The Memories of Milo Morai

VIII

But finding the nomad camp did not prove to be either quick or easy. Because the alien arrow had been found in the northeastern sector of the ruins, Captain Mehrdok led his companion first to the area north and east of the shrinking lake, vainly, not getting back to the armory until well after moonrise.

At around noon of the second day, at a spot well north of the lake, Mehrdok reined up, saying, “They wouldn’t be this far from water, Kahl, so they must be on the west side of the lake, either that or somewhere down along the creek. Let’s turn around and go back home today and search the west bank tomorrow.”

They had riddenalong, retracing their path toward the southeast, for some miles, and the shimmer of the lake was once more in sight when Mehrdok spoke again. Quickly, tensely, in a low tone, he cautioned his companion, “Kahl, listen tight! Keep both your hands on your reins and in full view. Whatever you do, do not make any move in the directions of your crossbow, your spear or your knives. There’re riders close behind us, on both sides of us and probably in front of us, as well. Don’t speed up the pace, either.”

First Sergeant Rehnee gulped once, then asked in a half-whisper, “Then what do we do, Wahrn?”

“Nothing except keep riding at a steady clip, Kahl,” was the reply. “This is their barn dance, whoever they are—they’ll call the steps.”

Rehnee could see only a little way into the thick stands of tall grasses through which they were riding and could not imagine how his captain had been able to see farther, but there could be no mistaking the intensity of Mehrdok’s voice. Somehow, the man had truly sensed danger . . . deadly danger.

Little Djahn Staiklee and his hunt had once again spent the morning and the early part of the afternoon in the rich hunting and fishing area of the swampy onetime suburbs of the ruined town. On their return to camp, they swung for no particular reason a little to the east of their usual route. It was for that reason that they cut across the clear trail of two shod horses, headed north. Curious and more than a little suspicious of possible designs against the camp on the other side of the lake, Little Djahn had Djim-Bahb Gahdfree, most accomplished tracker of them all, distribute his load of game, to two others, then set off on the trail at a fast pace, while the rest of the party followed more slowly.

However, the hunt had only been at it for some half-hour when Djim-Bahb returned at the gallop to report that two riders, clearly Dirtmen, were tracing the trail down from the north. The hunt had but just come through a stand of ten-foot-tall grasses, and Little Djahn led them all back into that stand, placing them well back from the trail and on either side of it, with orders to stay out of sight of the Dirtmen, but to close up behind them once they were within the grasses, then flank and trail them until they came out into the open area beyond, where the young leader sat his horse with drawn bow and his saber loose in its sheath.

Just beyond the higher, thicker grasses, First Sergeant Kahl Rehnee saw a single rider, his smallish horsestanding side-on, his bow drawn and its metal-shod arrow pointed squarely at Captain Mehrdok’s chest. Spare and a slender build, the horseman wore baggy trousers and shirt of some homespun fabric—the trousers about the hue of unbleached wool, the shirt obviously once dyed a green color but now much faded, the sleeves and much of the torso heavily embroidered in designs depicting animals, weapons, flowers and geometrical designs. Atop his blond head, the rider wore a helmet of boiled leather further armored with strips of horn and antler. His master-fully tooled leather boots were high-heeled and pointed-toed and rose to just below the knee, and to them were laced wide single strips of horn to protect the top of the instep, ankle and shin.

The slim young man appeared to be somewhere between sixteen and twenty years of age, but the cold, hard stare of his blue-green eyes denoted the deadly seriousness of his overall demeanor every bit as much as did the steady bow, the taut bowstring and the glittering tip of the black-shafted arrow.

As Kahl drew nearer, following Mehrdok, he could see that the threatening stranger was dusty, dirty and very sweaty and that his clothing was splashed here and there with what looked to be fresh blood.

Very slowly and with exceeding care, Wahrn Mehrdok raised his right hand to above shoulder level, horny palm outward, in the incredibly ancient symbol of peaceful intentions. Fervently hoping that he recalled the proper way to do it after so many years of not doing it, he mentally beamed, “Greet the Sacred Sun, brother warrior. My brother and I come in peace, our bows unstrung and all arrows cased.”

