“Pull a gun on me twice. Twice!” He slapped me so hard that my ears rang. “You stupid little punk.”
I looked up at him and said in a clear, penetrating voice, “And you big bastard.”
It was a time I would have done better to keep my mouth shut. All I can remember is a flash of pain as his fist crunched against the side of my face and then nothing more than that.
Brains are no good if you don’t use them.
Chapter 16
I REMEMBER PAIN AND SICKNESS AND MOTION DIMLY, but Hell-on-Wheels’ next clear memory came when I woke in a bed in a strange house. I had a vague feeling that time had passed, but how much I didn’t know. I had a sharp headache and a face that made me wince when I put a tentative finger to my cheek. I didn’t know where I was, why I was there, or why I ached so.
Then, as though a bubble had popped, the moment of disassociation was gone and it all came back to me. Horst and being knocked around. I was trying to push my way out of bed when the old man who had told the story came in the room.
“How be you feeling this morning, young lady?” he asked. His face was red, his hair white, and his deep-set eyes a bright blue. It was a good strong face.
“Not very well,” I said. “How long has it been?”
“Two days,” he said. “The doctor says you’ll be well soon enough. I be Daniel Kutsov. And you?”
“I’m Mia Havero,” I said.
“I found you dumped by the camp where Horst Fanger left you.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him. Everyone knows of him. A very unpleasant man—as I suppose he be bound to be, herding Losels.”
“Those green things were Losels? Why are they afraid of them?”
“The ones you saw been drugged. They wouldn’t obey otherwise. Once in a while, a few be stronger than the drug and they escape to the woods. The drug cannot be so strong that they cannot work. So the strongest escape. They be some danger to most people, and a great danger to men like Horst Fanger who buy them from the ships who bring them to the coast. Every so often hunters go to kill as many as they can find.”
I was tired and my mind was foggy. My head hurt, and when I yawned involuntarily it was painful.
Sleepily, I said, “It seems like slavery, drugging them and all.”
Mr. Kutsov said gently, “Only God can decide a question like that. Be it slavery to use my horses to work for me? I don’t know anyone who would say so. A man be a different matter, though. The question be whether a Losel be like a horse, or like a man, and in all truth I can’t answer. Now go to sleep again and in a while I will bring you some food.”
He left then, but in spite of my aching tiredness I didn’t fall asleep. I didn’t like it, being here. The old man was a Mudeater and that made me nervous. He was nice, being kind, and how could I stand for that? I tried to see my way around the problem and I couldn’t. My mind wouldn’t rest enough to see things clearly. At last I drifted off into a restless sleep.
Mr. Kutsov brought me some food later in the day, and helped me eat when my hands were too unsteady. His hands were wrinkled and bent.
Between mouthfuls, I said, “Why are you doing this for me?”
He said, “Have you ever heard the Parable of the Good Samaritan?”
“Yes,” I said. I’ve always read a lot.
“The point of the story be that at times good will come from low and evil men. But there be books that say the story been changed. In the true version, the man by the road been the Samaritan, as bad a man as ever been, and the man that rescued him did good even to such a one. You may be of the Ships, but I don’t like to see children hurt. So I treat you as the Samaritan been treated.”
I didn’t know quite what to say. I’m not a bad person. I thought he ought to be able to see that. I didn’t understand how he could think so badly of us.
He added then, perhaps seeing my shock, “I be sorry. I don’t think as harshly of the Ships as most. Without the Ships we wouldn’t be