Time Enough For Love

VARIATIONS ON A THEME-XII

The Tale of the Adopted Daughter (Continued)

Separation lay far behind. For three weeks the little train-two wagons in tandem, twelve mules hauling, four running free-had crawled toward Rampart Range. It had been more than two weeks since they had last seen a house. They were on the high prairies now, and for several days the gap of Hopeless Pass had been in sight.

Besides sixteen mules, the little party included a German shepherd bitch and a younger dog, two female cats and a tom, a fresh milch goat with two kids and a young buck, two cocks and six hens of the hardy. Mrs. Awkins variety, a freshly bred sow, and Dora and Woodrow Smith.

The sow had tested pregnant at New Pittsburgh before Smith paid for her, test conducted by Smith himself-and Mrs. Smith had tested pregnant, too, while still at Top Dollar and before Smith cleared Starship Andy J. to leave orbit, for (Smith had not found it necessary to tell his wife this) if Dora had not tested pregnant, the ship would have waited while they tried again-then, if she had still tested negative, he would have changed plans and taken her to Secundus, there to find out why and, if possible, to correct it.

In Smith's opinion as a professional pioneer, it was not only pointless but disastrously foolhardy to attempt single-couple pioneering out of reach of other people with an infertile woman-or a couple infertile with each other, he corrected in his mind, as his own fertility had not been put to the ultimate test for fifty-odd years. While he was about it, he had looked up physical records of Dora's parents in Krausmeyer's ill-kept files, found nothing to worry him-and it had indeed worried him, as he would not have been able to cope even with anything as simple as an Rh-factor incompatibility a long way from nowhere.

But within the limited medical resources of colony and ship, the board showed all green, and it seemed likely to him that Dora bad become pregnant about twenty minutes after their informal muleback wedding.

The thought had passed through his mind that Dora might have been pregnant even sooner-but the thought was merely an amusing whimsy that bothered him not at all. Smith felt certain that he had had the Cuckoo in his nest more than once over the centuries; he had been especially careful to be a loving father to such children and had kept his mouth shut. He believed in letting women lie all they needed to, and never taxing them with it. But he believed also that Dora was incapable of this sort of lie. If Dora had been pregnant and aware of it, she might have asked to be allowed to say good-bye to him on her back-but she would have asked for exactly that. Not for a child.

No matter- If the darling had made a mistake earlier and did not know it, he felt sure that she would nevertheless have a superior baby. She was clearly superior stock herself-he, wished he had known the Brandons; they must have been ichiban-and their daughter was, as Helen had once said, "choosy." Dora would, not bed with an oaf even for fun, because, being what she was, she would not find it fun. Smith was sure that it would take rape to put an inferior child into Dora-and the rapist might sing soprano the rest of his days; her Uncle Gibbie had taught her some dirty tricks.

The pregnant sow was Smith's "calendar." If they failed to reach a spot suitable for homesteading by the time that sow littered, then they turned back that very day-no hesitation, no regrets-as that would leave them just half of Dora's pregnancy to get them back to Separation and other people."

The sow rode in the back end of the second wagon, with a sling to keep her from falling down. The dogs trotted under the wagons, or ranged aside, warning of lopers or other hazards. The cats did as they pleased, as cats do, walking or riding as suited them. The nanny and billy goats stayed close to the wheel pair; the two kids were large enough to skitter along most of the time but were privileged to ride when they tired-a loud Me-e-e-eh from the mother goat would cause Smith to swing down and hand the tired baby up to Dora. The chickens complained in a double cage over the sow's pen. The mules running free had no duties other than to keep eyes out for lopers, save that Buck was at all times grand marshal of the parade, picking the footing, bossing the other mules, carrying out Smith's orders. Mules at liberty rotated as draft animals; only Buck was never in harness. Betty and Beulah had had their feelings hurt at being required to accept harness; they were gentry of the saddle, and they knew it. But Buck had had harsh words with them and harsher nips and kicks; they had shut up and hauled.

No real driving was required; only two reins were used, one to each of the lead pair and running from them back through rings on the collars of the following mules to the seat of the leading wagon, there usually loosely secured rather than held. Although the males were all stallions, these mules did what Buck ordered. Smith had stopped at Separation and lost most of a day to trade a strong brute with good shoulders for a younger, lighter stud because the bigger mule had not been willing to accept Buck's dominance. Buck was ready to fight it out, but Smith did not let the old mule risk it; he needed Buck's brain and judgment, and would not risk Buck's spirit being broken by losing to a younger stallion-or take a chance that Buck might be injured.

In real trouble more reins would not help. If the mules panicked and ran-unlikely but possible-two humans could not hold them, even with a double handful of reins. Smith was ready at any instant to pick off his lead pair, then hope that not too many mules would break legs stumbling over the corpses and pray that the wagons would not overturn.

Smith wanted to reach their destination with all his livestock; he hoped to get there with about 80 percent including a breeding pair of each sort-but if they arrived with, enough draft animals to pull the wagons (including at least one breeding pair) plus a pair of goats, he could consider it a conditional victory and they would make their stand, to live or to die.

How many mules were "enough" was a variable. Near the end of the trip it could be as low as four-then go back and get the second wagon. But if the number of mules dropped below twelve before they conquered Hopeless Pass-turn back.

Turn back at once. Abandon one or both wagons, jettison what they could not salvage, slaughter any animals that could not make it without help, travel light with any extra mules trailing along, unwitting walking larders.

If Woodrow Wilson Smith limped back into Separation on foot, his wife riding-miscarried but still alive-it still would not be defeat. He had his hands, he bad his brain, he had the strongest of human incentives: a wife to care for and cherish. In a few years they might try Hopeless Pass again-and not make the mistakes he had made the first time.

In the meantime he was happy, with all the wealth any man could hope for.

Smith leaned out Of the wagon seat. "Hey, Buck! Supper."

"Shupper dime," Buck repeated, then called out, "Shupper dime! Shirko nigh! Shirko nigh!" The lead pair turned left, started bringing the train around in a circle.

Dora said, "The Sun is still high"

"Yes," her husband agreed, "and that's why. The Sun is high, it's very hot, the mules are tired and sweaty and hungry and thirsty. I want them to graze. Tomorrow we'll be up before dawn and rolling at first light-make as many kilometers as possible before it gets too bloody hot. Then another early stop."

"I wasn't questioning it, dear; I simply wanted to know why. I'm finding that being a schoolmarm hasn't taught me all I need to know to be a pioneer wife."

"I understood; that's why I explained. Dora, always ask me if I do anything you don't understand; you do have to know...because if something happens to me, then it'll be up to you. Just hold your questions until later if I seem to be in a hurry."

"I'll try, Woodrow-I am trying. I'm hot and thirsty myself; those poor dears must be feeling it dreadfully. If you can spare me, I'll water them while you unharness."

"No, Dora."

"But- Sorry."

"Damn it, I said always to ask why. But I was about to explain. First we let them graze an hour. That will cool them down some in spite of the Sun, and, being thirsty, they'll look for short green stuff under this tall dry stuff. They will get a little moisture out of that. Meantime I'm' going to measure the water barrels, but I know that we're going on short water rations. Should've yesterday. Dorable, you see that patch of dark green way up there below the pass? I think there water there, dry as it's been...and pray hard that there is, because I don't expect to find water between here and there. We may have no water at all the last day or so. It doesn't take a mule long to die without water and not much longer for a man."

"Woodrow, is it as bad as that?"

"It is, dear. That's why I've been studying the photomaps. The clearest ones Andy and I made a long time ago, when we surveyed this planet-but in early spring for this hemisphere. The shots Zack took for me aren't much; the Andy J. isn't equipped as a survey ship. As may be, I took this route because it looked faster. But every wash we've crossed the past ten days has been bone dry. My mistake and it may be my last one."

"Woodrow! Don't talk that way!"

"Sorry, dear. But there is always a last mistake. I'll do my damndest to see that this is not my last mistake-because it must not happen to you. I'm simply trying to impress you with how carefully we must conserve water."

"You've impressed me. I'll be most careful with cleaning up and so forth."

"I still haven't made it clear. There will be no washing at all-not a face wash, not even a hand wash. Pans and such you'll scour with dirt and grass and put them in the sunshine and hope they sterilize. Water is only for drinking. The mules go on half water rations at once, and you and I, instead of the liter and a half of liquid each day a human is supposed to need, will each try to get by on a half liter. Uh, Mrs. Whiskers will get a full ration of water; she has to make milk for her kids. If it gets too tough, we slaughter the kids and let her dry up."

"Oh, dear."

"We may not have to. But, Dora, we aren't even close to last extremities. If the going gets really tough, we kill a mule and drink its blood."

"What! Why, they're our friends!"

"Dora, listen to your old man. I promise you that we will never kill Buck, or Beulah, or Betty. If I must, it will be a mule we bought n New Pittsburgh. But if one of our three old friends die-we eat him. Her."

"I don't think I could."

"You will when you're hungry enough. If you think about the baby, inside you, you'll eat without hesitation and bless your dead friend for helping to keep your baby alive. Don't talk about what you can't do when the chips are down, dear- because you can. Did Helen ever tell you stories about the first winter here?"

"No. She said I didn't need to know."

"Could be she was mistaken. I'll tell you one of the less grisly ones. We placed-I placed-a heel-and-toe watch over the seed, grain with orders to shoot to kill. And one guard did. A drumhead court-martial exonerated the guard; the man he killed was clearly stealing seed grain-his corpse had half-chewed grain in its mouth. Not Helen's husband, by the way; he died like a gentleman-malnutrition and some fever I never identified."

Smith added, "Buck's got us hauled around. Let's get busy." He jumped down, reached up to help her. "And smile, baby, smile!-this show is being transmitted back to Earth to show those poor crowded people how easy it is to take a new planet-courtesy of DuBarry's Delicious Deodorants, of which I need a bucketful."

She smiled. "I stink worse than you do, my love."

"That's better, darling; we'll make it. It's just the first step that's a dilly. Oh, yes! No cooking fire."

"'No f-' Yes, sir."

"Nor any until we get out of this dry stuff. Don't strike a light for any reason-even if you've dropped your rubies and can't find them."

"'Rubies-' Woodrow, it was wonderful of you to give me rubies. But right now I would swap them for another barrel of water."

"No, you wouldn't, dearest, because rubies don't weigh anything and I took every barrel the mules could haul. I was delighted that Zack had those rubies along and I could give them to you. A bride should be cherished. Let's take care of these tired mules."

After they turned the mules loose, Dora tried to figure out what she could feed her husband without the use of fire while Smith got busy on the fence. The fence was not much, but having only two wagons, they could not form a proper defensive circle; the best that could be done was to angle the wagons as far as the front axle of the second wagon permitted, then surround the bivouac with a fence of sorts-sharpened stakes of brasswood, each two meters long, and held together and spaced by what passed for rope in New Pittsburgh. The result, when held up on two sides by wagons and braced to the ground along the hypotenuse, constituted a high and fairly nasty picket fence. It would not slow up a dragon, but this was not dragon country. Lopers did not like it.

Smith did not like it much, either, but it was made on New Beginnings of all-native materials, could be repaired by a man who was handy, did not weigh much, could be abandoned with no great loss-and contained no metal. Smith had beer able to buy two sturdy, boat-bodied, Conestoga-type wagons in New Pittsburgh only by offering in part payment complete hardware for two other wagons-hardware imported across the light-years in the Andy I. New Pittsburgh was far more "New" than "Pittsburgh"; there was iron ore there and coal, but its' metals industry was still primitive.

The chickens, the sow, the goats, and even the humans were tasty temptations to wild lopers, but with the goats and kids shooed inside the kraal, two alert watchdogs, and sixteen mules grazing on all sides, Smith felt reasonably secure at night. True, a loper might get a mule, but it was much more likely that the mule would get the loper-especially as other mules would close in and help stomp the carnivore. These mules did not run from a loper; they struck out at him. Smith thought that, in time, mules might clean out the varmints even more than man did, make them as scarce as mountain lions had been in his youth.

A mule-stomped loper was readily converted into loper steak, loper Stew, loper jerky-and dog and cat food, and Mrs Porky the sow enjoyed the offal-all at no loss to the mules. Smith did not care much for loper in any form; the meat was too strongly flavored for his taste-but it, was better than nothing and kept them from digging too deeply into food they had hauled along, Dora did not share her husband's distaste for loper meat; born there aid having eaten it now and then since earliest childhood, it seemed to her a normal food.

