Free The Road Sharks by Clint Hollingsworth

don’t think I heard…” Ghost Wind listened for a moment, then cupped her hand behind her ear. “I might have heard gunfire, but a long, long ways off. Someone in a running gun fight?”
    “Doesn’t sound like the dustup’s moving. It’s coming from the direction of New Hope.” He looked at her. “I think you’d best wait here a while. I’m going to see what’s going on.”
    “I’m going.”
    “There’s no need for you to get involved in this,” he said, “You have no stake in this, and you don’t know these people.”
    “I saved your life. I helped you regain your health, which, by the way, I am not convinced that you HAVE regained fully.” She looked at him with raised chin. “I have a stake in your continued living.”
    She expected an argument, but Eli looked toward where the sounds had come from. “Pull your gear off the back, hide it in the brush, and get your firearms out to take with us.”
    “Why pull my things off?”
    “Because,” he turned back to her, “there are no guarantees. This could go bad, but if you can get out in the bush, I’m confident you could get away if things go to shit. If you can get away you can eventually find your way back here, and have your gear intact.”
    She nodded and pulled her bag and bedroll from the Terror, and placed it thirty feet from the road. She had just pulled her rifle out when she heard the motorcycle engine, quiet as it was, start up. She ran back to the road only to see Eli driving off down the road in a plume of dust.
    “I’ll be back! Wait for me!” he yelled back over his shoulder.
    The people of the Clan of the Hawk believe habits influence life, and they didn’t tend to swear often because of that belief. Ghost Wind, never one to enjoy being tricked, almost turned the air blue with the rapid fire comments about Eli’s parentage, personal sexual inclination towards farm animals, and general habit of having a cranium filled with excrement. She did NOT like being lied to.
    “I will be damned if I’m going to be here when he gets back!” she said, after realizing she had started to repeat herself. Grabbing her things, she started to move cross-country, then pulled up short. This hadn’t helped increase her trust in Eli, but the thought of having a people, a home again grabbed her around the jagged edges of her broken heart.
    “If I go, there a chance I will always be an outcast.” The lure of having a tribe to live with swayed her decision. She thought again how lonely she had been since leaving Lila’s place.
    Dammit. I want to know if I could fit in with…
    The gunshots couldn’t be more than a few miles away…
    “Damn you, Eli!”
    ****
    She was sweaty when she arrived, but not tired. Ghost Wind was used to covering vast distances on foot, often trotting and she would have felt right at home with the trail runners of the Beforetime. She realized she was not quite fully recovered from her convalescence though, when her breath was shorter than it had been for many years.
    The gunshots had died down, but she wasn’t going to be less cautious because of that. She hadn’t wanted to use the road, but the last few miles, she had realized that she needed to follow Eli’s tracks if she was going to catch up with him.   Ghost Wind hoped she wasn’t too late to help.
    She was sure she was getting close and as she moved along the edges, the wind shifted to blow into her face.  
    Oh Great Spirit! What stinks?
    As the wind shifted, she realized it was the scent of unwashed men blowing down the road and moved off into the thick junipers, readying her engraved rifle. The six-gun at her thigh was an afterthought, needed only as a backup, but she was glad to have it with her.  
    She had barely settled in when a troop of eight men began filing past. They were unkempt and from the look and smell, filthy. They wore dirty jean vests, though some were obviously jackets that had been cut off at the arms and each vest bore a hand-painted