340
The first of the convoy vehicles draws up as you and your captive arrive back at the roadster. Rickenbacker notices the cords binding the clansman’s hands and comments on your thoroughness.
‘Neat job you did there, Cal.’
‘Not really. He was already trussed-up like that when I found him,’ you reply.
Then Cutter and a handful of colonists disembark and come over to take a look at your prisoner. Readily he answers their questions, and seems genuinely eager to appease them. You discover that his name is Cookie. He says that he was trying to escape from Yuma and that the other two men, who ambushed you from the roof of the cinema, were scouts from a clan called the Pumas who control that city. Cookie says he was running east in the hope of finding a colony to join. The scouts were sent to capture him and take him back to Yuma where the Pumas’ leader, whose name is Pentagon, intended to execute him. It was to serve as a warning to the other members of his clan.
‘If you’re so keen to get away from the Pumas,’ says Rickenbacker, ‘why the hell did you join with ’em in the first place?’
Cookie says that he was exiled from California four months ago, after being caught by an army patrol while he was looting food from a derelict store in downtown LA. ‘I joined the Pumas ’cause I had to. It was either that or starve to death in the desert.’ He says that he knows the surrounding area well, and offers to help the colony if you agree to take him with you.
