Worldshaper by Edward Willett

Author:Edward Willett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2018-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

“THE ROAD AHEAD led only into darkness” was such a nice metaphor for my state of mind that I was almost disappointed when a sign appeared a few minutes later, glowing bright green in our headlights. I slowed, and stopped a few yards short of it. There were two names and distances on it: MOOREVILLE 20, with an arrow pointing left, and BOW AND ARROW RANCH 32, with an arrow pointing straight up. “Mooreville is one of the towns on the map,” I said. “Turn left?”

“What is Bow and Arrow Ranch?” he asked. “Have you heard of it?”

Oddly enough, I had: a friend of Brent’s had spent a couple of weeks there during the summer, and had told us about his outdoor adventures in excruciating detail one night at the Human Bean, made bearable only by the beer and the fact that that night’s otherwise execrable band (The Tosspot Turkeys) had been so loud I’d only heard one word in three. “It’s a dude ranch.”

He glanced at me, eyes glinting green in the spill of light reflecting from the sign. “A what?”

“You’ve never heard of a dude ranch? Dude, you showed up on my doorstep in a duster and cowboy hat!”

“They were not mine. Enlighten me.”

“It’s a ranch where dudes—city people—pretend to be cowboys,” I said. “They ride horses and go camping and sleep on air mattresses in fancy tents and eat gourmet food prepared by a private chef—you know, just like cowboys do.”

“Horses,” he said. “Would there be horses there now?”

“Where else would they . . .” I realized what he was thinking. “Oh. I get it. We need to do something unexpected. Our pursuers will expect us to head to the towns. They won’t expect us to head deeper into the mountains on horseback.”

“Would you?” Karl said.

“Not if I knew one of the two people I was chasing was allergic to horses.”

He frowned. “You are allergic to horses?”

“Yes.”

“So much so you cannot ride them?”

I sighed. I was afraid he’d ask that. “No,” I had to admit. “Just enough I’ll be sniffling and sneezing and wiping my eyes the whole time.”

I reached for the map. The road we had followed to this point might not be on it, but the road we had just intersected was. It showed that the road to Bow and Arrow Ranch wound through a series of canyons. Just like the road we’d taken into Candle Lake Resort, this was clearly a back road: the main access marked on the map was from the Interstate we were trying so studiously to avoid.

I took a closer look at the terrain. We still needed to lose the SUV. If the road through the canyons ran close to a big enough body of water . . . nothing showed on the map, but maybe, I thought, that doesn’t matter. I closed my eyes. I pictured a deep lake . . . no, an old quarry. Steep sides, full of water. Drop the SUV in there and it might never be found .

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