Chapter Six
Danichew didn’t bother to take his rifle from the cart.
“If you plan to escape, Doc Fuse,” he said as we walked along the dusty path toward a hut made of sticks and cow dung, “please give me warning so that I may step out of your way.”
I laughed. “Where would I go, Danichew?” I waved a hand around at the desolate landscape as we walked. “Two hundred miles of badlands in any direction you choose. I wouldn’t last a day out there.”
“I know.”
“I owe you my life,” I said. “I’ll not embarrass you before the warden by trying to run away.” Danichew was the man who’d interceded for me at the airfield on the day we landed. Colonel Brickenridge would surely have shot me if it hadn’t been for my friend Danichew.
A smiling woman with rich chocolate skin held aside the ragged blanket t
