Deathlands 122: Forbidden Trespass by James Axler Page B

he said. “That kind of thing is like a shaken-up jar full of wasps. It’s hard to put back once you take the lid off.”
    “And what if she’s wrong?” Tarley asked. “Then chillin’ the outlanders will leave the real murderers still loose. And murderin’ more, unless I miss my guess.”
    “That’s what I fear,” Conn admitted.
    He raised his voice and called to the rest of the party, “Any sign of tracks anywhere?”
    “Nary a scrap, Mr. Conn,” Edmun replied. “Just the prints Wymie made when she got onto the trail toward town.”
    Edmun was an indistinct blond man somewhere in his thirties, bland as tepid water, but with a reputation for steadiness, which made it a matter of curiosity to Conn why he had first taken up Wymie’s cause—when she’d carried her dreadful burden toward Stenson’s Creek—and then promptly fallen away when Conn raised the voice of reason.
    Conn didn’t hold that highly by his own powers of persuasion. He was a skilled bargainer, with a lifetime of experience in dealing with everyone from desperate dirt farmers to booze- and crank-fueled coldhearts one twitch away from a chilling frenzy. Yet he’d always found Edmun Cowil and his like the hardest to move, once they got set in a groove.
    There was something working here. It tickled the underside of his brain like gaudy-slut fingernails along the underside of his ball sack—though that was a pleasure he had long chosen to deny himself, as it was fundamentally bad business.
    But no time for that now.
    “Yard’s hard-packed and sun-set hard as brick,” Tarley said, taking a blue handkerchief from a pocket of his overalls and dabbing at his broad mocha forehead, where sweat ran out from beneath the brim of his black hat. Conn wasn’t sure what good the rag would do him at this point. It was long since soaked sopping from earlier duty. But the patriarch seemed to derive some kind of comfort from it.
    “Found something, Unk,” Zedd called from in between the charred and mostly roofless stone walls. He appeared in the doorway holding an ax. Its head was covered in smoke and crusted crud. Its haft showed charring on what Conn reckoned had been the uppermost surface as it lay on its side and the house burned down toward it. But it looked as if it’d be serviceable enough, once it got cleaned up.
    “Wonder why Wymie would leave her grandpappy’s ax,” Nancy said. “She treasured that dang thing.”
    “Even though the haft has been replaced a dozen times and the head twice,” Tarley said with a chuckle for the hoary old joke. Although truth told, it likely had more than a scrap of truth, if it wasn’t the literal thing.
    Conn shrugged. “Reckon she had to leave in a hurry, whether the marauders fired the place, or she set it alight to trap them.
    “Reckon we’ll never know what really happened here. Oh, well. World’s full of stuff I’ll never know. Best get back to Widow Oakey’s place, now, and see what kind of mischief Wymie’s gettin’ up to in this bright new day.”
    * * *
    T HE “CROWD” W IDOW O AKEY had spoken of turned out to consist of about half a dozen, Sinkhole residents andpeople from the surrounding countryside. They included a couple who had joined her sorrowful procession the night before, like Walter John and Burny Stoops, who had followed Conn’s orders to carry her sister to the coffin-maker’s place.
    With a shock she realized she’d still have to go talk to him, to Sam, about arrangements for Blinda, and her ma, for that matter.
    Mord Pascoe could lie out to feed the wolves and coyotes, as far as she was concerned. Unless the bastard had burned too far to carbon for even the likes of them to stomach. She wished he could’ve felt the flames that had consumed most of all she had held dear. But a person in her circumstances had to make do…
    She swayed.
    “We come to see how you was, Wymie,” Burny said. “And to see what you wanted to do about your, you know. Quest for