The Territory-New Mexico, Arizona, southern Nevada and Utah and northern Chihuahua and Sonora. The place where the metal eaters live.

"Palilithic? Is that what they're calling it now? If Neolithic is new stone, what is pali?"

"Anew. Afresh. Again."

"Stoned again."

She giggled and this led to other things.

HE rose in the dark, while it was coolest.

By the time he'd hitched Mrs. Perdicaris to the cart, filled his water barrels, and got his traveling gear loaded, the sky was half light and Mt. Taylor stood out against the western horizon like some sleeping giant's shoulder, shrugged up out of the covers.

He'd left Martha deep asleep, but there was a lamp in Ruth's kitchen. When he pulled the cart through the gate in the coyote fence, she came out and handed him something hot wrapped in a dishcloth. "For the road."

"Yes, Sensei. Thanks."

"Martha come to you last night?"

He felt his face go red. "She said she talked to you."

"She did. Just wanted to know what I would be dealing with, today. I like her. She's very straightforward-honest with herself. If she'd been disappointed, well-I would probably work her pretty hard to take her mind off things."

"She may still have been disappointed, Sensei."

"How much sleep did you get?"

"Damn little."

She snorted. "Well, then."

"Yes, Sensei."

Ruth pointed two fingers at her eyes. He nodded and she turned and walked away.

Mrs. Perdicaris headed out at a trot.

By late morning they'd gone fifteen miles and he was looking for a place to sleep through the heat of the day. They were on the river road, following the Rio Puerco down to where it flowed into the Rio Grande, so it wasn't as if he didn't have water, but he was still crossing the Jornada del Muerto. Better to sit out the heat.

Besides, he'd meant it when he said he didn't get much sleep the night before and he was barely keeping his eyes open, despite Sensei's gesture. That's what it meant. Keep aware. Keep alert.

When a few rocks and dirt clods rolled out of the brush on the low hillside and onto the road ahead, he dropped the reins on the seat beside him and rolled sideways off of the cart. Mrs. Perdicaris walked on and as the cart passed him he snaked his jyo out of the back, then climbed up the hill using a series of deep-set boulders, quiet as he could. It wasn't completely noise-free but the rumble of the cartwheels and the clop-clop of the mule's hooves were louder.

The crest of the hill was fringed with cedar, more bushes than trees, and some green tumbleweed, grown waist high in the summer thunderstorms. He reached the top just in time to see a man step out into the open with a fiberglass crossbow and yell, "Hold it right there!"

The man was looking down at the cart. Mrs. Perdicaris, at his shout, tossed her head, snorted, and walked on.

Kimble took a long stride forward and swung the jyo up, striking the crossbow string from below. It popped out of the catch and the quarrel fired over the road, a good twenty feet above Mrs. Perdicaris.

The man turned, eyes wide, and jerked the crossbow up like he intended to swing it at Kimble, but Kimble had stepped back after discharging the shot, holding the jyo low at his side.

The man was big, maybe six and a half feet tall, and muscled like a body builder-not like someone who worked on a farm, but like someone who spent a lot of time in a gym. He was the prettiest man Kimble had ever seen, like a movie star.

"That's not very friendly," Kimble commented.

The surprise wore off and the man calmed as he took in Kimble's height and size. Kimble was over a foot shorter and a good hundred pounds lighter. "Huh. Just a kid. Sorry about this, but my need is great." He dropped the crossbow onto a tumbleweed and lunged forward, raising his fist.

Kimble took another step back and brought the jyo around. It smacked into the man's ankle just before his foot touched the ground and the man went down hard. He tried to catch himself with his arms but it didn't keep him from pitching head over heels down the rocky hillside.

It was clear to Kimble that the man didn't know how to fall.

Kimble gave a sharp whistle and Mrs. Perdicaris stopped, maybe fifty feet down the road, but his attention was on Mr. Big and Tall.

The man wasn't moving.

Kimble picked up a rock and threw it hard, smashing it into the road a couple of feet from the man's head. Gravel and sand scattered but the man didn't move a bit.

Great.

He found where the man had been waiting, apparently for a while. There were six small apple cores eaten down to seeds and stems next to a burlap sack that contained a t-shirt, a couple of wrinkled apples, and half a roll of toilet paper. Beside the bag were a torn and frayed wool blanket and two more ceramic-headed crossbow quarrels.

The breeze shifted and Kimble smelled shit. Down the other side of the hill he found where the man had been going. He hadn't even bothered to kick dirt over his feces. The flies were buzzing all around and it was clear he'd had the squirts.