Little Djahn Staiklee started to such an extent that he almost let his thumb slip from off the bowstring. The very last thing he had ever expected was to be mindspoken by a damned Dirtman. To play it safe, he imperceptibly eased up on the tautness of the weapon and lowered the point a bit, beaming in coolish reply, “I am the brother of no Dirtman, no Dirtman of any stripe! How did you learn to mindspeak, anyway?And to do it in words of Horseclansfolk? Do you then reverence Sun and Wind, Dirtman?”

Mehrdok shrugged. “Yes, as much as I reverence anything, brother warrior; for without sun and the rain the wind brings, nothing could grow to feed man or beast. As for my telepathy, I never knew I owned it until I was a bit older than you now are. I was a hired sword with a caravan of wagon traders and became the friend and battle companion of a Horseclansman named Tchahrlee Rohz. He it was awakened my quiescent telepathic abilities and taught me to use them.”

“Your sword brother, there,” demanded Staiklee, “does he, too, mindspeak?”

Mehrdok shook his head silently, beaming, “No, Kahl Rehnee is a good man, but he has no trace of telepathic talents, nor do the most of the folk among whom I now dwell, though right many of our horses seem to.”

“Do we start breaking these two Dirtmen for slaves, or simply kill them, Little Djahn?” beamed Djim-Bahb Gahdfree from his place behind Kahl Rehnee, completely unaware that his leader and one of the strangers had been silently communicating.

“Neither, Djim-Bahb,” Staiklee broadbeamed to all, including Wahrn Mehrdok.“The man closest to me, he mindspeaks. I think it best that we take him and the other back to camp. Let Uncle Milo decide what to do with him and the others.”

Milo liked the big, solid man from first meeting. Mehrdok was most certainly frightened here in his surroundings of well-armed and cold, if not openly hostile, strangers, but he controlled himself well, polite and calm of demeanor, firm of handclasp and rock-steady of gaze from his wide-set dark-brown eyes.

Wahrn, Kahl Rehnee and Milo were all about of a height, which made them half a head taller than the tallest of the Horseclans warriors and even taller than most of the women. Where all of the Horseclansfolk were flat-muscled, mostly with fine-boned bodies, Milo and the two newcomers were big-boned, with rolling muscles. Of all the nomads, only Gy Linsee bore any resemblance in size and shape to the Dirtmen and Uncle Milo, and even he was a bit shorter and slighter than any of the three.

Nor were the Dirtmen’s mounts much akin to the equines of the Horseclans. Not only did the beasts stand a good hand or more higher, they were heavier-bodied, clearly more powerful, with deeper chests, thicker legs and smaller, more graceful heads in proportion to their size. They were mindspeakers;Milo, Gy Linsee and Little Djahn Staiklee had all conversed with them, checking out portions of Wahrn Mehrdok’s story. One was a mare, one a gelding, and both were glossy beneath the dust, well fed, and had been carefully shod on all four hooves.

With the evening meal consumed and most of the Horseclansfolk going about chores and various handicrafts by the light of the fire, Milo and Bard Herbuht talked with Wahrn and Kahl, speaking aloud for the benefit of the nonmindspeaker.

“Mr. Mehrdok, you claim to have been a close friend, a sword brother, of a Horseclansman, years agone, somewhere north of here. You say that his name was Tchahrlee Rohz. Was he older than you or younger?”

“Younger,” replied Mehrdok.“Younger by about six or seven years. Not much above a mere stripling, truth to tell, but nonetheless a tried and proven and fearsome warrior already, and wise far beyond his years.”

Milo nodded slowly, then asked, “What was his most striking physical feature, the thing you first noticed about him?”

Wahrn grinned, his eyes lighting up with old, good memories.“His ears, Mr. Moray. They both stuck out like the handles of a jug, and so big were they that he had to fashion oversized leather flaps for his helmet to afford them protection when blades came out. But big as those ears were, oddly enough, they neither one had hardly any lobe on them. We all laughed at his ears, in a good-natured, comradely way, and he laughed and joked about them as much as any. The two of us, Tchahrlee and me, we . . . well, we were closer than born brothers, closer than any two men who have not been comrades in arms can ever be, I . . . Do you understand any of this, Mr. Moray?”

