strode over to Jak and got in the smaller man’s face. “Is that what you were just doing?” he demanded, looking down on him. “Because it sure looks to me like what you were doing had nothing to do with keeping the group safe. You were making the situation worse.”
“Owed rich guy,” Jak said. “Paid.”
“Mebbe if you’d consulted with the rest of us,” J.B. offered, “we could have all come up with a plan together. We took some pretty hairy risks saving your skinny ass from that noose today.”
“Not to mention putting in a big load of work,” Mildred added.
Ricky rose to his feet.
“Guys, guys,” he said, holding up his hands. “Please, can’t we all just step back and calm down?”
Ryan and Jak turned to him and each shot out an arm tipped with an extended finger at him. “Back off,” they said as one.
Doc put a hand on Ricky’s shoulder.
“A valiant try, lad,” he said, pressing him back down. “And see? At least you have induced a moment of harmony between them.”
The two men returned to glaring at each other.
“However brief,” Doc added sadly, sitting back in his own spot.
Krysty came up behind Ryan, deliberately cracking a twig under her heel. His senses weren’t as inhumanly keen as Jak’s, but that didn’t mean they weren’t better than most people’s. As wired as he was right then, she did not want him to perceive that someone was sneaking up on him.
She placed a hand on his shoulder. He tensed as if to shake her off, but he didn’t.
“Let’s put this behind us,” she said in her most soothing voice. “Or at least put it aside. We should be safe enough here tonight, but we’re still in dangerous territory. And we’re all in this together.”
“That’s the problem,” Ryan said. “Jak’s been playing lone wolf more and more as the days go by. As if he’s too fast to run with the rest of the pack.”
He glanced back at her.
“And we’re always in dangerous territory. You know that.”
Jak’s face had been getting more and more twisted up, and his ruby eyes blazed redder the whole time Ryan spoke. Now he clenched his fists.
“You saying I not care ’bout companions?” Jak yelled.
Even Ryan took a step back at that. Mebbe not, Krysty thought, from the young albino’s spittle-spraying vehemence, as much as the fact that Jak was so violently boiling-over emotional that he’d almost spoken a complete sentence.
But Ryan wasn’t backing down. That was not what the man did.
“That’s how it looks to me,” he said, dead level. “That’s the way you’ve been acting.”
For a moment Krysty feared Jak would stab Ryan. Or try to.
Then she thought he was going to cry.
He shook himself like a wet dog. “All right.”
Jak walked over to the backpacks, picked up his and shrugged into it.
“Gone.”
He started to walk away, into the wild night.
“Wait!” Mildred jumped to her feet. “What’s gotten into you two? You can’t be serious about this.”
Jak stopped.
“I’m serious as a ground burst,” Ryan said. “I can’t speak for Jak.”
“Are you really talking about breaking up the group? Really?” Mildred pressed.
“I’m talking about doing what needs to be done to keep us alive,” Ryan said. “Same as always.”
“But—we’re, we’re like family. We look out for each other. That is what keeps us alive.”
“Jak hasn’t been looking out for us lately, in case you haven’t been paying attention. He’s been running off on his own, getting into trouble and dragging the rest of us in.”
Jak pulled his head down between his hunched shoulders, but he stayed in place as if frozen.
“He made a mistake, Ryan,” Krysty told him. “We all do that. We all have, we all will again.”
“And you don’t talk about throwing us out!” Mildred said.
Ryan scratched his cheek. “Nobody’s talking about throwing anybody out. Jak’s been separating himself from the rest of us. I reckon mebbe he thinks it’s time to make that official.”
“Well, Jak has gone off on his own in the past,” Doc said. “Of course, he did rejoin us, after tragedy claimed his family in the former New Mexico territory.”
“You’re not helping, you old coot!” Mildred flared. “Anyway, New Mexico was a state, not a territory.”
“Before that it was a territory,” Doc said mildly. “And it’s no longer either. QED.”
Krysty noticed he finished on a vague note. In the firelight his blue eyes took on an unfocused look. Krysty guessed the mention of Jak losing his family had reminded Doc of losing his own and steered his mind toward wandering off through the mists of memory once more.
Mildred was glaring at Doc. Krysty decided that if she started yelling at him the emotional escalation was liable to do more damage than the distraction would help.
“Jak,” she said, trying not to sound as urgent as she felt. “What about you?”
“Look out for companions,” he said sullenly. “Scout. Guard. Eyes. Ears.”
J.B. took off his glasses and polished them. “We’ve long since come to rely on Jak to recce, and that’s a fact,” he said. “We are pretty deep into unknown territory right now to cut him loose. And that’s without taking the muties in this giant tangle of thorns into account.”
“He’s right,” Krysty said.
“We got along ace without him before,” Ryan replied. “We can do it again.”
“Ryan, please,” Krysty begged. “Get him to stay.”
“Jak’s been intent on walking his own road for a long time. I’m done with trying to stand in his way.”
As the others tried to defuse the situation, Krysty had watched from the corner of her eye as Jak had lowered his head farther. Now he gave his head a quick shake and straightened.
“Fine,” he said, still not looking back. “Want gone. Going.”
He walked out of the yellow circle of the firelight and into the thorny embrace of the Wild.
With