But Smith wished that he had time to hunt one of the herbivores that were the loper's natural prey-six-legged like the loper but otherwise resembling a misshapen okapi- their meat was much milder. They were called "prairie goats," which they were not, but systematic taxonomy of fauna and flora on New Beginnings had not gone far; there had been as yet no time for such intellectual luxuries. Smith had shot a prairie goat from the seat of the wagon a week earlier (now only a memory, bittersweet, of tasty tender meat). Smith did not feel justified in taking a day off to hunt until they had conquered Hopeless Pass. But he kept hoping for another chance shot.

Maybe now- Fritz! Lady Macbeth! Here!" The dogs trotted up and waited. "High sentry. Loper! Prairie-goat! Up!" The dogs immediately got on the very top of the lead wagon, making it in two jumps and a scramble, step, seat, and curved top. There they split the duty, nigh side and off side- and there they would stay until told to get down. Smith had paid a stiff price for the pair, but he had known they were good dogs; he had picked their ancestors on Earth and had fetched them with the first wave. Smith was not a "doggie" man in any fanatic sense; he simply believed that a partnership that had lasted so long on Earth would serve men equally well on strange planets.

Dora was sobered by her husband's words, but once she got busy working, she cheered up. Shortly, while trying to plan a menu, from little choice and without a cooking fire, she came across something that vexed her-good for her as it displaced her worrisome thoughts. Besides, she did not really believe that her husband could fail at anything.

She came around the end of the second wagon, crossed the little kraal to where her husband was making sure that his fence was tight, "Oh, that pesky little rooster!"

Woodrow looked around. "Hon, you look cute in just a sunbonnet."

"Not just a sunbonnet, I'm wearing hoots, too. Don't you want to hear what that nasty little rooster did?"

"I would rather discuss how you look. Adorable, that is. Nevertheless, I'm not pleased with the way you are dressed."

"What? But it's so hot, dear. Since I can't wash, I thought an. air bath might make me smell better."

You smell good to me. But an air bath is a good idea; I'll peel down, too. Your gun, dear-where's your, belt with your knife and gun?" He started shucking his overalls.

You want me to wear my gun belt now? Inside the fence? With you here to protect me?"

As self-discipline and a standard precaution, my lovely one." He hitched his own gun-and-knife belt back into place as be stepped out of his overalls, then pulled off boots and shirt and got bare save for the belt and three other weapons that did not show when he was dressed. "In more years than I like to think about I have never been unarmed except when locked in somewhere safe. I want you to acquire the habit. Not just sometimes. Always."

"All right. I left my belt on the seat; I'll get it. But, Woodrow, I'm not much of a fighter at best."

"You're fairly accurate with that needle gun up to fifty meters. And you're going to get better and better the longer you live, with me. Not just with it but with anything that shoots, cuts, burns, or even makes nasty bruises, from your bare hands to a blaster. See over there, Dorable?" He pointed to nothing but flatness. "In just seven seconds a horde of hairy savages will come pouring over the top of that rise and attack. I get a spear through my thigh and go down...then you have to fight them off for both of us. What are you going to do, you poor little girl, with your gun clear over them on the seat of that wagon?"

"Why"-she set her feet apart, put her hands back of her head, and gave a wiggle that was invented in the Garden of Eden, or perhaps just outside-"I'll' go this way at 'em!"

"Yes," Lazarus agreed thoughtfully, "that should work. If they were human. But they aren't. Their only interest in tall, beautiful, brown eyed girls is to eat them. Bones and all. Silly of them, but that's how they are."

"Yes, dear," she said docilely. "I'll go put on my gun belt. Then I'll kill the one who speared you. Then I'll see how many more I can get before they eat me."

"That's right, durable Dorable. Always take an honor guard with you. If you have to go, go down fighting. The size of your guard of honor determines your status in hell."

"Yes, dear. I'm sure I'll enjoy hell if you're there, too," She turned to fetch her weapons.

"Oh, I'll be there! They wouldn't take me anywhere else. Dora! When you put on your gun belt, take off your sun-bonnet and boots-and put on your rubies, all of them."

She paused with a foot on the step of the wagon. "My rubies, dear? Out here on the prairie?!"

"Rangy Lil, I bought those rubies for you to wear and, for me to admire you wearing them."

She flashed a smile that turned her normally serious expression into sunshine, swung on up into the wagon and disappeared. She was back quickly wearing weapons belt and rubies but had taken a few seconds to comb her hair-long and chestnut brown and shining. That she bad not been able to bathe for more than two weeks did not show, did not detract from her enchanting, youthful beauty. She paused on the step and smiled at him.

"Hold it!" he said, "Perfect! Dora, you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in all my born days."

She flashed him another smile. "I don't believe that, my husband-but I hope you will go on saying it."

"Madam, I cannot tell a lie. I say it only because it is the simple truth. Now, what were you saying about the little rooster?"

"Oh! That perverted little monster! I said he had been breaking eggs on purpose! This time I caught him. Pecking them. Two freshly laid broken eggs!"

"Royal prerogative, dear. Afraid one of them would hatch out a rooster."

"I'll wring his neck! If we had a fire, I'd do it right now. Darling, I was trying to see what we could eat cold without opening anything not already open, and it occurred to me that salt crackers crumbled into raw eggs would almost make a meal. But there were only three eggs today and he broke the two laid by his hens. I'd put plenty of grass in both cages; the one egg on the other side wasn't even cracked. Damn him. Woodrow, why do we have to have two roosters?"

"For the same reason I carry two throwing knives. Sweetheart, alter we arrive and hatch our first chicks, once they're big enough that I'm certain of a spare rooster, we can have rooster and dumplings with him as guest of honor. Not before."

"But we can't have him breaking eggs. Tonight's supper will be mostly cheese and hardtack-unless you want me to open something."

"Let's not rush it. Fritz and Lady Mac are trying to spot game right now. Prairie goat, I hope. Loper if not."

"But I can't cook meat. You said. You did say-"

"Raw, my dear. Haunch of prairie goat, chopped fine, and spread on hard crackers. Beef Tartare a la New Beginnings. Tasty. Tastes almost as good as girl." He smacked his lips.

"Well...if you can eat it, I can eat it. But half the time, Woodrow, I don't know whether you are joking or not."

"I never joke about food or women, Dorable; those are sacred subjects." He looked her up and down again. "Speaking of women, woman, dressing you in rubies is just right. But why a bracelet around your ankle?"

"Because you gave me three bracelets, sir. As well as rings and a pendant. And you said to wear all of them."

] "So I did. Where did this one come from?"

"Hey! That's not a ruby; that's me!"

"Looks like a ruby. Here's another just like it."

"Unh! Maybe I'd better take my rubies off? So we won't lose them. Or should we water the mules first?"

"You mean before we eat?"

"Uh...yes, I guess that's what. I mean. Tease."

"You're not speaking very plainly, little Dora. Tell Uncle Gibbie what you want."

"I'm- not 'little Dora.' I'm Rangy Lil, the horniest girt south of Separation-you said so yourself. I cuss and I swear and I spit between thy teeth and I'm concubine to Lazarus Long, Super Stud of the Stars and better than any six men- and you know damn well what I want, and if you pinch my nipples again, I'm likely to trip you and take it. But I guess we ought to water the mules."

Minerva, Dora was just plain nice to be around, always. It wasn't her physical beauty...which wasn't that outstanding by the usual criteria in any case-although she was utterly beautiful to me. Nor was it her enthusiastic interest in sharing "Eros"-although she was indeed enthusiastic, ready any time, and always on a short fuse. And skilled at it and got more so; Sex is a learned art, as much so as ice skating or tight wire walking or fancy diving; it is not instinct. Oh, two animals couple by instinct, but it takes intelligence and patient willingness to turn copulation into a high and lively art. Dora was good at it and got better and better, always eager to learn, free of fetishes or silly preconceptions, patiently willing to practice anything she learned or was taught-and with it that spiritual quality that turns sweaty exercise into a living sacrament.

But Minerva, love in what still goes on when you ate not horny.

Dora was good company at any time, but the tougher things were, the better companion she was. Oh, she fretted about broken eggs because chickens were her responsibility; she did not complain that she was thirsty. Instead of nagging me to do something about that rooster, she figured out what had to be done and did it-shoved all the hens in with the other rooster, tied the feet of the egg breaker and laid him aside while she moved the partition between the cages, then the smaller rooster was in solitary confinement and we lost no more eggs.

But the truly tough parts lay ahead of us; she did not fret at all during those, or ever turn balky when I did not have time to explain. Minerva, much of the trek was slow death, other parts were sudden dangers that could have been, quick death. She was endlessly patient in the former, always kept her head and helped in the latter. Dear, you are awesomely learned-but you are a city girl and you've always been on a civilized planet; perhaps I had better explain some things.

Maybe you have been asking yourself: "Is this trip necessary?"-and; if it is, why do it the hard way?

"Necessary-" Having done something a Howard should never do, namely, marry an ephemeral, I had three choices: Take her to live among Howards. Dora rejected that-although I would have tried to talk her out of it if she had said Yes. A short-timer alone in a community of the long-lived is almost certain to go into suicidal depression; I had seen it first in my friend Slayton Ford and I've seen it many times since then. I did not want this to happen to Dora. Whether the number of her years was ten or a thousand, I wanted her to enjoy them.

Or we could stay in Top Dollar or-the same thing-near one of the villages of that small piece of the planet that was settled then. I almost chose this, as the "Bill Smith" dodge would work for that-for a time.

But only for a short time. The few Howards on New Beginnings-the Magees and three other families as I recall- had all arrived incognito-"masquerade" in Howard jargon- and by simple dodges they could shuffle things around and never be 'caught' at it. Grandmother Magee could "die," then show up as "Deborah Simpson" on another Howard homestead. The more people there were on the planet, the easier it was to pull this-especially after the fourth wave arrived, all of them cold-sleep cargo and thereby never having gotten acquainted with each other.

But "Bill Smith" was married to an ephemeral. If I stayed around the settled parts, I would have to be most careful to keep my hair dyed-not just on my head but all over my body lest some accident give me away-and then be careful to "age" as fast as my wife did. Worse, I would have to avoid people who had known "Ernest Gibbons" well- most of Top Dollar, that is to say-or someone would see my profile and hear my voice and start wondering, as I had had no chance for plastic surgery or anything of that sort. At other times, when it was needful to change name and identity, I had always changed location as well, that being the only foolproof way to do it. Even plastic surgery won't disguise me very long; I regenerate too easily. I once had my nose bobbed (the alternative seemed to involve having my neck bobbed); ten years later it was just as it is now, big and ugly.

Not that I was too jumpy about being disclosed as a Howard. But if I was going to have to live in masquerade, the more carefully I used these cosmetic tricks, the more Dora's nose would be rubbed in the fact that I was different from her-different in the saddest way of all, a husband and a wife who ran on very different time rates.

Minerva, it seemed to me that the only way I could give my pretty new wife a square shake was by taking her far away from both sorts of people, long-lived and short, where I could quit pretending and we could ignore the difference, forget it and be happy. So I decided to take her clear out of reach of other people, decided this before we got back to town the very day I married her.

It seemed the best answer to an otherwise impossible situation, but one not as irreversible as a parachute jump if she got too lonely, if she grew to hate the sight of my ugly mug, I could bring her out to the settlements again, still young enough to hook another husband. I had this in, mind, Minerva, as some of my wives have grown tired of me fairly quickly. I had arranged with Zack Briggs, at the same time I had arranged with John Magee to act as factor for Zack-arranged with Zack to ask John what had happened to "Bill Smith" and the little schoolmarm? It was possible that I would need a ride off-planet someday.

But why didn't I have Zack put us down on the spot on the map I had picked as being our likely place of settlement?- with everything we would need to start farming: and thereby avoid a long, dangerous trek. Not risk death by thirst, or by lopers, or the treacheries of mountains, or whatever.

Minerva, this was a long time ago and I can explain only in terms of technology available there and then. The Andy J. could not land; she received her overhauls in orbit around Secundus or some other advanced planet. Her cargo boat could land on any big flat field but required a minimum of a radar-corner reflector to home on, then had to have many metric tons of water to lift off again. The captain's gig was the only boat in the Andy J. capable of landing anywhere a skilled pilot could put her down, then lift off without help. But her cargo capacity was about two postage stamps-whereas I needed mules and plows and a load of other things.

Besides, I needed to learn how to get out of those mountains by going into them. I could not take Dora into there without being reasonably sure that I could fetch her out again. Not fair! It's no sin not to be pioneer-mother material-but it is tragic for both husband and wife to find it out too late.