Milo nodded. “Better than you could imagine, Mr. Mehrdok. I have had friends like that, over the years. But tell me, whatever became of your sword brother? Was he slain?”

“No, sir. After about five years of riding with the train and wintering over in Tradertown with the rest of us, he went back west in search of his folks; he said that he had promised to, and good, old Tchahrlee, he always kept his promises. He wanted me to go back along of him . . . and sometimes, over the years, I’ve wished to hell I had of. God bless him, I still miss him right often. I wish him well, be he alive or dead. He was the best buddy a man ever had.”

Milo smiled warmly. “You will then be happy to know that Tchahrlee Big-ears of Rohzis now a sub-chief of his clan. Herbuht, there, and I wintered with Clans Rohz and Ashuh some six years back. Tchahrlee now has three wives, a pretty young concubine and a pack of children, not a few of them with duplicates of his ears.

“Now, Mr. Mehrdok, that I can feel a bit more trusting of you, just why were you and Mr. Rehnee seeking out this camp? Wait, don’t try to tell me aloud, open your mind to me, your memories of recent events. Here, I’ll show you how.”

Milo drew out a pipe and a bladder of tobacco while he sifted the contents of Mehrdok’s mind. While stuffing the pipe carefully, he said, nodding, “It’s the same old story, Wahrn. Your people aren’t anywhere nearly the first to experience it, you know.

“Long, long ago, while the technology needed to bring up water from very deep beneath the ground and bring in nutrients for the soil from hundreds and thousands of miles away in vast quantities still existed, the prairie and its peripheries were rich farming country; few lands in all this world were more productive of grain crops for both man and beast. But the so-called Great Dyings—a short, hideous spate of warfare followed by a few months of uncontrolled and uncontrollable plagues that almost wiped the races of mankind off the face of the earth—ended all of that. Some of the pitifully few survivors of those plagues continued farming marginal lands for a few years, even for a few generations . . . until the machines wore out and the last of the fertilizers were gone; then they all were faced with the same three bitter choices—seek out land easier to farm, become herding-hunting-gathering nomads, or stay and die. Frankly, I am astounded that you and yours have lasted as long as you have on that land, Wahrn. Not many have—generally, it’s either the second or the third generation that has to move on.

“We tried it, you know. The first two generations of the Horseclans were farmers, settled farmers ... for a while, if you can call moving on every ten or twelve years in search of better land a settled existence.

“The place where the first generation grew up and bred was good enough to begin, but then the weather changed to the point where it was just too dry, usually, for consistent yields, so we all moved on north, to the shores of a lake—a far bigger lake than this one, a mountain lake—but there, at that elevation, we found the winters to be so long and harsh that we moved on again. Much farther north, in what seemed at first to be a fine, rich-soiled river valley, we lived and farmed until the second generation were grown and breeding their own families.

“But, once again, the steadily increasing lengths of the winters, the deep, long-lasting snowfalls and the terrible ice-melt floods that heralded each spring all joined to make our position untenable. So, we packed up and moved on once again. That was a very long trek and we were forced to fight our way through parts of it, but we came finally to our destination, only to quickly realize that we could not stay long there, either, not if we expected to live and reproduce. We prepared for that move for years, and by the time we at last undertook the journey, the people were cleanly split into two factions—the larger were become sick of farming, they wanted to continue to move, to become herding, hunting, gathering nomads on the plains and prairie; the smaller faction wanted to continue to try farming, but in a better location than the one we just had left. That larger faction became the ancestors of the Horseclans of today. I’ve never been able to determine just what ever befell the smaller.”

Mehrdok looked puzzled, saying, “Milo, the Great Dyings, they took place close on to two hundred years ago . . . yet you speak as if you were there, from the very beginning of the clans.”

Milo stared into the farmer’s eyes over the bowl of the pipe. “I was, Wahrn. I’m well over two centuries old.”

