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"It's all right to leave your stuff here," the limping man said. "The Bollardo
Gang's responsible for it until you leave the train."
The girl took their destinations and chalked them on the luggage, then she led
the passengers over to a table and sat down.
"Four prime toulth-hides for the trip to Nandrovvo's for the two of us?" a man
asked.
When the girl agreed, he showed her a warehouse receipt, and wrote out an
order on a local brokerage and storage gang. Another passenger produced a jug
of brandy; the girl uncorked it, smelled it, and accepted it for passage.
Dwallo pulled a book out of his shoulder-bag and handed it to her.
"How about this, for a trip to Vallado's Village?" he asked.
"Oh, that's too much," she protested, "we're not robbers!" Then she looked at
the title-
page. "I thought I recognized your name when I saw it on your things. You can
ride with us for nothing; we're all proud of the book your gang printed about
our railroad."
"No, take the book," Dwallo insisted. "I don't think you have it; we just
printed it."
She looked at it again. "
The New Steam Engine Which Re-condenses Water More
Efficiently, Designed by Johas Mandorgo at Needle Rock Rendezvous, as
Described by the Designer
," she read. "No, I've never heard of it. Thank you, Dwallo."
"And here; here's a list of the new books our gang has printed this past
season,"
Dwallo added. "Take it and show it to your gang. Maybe you'll want to order
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some of them."
"I'm sure we would. How long are you staying at
Vallado? We'll have a list of what we want ready for you when you pass through
here again."
With his new-found friend Koshtro, Dwallo examined the train which was waiting
at the platform. Although he had made the cuts of the drawings to illustrate
the book his gang had published, Dwallo had never seen the actual locomotive
and cars before. The locomotive was like a miniature steamboat engine, with a
brick furnace and a sheet-iron boiler, mounted on a wheeled platform of
iron-plated timbers, with the stack and the two cylinders in front. Behind it
was the fuel wagon, which could hold either wood or coal, and the freight
wagons, and the two passenger wagons at the rear. The wheels had wide flanged
iron tires; the track was built of squared timbers, faced with angle-iron on
the inside. While Dwallo was examining the train, the little cannon on the
platform boomed.
He and Koshto hastened to get seats in one of the passenger wagons.
"I'm from the Sky Lake country," Koshto told him. "I have the book your gang
printed about the railroad. My gang and a couple of other farming gangs are
teaming together to build a railroad of our own. We have a wonderful country
for grain, but we've no place to trade it close enough for the wagon-trains.
We make a little whiskey, but we can only trade so much of that; they raise
sugar-roots on one side of us, and make rum, and they make fruit-brandy on the
other side of us. So we decided to build a railroad, and I was sent up here to
study this one.
"I've been here at Nardavo's three days," he continued. "I don't like this
town. That fellow who tried to steal your bag was the fifth thief I've seen
shot in these three days.
The first one I've shot myself, but still
"I've also seen maybe a dozen brawls, three or four of them serious enough to
kill a person or two. There are too many gangs in this town, and none of them
willing to see to it that things are kept peaceful. I'm going to recommend
that the gangs in our railroad, when we get it built, see to keeping order in
our railhead town. Any other gangs who want to come in can do so like
trading-gangs in a craftsmen's village, on the understanding that they're
guests, and have to behave themselves."
The locomotive made a series of whooshing sounds, and then the train gave a
couple of jerks, a jolt or two, and started creeping forward. "I noticed that
there was a big crowd in town, seemed to be just standing around fingering
their rifles and waiting for something to happen," Dwallo said as the train
picked up speed.
"Oh, that. That's on account of the Thurkkas," Koshtro told him. "You've heard
about that?" Dwallo shook his head. "Savages from over on the other side of
the Rim Country,"
Koshtro went on to enlighten him. "There's been bad times over there drought,
cattle-
plagues, gang-wars and thousands of those people have migrated. They went
through the Rim Country and onto the plains on this side. The ranching gangs
wouldn't let them settle there; pushed them on, and they've come on into the
Central Mountain country.
About a thousand of them came down Crooked River; the gangs upstream didn't
try to stop them, so they're camped below the lowest village on Crooked
River, and starting to move into the isthmus. The gangs up Sulfur River are
determined not to let them through; all the gangs have sent people to ride
patrol and stop them."
Koshtro was riding to the end of the line, to get a look at the Bollardo
Gang's repair shops. Dwallo bid him goodbye at Vallado's Village and got off.
The Vallado Gang lived in a number of big barn-like houses against the side of
the mountain; their furnaces and forge and rolling-mill were a kilometer up
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the river; there was a trestle-bridge carrying a track to and from the
ore-pits. The furnace-stacks were blazing, and a couple of heavy drop-hammers
boomed intermittently. A half-grown youngster helped him up the path to the
houses with his box and bedroll.
A girl met him on the wide veranda as he climbed the front steps. He
introduced himself and asked if Kursallo Vallado were about. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]