So we did not do it the bard way; we did it the only way for that time 'and place. But I have never put the effort into a mass calculation for a spaceship at liftoff that I put into deciding what to take, what to do without, for that trek. First, the basic parameter: how many wagons in the train? I wanted three wagons so badly I could taste it. A third wagon would mean luxuries for Dora, more tools for me, more books and such for both of us, and (best!) a precut one-room house to get my pregnant bride out of the weather almost instantly at the other end.

But three wagons meant eighteen mules hauling, plus spare mules-~add six by rule-of-thumb-which meant half again as much, time spent harnessing and unharnessing, watering the animals, taking care of them otherwise. Add enough Wagons and mules and at some point your day's march is zero; one man can't handle the work. Worse, there would be places in the mountains where I would have to unshackle the wagons, move them one at a time to a more open place- go back for each wagon left behind, bring it up-a process that would take twice as long for a three-wagon train as for a two-wagon one, and would happen oftener, even much oftener, with three wagons than with two. At that rate we might have three babies born en route instead of getting there before our first one was born.

I was saved from such folly by the fact only two trekking wagons were available in New Pittsburgh. I think I would have resisted temptation anyhow-but I had with me in the light wagon we drove from Top Dollar, the hardware for three, then I spent that extra hardware on other, things, bartering it through the wainwright. I could not wait while he built a third wagon; both the season of the year and the season of Dora's womb gave me deadlines I had to meet.

There is much to be said for just one wagon-standard equipment over many centuries and on several planets for one family in overland migration if they travel in a party.

I've led such marches.

But one wagon by itself-One accident can be disaster. Two wagons offer more than twice as much to work with at the other end, plus life insurance on the march. You can lose one wagon, regroup, and keep going.

So I planned for two wagons, Minerva, even though I had Zack debit me with three sets of 'Stoga hardware, then did not sell that third set until the last minute.

Here's how you load a wagon train for survival: First, list everything that you expect to need and everything that you would like to take:

Wagons, spare wheels, spare axles

Mules, harness, spare hardware and harness leather, saddles

Water

Food

Clothing

Blankets

Weapons, ammunition, repair kit

Medicines, drugs, surgical instruments, bandages

Books

Plows

Harrow

Field Rake

Shovels, hand rakes, hoes, seeders, three- five- & seven-tine forks

Harvester

Blacksmith's tools

Carpentry tools

Iron cookstove

Water closet, self-flushing type

Oil lamps

Windmill & pump

Sawmill run by windpower

Leatherworking & harness-repair tools

Bed, table, chain, dishes, pots, pans, eating & cooking gear

Binoculars, microscope, water-testing kit

Grindstone

Wheelbarrow

Churn

Buckets, sieves, assorted small hardware

Milk cow & bull

Chickens

Salt for stock & for people

Packaged yeast, yeast starter

Seed grain, several sorts

Grinder for whole-grain flour, meat grinder

Don't stop there; think big. Never mind the fact that you've already overloaded a much longer wagon train. Search your imagination, check the manifests of the Andy J., search the ship itself, look, over the stock in Rick's General Store, talk with John Magee and look over his house and farm and outbuildings-if you forget it now, it's impossible to go back for it.

Musical instruments, writing materials, diaries, calendars

Baby clothes, layettes

Spinning wheel, loom, sewing materials-sheep!

Tannin & leather-curing materials and tools

Clocks, watches

Root vegetables, rooted fruit-tree seedlings, other seed

Etc. etc. etc...

Now start trimming-start swapping-start figuring weights.

Cut out the bull, the cow, the sheep; substitute goats with hair long enough to be worth cutting. Hey, you missed shears!

The blacksmith's shop stays but gets trimmed down to an anvil and minimum tools-a bellows you must make. In general anything of wood is scratched, but a small supply of wrought-iron stock, heavy as it is, must be hauled; you'll be making things you didn't know you could.

The harvester becomes a scythe with handle and cradle, three spare blades; the field rake is scratched.

The windmill stays, and so does the sawmill (surprise!)-but only as minimum hardware; you won't tackle either one soon.

Books-Which of those books can you live without, Dora?

Halve the amount of clothing, double up on -shoes and add more boots and don't forget children's shoes. Yes, I know how to make moccasins, mukluks, and such; add waxed thread. Yes, we do have to have block-and-tackle and the best glass-and-plastic lines we can buy, or we won't get through the pass. Money is nothing; weight and cubage are all that count-our total wealth is what mules can take through that notch.

Minerva, it was lucky for me, lucky for Dora, that I was on my sixth pioneering venture and that I had planned how to load spaceships many years before I ever loaded a covered wagon-for the principles are the same; spaceships are the covered wagons of the Galaxy. Get it down to the weight the mules can haul, then chop off 10 percent no matter how it hurts; a broken axle-when, you can't replace it-might as well be a broken neck.

Then add more water to bring it up to 95 percent; the load of water drops off every day.

Knitting needles! Can Dora knit? If not, teach her. I've spent many a lonely hour in space knitting sweaters and socks. Yarn? It will be a long time before Dora can tease goat shearings into good yarn-and she can knit for the baby while we travel; keep her happy. Yarn doesn't weigh much.

Wooden needles can be made; even curved metal needles can be shaped from scraps. But pick up both sorts from Rick's Store.

Oh my God, I almost missed taking an ax!

Ax heads and one handle, brush hook, pick-mattock-Minerva, I added and trimmed and discarded, and weighed every item at New Pittsburgh-and we weren't three kilometers out of there headed for Separation before I knew I had us overloaded. That night we stopped at a homesteader's cabin, and I traded a new thirty-kilo anvil for his fifteen-kilo one, traded even, with the pound of flesh nearest my heart tossed in for good measure. I swapped other heavy items that we would miss later for a smoked ham and a side of bacon and more corn for the mules-the last being emergency rations.

We lightened the loads again at Separation, and I took another water barrel in trade and filled it because I now had room for another and knew that too heavy a load of water was self-correcting.

I think that extra barrel saved our lives.

The patch of green that Lazarus-Woodrow had pointed out up near the notch of Hopeless Pass proved to be farther away in travel time than he had hoped. On the last day that they struggled toward it neither man nor mule had had anything to drink since dawn the day before. Smith felt lightheaded; the mules were hardly fit to work, they plodded slowly, heads down.

Dora wanted to stop drinking when her husband did. He said to her: "Listen to me, you stupid little tart, you're pregnant. Understand me? Or will it take a fat lip to convince you? I held out four liters when we served the mules; you saw me."

"I don't need four liters, Woodrow."

"Shut up. That's for you, and the nanny goat, and the chickens. And the cats-cats don't take much. DorabIe, that much water means nothing split among sixteen mules, but it will go a long way among you small fry."

"Yes, sir. How about Mrs. Porky?"

"Oh, that damned sow! Uh...I'll give her a half a liter when we stop tonight and I'll serve her myself. She's likely to kick it over and take your thumb off, the mood she's in. And I'll serve you myself, measure it out, and watch you drink it."

But after a long day and a restless night and then an endless day, they were at last among the first of the trees. It seemed almost cool, and Smith felt that he could smell water-somewhere. He could not see any. "Buck! Oh, Buck! Circle!"

The boss mule did not answer; he bad not talked all day. But he brought the column around, cornered the wagons, and nudged, the lead pair into the V to be unharnessed.

Smith called the dogs and told them to hunt for water, then started unharnessing. Silently his wife joined him, serving the off mule of each pair while Smith cleared the nigh mule. He appreciated her silence. Dora was, he thought, telepathic to emotions.

Now if I were water somewhere around here, where would I be? Witch for it? Or search the surface first? He felt fairly sure that no stream led away from this stand of trees, but he could not be certain without hiking all the downhill side. Saddle Beulah? Shucks, Beulah was worse off than he was. He started unlashing rolled sections of spike fence from the sides of the second wagon. He had not seen a loper for three days, which meant to him that they were three days closer to their next trouble with the beasts. "Dora, if you feel up to it, you can give me a hand with this."

She made no comment on the fact that her husband had never before let her help erect the kraal; she simply worried about how drawn and tired he looked and thought about the quarter liter of water she had stolen and hidden-how could she persuade him to drink it?

They were just done when Fritz set up an excited yipping in the distance.

Minerva, it was a water bole-a trickle that came out of a rocky face, ran a couple of meters and formed a pool with no outlet. None that time of year, I should say, as I could see where it overflowed in flood season. I could see also plenty of animal sign-loper tracks and prairie goat and more that

I could not identify. I had a feeling that there might be eyes on me, and I tried to grow eyes in the back of my head. It was dusky near the spring; trees and undergrowth were thicker and the Sun was getting low.

I was in a dilemma. I don't know how it happened that one of the free mules had not found this bole as soon or sooner than the dogs; mules can smell water. But mules were certain to be there soon, and I did not want them to drink too fast. Sensible as a mule is, he'll drink too fast and too much if he is very thirsty. These mules were extremely thirsty; I wanted to watch each one myself, not let one founder.

Besides that I did not want them walking into that pool; it was clear, seemed clean.

The dogs finished drinking. I looked at Fritz and wished that he could talk as well as a mule. Did I have anything to write on? No, not a durn thing! If I told him to fetch Dora, Fritz wouId try-but would she come? I had told her flatly to stay in the kraal till I got back. Minerva, I wasn't thinking straight; the heat and no water had got to me. I should have given Dora contingency instructions...because if I stayed away too long and it started to get dark, she was going to come looking for me no matter what.

Hell, I hadn't even fetched a bucket!

In the meantime I at least had sense enough to scoop up and drink a couple of handfuls of water, Gideon style. That seemed to clear my head some.

I dropped the straps of my overalls, got my shirt off, soaked it in water, and gave it to Fritz. "Find Dora! Fetch Dora! Fast!" I think he thought I had gone nuts, but he left, carrying that wet shirt.

Then the first mule showed up-old Buck, praise Allah!- and I ruined a hat.

That hat Zack had fetched as a present for me. It was alleged to be an all-weather hat, so porous it would let air in, yet so water-repellent that it would keep your head dry in a pouring rain. The former allegation was only moderately true; the latter I had not had a chance to test.

Buck snorted and was all for going into the water up to his knees; I stopped him. Then I offered him a hatful of water. Then a second. And a third.

"Enough for now, Buck. Assembly. Water call."

With his throat wet Buck could do it. He let out a trumpeting bellow that was mule talk, not English, and I won't attempt to reproduce it, but it meant "Line up for water" and nothing else. "Fall in to be harnessed" was another soil of bellow.

Then I was trying to cope with a dozen-odd thirst-crazed mules. But between me, Buck, Beulah who was Buck's straw boss, Lady Macbeth who was used to helping Buck too-and a hat that wasn't quite all that waterproof-we made it. I never did learn how seniority was established among mule's, but the mules knew and Buck enforced it and water call always found them queued up in the same order, and heaven help the youngster who tried crowd in out of turn; the least he could expect was a nipped ear.

By the time the last had been given a hatful of water my hat was a mess-but here came Dora with Fritz, her needle gun in her right fist, and, glory be!-two buckets in her left hand. "Water call!" I told my top sergeant. "Line 'em up again, Buck!"

With two buckets and two of us working we got a full bucket into each mule pretty rapidly. Then I got my shirt back from Fritz, scrubbed out the buckets a bit, filled them, and announced a third water call, telling Buck to let them drink from the pond.

He did so, but he still maintained discipline. As Dora and I left, each with a bucket of water in one hand and a drawn gun in the other, Buck was still requiring them to drink one at a time, by seniority.

It was nearly sundown when Dora and I and the dogs got back to the wagons, almost full dark as we finished watering goats and sow and cats and chickens. Then we celebrated. Minerva, I swear solemnly: on the half bucket of water we saved for ourselves Dora and I got stinkin' drunk.

Despite earlier resolutions not to stop short of the pass, we bivouacked there three days-but very useful days. The mules grazed steadily and filled out, plenty of water, plenty of forage. I shot a prairie goat at the water hole; what we couldn't eat, Dora sliced and dried as jerky. I filled all the barrels-not as easy as it sounds as Buck and I had to work out a route to the water hole, then I had to chop some, then I had to take the wagons in one at a time; it took me a day and a half.

But we had cooked fresh meat and all we could eat-and hot baths! With soap. With shampoos. With a shave for me. I carried Dora's big iron kettle to the pool, she fetched a bucket, I built a fire-then we took turns getting the stink off, one guarding while the other washed.

When we rolled toward the pass the morning of the fourth day, we were not only in fine shape, but Dora and I smelled good and kept telling each other so, in high spirits.

We were never again short of water. There was snow somewhere above us; you could feel it in the breeze and sometimes catch a distant glimpse of white in a saddle between peaks. The higher we got, the oftener we encountered rivulets, water that never reached the prairie in so dry a year. The forage was green and good.

