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Cub nodded in agreement. "Couldn't take it up by y'all. Taxation, regulations. Law stopping by with empty bellies. Don't plant, don't pitch, but want it all the same. Paw took we-uns outer there."
Bozich opened her mouth, but Valentine shook his head.
"You're on your own down here, that's for sure. Lonely country, though, should the others come through."
Rob Kelly's wife tightened her mouth.
"Our boys keep good watch," the younger Kelly said. "We-uns too small fer them to bother with. We-uns jes' tell Steiner and his Beasts if'n anythin' dangerous shows up."
"Who's this Steiner?"
"His-uns got a few places in country. Half day's hard walk."
"I've got a box of shells for that twelve-gauge if one of your sons will take me to him. Looks like you could use some paint for that barn, too. I might be able to find some."
Cub Kelly looked suspicious. Of course Valentine had seen only two expressions on his face, suspicious and taciturn. He made up his mind and nodded to his brother.
"We-uns got a deal, sojer-man."
Cub Kelly's scarecrow-lean, half-naked son Patrick spoke as little as his father. All tan skin and searching eyes, he guided Valentine through a series of swamp trails. The boy carried a sling and a bag of rocks the whole way. Valentine watched the youth kill a watchful hawk atop an old utility pole. He retrieved the limp mass of talons and feathers, saying, "Sumpin' fer the boilin' pot."
Bozich whistled at the sight of the Steiner place. A cluster of buildings sat on a mound in the center of miles of rice paddies. The whitewashed buildings were in good repair, with aluminum-covered roofs surrounded by walls, and the walls in turn surrounded by a wide moat.
The Wolves observed it from a little hummock of land marking the end of the trail and the beginning of the paddies. A small cemetery filled the hill, neat little crosses in rows, interspersed with rock cairns. Some of the graves were tiny, in clusters, telling the usual tale of high infant mortality in a rural region, lying next to cross after cross with died in childbed burned into the wood. After a moment's study of the community's dead, Valentine turned back to the living.
"Have you heard about this?" he asked Bozich.
"We knew there were some big plantations out here, but this beats all. These aren't border squatters-this is years of work, sir."
"Wonder how you get in? Drawbridge?" Valentine said.
"A boat on a line, sojer," Master Kelly said.
"Thanks, son. You can take your hawk home to the pot now. Tell your pa he needs anything, we're always ready to trade."
"Sure, sojer," the boy said, tying his sling around the legs of the hawk and trotting back into the brush.
"There's the boat," Michaels said. "Under where the wall goes down to the water."
Valentine surveyed the walls with his binoculars. The stone for them had been quarried; they were fitted together with no small skill. He saw another head, binoculars held to the eyes, staring back at him. "They've seen us, too. No use looking timid, let's go find the landing."
The three Wolves zigzagged across the earthen dikes separating the rice fields. It occurred to Valentine that anyone attacking the compound would have to take a circuitous route to rush the walls if they did not want to flounder through the mud.
"Think these folks'll feed us?" Bozich asked. "The Kellys weren't too hospitable."
"We'll learn soon enough," Valentine said. "Michaels, you stay outside of rifle range. There's a funny smell to this place."
Bozich sniffed the air. "Smells kinda like pigs... I hope, Mr. Valentine. Really clean ones?"
"Smells like Grogs to me. Doesn't look like there's been a fight. But be ready for anything. If night comes, Michaels, and you don't hear from us, you skedaddle. You hear shooting, you skedaddle. Understand?"
"Yes, sir. I'll bring help."
"You'll tell Quist to alert Southern Command is what you'll do."
Dogs barked as they approached, not just the yips of mongrels, but the deep baying of hounds. A man appeared at the wall. He looked at them from behind a firing slit.
"Hi-yi, strangers. Whatever you're selling, we don't need any."