“Impossible!” yelped Mehrdok. “Man, you’re a raving lunatic, must be. Look at you, yes, you’ve got a bit of silver hair, but you can’t be more than three, four, maybe five years older than me, if that! I’ve heard some tall tales in my time, but that one takes the cake. You don’t really expect me to believe such a yarn, do you?”

Milo just nodded, mindspeaking now. “Yes, it’s a hard thing to believe, Wahrn. Nonetheless, it’s true. There’s only one way to prove it to you, though. Here, enter into my memories as I entered into yours, earlier.”

Aloud, he said, “This may take some time. Herbuht, you and Gy entertain Mr. Rehnee for a while, eh?”

Slowly, inexorably, Clans Staiklee and Gahdfree marched northeastward, guided by young Djessee-Kahl Staiklee, following the same route that Milo’s party had earlier traveled. Of course, the clans could not hope to move as fast, cover as much distance in a day’s trek, as had Milo’s party, which had not been burdened with herds of cattle, sheep and goats. But the hunting had continued excellent, day after day, the only cattle butchered had been those few unadvoidably hurt too seriously to keep up with the herd, and Big Djahn Staiklee had consequently remained happy.

Sergeant Daiv Djahnstuhn, however, was far from happy. It now had been almost six days since hide or hair had been seen of the captain and the first sergeant of the Guardians, not even one of the horses had wandered back to its stableyard. Everyone was talking of it, of course, which meant that old Mosix had heard of the disappearances, too. Daiv expected any moment to be faced with an attempt of the onetime priest—who still had, for some reason, a little power among a few of the womenfolk—to blame the too-long absences upon the wrath of God and the Governor, then try to regain his former status. And Daiv—his wife being one of those who still reverenced Mosix—was not at all certain that he would be able to hold the Guardians steady enough to quell a religious mutiny, especially not with his goodwife, Rebah, as one of the mutineers. Sergeant Daiv Djahnstuhn longed and yearned for the sight of Captain Mehrdok, or even First Sergeant Rehnee, riding into the open space fronting the armory.

Despite his heavy load of doubts, however, Daiv did his assigned lieutenant’s duties to the best of his abilities. Turning the work of his farm over to his wife and children, he spent much of his time at the armory, trying to at least look busy, sending out the pot hunters each morning, helping to skin and butcher their kills each afternoon, then supervising the apportionment of game flesh to representatives of the families.

Each night, after suppertime, Guardians would ride or walk to the armory to inquire of word concerning Mehrdok and Rehnee, then to sit, sip homebrewed beer and speculate on just what might have happened to the captain and the first sergeant, whether or not a full-scale search should be mounted for the two, when it should be mounted, what direction should first be covered, how many men should go, who should command said search, since Daiv’s job was to stay and command the armory.

Daiv always listened to them, answered questions as best he could and drank down his fair share of the beer (which had all been seized—“commandeered,” Cap-tain Mehrdok had called it—from the cellars of the priests’ house and trundled back to the armory cellar on the same day that the library and conference table had been borne away), but at the same time he knew good and well that no search would ever actually take place, for something was always more important: crops to weed or muck or tend, livestock problems, petty disputes to be resolved, human and animal ill-nesses and minor injuries, always something. To get a search started, a real leader was needed, and Daiv Djahnstuhn knew in his heart of hearts that he was no such thing.

But he waited, listened, drank beer and tried to look as if he was doing his temporary job, to feel as if he was taking the place of the absent captain, always knowing that he was doing no such thing, feeling himself incapable of being a real leader, but afraid to show just how far he was beyond his depth.

Then, on the seventh morning since the second departure of Mehrdok and Rehnee, big, beefy Djeen Nohbuhl brought a lathered riding horse to a rearing halt before the armory, jumped off the beast and stalked purposefully toward the door, shouting ahead of himself.

“Who the hell’s gonna be the next one for to disappear, Daiv?You? Where in tarnation is that old goat Mosix, anyhow? It ain’t no drop of water in none of the ditches. I just come by the creek from my place and itdon’t look like one damn bucket’s been raised since at least yestiddy. You s’pose to be taking the cap’n’s place, man! What you gonna do ’bout it, huh?”