We stopped in a little alp close to the pass. There I left Dora with the wagons and the mules and with flat-footed instructions about what to do in case I did not come back. "I expect to be back by dark. If I am not, you can wait a week. No longer. Understand me?"

"I understand you."

"All right. At the end of a week, lighten the first wagon by chucking out anything you can do without on trek. Put all food into that wagon, empty the barrels in the second wagon and put them in the first wagon, turn the sow and the chickens loose, and head back. Fill all your barrels at that trickle we crossed earlier today. After that, don't stop for anything; roll all day from dawn till dark. You should reach Separation in half the time it took to get us up here. Okay?"

"No, sir."

Minerva, a few centuries earlier I would have started to boil up at that point. But I had learned. It took me about a tenth of a second to realize that I could not make her do anything-if I were gone-and that a promise made under duress won't hold. "All right, Dora, tell me why not and what you intend to do instead. If I don't like it, perhaps we both will start back for Separation."

'"Woodrow, while you did not say so, you are asking me to do what I should do-and I would do!-if I were a widow."

I nodded. "Yes, that's right. Dearest, if I'm not back in a week, you're a widow. No possible doubt."

"I understand that. I also understand why you are leaving the wagons here; you can't be sure that you can turn them around higher up."

"Yes. That's probably what happened to earlier parties- reached a place where they couldn't go forward and couldn't turn around...then tried one or the other and went over."

"Yes. But, my husband, you mean to be gone only one day-half a day out, half a day back. Woodrow, I won't assume that you are dead-I can't!" She looked at me steadily and her eyes filled with tears, but she did not cry. "I must see your dear body, I must be certain. If I am certain, I will go back to Separation as fast and as safely as possible. And then to the Magees as you have told me, and have your child and bring him up to be as much like his father as possible. But I must know."

"Dora, Dora! In one week you will know. No need to look for my bones."

"May I finish, sir? If you aren't back tonight, I'm on my own. At dawn tomorrow I start out on Betty, with another saddle mule following. At noon I turn back.

"Perhaps, if I can't find you, I'll find a spot higher up where I can take one wagon and turn it around. If I find such a spot, I'll move one wagon up and use it as a base and look farther. I could have missed your track. Or I might have followed mule tracks-but you aren't on the mule. Whatever it is, I'll search and search again. Until there's no hope at all! Then...I will go to Separation as fast as mules can get me there.

"But, my darling, if you are alive-maybe with a broken leg but alive-if you still have a knife or even your bare hands, I don't believe that a loper or anything can kill you. If you are alive, I'll find you. I will!"

So I backed down and checked watches with her and agreed on what time I would turn back. Then Buck and I, with me up on Beulah, set out to scout ahead.

Minerva, at least four parties had tried that pass; none had come back. I'm certain enough that they each failed from being too eager, not patient enough, unwilling to turn back when the risk was too great.

Patience I have learned. The centuries may not give a man wisdom, but he acquires patience or he doesn't live through them: That first morning we found the first spot that was too tight. Oh, someone had blasted there and probably got around that turn. But it was too narrow to be safe, so I blasted some more. Nobody in his right mind takes a wagon into the mountains without dynamite or some such; you can't nibble at solid rock with a toothpick, or even a pickax, without risking being still up there when the snows come.

I was not using dynamite. Oh, anyone with a modicum of chemistry can make both dynamite and 'black powder,' and I planned to do both-later. What I had with me was a more efficient and more flexible blasting jelly-and not shock-sensitive, perfectly safe in wagon and saddlebag.

I placed that first charge in a crack where I thought it would do the most good, set the fuse but did not light it, then walked both mules back around the bend and exerted my histrionic talent to its limit to explain to Buck and Beulah that there was going to be a loud noise, a bang/-but it could hot hurt them, so don't worry. Then I went back, lit the fuse, hurried back to them and was in time to have an arm on each neck-watched my watch. "Now!" I said, and the mountain obliged me with Ka-boom!

Beulah shivered but was steady. Buck said inquiringly, Paaang?

I agreed. He nodded and went back to cropping leaves.

We three went up and took a look. Nice and wide now- Not very level, but three tiny blasts took care of that. "What do you think, Buck?"

He looked carefully up and down trail. "Doo wagon?"

"One wagon."

"Ogay."

We explored a little farther, planned the next day's work; then I turned back at the time promised, was home early.

It took me a week to make a couple of kilometers safe to another little alp, a grassy pocket big enough to turn one wagon around at a time. Then it took all of a long day to move our wagons, one at a time, to this next base. Someone had made it that far; I found a broken wagon wheel-salvaged the steel tire and the hub. It went on that way, day after day, slowly, tediously, and at last we were through the notch and headed-mostly-downhill.

But that was worse, not better. The river I had been sure was there, by photomaps from space, was far below us, and we still had to go down, down, down, and follow it a long way before we would reach the place where the gorge opened out into valley suitable for homesteading. More blasting, lots of brush chopping, and sometimes I had to blast trees. But the nastiest part was rappelling those wagons down the steepest places. I didn't mind steep places going uphill (which we still encountered); a twelve-mule team can drag a single wagon up any slope they can dig their hooves into. But downhill-

Certainly those wagons had brakes. But if the grade is steep, the wagon slides on its tires-then goes over the edge, mules and all.

I couldn't let that happen even once. Not ever risk letting it happen. We could lose one wagon and six mules and still go on. But I was not expendable. (Dora would not be in the wagon.) If that wagon cut loose, my chances of jumping clear would be so-so.

If the grade was steep enough to give me even a trace of doubt that I could hold a wagon with its brakes, we did it the hard way: used that expensive imported line to check it down such pitches. Lead the line out fair and free for running, pass the bitter end three times around a tree stout enough to anchor it, secure it to the rear axle-then our four steadiest mules, Ken and Daisy, Beau and Belle, would take the wagon down at a slow walk (no driver) following Buck, while I kept tension on the line, paying it out very slowly.

If terrain permitted, Dora on Betty would take station halfway down to relay orders to Buck. But I could not permit her to be on the trail itself; if that line parted, it would whip. So maybe half the time Buck and I worked without liaison, doing it dead slow and depending on his judgment.

If there was not a sound anchor tree properly positioned-and it seems to me that this happened more often than not-then we had to wait while I worked something out. This could be anything: a sling between two trees, then rig a fair-lead to a third tree-A bare-rock anchor using driven pitons-I hated these as I bad to do my checking right at the rear axle, walking behind, and God help us all if I stumbled. Then that was always followed by the time-consuming chore of salvaging those pitons-the harder the rock, the better the anchor, but the tougher the job of getting them out-and I had to get them out; I would need them farther along.

'Sometimes no trees and no rock- Once the anchor was twelve mules faced back along the trail, with Dora soothing them while I checked at a rear axle and Buck controlled the progress.

On the prairie we often made thirty kilometers a day. Once we were through Hopeless Pass and had started down the gorge the distance made good over the ground could be zero for days on end while I prepared the trail ahead, then up to as high as ten kilometers if there were no steep pitches that required rappelling down by line. I used just one unbreakable rule: The trail had to be fully prepared from one turnaround base to the next before a wagon was moved.

Minerva, it was so confounded slow that my "calendar" caught up with me; the sow 'littered-and we were not out of the mountains.

I don't recall ever making a harder decision. Dora was in good shape, but she was halfway through her pregnancy.

Turn back (as I had promised myself, without telling her)- or push on and hope to reach lower and fairly level ground before she came to term? Which would be easier on her?

I had to consult her-but I had to decide. Responsibility cannot be shared. I knew how she would vote before I took the matter up with her: Push on.

But that would be simply her gallant courage; I was the one with experience both in wilderness trekking and in childbirth problems.

I studied those photomaps again without learning anything new. Somewhere ahead the gorge opened out into a broad river valley-but how far? I didn't know because I didn't know where we were. We had started with an odometer on the right rear wheel of the lead wagon; I had reset it to zero at the pass-and it had lasted only a day or two; a rock or something did it in. I didn't even know how much altitude we had managed to drop since the pass, or how much more we must lose to get down.

Livestock and equipment: fair. We had lost two mules. Pretty Girl had wandered over the edge one night and broken a leg; all I could do for her was to put her out of her misery. I didn't butcher her because we had fresh meat and I could not do it where the other mules could not see it, anyhow. John Barleycorn had simply upped and died one night-or possibly lost to a loper; he was partly eaten when we found him.

Three hens were dead and two piglets failed to make it, but the sow seemed willing to suckle the others.

I had only two spare wheels left. Lose two more and the, next broken wheel meant abandoning one wagon.

It was the wheels that made up my mind.

(Omitted: approximately 7,000 words which reiterate difficulties in getting down the gorge.)

When we came out on that plateau, we could see the valley stretching out before us. A beautiful valley, Minerva, wide and green and lovely-thousands and thousands of hectares of ideal farmland. The river from the gorge, tame now, meandering lazily between low banks. Facing us, a long, long way off, was a high peak crowned with snow. Its snow line let me guess how high it was-around six thousand meters, for we had now dropped down into subtropics, and only a very high mountain could keep so much snow through a long and very hot summer.

That beautiful mountain, that lush green valley, gave me a feeling of déjà vu. Then I placed it: Mount Hood in the land of my birth back on old Earth, as I had first seen it as a young man. But this valley, this snowcapped peak, had never before been seen by men.

I called out to Buck to halt the march. "Dorable, we're home; in sight of it, somewhere down in that valley."

'Home,'" she repeated. "Oh, my darling!"

"Don't sniffle."

"I wasn't sniffling!" she answered, smiling. "But I've got an awful good cry saved up and when I get time to, I'm going to use it."

"All right, dear," I agreed, "when you have time. Let's name that mountain 'Dora Mountain.'"

She looked thoughtful. "No, that's not its name. That's Mount Hope. And all this below is Happy Valley."

"Durable Dora, you're incurably sentimental."

"You should talk!" She patted her belly, swollen almost to term. "That's Happy. Valley because it's where I'm going to have this hungry little beast...and that's Mount Hope because it is."

Buck had come back to the first wagon and was waiting to find out why we had stopped. "Buck," I said, pointing, "that's home out there. We made it. Home, boy. Farm."

Buck looked out over the valley. "Ogay."

-in his sleep, Minerva. Not lopers, there wasn't a mark on Buck. Massive coronary, I think, although I didn't cut him open to find out. He was simply old and tired. Before we left, I had tried to put him to pasture with John Magee. But Buck didn't want that. We were his family, Dora and Beulah and I, and he wanted to come along. So I made him mule boss and didn't work him-I mean I never rode him and never had him in harness. He did work, as mule boss, and his patient good judgment got us safely to Happy Valley.

We would not have made it without him.

Maybe he could have lived a few years longer turned out to pasture. Or he might have pined away from loneliness soon after we left. Who's to judge?

I didn't even consider butchering him; I think Dora would have miscarried it I had so much as broached the idea. But it is foolish to bury a mule when lopers and weather will soon take care of his carcass. So I buried him.

It takes an hellacious big hole to bury a mule; If it hadn't been soft river-bottom loam, I'd be there yet.

But first I had to deal with personnel problems. Ken was just junior to Beulah in the water queue and was a steady, strong mule who talked fairly well. On the other hand, Beulah had been Buck's straw boss the whole trek-but I could not recall a gang of mules bossed by a mare.

Minerva, with H. sapiens this would not matter, at least not today on Secundus. But with some sorts of animals it does matter. A boss elephant is female. A boss chicken is, a cock, not a hen. A boss dog can be either sex. In a breed where sex controls the matter a man had better by a damn sight go along with their ways.

I decided to see if Beulah could swing it, so I told her to line 'em up for harness, both as a test and because I wanted to move the mules out of sight while I buried Buck-they were nervy and restless; the boss mule's death had upset them.

I don't 'know what mules think about death, but they are not indifferent to it.

She promptly got busy, and I kept an eye on Kenny. He accepted it, took his usual place by Daisy. Once I had them harnessed, Beulah was the only one left over, three mules dead now.

I told Dora that I Wanted them moved a few hundred meters away. Would she handle it, with Beulah as march boss? Or would she feel safer if I did it?-and ran into a second problem: Dora wanted to be present when I buried Buck. More than that-"Woodrow, I can help dig. Buck was my friend, too, you know."

I said, "Dora, I'll put up with anything at all from a pregnant woman except allowing her to do something that would hurt her."

"But, dearest, I feel okay, physically-it's just that I'm dreadfully upset over Buck. So I want to help."

