Bonner left the bar and headed straight for the cavernous old bus station. It was the lair of Lucky, the best mechanic in the ruins of the Continent, the weird, skew-legged little guy who looked after Bonner's road-slicing war wagon. It was the fastest, most powerful thing on the road—Lucky had designed it, built it, and he felt that Bonner didn't take good care of it.

Bonner walked through the streets, the Mean Brothers trailing behind him. They could tell that their man was deep in thought so they appointed themselves his guardians. The streets of Chicago weren't safe, not even for The Outrider.

The cigarette lighter that Roy carried belonged to Bonner's good friend Seth. Seth was a quiet, powerful man who rode the old train lines in his steam locomotive the same way Bonner traveled the broken roads of the Continent. Seth knew trains and he knew his way back and forth across the Continent. He was good with a gun. Bonner, Seth, Beck, Clara, and a few others were considered the toughest bring downs in the riding confraternity.

Bonner knew Seth. He knew that he wouldn't give up that old pre-bomb cigarette lighter. Seth worshipped the old railwaymen, a long-dead tribe of men who had built the steel highways and the iron horses that rode over them. The lighter was marked with the symbol of one of the old lines, the Atcheson, Topeka, and the Santa Fe. It was an icon from the past, a talisman that Seth would never have surrendered. If the Rich Man had given it to that little shit Roy, then the Rich Man had taken it from Seth by force. That meant that Seth was in trouble. That meant that Bonner had to go find him.

It wasn't heroics. It was duty. Seth would have done the same for Bonner.

Little Lucky sat with his legs in the well of the engine of Bonner's monster machine. The bay of the bus station that he worked in was bedecked with lanterns and candles throwing as much light as possible onto the car.

There were pieces spread all over the garage floor. The engine was stripped down. The piston chambers were exposed.

"You son of a bitch'," Lucky swore when he saw Bonner. "You fuck this old girl all over the country."

"We get around together," said Bonner.

"Well, she's gonna do a little better when I get these new rings in."

"Well," said Bonner, smiling at the anticipated reaction of the mechanic. "You're going to have to put her back together right now. Lucky. Me and the Mean Brothers are going riding."

"The hell you are," muttered Lucky. He stuck his head down close to the exposed block of the massive engine. He was peering at a slightly corroded spot on the inside of the cylinder wall. "Gonna have to bore 'em out too," he said.

"Lucky, I need the machine. How soon can you get it running . . ."

Lucky looked up. His face was smeared with oil and grease and his strange little pale blue eyes seemed almost to disappear into the bright light of the dozen lanterns. "Bonner, goddam you! You're gonna kill this old girl! I can have her back together again in a couple of hours but if you take her out on the road and screw her all over the Continent you'll drive back a pile of junk. It'll take me two months to fix her up again. But you won't give me two months. I might get three days if I'm lucky and then you'll be around again wanting the machine for another damn fool galavant on them shitty roads." Lucky had gone very red in the face and his squeaky voice was echoing in the black cavern of the bus station.

"Thanks, Lucky, I knew I could count on you. I'll be back in an hour or so . . . Come on, Mean Brothers."

Lucky's screeched curses followed them down the ramp. Bonner smiled to himself. He was damn fortunate to have Lucky on his side. The little man could get every ounce of power out of an old engine. He also had an encyclopedic knowledge of every junked car and wreck within a fifty-mile radius of Chi-town. That's where he found the spare parts that he used to keep his select clientele on the road.

"Time to arm up," he told the Mean Brothers. "You got your stuff?"

One of the Mean Brothers pointed down a dirty dark street. They lived down there in a rubble cave someplace. It was there they kept the only weapons they needed to augment their fearsome strength. One Mean Brother wielded a shovel, the other an axe. The two man giants could do more damage with those crude implements than a dozen Stormers could do armed with automatics.

"You go get 'em," said Bonner. "Meet me at my place."

The Mean Brothers smiled happily and ambled down the street. They were happy. A ride with Bonner meant another chance to dispose of some enemies. They hated Leatherman's Stormtroopers—Stormers— the most but they would take what they could get:

Devils from the Hotstates, Snowmen from the Snow-states up north. They weren't particular. They wreaked their havoc at Bonner's direction. If he said kill, they killed; if he said don't kill, they didn't.

