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"Please, stay close to the train. Don't wander off," Valentine repeated, walking up the line to check on Salazar.
Salazar had two bullets in him, or rather through him. The Quisling adjutant had opened up on him at point-blank, and Salazar still managed to half decapitate the Quisling before Crow finally fired his pistol.
Crow looked miserable, rubbing at Salazar's blood on his hands like Lady Macbeth.
"I think he'll live, sir," Cabbage reported. "Four neat little holes, two coming in and two going out. His left lung is deflated and he may have lost a big chunk of kidney, but that's just a guess without X-rays."
"Nearest machine is probably in Nashville," someone said.
They held an impromptu officers conference while second platoon distributed food from the stores in the forward-most boxcar to the "fodder."
Valentine had to snap Crow out of his misery.
"Crow, forget it. I need you in the here and now, okay?"
"Yes, sir," Crow said.
"Salazar's either going to make it or not. You poured iodoform into the wound and applied pressure. The rest is up to him and the medics. Worrying about fifteen minutes ago won't cause him to draw one breath more. Answer a few questions for me, and then you can go back to him."
Crow took a breath. "Yes, sir."
"They got off a message to Lexington. What happens if guerrillas hit a train?"
"It depends on if the train is just reported overdue or if they called in that they were being attacked," Crow said, his pupils gradually settling on the group of men around him.
"Let's assume the worst," Valentine said.
"They'll send out an armored train and motorbike and horse cavalry, backed up by at least a few companies of infantry and some light artillery in gunwagons. There's never been more than a few dozen guerrillas here. Too many Kurian-friendly legworm clans."
"How do they track the guerrillas?"
"Reapers, usually. I've seen them get off trains myself."
"Reapers mean there has to be a Kurian controlling them," Valentine said. Or the strange organization known as the Twisted Cross, but ever since the Nebraska Golden Ones smashed their facility south of Omaha, there were only a few odd units of them scattered around.
"I was told there's a Kurian in charge of rail security who goes around in an armored train,"
Crow said. "I never saw him though, just his Reapers."
"Brave of him to venture out," Patel put in.
"Yes," Valentine said absently. He was wondering how Gamecock's Bears would like a chance at a Kurian on the loose.
"What about the fodder?" Patel asked. "We can't take these people over ridges."
"No, we'll have to use the train," Valentine said. "We've crossed over enough old tracks this week. Is there a line we could use?"
Crow scratched his chin. "Lessee, sir. There's an old spur that heads off east at first, hooks around more south. Skirts the south end of the Boonwoods. It fed some mines that went dry.
That'll get us back toward brigade maybe even a little ahead of them."
By "Boonwoods" Crow meant the Daniel Boone National Forest, according to the legworm ranchers' description of Kentucky's regions.
"Yes," Valentine said, reading the doubt on Crow's face. "What's the problem?"
"Major, it's really overgrown," Crow said. "The engine has a brush cutter on it, but we'll have to go slow, move fallen logs and whatnot ourselves. They'll catch up to us easy, especially since it's obvious where the trail is leading."
"We'll blow track at the cutoff," Valentine said.