"I think you are in good shape, too, and I want you to stay that way. You can help best by staying in the wagon. Dora, I haven't any' way to take care of a premature baby, and I don't want to have to bury a baby as well as Buck."

Her eyes widened. "You think that would happen?"

"Sweetheart, I don't know. I've known women to hang onto babies under unbelievable hardships. I've seen others lose babies for no reason that I could see. The only rule I have about it is: Don't take unnecessary chances. This one is not necessary."

So once again we replanned things to suit both of us, though it took an extra hour. I unshackled the second wagon and set up the fence again, put the four goats inside the fence, and left Dora in that wagon. Then I drove the first wagon three or four hundred meters away, unharnessed the mules, and told Beulah to keep them together-and told Ken to help her, and left Fritz to help her, too, and took Lady MacBeth with me to watch for lopers or whatever. The visibility was good-no brush, no high grass; the place looked like a tended park. But I was going to be down in a hole; I didn't want something sneaking up on me or on the wagon. "Lady Macbeth. High sentry. Up!"

By agreement Dora stayed in the wagon.

It took all that day to take care of our old friend, with a stop for lunch and a few short breaks for water and to catch my breath in the shade of the wagon-breaks I shared with Lady Mac, letting her get down each time I came up. Plus one interruption-It was rnidafternoon and I had dug almost enough hole when Lady Mac barked for me. I was up out of that hole fast, blaster in hand, expecting lopers.

Just a dragon- I wasn't especially surprised, Minerva; the well-cropped state of the turf, almost like a lawn, seemed to indicate dragon rather than prairie goat. Those dragons are not dangerous unless one happens to fall on you. They are slow, stupid, and strictly vegetarian. Oh, they're ugly enough to be frightening; they look like six-legged triceratops. But that's all. Lopers left them alone because biting armor is unrewarding.

I joined Dora at the wagon. "Ever seen one, hon?"

"Not up close. Goodness, it's huge."

"It's a big one, all right. But it will probably turn away. I won't waste a charge on it if I don't have to."

But the durned thing did not turn away. Minerva, I think it was so stupid that it mistook the wagon for a lady dragon.

Or the other way around, it is hard to tell male from female. But they are definitely bisexual; two dragons humping is a remarkable sight.

When it got within a hundred meters, I let myself out the fence and took Lady Mac along, as she was quiveringly eager. I doubt if she had ever seen one; they were cleaned out around Top Dollar long before she was whelped. She danced up to it, barking but wary.

I hoped that Lady would cause it to turn aside, but this misshapen rhinoceros paid no attention; it lumbered slowly along, straight for the wagon. So I tickled it with my needle gun between where it should have had lips, to get its attention. It stopped, astounded I think, and opened its mouth wide. That was what I needed, as I did not want to waste maximum power blasting through that armored hide. So-Blaster at minimum, right into its mouth: Scratch one dragon.

It stood there a moment, then slowly collapsed. I called Lady and went back to the fence. Dora was waiting. "May I go look at it?" I glanced at the Sun. "Sweetheart, I'm going to be pushed to take care of Buck before dark, then fetch the mules back and move us on a way. Unless you are willing to bivouac, with the grave on one side and a dead dragon on the other?"

She did not insist, and I got back to work. In another hour I had it deep enough and wide enough-got out block-and-tackle, a triple purchase, secured it to the rear axle, tied Buck's hind feet together, hooked over the tie and took up the slack.

Dora had come out with me. "Just a moment, dear." She stopped to pat Buck's neck, then leaned down and kissed his forehead. "All right, Woodrow. Now."

I heaved on the line. For a moment I thought the wagon would move despite the brakes being locked. Then, Buck started to slide, and fell into his grave. I shook the hook loose, then backfilled fast, closing in twenty minutes a hole it had taken me most of the day to dig. Dora waited.

I finished. "Up into the wagon, Dorable; that's it."

"Lazarus, I wish I knew something to say. Do you?"

I thought about it. I had heard a thousand burial services; most of them I did not like. So I made up one. "Whatever God there be, please take care of this fine person. He always did his best. Amen."

(Omitted)

-even those first years weren't too hard, as Happy Valley would grow anything, two and three crops a year. But we should have named it "Dragon Valley."

Lopers were bad enough, especially the small lopers that hunted in packs which we found on that side of Raxnpa Range. 'But those damned dragons! They almost drove me out of my skull. When you've lost the same potato patch four times running, it begins to wear.

Lopers I could poison and did. I could trap them, too, if I changed style every time. Or I could put out bait at night and sit quietly and get most of a pack, silently, with a needle gun. I could do lots of things and did, and the mules learned to cope with them, too, sleeping closer together at night an always with one on watch, like quail or baboon. Whenever I beard the bellow that meant "Loper!" 'I always came awake fast and tried to join the fun-but the mules rarely left me any; they not only could stomp them, but they could outrun them and get some or all of a pack that tried to escape. We lost three mules and six goats to lopers, but the lopers got the news and started giving us a wide berth.

But those dragons! Too big to trap and would not take poison; salad was all they were after. But what one dragon can do to a cornfield in one night shouldn't happen to Sodom and Gomorrah. Bow-and-arrow was futile against them, and a needle gun just tickled them. I could kill one with a blaster at full power right through the armor, or minimum power the way I got that first one if I could get my target to open its mouth. But unlike lopers, they were too stupid to stay away when they were losing.

The first summer I was able to farm I killed more than hundred dragons in trying to save my crops...which was defeat for me and a victory for the dragons. Not only was the stench terrible (what can you do with a carcass that big?) but, far worse, I was running out of charges and they didn't seem to be running out of dragons.

No power. Buck's River did not have enough head on it where we settled to think about trying to build a water wheel even if I cannibalized one wagon to build it. The windmill had fetched was in fact nothing but gears and other hardware the mill itself I would have to build, from sails to tower. Bu until I had power I had no way to recharge power packs.

Dora solved it. We were still living in that first compound nothing but a high adobe wall just big enough to surround the wagons and to bring the goats inside at night, while we slept in the first wagon along with baby Zack and cooked in a clay Dutch oven-and between smoke, and goats and chickens and the sour smells babies can't help making and the cesspit that bad to be inside the wall-well, the stench of dead dragons wasn't too noticeable.

We were finishing supper, Dora dressed in her rubies as always for supper, and were watching the moons and the stars coming out-best time of day, always, except that when I should have been admiring our firstborn at suck and enjoying the sky, I was grousing about power and what in hell I could do about those pesky dragons.

I had ticked off several simple ways to produce power- simple if you are on a civilized planet or even at a place like New Pittsburgh with its coal and its infant metals industry- when I happened to use a very old-fashioned term. Instead of talking about kilowatts or megadynecentimeters per second or such, I had remarked that I would settle for ten horsepower any way I could get it.

Dora had never seen a horse, but she knew what one was. She said, "Beloved, wouldn't ten mules do instead?"

(Omitted)

We had been in our valley seven years when the first wagon showed up. Young Zack was nearly seven and beginning to be some help to me-or thought he was and I encouraged him to try. Andy was five, and Helen not yet four. We had lost Persephone, and Dora was pregnant again, and that was why-Dora had insisted on starting another baby at once, not wait one day, one hour-and she was right. Once we knew she had caught, our morale picked up overnight. We missed Persephone; she had been a darling baby. But we stopped grieving and looked forward instead. I hoped for another girl but was willing to settle for any baby-no way to control the sex of a child, then and there.

All in all, we were in fine shape, with a prosperous farm, a healthy, happy family, plenty of livestock, a much larger compound with a house built right into it against the back wall, a windmill that drove a saw, or ground grain, or supplied power for my blaster.

When I spotted that wagon, my first thought was that it was going to be nice to have neighbors. But my second thought was that I was going to be proud, very proud, to show off my fine family and our farm to these newcomers.

Dora climbed up to the roof and watched the wagon with me; it was still over fifteen kilometers away, could not arrive before evening. I put my arm around her. "Excited, hon?"

"Yes. Though I've never been lonely; you haven't let me be. How many do you think I should expect for supper?"

"Hmm- Only one wagon. One family. My best guess is a couple, with none, one, or two children. More than that would surprise me."

"Me, too, darling, but there'll be plenty to eat."

"And put some clothes on our kids before they get here-wouldn't want 'em to guess we're raising savages, would we?" She answered, deadpan, "Shall I wear clothes, too?"

"What swank! That's up to you, Rangy Lil-but who was it said just last month that she had never worn her party dress?"

"Will you be wearing a kilt, Lazarus?"

"I might. I might even take a bath. I'll need one because I'm going to spend the rest of the day cleaning the goat compound and a lot of other things-make this place look as neat as possible. But forget the name 'Lazarus,' dear; I'm Bill Smith again."

"I'll remember-Bill. I'll bathe before they get here, too- because I'm going to have a hot and busy time, cooking, cleaning house, bathing our children, and trying to teach them how to be introduced to strangers. They've never seen anyone else, dear; I'm not sure they believe there is anyone else."

"They'll behave." I was sure they would. Dora and I had the same ideas about raising kids. Praise them, never scream at them, punish as necessary and right now-never a moment's delay-then it's over with and forget it. Be as lavish with affection after a spanking as any other time-or a bit extra. Spanking they had to have (Dora usually used a switch) because, without exception over the centuries, my kids have been hell-raisers who would take advantage of the sweetness-and-light routine. Some of my wives had trouble believing what little monsters I spawn-but Dora was right with me on this wild-animal act from scratch. In consequence she raised the most civilized brood I've ever fathered.

When that wagon was maybe a kilometer away, I rode out to meet them-then was surprised and disappointed. A family, yes, if you count a man and two grown sons as a family. No women, no children. I wondered how they thought they were going to pioneer.

The younger son was not fully grown; his beard was sparse and scraggly. Nevertheless, he was taller and heavier than I was, and he was the smallest of the three. His father and brother were mounted; he was driving-actually driving; they were not using a mule boss. No livestock other than mules that I could see, although I did not attempt to look into their wagon.

I did not like their looks and reversed my idea about neighbors. I hoped they would move on down the valley, at least fifty kilometers.

The mounted two were carrying guns at their belts-reasonable in loper country. I had a needle gun in sight myself, as well as a belt knife-and maybe other things not in sight, as I don't consider it diplomatic to show much hardware in meeting strangers.

As I approached, they stopped, the driver reining up his mules. I had Beulah stop about ten paces short of the lead pair. "Howdy," I said. "Welcome to Happy Valley. I'm Bill Smith."

The oldest of the three looked me up and down. It is hard to tell a man's expression when he wears a full beard, but what little I could see was no expression at all-wariness, perhaps. My own face was smooth-freshly shaved and clean overalls, in honor of visitors. I was keeping my face smooth both because Dora preferred it so and because I was staying "young" to match Dora. I was wearing my best friendly look-but was saying to myself, "You've got ten seconds to answer my greeting and say who you are-or you're going to miss some of the best cooking on New Beginnings."

He just slid under the deadline; I had silently counted seven chimpanzees when he suddenly grinned through that face moss. "Why, that's mighty friendly of you, young man."

"Bill Smith," I repeated, "and I didn't catch your name."

"Probably because I didn't say," he answered. "Name's Montgomery. 'Monty' to my friends, and I don't have any enemies, at least not for long. Right, Darby?"

"Right Pop," agreed the other mounted one.

"And this is my son Darby and that's Dan driving the jugheads. Say 'Howdy,' boys."

"Howdy," they each answered.

"Howdy, Darby. Howdy, Dan. Monty, is Mrs. Montgomery with you?" I nodded at the wagon, still did not attempt to see into it-a man's wagon is as private as his house.

"Now why would you be asking that?"

"Because," I said, still holding onto my friendly-idiot look, "I want to trot back to the house and tell Mrs. Smith how many there'll be for supper."

"Well! Did you hear that, boys? We've been invited to supper. That's mighty friendly, too, isn't it, Dan?"

"Right, Pop."

"And we most kindly accept. Don't we, Darby?"

"Right, Pop."

I was getting tired of the echo, but I kept my sweet expression. "Monty, you still haven't told me how many."

"Oh. Just three. But we eat enough for six." He slapped his thigh and laughed at his own joke. "Right, Dan?"

"Right, Pop."

"So you stir up those jugheads, Dan; we've got reason to hurry now."

'I interrupted the echo to say, "Hold it, Monty. No need to overheat your mules."

"What? They're my mules, son."

"So they are and do as you please about them, but I was sent out ahead so that Mrs. Smith would have time to be ready for you. I see you're wearing a watch"-I glanced at my own-"your hostess will expect you in one hour. Unless you need more time to get there and unharness and water your mules?"

"Oh, them jugheads will keep until after supper. If we're early, we'll set awhile."

