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said Looks Away, “that trap was very much designed to kill me. My enemy is very, very clever.”
    â€œDo you have a name for this clever son of a bitch?” asked Grey.
    â€œNot one I can prove,” said Looks Away cautiously. “Merely one I’ve come to view as the only person with both means and sufficient guile.”
    â€œWho?”
    He finished his coffee, sloshed the last drops into the fire, and listened to them hiss.
    â€œAleksander Deray,” he said.
    â€œYeah,” said Grey. “Pretty much figured. What are you going to do about it? From what you told me, this Deray character sounds like a bad enemy to have. Lots of money, lots of guns working for him, and like most folks he probably doesn’t cotton too well to nosy redskins.”
    Looks Away shrugged. “What can I do? I can give up, head to the Sioux nation and try to make peace with my family.”
    â€œCould you?”
    â€œDear me, no. I’d probably find myself buried up to my chin in an anthill. If I was lucky.”
    â€œMaybe you shouldn’t have done that much damage to your cousin’s privates.”
    â€œWater, as they say, under the bridge.”
    â€œOr—?”
    â€œOr, I could go back to California, get the evidence I need, build a case and turn it over to the proper authorities.”
    Grey looked at him. “ Proper authorities? In the Maze? Who in the great green hell are the proper authorities in that godforsaken place?”
    â€œHave you ever been there?”
    â€œNo, but I heard tales. Ever since the Great Quake, there isn’t all that much of California left, and what is left is no place for proper people to live. Lots of bad people doing bad things and what little law’s out there is owned by someone else. No, son, I don’t think you’re going to get any help from the authorities.”
    â€œCorrect. Which is why it’ll just be the three of us,” said Looks Away.
    â€œYou and who else?”
    Looks Away gave him a smile that was every bit as cold, lifeless, and murderous as he’d seen on the dead faces of Riley and Big Curley. The Sioux held up his .44 American. “Messieurs Smith and Wesson and your humble servant.”
    The fire between them popped and hissed.
    Grey Torrance said, “You know … I was thinking about heading west to see if there’s any kind of trouble I can get into.”
    â€œAre you indeed?” asked the Sioux, cocking an eyebrow.
    â€œYes I damn well am.”
    They grinned at each other while above them the wheel of night ground on toward the coming dawn.

 
    Chapter Twelve
    Dawn found them miles away from the corpses and the blasted heap of rocks.
    Thomas Looks Away sat astride a chestnut mare that had once belonged to Big Curley. Since he had no way of knowing what the horse’s name had been, Looks Away renamed her Queen Victoria, but by mid-morning that name became unwieldy so he shortened it to Queenie.
    Grey gave Picky a thorough going-over to reassure himself that she hadn’t been injured by the madness of last night, and aside from a few scrapes and scratches she was fine. Three of the posse’s horses had survived the blast, and they trailed behind, laden with all of the supplies, weapons, and water the men could find.
    The chill of the night burned off with disheartening rapidity and the sun began to bake the landscape in earnest. The Joshua and juniper trees were spaced too far apart to offer any hope of shade. The horses moved forward, heads down, in a plodding walk that seldom veered from an arrow-straight line except to go around a knot of creosote bushes or avoid a barrel cactus. A clutch of vultures were hunkered down around a dead bighorn sheep, and once a sidewinder whipsawed through the dry grass.
    Grey had lived in a variety of climates all over the country, from the deep snows and biting cold of a Missouri winter to a swampy Florida summer, where the only