Zelazny, Roger - Novel 07 by Bridge of Ashes Read Free Book Online Page B

Dick.
                   Of course.
                   We made it to a COE farm in Colorado that evening. I had lain in the rear of
vehicle after vehicle— four, to be exact—clutching my shoulder much of the
time. The second driver had gotten some gauze and tape and bandaged it. He had
also gotten me aspirins and a fifth of bourbon. These helped quite a bit.
                   Jerry's and Betty's place is sort of a
communal farm. Everyone on it is COE, but only Jerry and Betty and a guy called
Quick Smith knew what I had been about and knew that I might show up in need of
help. The fewer in on it the better, like always. They took me right to a
bedroom they had had ready in the main building, where Jerry dug out the .38
long under a local, cleaned the wound and sewed it up, ground some bones
together, plastered me up, shot me full of antibiotics and fitted me with a
sling. He was a veterinarian. We did not have a reliable M.D. in the area.
                   "How many of those damn aspirins did you
take?" he asked me.
                   "Maybe a dozen. Maybe more."
                   Jerry was a tall, gaunt man, who could have
been anywhere between thirty and fifty. He had sweated away everything but
sinews and calluses, leaving behind a lot of facial creases. He wore
steel-rimmed spectacles, and his lips grew thinner whenever he was angry.
                   "Don't you know what they do to the
clotting factor?"
                   "No."
                   "They screw it up. You bleed more. You
lost a lot of blood. You should probably have a transfusion."
                   "I'll live," I said. "I made it
this far without going into shock."
                   He nodded and his glasses flashed.
                   "Give me a horse any time," he said.
"Booze and aspirin. And nothing to eat all day."
                   I started a shrug, reconsidered immediately.
                   "I'd have chosen a better menu under
other circumstances—and if I were a horse, you might have shot me."
                   He chuckled, then sobered.
                   "You did pull it off, though. I wasn't
sure you'd make it away afterward."
                   "We figured it pretty carefully."
                   He nodded.
                   "How do you feel about it—now?"
                   "It had to be done."
                   "I guess so."
                   "You see any alternatives? We've got to
try and stop them. We're making ourselves felt. They will be treading a lot
more carefully after today."
                   "I see it," he said. "It is
just that I wish there was another way. I am still something of a lay preacher,
you know? But it is not just that. It is mainly that I don't like to see things
killed or hurt. One of the reasons I'm a vet. It's my feeling, not my thinking,
that goes against it."
                   "I know," I told him. "Don't
you think I thought about it for a long time? Maybe too much, even."
                   "I guess so. I think you ought to
reconsider moving on, and spend the night here. You need the rest."
                   I shook my head.
                   "I know I do. I wish I could. I have to
keep moving, though. I am still too close to where it happened to rest easy.
Besides, the new vehicle is a van. It has a mattress in the back. I can stretch
out there. Anyway, it's better for you if I move along as quickly as
possible."
                   "If I was worried about my own safety, I
would never have gotten involved in the first place. No. That's not it. It goes
back to my feeling about not liking to see things hurt or dead."
                   "Well, I stand a better chance of
avoiding both if I cloud the trail as much as I can."