"No," I said firmly. "One hour, no sooner. You know how a lady feels about guests arriving before she's ready for them. Crowd her, and she might ruin your supper. Do as you please about your mules-but there is an easy place to water them, a little beach, where the river comes closest to the house. Nice place to spruce up a bit yourself, too-before dining with a lady. But don't come up to the house short of one hour."

"Your wife sounds mighty particular...for way out here in the wilds."

"She is," I answered. "Home, Beulah."

I moved from a trot into Beulah's fast lope and did not get over an uneasy feeling between my shoulder blades until I was certain I was too far away to be a target. There is only one dangerous animal, yet at times you're forced to pretend that he's as sweet and innocent as a cobra.

I didn't stop to unsaddle Beulah; I hurried inside. Dora heard my slam-bang arrival, was at the compound's door. "What is it, dear? Trouble?"

"Could be. Three men, I don't like them. Nevertheless, I've promised them supper. Have the kids eaten? Can we put them right to bed and convince them that if they so much as let out a peep, they'll be flayed alive? I didn't mention children, we aren't going to mention them, and I'm going to take a fast look around to make sure there is nothing in sight that says 'kids.'

"I'll try. Yes, I've fed them."

Right on the hour Lazarus Long met his guests at the door of the compound. They drove and rode up from the direction of the beach he had described, so he assumed that they had watered their animals, but he noted with mild scorn that they now did not bother to unharness their team for what was sure to be a long wait. But he was pleased to note that all three Montgomerys had made some effort to spruce up-perhaps they were going to behave; perhaps his sixth sense for trouble was hypersensitive from too long in the wilderness.

Lazarus was dressed in his best-kilt with full kit save that the effect was marred by a faded work shirt of New Pittsburgh origin. But it was indeed his best, worn only for children's birthdays. On other days he wore anything from overalls to skin, depending on work and weather.

After Montgomery dismounted, he paused and looked over his host. "My, aren't we fancy!"

"In your honor, gentlemen. I save it for very special occasions."

"So? It's mighty nice of you to honor us, Red. Isn't it, Dan?'

"Right, Pop."

"My name is Bill, Monty. Not 'Red.' You can leave your. guns in your wagon."

"Well! Now that's not very friendly. We always wear our guns. Don't we, Darby?"

"Right, Pop. And if Pop says your name is 'Red,' that's your name."

"Now, now, Darby, I didn't say that. If Red wants to call himself Tom, Dick, or Harry, that's his choice. But we wouldn't feel dressed without our guns, and that's the truth, uh, Bill. Why, I even wear mine to bed. Out here."

Lazarus was standing in the opened door of the compound. He made no move to step aside and let his visitors in. "That s a reasonable precaution...on the trail. But gentlemen don't wear arms when they dine with a lady. Drop them here or put them in your wagon, whichever you wish."

Lazarus could feel the tension grow, could see the younger two watching their father for instructions. Lazarus ignored them and kept his easy smile on Montgomery, while forcing his muscles to stay loose as cotton. Right now? Would the bear back off? Or treat it as a challenge?

Montgomery split his face in his widest grin. "Why, sure, neighbor-if that's how you want it. Shall I take off my pants, too?"

"Just your guns, sir." (He's right-handed. If I were right-handed and wearing what you are wearing, where would my second gun be? There, I think-but, if so, it must be small either a needle gun or possibly an old-fashioned snub-nosed assassin's gun. Are his sons both right-handed?)

The Montgomerys put their gun belts on the seat of their wagon, came back. Lazarus stood aside and welcomed them in, then slid the bar into place as he closed the door. Dora was waiting, dressed in her "party dress." For the first time since a very hot day on the prairie she did not wear her rubies at the evening meal.

"Dear, this is Mr. Montgomery and his sons, Darby and Dan. My wife, Mrs. Smith."

Dora bobbed a curtsy. "Welcome, Mr. Montgomery, and Darby, and Dan."

"Call me 'Monty,' Mrs. Smith-and what's your name? Mighty pretty place you've got here...for so far out in the country."

"If you gentlemen will excuse me, 'I have a couple of things to do to get supper on the table." She turned quickly and hurried back into her kitchen.

Lazarus answered, "I'm glad you like it, Monty. It's the best we've been able to do so far, while getting a farm started." The back wall of the compound had four rooms built against it: storeroom, kitchen, bedroom, and nursery. All had doors into the compound, but only the kitchen door was open. The rooms interconnected.

Outside the kitchen door was a Dutch oven; in the kitchen was a fireplace used for other cooking and for all cooking when it rained. That and a water barrel were as yet Dora's major kitchen equipment-but her husband had promised her running water "sometime before you are a grandmother, my lovely." She had not pressed him about it; the house grew larger and better equipped each year.

Beyond the Dutch oven and paralleling the bedrooms was a long table with matching stools. At the other wall by the storeroom was an outhouse; it and a water barrel and two wooden tubs made by cutting another barrel in two constituted, so far, their "bathroom-toilet-refresher." A pile of earth with a shovel stuck into it was by the outhouse; the cesspit was being slowly backfilled.

"You've done pretty well," Montgomery conceded. "But you shouldn't have put your privy inside. Don't you know that?"

"There is another privy outside," Lazarus Long told him. "We use this one as little as possible and I try to keep it from being too whiff. But you can't expect a woman to go outside after dark, not in loper country."

"Lots of lopers, eh?"

"Not as many as there used to be. Did you see any dragons as you came through the valley?"

"Saw a lot of bones. Looked like a plague had hit the dragons hereabouts."

"Something of the sort," Lazarus agreed. "Lady! Heel!" He added, "Monty, tell Darby that it's not safe to kick at that dog; she'll attack. She's a watchdog, in charge of this house, and she knows it."

"You heard what the man said, Darby. Leave the dog alone."

"Then she had better not come sniffing around me! I don't like dogs. She growled at me."

Lazarus said directly to the older son, "She growled because you kicked at her when she sniffed you. Which was her duty. If I had not been present, she would have taken your throat out. Leave her alone and she'll leave you alone."

Montgomery said, "Bill, you had better put her outside while we eat." Phrased as a suggestion, it was made to sound like an order.

"No."

"Gentlemen, supper is served."

"Coming, dear. Lady. High sentry." The bitch glanced at Darby but immediately trotted up the ladder to the roof, using the rungs without hesitation. There she made a careful full-circle scan before sitting down where she could watch both outside and the supper party below her.

The Supper party was more successful as a supper than as a party. Conversation was limited mostly to small talk between the two older men. Darby and Dan simply ate. Dora answered briefly sallies that Montgomery made at her and failed to hear any that she regarded as too personal. The sons seemed surprised to find their plates set each with knife, fork, chop tongs, and spoon, then relied mostly on knife and fingers; their father made some effort to use each eating tool, getting quite a bit of food into his beard.

Dora had piled the table with hot fried chicken, cold sliced ham, mashed potatoes and chicken gravy, hot corn pone and cold whole wheat bread with bacon drippings, a mug of goat's milk at each place, lettuce-and-tomato salad with grated goat's-cheese-and-onion dressing, boiled beets, fresh radishes, fresh strawberries with goat's milk. As promised, the Montgomerys ate for six, and Dora was pleased that she had provided a plenty.

At last Montgomery pushed back his stool and belched appreciatively. "My, that hit the spot! Miz Smith, you can cook for us all the time. Right, Dan?"

"Right, Pop!"

"I'm pleased that you enjoyed it, gentlemen." She stood up and started to clear the table. Lazarus stood and started to help her.

Montgomery said, "Oh, sit down, Bill. Want to ask you some questions."

"Go ahead and ask," Lazarus said, continuing to stack plates.

"You said there was no one else in the valley."

"That is correct."

"Then I think we'll stay right here. Miz Smith is a very good cook."

"You're welcome to camp here overnight. Then you'll find excellent farmland farther down the river. As I told you, I've homesteaded all of this."

"Been meaning to talk to you about that. Doesn't seem right for one man to grab all the best land."

"It isn't the best land, Monty; there arc thousands of hectares just as good. The only difference is that I've plowed and cultivated this part."

"Well, we won't argue about it. We outvote you. Four voting, I mean, and us three all voting the same way. Right, Darby?"

"Right, Pop."

"It's not subject to vote, Monty."

"Oh, come now! The majority is always right. But we won't argue. Been a nice feed, now for some entertainment. Do you like to rassle?"

"Not especially."

"Don't be a spoilsport. Dan, do you think you can throw him?"

"Sure, Pop."

"Good. Bill, first you rassle Dan-out here in the middle and I'll referee, keep everything fair and square."

"Monty, I'm 'not going to wrestle."

"Oh, sure you are. Miz Smith! Better come out here, you won't want to miss this."

"I'm busy now," Dora called out. "I'll be out shortly."

"Better hurry. Then you rassle Darby, Bill-then you rassle me."

"No wrestling, Monty. Time for you folks to get into your wagon."

"But you want to rassle, young fellow. I didn't tell you what the prize is. The winner sleeps with Miz Smith." His second gun appeared as he said it. "Fooled you, didn't I?"

From the kitchen Dora shot the gun out of his hand just as a knife suddenly grew in Dan's neck. Lazarus shot Montgomery carefully in the leg, then even more carefully shot Darby-as Lady Macbeth was at his throat. The fight had lasted under two seconds.

"Lady. Heel. Nice shooting, Dorable." He patted Lady Macbeth. "Good Lady, good dog."

"Thank you, darling. Shall I finish off Monty?"

"Wait a moment." Lazarus stepped over and looked down at the wounded man. "Got anything to say, Montgomery?"

"You bastards! Never gave us a chance."

"Gave you lots of chance. You wouldn't take it. Dora? Do you want to? Your privilege."

"Not especially."

"All right." Lazarus picked up Montgomery's second gun, noted that it was indeed a museum piece but did not seem to be hurt. He used, it to finish off its owner.

Dora was peeling off her dress. "Half a moment, dear, while I get this off; I don't want to get blood on it." With the dress out of the way, her pregnant condition showed a little. She also showed several other weapons as well as a gun belt riding low on her hips.

Lazarus was getting out of his kilt and other finery. "You don't need to help, sweetheart; you've done a full day's work-and a fine one! Just toss me my oldest overalls."

"But I want to help. What are going to do with them?"

"Put them into their wagon, take them far enough downriver that lopers will dispose of them, drive back." He glanced at the Sun. "An hour and more of daylight left. Time enough."

"Lazarus, I don't want you away, from me! Not now."

"Upset by it, my durable one?"

"Some. Not much. Uh...made horny by it, I'm ashamed to say. Perverted, huh?"

"Rangy Lil, anything makes you horny. Yes; it's somewhat perverse...but a surprisingly common reaction to one's first encounter with death. Nothing to be ashamed of as long as you don't get hooked by it; it's just a reflex. On second thought never mind the overalls; I can scrub blood off my hide easier than getting it out of cloth." He removed the bar and opened the gate as he' talked.

"I've seen death before. I was much more upset when Aunt Helen died...and not a bit horny."

"Violent death, I should have said. Dear, I want to get these bodies outside the wall before any more blood soaks into the ground. We can discuss it later."

"You'll need help loading them. And I don't want to be away from you, truly I don't."

Lazarus stopped and looked at her. "You're more upset than you let on. That's common, too-steady in the clutch, then a reaction afterwards. So let's work it out. I don't fancy leaving the kids alone that long, nor do I want them in a wagon loaded with all that bad meat. Suppose I drive just a short distance tonight-say three hundred meters or so-while you start a kettle of water? I'm going to want another bath after this job even if I manage not to get a drop of blood on me."

"Yes, sir."

"Dora, you don't sound happy."

"I'll do it your way. But I could wake Zaccur and have him baby-sit. He's used to it."

"Very well, dear. But first we load them. You can hold up their feet while I drag them. If you throw up, I'll assume that you'll baby-sit while I finish this chore."

"I won't throw up. I ate very little."

"I didn't eat much either." They got on with the grisly task; Lazarus continued to talk. "Dora, you did a perfect job."

"I caught your signal. You gave me plenty of time."

"I wasn't sure he was going to push it to a showdown even when I signaled."

"Really, dear? I knew what they meant to do-kill you and rape me-before they ever sat down to eat. Couldn't you feel it? So I made sure that they ate plenty-to slow them down."

"Dora, you really do sense emotions--don't you?"

"Mind his head, dear. When they're as strong as that, I do. But I wasn't sure how you would handle it. I made up my mind to be raped all night if that was what it took for you to set up a safe chance."