Bonner passed by Dorca's just in time to see the last of the newly recruited riders pulling out. It looked like Roy had got himself quite a few men to go. Why not? The terms were good and most of the boys he got didn't have the stuff you needed to make it as a solo rider. Bonner hoped that in his quest for Seth none of these boys got in his way. They were, after all, Chicago men. But if they interfered—well, they wouldn't be the first Chi-riders he had taken down.

As soon as he entered the small tumbledown building in which he lived he knew there had been trouble. The bitter smell of cordite still hung in the air. At the top of the stairs he found the couple of bodies that the girl had managed to cut down in the initial assault on the apartment. Bonner drew his Hi Standard from his belt and pushed open the door. There was a lake of blood on the floor, the residual gore that had streamed out of Jasper's body.

He heard a faint sob from the girl. He wheeled around, the long, elegant snout of the handgun pointed in her direction. She was crouched in the comer, her legs drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her knees.

Bonner knelt in front of her and gently raised her head. Her face was a mess. Her shaking hands reached out and hugged him. She wept on his shoulder.

Very gently Bonner lifted her in his strong arms and lay her on the bed. One of her eyes was swollen closed where Roy's rough fist had cracked her hard. Her other blue eye stared at him, scarcely able to believe that he had come back. One of her hands snaked out and grabbed a handful of shirt.

He had to clean her wounds, so he gently disengaged her hand. She whimpered slightly when he tried to move away to the little kitchen.

"Its okay," he whispered, "I'll be right back." He quickly built a fire in the big cracked porcelain sink in the kitchen. That was where they always cooked—the old gas stove that stood there was useless without the fuel that it had used in the old days. He set a kettle down on the flames and in a matter of minutes he had some water boiling.

He carried the water back to the bedroom and tore a clean sheet into rags. Gently he explored her bruised body. His lips set in a hard line and his eyes narrowed as he looked her over. They did a hell of a job, he thought. Four or five big riders beating up on a girl . . . He felt the muscles in his stomach tighten. He ran his fingers over her arms and legs, gently felt her ribs. Nothing broken, it seemed.

He wet one of the rags and began to wipe the blood from her face. One of the blows had been so hard that it tore the skin deep and buried some of the girl's long hair in the messed-up flesh. He soaked the wound until the dried blood was wet again and the gingerly extracted the hair from the wound.

He worked slowly. Gradually, the girl began to look almost human again. But her pretty face was a black-and-blue battlefield. Her graceful back and legs were criss-crossed with welts from Roy's leather belt.

She cried out when he pressed one of the brandy-soaked rags to the cuts. He used up a whole bottle of liquor disinfecting her cuts, but it never occurred to him to spare any. She needed it.

Finally, he bound the wounds as best he could and slipped her frail body into one of his soft old shirts. Exhausted, she began to doze. Bonner found his shotgun, a cut-down beauty, his three black-handled knives and a needle-nosed light automatic rifle. He bent down and kissed the girl on the forehead.

Her good eye flickered open. "Are you going?"

"Yes," he said.

She nodded. She knew he would. But she wanted to scream out, "Forget revenge! Stay with me, please . . ."

"I'll get Dorca to come up and take care of you.

He'll get Artie to clean this mess up . . ." He gestured towards the corpse in the middle of the room.

Bonner kissed her again and she rested in his arms. Tears streamed down her face.

"I'm sorry . . ." he said.

She shook her head. "Not your fault . . ."

But Bonner thought otherwise. It was his fault. They hadn't been able to find him so they took it out on her. He should have been here. He hefted his weapons and made for the door. He swore silently that before too many more miles passed on the road that day, he would use every piece of steel to avenge the girl. That was a promise.

The Mean Brothers were waiting on the street. They had their weapons and jumped up happily when - Bonner appeared in the doorway.

"Come on, Means," said Bonner, "we got some riding to do."

If the Mean Brothers had the gift of speech they would have said "Hot damn!" or something like it.

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