Free Valhalla by Newton Thornburg Page B

we got to feed at the lodge—well, it’s jist purty much a full time job for damn near ever’body. Way it is for you too, I bet.”
    Stone nodded. “Yeah, that’s the name of the game, all right.”
    “You bet it is.” Baggs was still smiling, but he was also looking through the kitchen door at the Mason jars on the sink, some of which still held food. “And by the looks of things, I’d say you folks been playin’ the game a mite better’n we have.”
    “Yeah, we did find some canned goods here,” Stone said. “You’re welcome to share what’s left.”
    He meant only the small amount in the kitchen, but the old man was too fast for him.
    “Well, we shore do appreciate that. Mighty neighborly of you.” He looked over at the young cowboy. “Oral, why don’t you hep ’em out a bit—check around and see they didn’t miss nothin’. Maybe there’s a cellar.”
    Jagger suddenly started calling for Eddie. “They stealing our food?” he cried. “Huh? Tell me! Tell me!”
    “No one’s stealing anything,” Stone broke in. “We’re sharing it, that’s all.”
    “The hell we are! And who are you to say anyway, Boy Scout?”
    Eddie and Eve both attempted to quiet Jagger, without much success. Stone tried to speak over the ruckus, asking Baggs about the “lodge,” what it was and where it was. Beaming, Baggs explained that it was “jist a little old fishin’ lodge” he had on a lake about three miles away, and over the last couple of months it had been accumulating“old-timey guests and neighbors and pilgrims” at a clip that simply had to stop.
    “Like Spider here,” he said. “He come with this family of Negras whose car jist played out. And Oral, him and his brother Harlan is both with me now. Their daddy was an old friend of mine, with a little old farm outside Spalding. Well, the boys come home one night and find the house and buildins all burned down and their daddy shotgunned and dumped down the privy. So they come with me too.”
    “This Spalding,” Stone asked, “is that near your lodge?”
    “Jist across the lake.”
    “How big?”
    “Couple thousand, it used to be.”
    “They got a doctor there?”
    “Used to. Before the trouble.”
    “What trouble?”
    Baggs shrugged. “Same gang as burned out Oral’s place, I guess. Must’ve been a mess of them. People cleared out and didn’t come back for a coon’s age. They jist now stragglin’ back.”
    “But you don’t know if there’s a doctor?”
    “Cain’t say as I do. But there ain’t jist Spalding. There’s also Blackburn about twelve mile up the road. They got three, four doctors there, last I knew. Why? Guess you want one for him, huh?” Baggs nodded toward Jagger, who was silent now.
    “Yeah. They do anyway,” Stone said, meaning Eve and Eddie. “Then I can go my way. So I was wondering—you going back there? Could you show us the way?”
    For a few moments Baggs tried to look dubious, as though he had to give the matter serious thought. Then he gave it up and grinned. “Why the hell not? I could use achange of company. Old Oral and Spider here ain’t all that swift, are you, boys?”
    Neither of them answered.
    After sharing a breakfast of canned applesauce, corn, and tomato juice, they all got ready to leave. Baggs had Oral and Spider bring the rest of the precious Mason jars up out of the cellar and supervised their packing in Eddie’s suitcase, among the few items of clothing that the blacks had not carried off. He also packed the butter churn and most of the kitchenware. Then Oral went out into the woods and returned with two horses, one a sturdy pack-horse already burdened with Baggs’ camping equipment. But the animal stoically accepted the new items as well, everything except Stone’s backpack and gun, which Stone preferred to carry himself.
    The second horse was Baggs’, a big sorrel that he evidently rode while the younger men traveled on foot. But now he led it over to Eve and helped her up into