Her husband answered soberly, "Dora, I will allow you to be raped only if that is the only possible way to save your life. Tonight it was not necessary. Thank goodness! But Montgomery had me worried at the gate. Three guns out in the open and mine still under my kilt- Could have been a problem. Since he meant to take me anyhow, he should have done it then. Durable, three-fourths of any fight lies in not hesitating when the time comes. Which is why I'm so proud of you."

"But you set it up, Lazarus. You signaled me to get into position, you stayed on your feet when he told you to sit down, you went around to the end of the table and pulled their eyes with you-and stayed out of my line of fire. Thank you. All I had to do was shoot when he got out his gun."

"Of course I stayed out of your line of, fire, dear; this isn't my first time by too many. But it was your straight shooting that gave me time to put my knife into Dan instead of having to settle his father first. And Lady did me the same favor with Darby. You two girls saved me from having to be three places at once. Which I've always found difficult."

"You trained both of us."

"Mmm, yes. Which detracts not at all from the admirable fact that you held your fire until he committed himself-then lost not a split second in taking him. As if you were a veteran of a hundred gun battles rather than none. You might go around and steady the mules while I get this tailgate open."

"Yes, dear."

She had just reached the lead pair and spoken soothingly to them when he called out: "Dora! Here a minute."

She came back; he said, "Look at that."

It was a flat piece of standstone he had removed from the end of the wagon bed and laid on the ground by the corpses. It was carved with:

BUCK

BORN ON EARTH

3O3lA.D.

DWD ON THIS SPOT

N.B.37

He Always Did His Best

She said, "Lazarus, I don't understand it. I can understand why they intended to rape me-I'm probably the first woman they've seen in many weeks. I can even understand that they would kill you, or do anything, to get at me. But why would they steal this?"

"It's not exactly 'why,' dear...People who don't respect other people's property will do anything...and will steal anything that's not nailed down. Even if they have no use for it." He added, "Had I known this earlier, I would have given them no chance. Such people should be destroyed on sight. The problem is to identify them."

Minerva, Dora is the only woman I ever loved unreservedly. I don't know that I can explain why. I did not love her that way when I married her; she had not had a chance as yet to teach me what love can be. Oh, I did love her, but it was the love of a doting father for a favorite child or somewhat like the love one can lavish on a pet.

I decided to marry her not through love in any deepest sense but simply because this adorable child who had given me so many hours of happiness wanted something very badly-my child-and there was only one way I could give her what she wanted and still please my own self-love. So almost coldly, I calculated the cost and decided that the price was low enough that I could let her have what she wanted. It could not cost me much; she was an ephemeral. Fifty, sixty, seventy, at the most eighty years and she would be dead. I could afford to spend that trivial amount of time to make my adopted daughter's pitifully short life happy-that's how I figured it. It wasn't much, and I could afford it. So be it.

All the rest was just a case of no half measures; do whatever else is necessary to your main purpose. I told you some of the possibilities; I may not have mentioned that I considered taking back the captaincy of the Andy J. for Dora's lifetime, have Zaccur Briggs take the ground side of the partnership or buy him out if that didn't suit him. But while eighty-odd years in a starship would not stonker me, to Dora it would be a lifetime and it might not suit her. Besides, a ship is not an ideal place to raise kids-what do you do when they grow up? Drop them off somewhere not knowing anything but ship's routine? Not good.

I decided that the husband of an ephemeral had to be an ephemeral, in every way possible to him. The corollaries to that decision caused us to wind up in Happy Valley.

Happy Valley-The happiest of all my lives. The longer I was privileged to live with Dora, the more I loved her. She taught me to love by loving me, and I learned-rather slowly; I wasn't too good a pupil, being set in my ways and lacking her natural talent. But I did learn. Learned that supreme happiness lies in wanting to keep another person safe and warm and happy, and being privileged to try.

And the saddest, too. The more thoroughly I learned this- through living day on day with Dora-the happier I was and the more I ached in one corner of my mind with certain knowledge that this could be only a brief time too soon over-and when it was over, I did not marry again for almost a hundred years. Then I did, for Dora taught me to face up to death, too. She was as aware of her own death of the certain briefness of her life, as I was. But she taught me to live now, not to let anything sully today... until at last I got over the sadness of being condemned to live.

We had a wonderfully good time! Working our arses off, always too much to do, and enjoying every minute. Never too rushed to enjoy life no matter what. Sometimes just pat-ass and squeeze-titty as I hurried through the kitchen, with her quick smile acknowledging it, sometimes a lazy hour on the roof invested in watching sunset and stars and moons, usually with "Eros" to make, it sweeter.

I guess you could say that sex was, our only active amusement for a number of years (and never stopped being in first place as Dora was as enthusiastic at seventy as at seventeen- just not as limber). I was usually too tired to play good chess even though I made us a set of chessmen; we had no other games and probably would not have played them anyhow- too busy. Oh, we did do other things; often one of us would read aloud while the other knitted or cooked or something. Or we would sing together, coonjining the rhythm while we pitched grain or manure.

We worked together as much as possible; division of labor came only from natural limits. I can't bear a baby pr suckle it, but I can do anything else for a child. Dora could not do some things that I did because they were too heavy for her, especially when she was far gone in pregnancy. She had more talent for cooking than I (I had centuries more experience but not her touch), and she could cook while she took care of a baby and tended the smallest children, ones too small to join me in the fields. But I did cook, especially breakfast while she got the kids organized, and she did help work the farm and especially the truck garden. She knew nothing of farming; she learned.

Nor did she know construction-she learned. While I did most of the high work, she made most of the adobe bricks, always with the right amount of straw. Adobe was not well suited to the climate-too much rain and it can be discouraging to see a wall start to melt because an unexpected rain has caught you before you've topped it.

But you build from what you have, and it helped that I had the tops from the wagons to peg against the most exposed walls, until I worked out a way to waterproof an adobe wall. I did not consider a log cabin; good timber was too far away. It took the mules and me a full day to bring in two logs, which made them too expensive for most construction. Instead, I made do with smaller stuff that grew along the banks of Buck's River and dragged in logs only for beams.

Nor did I want to build a house that was not as near fireproof as I could make it. Baby Dora had once almost been burned to death; I would not risk it again for Dora, or for her children.

But how to make a roof both watertight and fireproof nearly stumped me.

I walked past the answer hundreds of times before I recognized it. When wind and weather and rot and lopers and insects have done their worst on a dead dragon, what is left is almost indestructible. I discovered this when I tried to burn what was left of a big brute that was unpleasantly close to our compound; I never did find out why this was so. Perhaps the biochemistry of those dragons has been investigated since then, but I had neither equipment nor time nor interest; I was too busy scratching a living for my family and was simply delighted to learn that it was true. Belly hide I cut into fireproof, waterproof tarpaulins; back and sides made excellent roofing. Later I found many uses for the bones.

We both taught, school, indoors and out. Perhaps our kids had a weird education...but a girl who can shape a comfortable and handsome saddle starting with a dead mule and not much else, solve quadratics in her head, shoot straight with gun or arrow, cook an omelet that is light and tasty, spout page after page of Shakespeare, butcher a hog and cure it can't be called ignorant by New Beginnings standards. All our girls and boys could do all of that and more. I must admit that they spoke a rather florid brand of English, especially after they set up the New Globe Theater and worked straight through every one of old Bill's plays. No doubt this gave them odd notions of Old Earth's culture and history, but I could not see that it hurt them. We had only a few bound books, mostly reference; the dozen-odd "fun" books were worked to death.

Our kids saw nothing strange in learning to read from As You Like it. No one told them that it was too hard for them, and they ate it up, finding "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

Although it did sound odd to hear a five-year-old girl speak in scansion and rolling periods, polysyllables falling gracefully from her baby lips. Still, I preferred it to "Run, Spot, run. See Spot run" from a later era than Bill's.

Second only to Shakespeare in popularity, and first whenever, Dora was swelling up again, were my medical books, especially those on anatomy, obstetrics, and gynecology. Any birth was an event-kittens, piglets, foals, puppies, kids-but a new baby out of Dora was a super-event, one that always put more thumbprints on that standard OB illustration, a cross section of mother and baby at term. I finally removed that one and several plates that followed it, those showing normal delivery, and posted them, to save wear and tear on my books- then announced that they could look at those pictures all they wanted to, but that to touch one was a spanking offense- then was forced to spank Iseult to keep justice even, which hurt her old father far more than it did her baby bottom even though she saved my face by applauding my gentle paddling with loud screams and tears.

My medical books had one odd effect. Our kids knew from babyhood all the correct English monosyllables for human anatomy and function; Helen Mayberry had never used slang with Baby Dora; Dora spoke as correctly in front of her children. But, once they could read my books, intellectual snobbery set in; they loved those Latin polysyllables. If I said "womb" (as I always did), some six-year-old would inform me with quiet authority that the book said "uterus." Or Undine might rush in with the news that Big Billy Whiskers was "copulating" with Silky, whereupon the kids would rush out to the goat pen to watch. Somewhere around their middle teens they usually recovered from this nonsense and went back to speaking English as their parents spoke it, so I guess it didn't hurt them.

The reason my own goatiness was not a spectator sport for children that all the animals afforded was, I think, only my own unreasoned but long-standing habits. I don't think it would have fretted Dora because it did not seem to fret her' the times it happened-as it did; privacy was scarce and got scarcer until I got our big house built some twelve or thirteen years after we entered the valley-time indefinite because for years I worked on it when I could; then we moved into it unfinished because we were bulging the walls of our first house and another baby (Ginny) was on the way.

Dora was untroubled by lack of privacy because her sweet lechery was utterly innocent, whereas mine was scarred by the culture I grew up in-a culture psychotic throughout and especially on this subject. Dora did much to heal those scars. But I never achieved her angelic innocence.

I do not mean the innocence of childish ignorance; I mean the true innocence of an intelligent, informed, adult woman who has no evil in her. Dora was as tough as she was innocent, always aware that she was responsible for her own actions. She knew that "the tail goes with the hide, that you can't be a little bit pregnant, that it is no kindness to hang a man slowly." She could make a hard decision without dithering, then stand up to the consequences if it turned out that her judgment was faulty. She could apologize to a child, or to a mule. But that was rarely necessary; her self-honesty did not often lead her into faulty decisions.

Nor did she flagellate herself when she made a mistake. She corrected it as best she could, learned from it, did not lie awake over it.

While her ancestry had given her the potential, Helen Mayberry must be credited with having guided it and allowed it to develop. Helen Mayberry was sensitive and sensible. Come to think of it, the traits complement. A person who is sensitive but not sensible is all mixed up, cannot function properly. A person who is sensible but not sensitive-I've never met one and am not sure such a person can exist.

Helen Mayberry was born on Earth but had shucked off her bad background when she migrated; she did not pass on to Baby Dora and growing-girl Dora the sick standards of a dying culture. I knew some of this from Helen herself, but I learned more about Helen from Dora the Woman. Over the long course of getting acquainted with this stranger I had married (married couples always start out as strangers no matter how long they've known each other) I learned that Dora knew exactly the relationship that had once existed between Helen Mayberry and me, including the fact that it was economic as well as social and physical.

This did not make Dora jealous of "Aunt" Helen; jealousy was only a word to Dora, one that meant no more to her than a sunset does to an earthworm; the capacity to feel jealousy had never been developed in her. She regarded the arrangements between Helen and me as natural, reasonable, and appropriate. Indeed I feel certain that Helen's example was the clinching factor in Dora's picking me as her mate, as it could not have been my charm and beauty, both negligible. Helen had not taught Dora that sex was anything sacred; she had taught her, by precept and example, that sex is a way for people to be happy together.

Take those three vultures we killed- Instead of what they were, had they been good men and decent-oh, such men as Ira and Galahad-and given the same circumstances, four men with only one woman and the situation likely to stay that way, I think Dora would have entered easily and naturally into polyandry...and would have managed to convince me that that was the only happy solution by the way she herself treated it.

Nor would she, in adding more husbands, have been breaking her marriage vows. Dora had not promised to cleave unto me only; I won't let a woman promise that because a day sometimes arrives when she can't.

Dora could have kept four decent, honorable men happy. Dora had none of the sickly attitudes that interfere with a person loving more and more; Helen had seen to that. And, as the Greeks pointed out, one man cannot quench the fires of Vesuvius. Or was it the Romans? Never mind, it's true. Dora probably would have been even happier in a polyandrous marriage. And if she were happier, it follows, as the night the day, that I would have been also-even though I cannot imagine being happier than I was. But more big male muscles would have made life easier on me; I always had too much to, do. More company could have been pleasant, too, I am forced to assume the company of men whom Dora found acceptable. As for Dora herself, she had enough love in her to lavish it on me and a dozen kids; three more husbands would not have used up her resources, she was a spring that never ran dry.

