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some sort of settlement. I hoped there would be a home found for them there. If no one took them in, I didn’t know what I would do. I guess I’d bring them back to my home. Or Kim’s. I smiled at that thought. I doubt children were what she had in mind when she asked me to bring something back for her.
    On the road, I walked with my left hand on the reins, keeping my right hand free. I didn’t think for a minute that the two men who had followed me this morning hadn’t heard the shots I had fired just a little while ago. If they were out here, they’d probably be along shortly.
    I hoped I’d reach the town of Manhattan by then, and maybe there would be some law I could report them to. But I figured that wouldn’t be likely.  Not since I could see two figures walking towards me from the west. They were both carrying rifles, and from what I knew about guns, I could see they were not scoped guns. If they had been, I’d probably already be dead.
    I stopped Judy and pulled my rifle out of its scabbard. No point in being under-gunned in a fight. If I could end this peacefully I would, but these two seemed determined to force the issue.
    When they were about fifty yards away I raised a hand. My other hand held the rifle hip level, pointing in the general direction of the two men.
    “That’s close enough,” I said. “You guys have been hunting me all morning. It needs to stop.”
    One of the men slapped the other one on the arm.
    “Oh, it’ll stop,” he said. “I promise. Get them kids off the horse, put your guns on the ground, and walk away. We’ll let you keep your hat.”
    I shook my head. “These kids just lost their parents to Trippers. I’m taking them to Manhattan. Let us by.”
    The other man, Don, shouted angrily, “I’m done talkin’! Next thing you hear will be my gun goin’ off! You hear me, boy?”
    As my father would have said, the negotiations seemed to be over. I raised the barrel of my rifle slightly, and fired from the hip. I didn’t wait to see if I hit anything, I threw the gun up to my shoulder, and this time, I aimed carefully, firing at the man who was raising his rifle to his shoulder. He suddenly threw his hands up in the air, tossing his rifle behind him as he stumbled backwards and lay flat while his feet kicked at the ground.
    I shifted my aim and looked for a target while Judy tossed her head at the noise. The kids screamed at the shots and the sudden shifting of Judy’s back. I apparently had scored a hit with my first shot, as both men were on the ground. I couldn’t believe my luck. I hadn’t practiced much, but I guessed that my practice with the bow had sharpened my aiming skills towards other weapons.
    Leaving the kids with Judy, I walked forward slowly, keeping my rifle trained on the two inert forms. I looked left and right at the houses near the road, making sure no other Trippers might be coming out of their caves.
    I reached the men, and with a single look, knew I didn’t need the firepower anymore. One man had been shot through the neck, the other had been hit square in the face. After removing a couple more weapons from the men, I dragged the corpses over to the ditch and dumped them in. I doubted they had any family to take care of, since I didn’t think their families would have approved of them hunting down another person. One thing I had learned from this mess of a world I had grown up in was people tended to behave themselves in groups larger than five. Single people were fifty-fifty on whether they were good or bad. Groups of two to four were just bad news.
    I picked up the rifles the men were carrying. One was a bolt action of some caliber, while the other was a levergun a little like mine but different. It had a magazine that came out the bottom, and the bullets were much larger than the ones that fed my Winchester. The writing on the gun’s barrel said Savage 99, and it was chambered in .308 Winchester. I liked the look of it, so I figured to keep