The redfaced farmer shut up long enough to apply his mouth to the full mug of beer Daiv shoved at him, and while the newcomer was noisily drinking the cool liquid, Djahnstuhn asked, “Did you ride by his place, Djeen? Maybe the old bastard’s sick. I know he didn’t come to get no meat last time, but we run out anyway, you know, so I just didn’t pay him not coming no mind, really.

“I tell you, Djeen, you stay here and have you another quart of beer, see, and I’ll take your mare and ride over to Mosix’s. If he’s sick or hurt of somethin’, ought to be somebodygot to look after him and some-body else got to work down at the creek till Mosix can do it again, too.”

Nohbuhl, whose fondness for beer was well known, needed no further urging. Long before Daiv had walked across to the panting mare, he heard the wail of the trapdoor’s squeaky hinges and he knew that he dare not take long about this affair, or Djeen would be too drunk to mount and ride back to his farm.

Daiv was not a cruel man, however, and despite his urgency, he kept the nearly spent mare to a slow walk the length of the journey. Long before he reached the complex of ancient brick-and-concrete buildings, he could hear the loud braying of Mosix’s ass gelding and, as he neared, the blattings of the old man’s two milk goats.

Thereason for the animal’s complaints were apparent when he had dismounted and sought them out. Shaking his head in disgust at such mistreatment of livestock, he led the ass out of the stinking, dung-littered stall, opened the gate of the small paddock and urged the ass into it. Next, he drew enough buckets of water up from the well to fill the trough and forked a goodly amount of hay over the fence to the hungry, thirsty ass. More hay went into the goat pen and several more buckets of well water into the smaller trough, but he knew that this would not be enough to assuage the discomforts of the two big nannies. Their udders were hugely distended, both needed to be milked, but there was no milking pan to be seen and Daiv’s inborn frugality could not countenance wastage of the goat milk, not under any circumstances.

Observing the proprieties, Daiv walked around to the front of the dwelling and, after scraping his soles on the edge of a slab of wood placed there for the purpose, mounted to the low, roofed stoop. As he approached the front door, a large brownish tomcat jumped from off a railing and, uttering contrabasso purrs, began to rub against his leg, looking up at him from a scar-seamed face.

But there was no answer to his repeated knockings, and the door was immovable, locked and barred, from the feel of it. So, now trailed by the tomcat, he walked back around to the door closest to the stableyard. That one, too, was locked, however, and the windows were all tightly shuttered. For a moment, Daiv could only stand and swear in frustration.

Then, suddenly, he snapped his calloused fingers, smiled and set off around the complex to the high, wide, two-valved door which led into the sometime council chamber and library. Opening one of the doors, then the other for light, he wormed his way between the high stacks of sacked grain to the other end of the long, lofty room. As he reached the interior door that was his objective, he noted a ferret crouching beside a bare wooden platter. The half-tame creature stared at him briefly with beady eyes, then scuttled back among the stacks of grain sacks.

The door let into a short corridor at the end of which was another door. Immediately Daiv opened that second door, his nose told him exactly what he was going to find within the priests’ house. There was no mistaking the stink of overripe flesh.

The body, swollen and hideously discolored with rampant corruption, lay on the floor between the dining table and the hearth. Gagging at the close, fetid stench that filled the room, Daiv afforded the corpse of the onetime high priest but the briefest of glances before striding to the front door, unbarring and unlocking it, then flinging it wide open, followed by both windows.

From the place it had resumed upon the front stoop, the brown tomcat strolled into the room and, after sniffing cursorily at the body of its deceased servant, hopped up onto the dining table and began to nibble at a half-emptied bowl of hard, stale, crusted porridge, heedless of the skittering roaches whose feastings he had disturbed.

Hating to do it, Daiv put Nohbuhl’s mare to a stiff trot all the way back to the armory, thinking that he would have to send the man to the closest farm to the armory—the Gibsuhn place—to fetch back some men and boys to get Mosix underground as soon as possible; the shape the days-old cadaver was in now, Daiv would not have even considered having the women wash it and clothe it properly; the thing would likely burst or come to pieces under their ministrations anyway.

