Dark and roiling clouds dominated, and the air felt thick with the threat of rain. The downpour would begin within fifteen minutes, Raintree estimated. As a traveling man usually separated from the natural world only by the thin walls of a railroad car, he’d become proficient at reading the weather, and was seldom wrong in his predictions. Raintree looked at the shallow ruts left by Anubis’s wagon when he’d left for Wiles earlier. Despite his partner’s assurances, he was still uncertain it was a good idea to actually parade one of their main displays into the heart of town. Sure, it had worked elsewhere, enticing customers who might otherwise have never attended…but it was also a dangerous move, inviting uncomfortable questions from the local law. There were plenty of people out there who just couldn’t shake off the notion that there had to be something wrong, morally, legally, or both, with displaying actual corpses or portions thereof. Never mind that there were museums all across the country and world displaying the mummified remains of ancient Egyptians, South American natives, American Indians, and others.
