Chapter 11

Sultry: Another country heard from; 11

About 20 minutes after Hero Alfred of Earth showed up in Crossroads ... dead ... Eva, Hero Caretakers of Crossroads Coordinator, stepped out of the bank. She was expecting to find confusion and consternation, but the town was surprisingly calm.

Her people were not on the street. She slipped through the alley between the bank and general store and checked the rear honey-wagon road. It was pretty obvious that the wagon hadn't made a pickup in quite some time ... like years? ... maybe.

Placing her perfumed handkerchief over her nose and taking very shallow breaths only as often as absolutely necessary, she was peeking in backdoors up the street ... the tannery end ... and down the street ... the stable end when a canvas bag was thrust over her head and the drawstring tightened just enough to stop what little breath she had.

It would be exceptionally unfair and a complete distortion of the facts to say... She fell like a ton of bricks. Conversely, it would be a bald-faced lie to say she gently swooned.

Eva hit the dirt.

Her captors trussed her up like a roasting turkey and tossed her over a packsaddle.

The dust of their leaving had no more than settled when the bank erupted. A number shy of dozens ... but a goodly number of rather stalwart and deeply bronzed hinterland sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters and even unto the twelfth generation offspring of Damsels and Earth Heroes suddenly made the bank lobby extremely crowded. One charmingly gorgeous creature with rare magenta hair and blue eyed held her hand up to one ear.

"Thank you," she said the air. Pulling a whistle from her pocket she blew a shrill blast and in the ensuing silence said, "The monitor said they're at the INN."

The lead horseman took a little off the road trail where he met up with a masked man on horseback leading as many packhorses carrying a slung sack of flour that accidentally weighed within a few ounces of Eva, Hero Caretakers of Crossroads Coordinator.

The fella with the mask asked, "Any trouble?"

The man who snatched Eva said, "Not a bit, she was exactly where you said she'd be."

The men who had helped snatch her each took a packhorse and led them off the forks in the trail. The shoes of all the animals were identical. Machine made shoes are like that. They weren't easily identifiable by hammer marks of cracks.

The man with the mask had done his homework well ... no single trail was different than any other trail. Finding the actually quarry by first intention would be impossible ... or so he thought. Clucking to his mount and giving a tug to the lead rope he left by a separate trail.

The shout of laughter as he made a turning gave one to doubt his sanity.

Cassie was the first to recognize the crowd that entered.

"Sandra!" she shouted, "What are you doing ... and Elizabeth ... is that? ... Karen? Something has happened ... tell me."

Sandra, a striking blonde, said, "Eva, Hero Caretakers of Crossroads Coordinator has been kidnapped. The monitors saw her taken. They would have had a better idea of which way the fiends took her," here she glared at the rescuers en masse, "But SOMEONE killed the holocam."