But by the time he reached the armory, Djeen Nohbuhl was roaring drunk, swilling down a mixture of winter cider and beer, all the while bellowing out what he probably thought was a song and beating time on a tabletop with the work-hardened palm of one broad hand.

Poor Daiv did not know what to do. Were he to try using Djeen’s mare again today, he would run a severe risk of foundering her. Then, announcing their arrival with exuberant whoops, the hunt came riding in, their pack animals heavy-laden with two big stags and what looked to be at least twenty rabbits.

The hunters were proud of themselves and had every right to be so, and Daiv was quick to afford their prizes at least a brief examination accompanied with words of praise, before getting down to business.

“Herb, old Mosix has done died, two, mebbe, three days ago in his house. Won’t be no proper fun’ral, ’cause he’s rotten, stinking, in there. You ride out to Gibsuhn’s and tell him I said to bring along his two biggest boys and a pickaxe and a couple of shovels, too. Tell him he’ll get Mosix’s ass for the trouble, but that them two goats is already spoke for.

“Sam, you and your brother get to skinning and butchering, hear? Gabe, you ride out to Nohbuhl’s place and tell his wife she better send in a wagon for old Djeen in there—his mare is plumb spent and he’s too drunk to get on her anyhow.”

Sam Cassidy dismounted, hitched his horse and walked back to begin offloading the kills from the pack animals, but his brother, Shawn, sat his horse in silence for a moment before speaking to Daiv.

“With just only the two of us, men’ Sam, doing it all, it’s bound to take us till dark or after, and I got reasons I gotta git back to our place sooner’n that,” he stated.

Daiv felt his anger rising, but he held it in check for the nonce, asking, “Shawn, if Captain Mehrdok had done told you what I just done told you, would you’ve told him what you just done told me?”

Shawn squirmed in his saddle and would not meet Daiv’s stare. “Well . . . but you ain’t the captain, neither.”

“No,” Daiv agreed readily, “I ain’t the captain, not even the first sergeant, but I am a sergeant, which is more rank than you or your brother got, and I’m the man—Sergeant Daiv Djahnstuhn—that our captain said was to run things here till he and First Sergeant Rehnee got back. You heared that, we all of us did. Right?”

Shawn squirmed even more, while his brother and the other two hunters, though clearly listening and watching, were just as clearly keeping out of the matter, waiting to see what happened.

“But . . . but, gee, Daiv . . . uhh, sarge,” the younger Cassidy brother finally half-whined, “I got me a dang good reason for to need to get back home early, see?”

Carefully controlling himself, Daiv strode over to the side of the young man’s mount, reached up and took a firm grip of his belt with one hand, while he showed him the other clenched into a fist.

“And you got youa even better reason to do like I tell you, boy! You git off that horse and git to work on them carcasses or I’ll drag you down and purely beat the shit out of you! Hear me?”

Turning, Daiv then strode into the armory, where he found Djeen Nohbuhl lying on his back on the floor, snoring thunderously in a pool of urine. Taking the big man’s shoulders, Daiv dragged him out onto the stoop, careful to lay the drunk on his belly so he would not strangle when he vomited, which he always eventually did after a drinking bout. Looking, without giving the appearance of so doing, he noted that Herb and Gabe were nowhere in sight, although there was a small cloud of dust up the road, while both Sam and Shawn Cassidy were manhandling one of the stags toward the skinning rack.

“Well, I’ll be dee-double-damned!” he muttered to himself as he fetched in a mop to clean up the mess on the armory floor. “Cap’n Mehrdok, he was right. It worked! I done just like he told me, and, by God, it worked. I might git the hang of all of this yet.” Then he thought and could not repress a shudder. “And I damn well better, and quick, too; ’cause if the cap’n and the first sergeant don’t never come back and with old Mosix dead and rotting, that means I’m gonna be it . . . leastways, till we gits around to having another election, that is.”

