Tribal Ways. Alex Archer

on Annja. He didn’t ask her pleasure.

      “May I borrow the phone, please?” she asked politely.

      He jerked his head. “Pay phone,” he said. “Booth in the back.”

      She raised a surprised eyebrow. In this cell-phone era pay phones were becoming an endangered species.

      “It’s a dead zone,” said the biker who stood farther away from Annja to her right. He was a big bearlike guy with his black hair hanging free to his shoulders in twin braids.

      “And we like it that way,” said the man next to her.

      With a shock Annja noticed, more than a beat late, one of the very sort of details she was normally adept at picking up on quickly—he wore a semiautomatic pistol holstered on his left hip. A SIG-Sauer, she thought. She realized just about everyone in the bar was packing.

      She was pretty sure it was a violation of Oklahoma law to carry a firearm into an establishment that served alcohol. She decided not to bring it up.

      Annja turned in the direction indicated by the bartender and headed for a niche sunk in a plank wall beside a faded and torn poster for a bullfight, in Madrid in September 1963.

      Suddenly she found herself blocked by a figure a good three inches taller than she was. It was a woman, with hair bound back from a long, strikingly beautiful face with high exotic cheekbones and long, narrow eyes. She looked to Annja as if she came from a North Plains nation, Cheyenne maybe. Despite the weather outside, she wore a black tank top under a denim vest. Where lots of bikers sported U.S. flag patches she wore a yellow-and-red Gadsden flag. The one with the snake and the motto Don’t Tread on Me.

      She had, Annja felt, a somewhat snaky appearance in general. She was smaller in the chest and hips than Annja, and moved with sinuous grace that suggested the serpentine. The metaphor was extended by tattoos that twined from her biceps down her bare brown forearms—rattlesnakes striking with fangs sticking straight out from their gaping jaws like Kiowa lances.

      “Excuse me,” Annja said, and started to go around.

      The woman seemed to flow in front of her again. “The white-eyes made us sign away our ancient right of roaming for reservations. Then they cheated us out of those and turned us out. So we tend to be a bit territorial these days. And you’re off your reservation here, white-eyes. This is Indian country,” she said.

      “Yes, that whole land-grab thing sucked,” Annja said as conversationally as she could. “And neither of us was alive back then, so it’s probably way too late to debate it, isn’t it? Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

      She sidestepped once again. To her relief the woman didn’t move to intercept her. Annja noted the 1911-style Springfield Armory .45 that rode in a black Kydex holster on her left hip. A gunfighter’s rig for an old-school gunfighter’s piece.

      Annja made for the pay phone only to see that the bearlike guy had stopped playing pool and had slipped into the booth. She realized with a start that he didn’t have a shirt on beneath his own denim vest, and that his considerable paunch was covered in an intricate blue tattoo.

      He showed her a happy grin. “Sorry,” he said with patent insincerity, trapping the handset between his shoulder and his ear. “I got to call my broker to see how much money I lost on stocks today. I’m still waitin’ on my personal bailout.”

      He punched a number and pretended to listen. All the while he smiled beatifically at Annja out of his wide, round face.

      She found it much scarier than the snake woman.

      “You should probably go,” he said, as if as an afterthought.

      After a moment Annja said, “You’re right.” She turned and started to walk out.

      Discretion, in this case, was the better part of staying alive. Anyway I can hike to the highway much better if both my legs aren’t broken, she told herself.

      A young biker emerged from a dark oblong opening in the back wall next to the phone booth. He was tall and straight, long-legged and narrow-waisted in his blue jeans, broad-shouldered in his colors. Unlike almost everybody else in the bar, men or women, he wore his long black hair unbound in a straight gleaming fall down his back. He was, undeniably, gorgeous.

      From his carriage, from the way the feeling in the room suddenly shifted, he was clearly the boss. His dark-chocolate eyes locked on Annja’s. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

      She made a beeline for the door. Away from him.

      She felt a strong hand clamp on her right biceps.

      “Not so fast,” the biker chieftain said, spinning her around. “I got a few questions for—”

      Annja used the momentum imparted by his yanking her around to jam her left knee into his groin really hard.

      Okay, this is probably not the brightest thing you’ve ever done in your life, she thought even as she brought her knee up to its inevitable rendezvous with the juncture of those long, lean legs. It didn’t diminish in the slightest the sheer fierce satisfaction she felt. He had laid hands on her. Even in the lion’s den boundaries must be drawn, and rigorously enforced. Perhaps even more so. And Annja had not had a good day.

      Clearly her victim didn’t remotely expect any such response to trying to turn the interloper around. The breath burst out of him and he doubled over, then collapsed to the floor.

      Despite herself, Annja was impressed by her results.

      Unfortunately the entire bar full of rough Indian outlaw bikers were too. And after a beat or two of goggling at their pack leader lying there helpless on the sawdust-covered planks—was that even in code?—they got pissed.

      “She dropped Johnny!” a voice cried. “Get her!”

      A heavy weight landed on Annja’s shoulders, staggering her. She reached back to grab a handful of coarse hair, then jackknifed forward, pulling hard. A figure flew over her back to slam on the planks in a cloud of sawdust. Annja saw it was a woman.

      Hands clutched at Annja from several directions. A hand grabbed her jacket. Somebody yanked her hair. She slapped the hands away, lashing out with quick jabs and backfists. All the time she waded through the crowd toward the door.

      As if materializing from the gloom itself the snake woman blocked Annja’s path. She grabbed a handful of Annja’s blouse through her open jacket and cocked her left fist back for a punch.

      As she did she rocked her weight back. Annja grabbed the woman’s left wrist and stepped quickly forward with her right foot, stepping out so that her hip brushed the woman’s right hip. Her left hand shot up and around to grab the denim vest up near the slim neck. At the same time Annja pressed her elbow into her opponent’s upper arm, effectively fouling the blow.

      Annja twisted hard counterclockwise, putting her hips and all the strength of her own long legs into it. The other woman was wiry-strong, but Annja was strong, too; and she’d been practicing her grappling techniques. With her own weight already going backward the taller woman was easily toppled over Annja’s outthrust hip and slammed flat on her back onto the pool table. Her head hit with a crack and the air rushed out of her.

      For a moment the way cleared. Annja started to move for the door but the short, wide guy who’d occupied the phone booth now stood in her way.

      A flash decision faced Annja. She had an ace in her sleeve, but it wasn’t one she cared to turn up in public. And also there were all those guns. If this confrontation turned lethal she’d be able to hope for nothing better than an honor guard to take into the afterlife with her.

      Besides, even though these people were attacking her, Annja knew she was the intruder. And they hadn’t used weapons yet. Should the need arise, she knew she could summon her sword from the otherwhere. But she did not want to have to explain the sudden appearance of the weapon to a bar full of people.

      But she was going to have to even the odds somehow. And that entailed