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feet, ten feet.
The Cougars have pulled firebrands from the blaze. They are searching, searching.
One of them spots him. He calls to the others, and they all run to see. He points his flaming brand at
Jarrod, now twenty feet up the tree. Jarrod pulls frantically upward. He reaches the first branches.
First they pelt him with rocks. Jarrod ignores these, although several hit him with a solid thud, and climbs
higher. Soon he is out of effective range. The Cougars speak among themselves in the guttural tongue.
Jarrod can make out nothing that they say. Finally, all but one of them leaves.
Jarrod looks around. There are no other trees near enough to leap to and even if there were, he could
not manage it. I'm too broken up, he thinks. Too weak and broken.
The other Cougars return with dry branches. They begin to build a pile around the base of the pine tree.
They will burn me, he thinks. Do they know how hard it is to burn down a tree? But the pile grows
higher, and Jarrod realizes that the smoke alone will be enough to overcome him. Yet he holds tight, does
not descend. This is the way to end it all. In the branches.
The Cougars open a bottle of napalm and pour it over the wood. They light their fire. As the fire takes
and burns higher, a curious thing happens. Through the smoke, Jarrod can see the Cougars begin to sway
back and forth, in rhythm to the flicker of the blaze. More smoke now, great oily puffs of it. Jarrod
coughs it out of his lungs as best he can.
The Cougars are swaying. They are singing. It's a tune Jarrod recognizes, and the words too, twisted,
drawled.
"Furudjuka. Furudjukuh. Durmuhvue? Durmuvuhue."
A ranger tune. "Are you sleeping, are you sleeping? Brother John? Brother John?" But the Cougars don't
finish the chorus. Instead, they repeat those syllables, over and over. They sway and sing. Then all is lost
in the rising smoke.
Jarrod is unconscious when he falls, and only the hot coals of the fire awaken him as they burn into his
side. He instinctively rolls away, pulls himself from the heat. And that is when the Cougars are upon him,
beating him with the firebrands, dragging him back to the camp. But the pain, the outrage to his body, is
too great, and Jarrod slips away into a brown, hurting oblivion once again.
He awakes with something in his mouth, shoved back into his throat. He gags, spits it out. He stares at
what lies in the dirt before him.
It is a phlegm-covered clump of two human fingers.
The two end fingers of his right hand. He stares down at the stumps the Cougars have left.
How did I not wake up when they did that? he thinks. How? But he did not.
Never mind. Doesn't matter. He noses dirt over his severed fingers, buries them as best he can, bound as
he is.
The next day, he trudges for hours behind the cart. The Cougars kick him, and hit him with sticks
constantly. And the next day. And the next.
The wound in his side is not healing, his mouth drips a foul green slobber, and despite the kicks and
goads with sticks, there are moments when Jarrod physically cannot continue. The Cougars let him lie for
a few moments, then two men pull him up by the wrist thong and Jarrod stumbles another few miles
behind the cart, only to fall again.
He tries to imagine ways of killing himself, but can come up with nothing.
Won't be long, though. Won't be long, he thinks.
During the heat of an afternoon, the two gouges of the cart track grow wider, the rut becomes a road.
The procession arrives at a gate. There is no fence on either side of the gate; it merely straddles the road.
The sides of the gate are made of mortared stone, with the gate itself formed from iron uprights. Beside
the gate is a little shelter, a guardhouse. A man steps out. He is wearing a long robe, all of a piece. Wool.
"I've already told them that Cougars are here with goods," he says. He looks over the slaves pulling the
cart, at Jarrod. "And men."
"Burts," says one of the Cougars. "Wuk killdruh fin yek fuckdruhik wuk."
"There's no deception," the man says. "I signaled them by mirror relay. They'll be here soon enough. You
want some water?"
"Nu."
"At least let me give it to those burts."
"Nu. Keepdruh handsikuh buk."
"All right." The man shakes his head and goes back to sit in the shade of the guardhouse. Jarrod sinks to
his knees. Green spit dribbles onto the ground before him. He watches it coil in the dirt of the road.
After a long while, Jarrod hears a clattering sound. He raises his head wearily and looks through the iron
bars of the gate. At first he sees only a cloud of dust, drawing closer. Then he makes out horses. People
riding on the horses. Closer, closer. One of the horses pulls a wagon. All of the people wear the same
robes as the gatekeeper.
The wagon rattles to a stop. The riders do not dismount. Two of them turn their horses and go around
the gate, coming to loom over the gathering of Cougars. One of the riders, a man with a flowing beard of
black and gray, speaks.
"We'll take the burts, of course. As usual."
"Nu," says one of the Cougars, Jarrod couldn't tell which one. "But elik." The Cougar points at Jarrod.
"Frekik totamuh thut wagun."
"Are you sure? We want to buy them."
"Yuh. Frekis totmuh thut wagun."
"All right. Him then. And what else?"
The Cougar begins to unload the cart.
"They've been raiding trains again, Uncle," says the other rider.
"So it would appear." The bearded rider motions impatiently to the Cougar. "Let's make this simple. If it's
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