Someone has been drinking untreated water.

Kimble covered the feces with dirt, gathered up the man's meager belongings, and went on down the hill.

He was breathing, at least. Kimble ground his knuckle across the man's sternum, a trick he'd learned from a Ranger paramedic, but Mr. Big and Tall didn't flinch a bit. Well and truly unresponsive.

There was a goose egg of a lump over his right ear and a bit of blood had seeped through the hair. Kimble thumbed his eyelids back one at a time. The pupils looked normal and they responded to the bright sky, but Kimble didn't like his color. He was pasty under his tan. He hadn't looked like that before he'd fallen.

He'd hit any number of rocks on his way down the hill and Kimble was concerned for his spine. He fetched Mrs. P and the cart back and took off the cart seat, a padded board that covered the tool compartment at the front of the cart box. After he eased it under the man, he duct-taped him to it, a strip across his forehead and some generous strips across his chest to immobilize his head and neck.

Kimble unhitched Mrs. P and tilted the cart shafts up, bringing the back of the box down to the road. Of course everything slid down, but Kimble moved most of his stuff to one side and eased the man in over the tailgate, then tilted the cart back up and rehitched Mrs. P. The man's legs were hanging over the back, but Kimble didn't bother to adjust him-he just wanted to get them out of the sun.

He walked Mrs. P another hundred yards along the road, to where it sank back down to the level of the river, then turned into the bosque and the shade of some Russian olive trees. Kimble unhitched Mrs. P and took off her harness, too. She walked off toward the river for a drink, then had herself a nice roll in the sand.

Kimble soaked a cloth with water and put it on the lump on Mr. Big-n-Heavy's head. He had a chemical ice pack in the first aid kit but he didn't feel the man deserved it. The cloth cooled down pretty good, though-evaporation in the dry air.

The man was wearing outside stuff, manufactured clothing from overseas, but the jeans had been retroed for the territory. The metal rivets at the corners of the pocket had been pulled out and oversewn to replace the reinforcement, and the zipper and slide had been replaced with Velcro and the metal snaps with plastic. His shirt was one of those long-sleeved sunscreen affairs, with the collar that rolled up high over the neck and vents for cooling, and he wore hiking boots with Velcro closures.

But his pockets were empty, no ID, no money-neither cash nor territorial script.

He also stank. He reminded Kimble of himself after three days in the stocks. Well, maybe not quite as bad-the man had been able to take his pants down when he needed to go.

Kimble tried to get a little water into him but it either ran out the side of his mouth or he inhaled it, so he left well enough alone.

There'd clearly been a thunderstorm upriver; the Puerco was up from its usual trickle to a steady flow. Kimble took a quick dip, rinsed out his pants and shirt and spread his bedroll for a nap.

He awoke to great swearing.

The man had gotten up but the way he was taped to the seat board, he was staggering around like Frankenstein's monster, his upper body stiff.

"Whoa there, fella," Kimble said. "Settle down-you'll do yourself an injury!"

The man swiveled around at the waist to look at Kimble. He was patting at the duct tape running across his shirt. "Who the hell are you?"

Trauma-induced amnesia? Then Kimble realized he was only wearing his boxers and probably looked a bit different. "We met on the hillside," he said. "You had a crossbow, I had a stick? You fell down the hill?"

"Oh." Then, "Oh, shit!" He dropped to his knees and threw up.

"Okay, then," Kimble said. He let the man get on with his retching and fetched the water bottle. Then, on reflection, added a cup. (He wasn't going to let the man drink out of the same bottle-Kimble didn't have any idea what germs he was carrying.) The man was on all fours and weaving a little. Kimble held the cup to the man's lips and let him rinse out his mouth, then took hold of the board and eased him back against the trunk of one of the Russian olive trees. He put a bit more water in the bottom of the cup and the man swallowed it abruptly. "More?" the man asked.

"Sure, just slowly, okay? Unless you want to vomit it up again."

This time Kimble gave him a full cup, watched for a second to make sure he was just sipping, then went and found a patch of goat-heads and picked one of the bigger spiky seed heads. The man had finished the water by the time Kimble got back and, while he was still pale, he didn't look as green as he had a minute before.

"Want that board off?"

The man tried to nod, but of course that didn't work. "Yeah."

"I'm going to look for nerve damage, all right?"

"Look? What do you mean? How can you look for nerve damage?"

