Who cares what it was made for?
—Now it burns. Who cares what it was made for? That should be your motto. I should have it engraved on your grip. Oh, look at it burn! That should keep them busy.
—There may be more nearby.
—What do you think they were doing here?
—Spying. Establishing their hateful spying machines. Laying claim to territory that is not theirs.
Two more men, short, hunching, coughing, staggered out of the blaze, smoke streaming from shabby black suits and howling mouths, ugly stub rifles held loosely and rattling away.
—Finish them. Smash their machines. Go.
On his way back from the boardinghouse—his clothes somewhat singed; mopping ash, dust, and blood from his face with someone else’s neckerchief—Creedmoor stopped by the stage and what remained of Sloop’s medicine show. The crowd was long dispersed from the square; even Kloan’s cow-slow folk had figured the score by then. Sloop was dead of a bloody chest wound. The muscleman lay beside him with the back of his head open. Professor Harry Ransom was laying out the bodies and cleaning them up, but he up and ran at Creedmoor’s approach. Ransome’s white suit was ruined, of course, and his apparatus didn’t seem to have fared much better, because the stage now was scattered with broken glass and wire.
—Never know what it did now, I guess. Shame.
The showgirl was on her knees sobbing, her feather boa trailing in the blood and glass. Creedmoor paid her what seemed to be a fair price for two bottles of her dead master’s tonic water.
—It is grain alcohol and curry powder. I can sense it. You will be lucky not to go blind, Creedmoor.
—Nevertheless.
The showgirl’s trembling fingers half closed over the bills.
He said, “You keep your clothes very nicely, considering the rough country you travel in. Do you have needle and thread?”
The baobab tree was a blazing crown like some awful prophecy.
Over by the burning boardinghouse, half Kloan’s folk were passing up buckets from the well. Mostly the women. Their efforts were not going well. The fire spread to another and another house, and meanwhile many of the men were eyeing Creedmoor angrily, nervously—this interloper who had brought down horror upon them—this dealer with devils, this Agent of the Gun. Some carried pitchforks and knives and hatchets; a few clutched old muskets; one or two had hunting bows.
He could have killed them all. But what would be the point? Kloan was a pretty town. And besides, one lucky shot might always end him. It happened, sadly, even to Agents of the Gun—only last year, Red Molly had died in similar circumstances. Though she had, of course, been ragingly drunk.
Creedmoor’s horse was dead, slumped and bloody by the hitching post to which he’d tied it. The animals nearby were panicking and screaming and rearing against their ropes. He took another from over the other side of the square.
The men of Kloan edged closer, murder-minded. Creedmoor stared them down from horseback. “Your town is burning. See—your women are fighting for it. Go help them, you fools.” And he spurred the horse round and thundered out of town before Kloan’s folk—not so peaceful or simple anymore!—could start shooting.
The War had been bound to come to Kloan sooner or later. Still, Creedmoor felt just awful that he’d been the one to bring it, and he rode out in grim silence. Naturally his master, sensing his mood, set out to worsen it.
—We warned you, Creedmoor. You defied us.
—I did.
—Never again, Creedmoor. Next time you defy us, we will put the Goad to you. You have a mission.
He went west into lands that were still peaceful—rough and hilly and broken but not yet marked by war. An hour later, he’d put some good miles behind him, and the smoke was no longer visible.
He spied a fast rider in the distance, tearing out of Kloan along a route southwest of and near parallel to Creedmoor’s own, raising dust.
—Spare us embarrassment, Creedmoor. Keep this story from the newspapers.
Only a short detour was necessary to bring the rider within Marmion’s prodigious range—and Creedmoor didn’t miss. He never missed.
A crack. The rider silently tumbled into the dust.
Creedmoor shook his head.
—Damn fool. Should have stayed home where they needed him.
—The Line knows we are here. Get to work, Creedmoor.
Creedmoor began to scour the trails and back roads of the hills. Twenty-four hours later, he picked up the trail of a procession—he could smell them—a dozen men and women, on foot, slow moving, some of them wounded, scents of pus and bandages