in the Southeast aren’t much better. The people who used to look for a big game aren’t looking to play cards these days. They’re looking to buy food and repair their homes. They’re looking to restore their businesses. They’re hiding in their houses when the sun goes down.” He sighed. “The travel bans are strictly enforced, at least for the trains. And anyone foolish enough to drive at night carries a loaded gun on the seat beside him, figuring that if he’s caught, a bullet in the brain will be more merciful than whatever will be done to him by what’s out there in the dark.”

“That’s what you’ve heard?” Parlan dealt a couple more hands, not asking if Henry wanted to hit or stay. Didn’t matter. It was just something to do with his hands.

“I was in a Southeast city playing in a high-stakes game when the news reports showed all the dead shifters that were killed by followers of the Humans First and Last movement. And I was still in that city when the Others retaliated.” Henry’s voice remained calm, conversational, but when he looked at Parlan there was fear in his eyes. “Traveling from town to town for games? Not the way I want to live anymore—mostly because I realized that I wanted to live.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

Henry laughed quietly. “My sister and her husband live in a small town on the western side of Lake Honon. They own an old-fashioned general store—the kind of place where you can buy basic groceries and a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer along with a coloring book or a toy for the kids, and the wife can look through a box of patterns to make a new dress. They even have bolts of cloth and needles and thread and whatnot for sewing. A year ago they wanted to expand but couldn’t get a loan from a bank. So I put in the money and became a silent partner.” He smiled. “I figured I was tossing money out the window, but she’s my sister. Anyway, they got the building renovations done and purchased the merchandise they wanted to add. And now? They and their old-fashioned store survived when the Others ripped through all the human towns. Now they’re an important fixture in that part of their town and need help running the place.”

Parlan didn’t scoff, but it took effort to keep his voice politely interested. “You’re going to give up being a gambler to become a grocer?”

Henry nodded. “I’d made the decision before all of . . . this . . . happened. I’m glad I did. I had my sister’s reply in my pocket when I bought my ticket, showing that I was returning to family and a job. Wouldn’t have been able to cross back into the Northeast without that letter. The old life is gone, Parlan. The days of being able to cross the continent on a whim aren’t coming back anytime soon, if ever.”

It rippled through him, that same feeling that told him a game was going sour and it was time to walk away from the table.

Henry Hollis was right. It would take years for Toland to recover, if it ever came back to what it had been. From the things he’d heard, Hubb NE was a quagmire of displaced people pouring into that city, looking for food and shelter. Desperate people and professional gamblers did not mix. Lakeside? Something about Lakeside and the other towns in that area had always made him uneasy. Not because of the Others. He’d always successfully avoided contact with them. But he’d had the feeling there were other kinds of hunters in Lakeside who couldn’t be discouraged or bribed—and just might twig to why the Blackstones were such successful gamblers and swindlers.

That left Shikago. And once he’d worn out his welcome there? Then what?

“Where do you get off?” Parlan asked.

“Shikago is the closest station to the town where my sister lives. From there I’ll take a boat.” Henry laughed softly. “I’m told it’s a common way to reach the towns along the lakes. You just have to get used to some of the travelers being a bit . . . furry.”

Parlan shuddered. He didn’t want to think about having to deal with the Others. “Well, Henry, I wish you luck.”

We need to get out of this car. When he felt this strongly that a game was going to go wrong, he didn’t ignore the feelings that came from being an Intuit.

Parlan gathered the cards and put the deck in his pocket. He nudged the hundred-dollar bill toward Henry. “You keep it.” He smiled. “We’ll be at the next station in a few minutes. You can buy me lunch.”

He saw Henry open his mouth, ready to remind Parlan that the executive car provided food as part of the cost of the ticket. Then Henry moved his eyes to look toward the four men at the other table. Parlan gave the tiniest nod.

Thugs dressed in suits were still thugs.

When the train pulled into the station, Parlan rose swiftly and headed toward the door with Henry right behind him. He didn’t look back, but he knew Judd had also moved, and whatever was said—or done—would encourage the men not to follow.

“Come with me,” Parlan said, going down the steps so fast he almost slipped. They were on the wrong side of the train to be seen by the four men or anyone at the station, but he still crouched low as he hurried to his private car. Once they were inside, he lifted the side of one of the window blinds just enough to see Judd walk off the train and go into the station.

He didn’t see the four men who had been in the executive car.

Just before the train began to pull out of the station, Parlan heard a quiet knock on the door of his private car before Judd walked in, holding a paper bag.

“The best they had,” Judd said, pulling sandwiches and bottles of beer out of the bag. He took a sandwich and a bottle of beer, then retreated to the chair farthest from the table where Parlan and Henry sat.

“I always admired how you knew when to avoid a game,” Henry said.

Parlan got up and locked the door before returning to the table and unwrapping his sandwich. “I’m just good at reading other people’s tells.”

“Your daughter was good at reading those fortune-telling cards.”

That wasn’t the bitch’s only skill, but reading those cards was an ability seen at every harvest fair and was, therefore, nothing extraordinary, nothing that would call undo attention to the family.

“Sweet girl,” Henry continued. “Is she still traveling with you?”

“No, she hasn’t traveled with us for a while now,” he replied quietly.

“Too bad. I could have asked her to read the cards and tell me my future.”

Parlan stared at Henry with cold eyes. “She lost the knack for seeing the future.”

“Sorry,” Henry said. “I didn’t realize . . .”

He waved away the apology. “All families have their troubles. We’ll work it out.” He asked Henry about the town where the sister and brother-in-law lived and deflected any more talk about his own family—especially any talk about his ungrateful daughter.