Their funerary chores accomplished, Wally Gibsuhn and his sons reined up their wagon, to the tail-board of which the late Mosix’s roan ass was now hitched, before the armory in the early twilight. From the stoop, Daiv could see that a full bale of hay, some odds and ends of ass harness, a half sack of grain and a large iron skillet had joined the spades and pick in the back of the wagon and knew that there were probably smaller items he could not see in the conveyance and in the pockets of the man and his two sons. But he figured that that had been a messy job they had done over there and that since none of the high priest’s effects would do him any good anymore, the Gibsuhns might as well have what they wanted of them, just so long as they left the two goats he meant to have driven out to his own farm tomorrow, and maybe that big rangy brown tomcat, as well. The beast had had the appearance of a good ratter.

He waved his arm and said loudly, “Wally, come on in and have some beer with me, huh?”

The short, balding farmer handed the reins to the boy who sat on the seat beside him. “You boys drive on home, straight home, hear me? I’ll ride the new ass back, later. And when I gits back, the team had better be unhitched and took care of proper, the wagon unloaded and in the shed, the harness all cleaned and hung up where it belongs and the tools all cleaned and put up. You make your brothers help you out, won’t none of it take too long, so don’t go looking at me out’n them sad, put-on eyes, hear? Give that skillet to your maw, tell her the sarge has me at the armory and I’ll be home just as soon as I can.”

As the wagon rumbled off at a good clip behind its sturdy, well-matched team of horses, Gibsuhn looped the ass’s halter to the hitchpost and climbed the steps onto the stoop. “Huh!” he grunted, on noticing the big body on the boards to one side of the stoop. “Old Djeen’s been at it again, looks like. Why cain’t he be happy unlest he gets sloppy, pissy, falling-down drunk, I wonder?”

Daiv shrugged as he led the way into the lamp-lit armory. “He’s jest like that, Wally. But if you think back on it, his paw was too, so I guess he come by it natcherl.”

When the two men were seated at one of the long board tables with mugs of the cool beer that Wally had fetched up from the cellar, Daiv said, “Wally, that was a plumb nasty job I give you and your boys to do, and I thank you for doing it so quick on such short notice. You really earned that there ass, but he looks like a good young’un with a lot of years of work in him.”

Basically honest Wally Gibsuhn choked a little on his beer, then said, his gaze fixed to a spot on the floor, “Well . . . actually, Daiv . . . uhhh . . . the ass, he won’t all we ... I... took, see.”

Daiv chuckled good-naturedly and patted the short man’s thick, hard-muscled arm. “Don’t worry none, Wally. I saw the hay and feed grain and harness and all in your wagon; Mosix had all that stuff for the ass, so if you’re getting the ass itself, you might as well take his fixin’s too.”

Still looking at the floor, the farmer muttered, “But . . . that won’t all, Daiv. I took a big ol’ iron frying pan out’n the kitchen of the priest’s house and a real steel cleaver and some them thick metal pans what don’t never rust and a axe and three flitches of bacon and . . .“

Laughing heartily, Daiv quickly reassured the guilt-ridden man. “Now, Wally, I done told you, don’t worry none. You didn’t really steal nothin’, like you seem to think you done. Old Mosix, he’s dead now, you oughta know that better’n anybody, by now, so he sure-Lord ain’t gonna ever have no more use for nothing he owned alive.

“Me, I got dibs on them two goats, and like as not, when my boys goes over there to fetch ’em home, they’ll pick up a thing or two, too, just like you and yours done, this night.

“Now, here, let’s have us another mug of beer, huh?”

Before Wally left on his newly acquired ass, Kathleen Nohbuhl and one of her hands drove a wagon along the darkening road to the armory. With hardly a word to Daiv, Wally and the Cassidys, they dragged the sodden bulk of Djeen Nohbuhl off the stoop and tumbled it over the side of the wagon, then remounted and drove off, the mare hitched on behind and her saddle tossed carelessly atop her snoring owner. Daiv was no longer worried about the misused mare, for while the Cassidys had gone about their work that afternoon, he had patiently walked and cared for her, cooling her slowly, gradually, treating her as tenderly as if she had been his own.