Kimble poked him in the back of the hand with the goat-head.

"Ow!"

"Good." Kimble moved the sticker toward his other hand and the man jerked it back. "Well, you have motor control." He jabbed him in the thigh.

"Stop that!"

The man tried to get up again but the board caught on a low branch and shoved him down again. Kimble used the interval to try his other leg. "Ow! Nerve damage, my ass. You're just trying to get even!"

Kimble grinned broadly. "Any numbness?" he asked. "In your toes? In your fingers?"

"No! Get that thing away from me!"

Kimble went back to the wagon and got his knife block, a core of glassy Jemez obsidian, and his knocker, an oblong fist-sized chunk of river-smoothed granite. He knelt down and chipped off an obsidian flake about two inches in diameter, a quarter-inch thick at one edge and tapering to razor sharp nothingness on the other edge.

"Hold still, I mean it." The whites of the man's eyes showed as he tried to track the blade as Kimble moved it close to the man's ear. Kimble cut the tape off on both sides of the man's head and then on both sides of his chest, but he let him peel it off his face and shirt.

"Ow!"

As soon as the man had sat up and moved away from Kimble, Kimble took the seat board and stripped off the remnants of tape, then put it back in place on the cart. Kimble's clothes were not quite dry, but he put them on anyway. The damp cloth felt good in the heat.

Kimble let the man drink more water. While he was doing that he commented, "You're not a very good highwayman, Mr. Big and Tall."

"Don't call me that. Name's Pierce." He put his hand to his head and glared at Kimble. "I'm not a highwayman, either."

"Well, you had me fooled, Mr. Pierce. Pointing a crossbow at someone could get you dead around here."

"I was robbed," he said. "Twice. Had my horse stolen. Then someone else took all my food and luggage while I was, uh, away from my campsite."

"Away? What does that mean, away?"

He blushed. "There was this farm girl..."

"Let me guess. She wanted a place more private, more secluded. When you got back, your stuff was gone."

Pierce scowled and looked away.

"And there was a lot of kissing but you didn't get to first base."

"Someone called her name and she said it was her husband. She put her top back on and ran for it."

"Second base, then." Kimble tried not to laugh. "It probably was her husband. Or her boyfriend. And he had your stuff before he yelled for her."

Kimble whistled and Mrs. Perdicaris came trotting in from the riverbank where she'd been cropping green grass. He grabbed the burlap bag with Pierce's stuff out of the back of the cart and dropped the crossbow on it. The three quarrels he held in his fist. "I'll drop these beside the road after a bit. Don't want to tempt you." He set the quarrels on the cart seat. "Here." He set a two-liter plastic bottle of water on the burlap sack. "This is good well water. You wanna keep away from the river water unless you boil it."

He pulled the cart back around and went over to the tree where he'd hung Mrs. P's harness. He was keeping his eye on Pierce because he didn't want him going for the quarrels. He didn't think Pierce would be stupid enough to go for Mrs. P.

He was wrong.

She wasn't even looking at him but Kimble could see her ears were tracking Pierce and when Pierce stood and took a step toward her, the ears went back. Kimble opened his mouth to warn him, but Pierce took two quick steps forward and leapt, trying to get up on her back. Mrs. P bucked, a twisting sideways thing that slammed her hindquarters into him in mid-leap, like a rugby check. Pierce flew back at least eight feet before his feet touched and he fell backward, tumbling over and over.

It would not have met the standards for a back roll at the dojo. For one thing, he didn't end up back on his feet. And he was all corners, not smooth like a ball. Corners bang into the ground. Elbows, shoulders, hips, knees, head.

He groaned much too loudly to be dead, so Kimble didn't check on him until Mrs. P was harnessed and they were pulling out of the grove. Kimble looked down at him from the seat of the cart. Pierce had gone from lying to sitting and he was holding on to his elbow like it really hurt. He tried to glare up at Kimble but he was having trouble meeting Kimble's eyes.

"Try washing yourself and your clothes in the river-get rid of some of the stink. Don't drink the river water unless you boil it. And the next person who comes along, you might just consider asking for help. Tell them you've been robbed. You might be surprised." Kimble waited a beat and felt his eyes narrow. "But if you try this takin' shit with some of the people who ride this road, you're gonna be dead. Or worse."

"Go fuck yourself," Pierce said.

Kimble thought about the previous night and smiled again. "Have a nice day, Mr. Pierce." He clucked his tongue and Mrs. P headed out at a trot.

15.