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upstairs.
    Racy sat him down at the table where the light was best, then began cleaning his wound. With a businesslike efficiency and workmanlike fingers, she soon had the knife cut sewed up and bandaged.
    Racy had been in charge of the girls for so long it was second nature to her. She had nursed them through sickness, doctored their wounds, held their hands and been a nurse and surrogate mother for two years, ever since Jane had died and left Racy as the oldest. Adrian sat through her ministrations without flinching, or acknowledging she was in the room.
    “There Mr. Hunter,” she said. “You’re all fixed up now. Is there any point in my going upstairs?”
    Adrian, forced by her direct question into responding said, “No, no reason at all. Lacy and Reggie are dead, the other man has a badly broken arm. When he comes to he won’t pose a problem for anyone, he’ll be in too much pain. Just let him leave the way he is, don’t try to fix his arm. Son of a bitch deserves a lot more pain than that. On the other hand, you might run up there and fetch Reggie’s pistol, don’t want to leave that where he can find it when he wakes up.”
    Racy went up the stairs and spotted the open door with light coming from the room. She stopped on the threshold, aghast at the carnage and the creepy site of Lacy sitting on her heels but dead. She suddenly had a mounting fear of Adrian. Had she seen this room first, she might not have been so cavalier at ordering him around and stitching him up. She had been amazed that while stitching him he had shown no signs of pain.
    After seeing this room she now thought that was a bit of a minor point.
    Racy took a deep breath, then walked into the room, carefully stepping around the various pools of blood and retrieved the pistol.
    When she returned downstairs Adrian was sitting just as she had left him. She laid the pistol on the table next to him and diffidently asked “What do you want me to do next?”
    “Yeah, that’s the question isn’t it? I’ve been thinking about that. What do I do next? I can’t go off and leave you girls here. You might be able to feed yourselves, but you won’t be able to protect yourselves. You could probably fight off one or two men, maybe even half a dozen. But sooner or later there will be a group of men that you can’t fight off, and your odds of ending back up in this situation…or worse…are too high for comfort.”
    “How in hell do I take you with me though? And where can I leave you off? I didn’t plan on keeping Rita and Lila to raise, I’m sure not planning on raising sixteen girls. Good Lord what a fubar this is. Can’t take you with me, can’t leave you behind, and probably never find a safe place to leave you.” Adrian looked directly at Racy, seeming to seeing her for the first time. “Thank you for sewing me up, I appreciate it.”
    “You said you were going to Corpus Christi, why not take us with you? It’ll be slower with all of us walking, and the young ones not able to walk fast, but we’ll get there eventually and unless you have some reason to rush then why not? Eating will be the biggest problem on the trip. Takes a lot of food for this many girls you know, and the food we have will be hard to carry. There’s lots of food in the pantry and store room—mostly what the men traded for us. There’re quite a few guns and lots of bullets, too; that was another favorite trade item. Reggie traded us for whatever he thought he could trade again and gain on. People stopped by here not just to take a girl upstairs but often just to trade. If we could find a wagon of some kind, we could carry most of it with us. Take two wagons probably to carry it all.”
    Adrian perked up a little at hearing this news. “That might be an idea…if there’s enough valuables here, and if we can carry them with us, then we might be able to find a place for you in Corpus, a safe place maybe since the Navy is down there. Oh crap, what am I thinking?