But the matter is hypothetical. Those three Montgomerys were so little like Galahad and Ira that it is hard to think of them as being of the same race. They were vermin for killing, and that's what they got. I learned only a little about them, from reading the contents of their wagon. Minerva, they were not pioneers; there was not the barest minimum in that wagon for starting a farm. Not a plow, not a sack of seed-And their eight mules were all geldings. I don't know what they thought they were doing. Exploring just for the hell of it, perhaps? Then go back to "civilization" when they grew tired of it? Or did they expect to find that some one of the pioneer parties that had started over the pass had made it-and could be terrorized into submission? I don't know, I never will know. I have never understood the gangster mind-I simply know what to do about gangsters.

As may be, they made a fatal mistake in tackling sweet and gentle Dora. She not only shot at the right instant, but she shot his gun out of his hand instead of taking the much easier target, his belly or chest. Important? Supremely so, for me. His gun was aimed at me. Had Dora shot him, instead of his gun, even if her shot killed him, his last reflex would probably- certainly, I think-have caused his fingers to tighten and I would have been hit. You can figure it from there in half a dozen ways, all bad."

Lucky accident? Not at all. Dora had him covered from the darkness of the kitchen. When he pulled that gun, she instantly changed her point of aim and got the gun. It was her first-and last-gunfight. But a true gunfighter, that girl! The hours we had spent polishing her skill paid off. But more rare than skill was the cool judgment with which she decided to try for the much more difficult target. I could not train her in that; it had to be born in her. Which it was-if you think back, her father made the same sort of correct split-second decision as his last dying act.

It was seven more years before another wagon appeared in Happy Valley-three wagons traveling together, three families with children, true pioneers. We were glad to see them and I was especially happy to see their kids. For I bad been juggling eggs. Real eggs. Human ova.

I was running out of time; our oldest kids were growing up.

Minerva, you know all that the human race has learned about genetics. You know that the Howard Families are inbred from a fairly small gene pool-and that inbreeding has tended to clear them of bad genes-but you know also the high price that has been paid in defectives. Is still being paid, should add; everywhere there are Howards there are also sanctuaries for defectives. Nor is there any end to it; new unfavorable mutations unnoticed until they are reinforced is the price we animals must pay for evolution. Maybe there will be a cheaper way someday-there was not one on New Beginnings twelve hundred years ago.

Young Zack was a husky lad whose voice was firmly baritone. His brother, Andy, was no longer a boy soprano in our family chorus although his voice still cracked. Baby Helen wasn't such a baby any longer-hadn't reached menarche, but as near as I could tell it would be any day, any day.

I mean to say that Dora and I were having to think about it, forced to consider hard choices. Should we pack seven kids into the wagons and head back across the Rampart? If we made it, should we put the four oldest with the Magees or someone, then come home with the younger three? By ourselves? Or sing the praises of Happy Valley, its beauty and its wealth, and try to lead a party of pioneers back over the range and thereby avoid such crisis in the future?

I had expected, too optimistically, that others would follow us almost at once-a year or two or three-since I had left a passable wagon trail behind me. But I'm not one to fume over spilled milk after the horse is stolen. What might have been was of no interest; the problem was what to do with our horny kids now that they were' growing up.

No point in talking to them about "sin" even if I were capable of such hypocrisy-which I am not, especially with kids. Nor could I have sold the idea. Dora would have been shocked and hurt, and her skills did not extend to lying convincingly. Nor did I want to fill our kids with such nonsense; their angelic mother was the happiest, most ever-ready lecher in Happy Valley-even, more so than I and the goats-and she never pretended otherwise.

Should we relax and let nature take its ancient course? Accept the idea our daughters would presently (all too soon!) mate with our sons and be prepared to accept the price? Expect at least one defective grandchild out of ten? I had no data on which to estimate the cost any closer than that, as Dora knew nothing about her ancestry and, while I did know a little about mine, I did not know enough. All I had was that old and extremely rough thumb rule.

So we stalled.

We fell back on another sound old thumb rule: Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow if tomorrow might improve the odds.

So we moved into our new house while it was still not finished-but finished enough that we then had a girls' dormitory, a boys' dormitory, a bedroom for Dora and me, with adjacent nursery.

But we did not kid ourselves that we bad solved the problem. Instead we hauled it out into the open, made sure that the three oldest knew what the problem was and what the risks were and why it would be smart to hold off. Nor were the younger kids shut out of this schooling; they simply were not required even to audit the course when they found themselves bored with technicalities they were too young to be interested in.

Dora chucked in a frill, one based on something Helen Mayberry had done for her some twenty years earlier. She announced that when little Helen achieved menarche, we would declare a holiday and have a party, with Helen as guest of honor. From then on, every year, that day would be known as "Helen's Day" and so on for Iseult and Undine and on down the line until there was an annual holiday named for each girl.

Helen could hardly wait to pass from childhood into girlhood-and when: she did a few months later, she was unbearably smug. Woke us all up shouting about it. "Mama! Papa! Look, it's happened! Zack! Andy! Wake up! Come see!"

If she hurt, she did not mention it. Probably she did not; Dora wasn't subject to menstrual cramps, and neither of us told the girls to expect them. Being myself convex instead of concave, I refrain from commenting on the theory that such pains are a conditioned reflex; I don't think I'm entitled to an opinion

-you might ask Ishtar.

It also resulted in me being called on by a delegation of two, Zack and Andy with Zack as spokesman: "Look, Papa-we think it splendid, meet, and fit our sister Helen's day to mark with joyful sounds and jollity acclaiming this our sibling's rightful heritage. But soothly, sire, methinks-"

"Chop it off and say it."

"Well, how about boys!"

By gum, I reinstituted chivalry!

Not as a sudden inspiration. Zack had asked a tough one; I had to dance around it a bit before I reached a workable answer. Sure, there are rites of passage for males as well as females; every culture has them, even those that aren't aware of it. When I was a boy, it was your first suit with long pants. Then there are ones such as circumcision at puberty, ordeal by pain, killing some dread beast-endless.

None of these fitted our boys. Some I disapproved of, some were impossible-circumcision for example. I have this unimportant mutation, no foreskin. But it is a Y-linked dominant, and I pass it on to all my male offspring. The boys knew this, but I stalled by mentioning it again, discussed it in connection with the endless ways in which a male's transition into beginning manhood was sometimes celebrated-while trying to think of an answer to the main question.

Finally I said, "Look, boys, you both know all about reproduction and genetics that I have been able to teach you. You both know what 'Helen's Day' means. Don't you? Andy?"

Andy did not answer; his older brother said, "Sure he knows, Papa. It means Helen can have babies now, just like Mama. You know that, Andy." Andy nodded agreement, round-eyed. "We all know, Papa, even the kids. Well, I'm not sure about Ivar; he's so little. But Iseult and Undine know it-Helen's been telling them that she's going to catch up with Mama-have her first baby right away."

I controlled the cold chills I felt. Let me cut this short: I did not tell them that this was a bad idea; instead I took a long time drawing answers from them, things they both knew but had not yet thought of quite so personally-how Helen could not have a baby unless one or the other of them put it into her; how Helen was still too little for the strain of baking a baby even though "Helen's Day" marked the fact that she was now vulnerable; how and why, even when Helen was big enough in a few years, a baby out of Helen by one of her brothers could be a tragedy instead of the fine babies Mama made every time. They told me, Andy's eyes getting bigger all the time-I simply supplied leading questions.

I was helped in this by the fact that a little mule mare, Dancing Girl, had come into her first estrus when I thought she was not grown-up enough for a colt. So I had had Zack and Andy fence her off-and she kicked a hole in the fence and got what she wanted; Buckaroo covered her. Sure enough, the colt had been too big for her and I had to go in and cut it up and take it out in chunks-a routine job of emergency veterinary surgery but an impressive and bloody sight for two stripling boys who had helped their father by controlling the mare while he operated.

No, indeed, they did not want anything even a little bit like that to happen to Helen.No, sir!

Minerva, I cheated a little. I did not tell them that the way Helen was spreading in the butt and the measurements she already had made it appear to her family doctor-me-that she was even more of a natural baby factory than her mother and would be big enough for her first one much younger than Dora had had Zaccur; I did not tell them that the chances of a healthy baby from a brother-sister mating were higher than the chances of a defective. I certainly did not!

Instead, I waxed lyrical about what wonderful creatures girls are, what a miracle it is that they could make babies, how precious they are and how it is a man's proud privilege to love and cherish and protect them-protect them even from their follies because Helen might behave just like Dancing Girl, impatient and foolish. So don't let her tempt you, boys-jerk off instead, just like you've been doing. They promised, tears in their eyes.

I didn't ask them to promise that or anything-but it gave me the idea: Have "Princess" Helen knight them.

The kids grabbed that idea and ran with it; Tales of King Arthur's Court was one of the books Dora had fetched along because Helen Mayberry had given it to her. So we had Sir Zaccur the Strong and Sir Andrew the Valiant and two ladies-in-waiting-waiting rather eagerly; Iseult and Undine knew that they, too, would be "princesses" as each reached menarche. Ivar was squire to both knights and would be dubbed himself when his voice changed. Only Elf was too small as yet to play the game.

It worked, a stopgap. I suppose "Princess" Helen was protected more than she wanted to be protected. But if she could not lure her faithful knights into the cornfields, they did place her stool for her at meals, they bowed to her rather often, and usually addressed her as "Fair Princess"-considerably more than I ever did for my sisters.

Before the first anniversary of "Helen's Day" those three new families dropped down the rise and the crisis was over. It was Sammy Roberts, not one of her brothers, who first spread "Princess" Helen's thighs-certain, as she told her mother about it at once (more of Helen Mayberry's influence) and Dora kissed her and told her that she was a good girl and now go find Papa and ask him to examine you-and I did and she hadn't been hurt, not to mention. But it gave Dora some control over the matter, just as Helen Mayberry had guided Dora at about the same age-so Dora had told me, long before that. In consequence our oldest daughter did not get pregnant until she was almost as old as and quite a bit more filled out than Dora had been when I married her. Ole Hanson married her; and Sven Hanson and I, and Dora and Ingrid, helped the youngsters start their homestead. Helen thought the baby was Ole's, and for all I know she was right. No fuss. No fuss when Zack married Hilda Hanson, either. In Happy Valley pregnancy was equivalent to betrothal; I can't recall any girl who married without that proof of eligibility. Certainly none of our daughters.

Having neighbors was grand.

(Omitted)

-not only fetched his fiddle over the Rampart but could call. I could call some and, while I hadn't touched a violin for fifty years or so, I found it came back to me, so we spelled each other as Pop liked to dance, too. Like so:

"Square 'em up!

"Salute your lady! Opposite lady! Corner gal! Right-hand gal! Salute your own and make 'er a throne. All stand up and don't let 'er fall; swing your ladies one and all!

"'Moses lived a long time ago.

'King said Yes; Moses said Not-form hands, circle right.

'Phar'oh was dat king's first name;

'Made 'em live a life of shame!-allemande left/-with a dosey-doh! Then home you go and swing!

"'...said Yes and th' waves did part. First couple through the Red Sea! Now corner gal and right-hand man! Corner boy, right-hand gal-on around and keep it coming right and left!

"'A happy band on th' opp'site shore,

'So all form up and swing once more!

'King weeps alone on Egypt's shore;

'Chosen People slaves no more!

'So kiss your lady and whisper in her ear;

'Then sit 'er down and get 'er a beer.' Intermission!"

Oh, we had fun! Dora learned to dance when she was a new grandmother-and was still dancing when she was a great-great-grandmother. Early years the parties were oftenest at our place because we had the biggest house and a compound large enough for a big party. Start dancing late afternoon, dance till you couldn't see your partner; then a potluck buffet supper to candlelight and moonlight, then sing a while, and bed down all over the place-all the rooms, the roof, shakedowns in the compound, some in wagons-and if anybody ever slept alone, I never heard about it. Nor any trouble worth mentioning if things got a little loose around the edges.

Next morning there was likely to be a double performance by the Mermaid Tavern Players, one comedy, one tragedy, then it would be time for those who lived farthest away to round up their kids, hitch up their mules, and roll, while those who lived closer helped clean up before doing the same thing.

Oh, I remember one spot of trouble: A man gave his wife a black eye over nothing much, whereupon six men nearest him tossed him out the gate and barred it. Made him so mad he hitched up and left...and headed back up the Great Gorge toward Hopeless Pass-a fact that wasn't noticed for a while, as his wife and baby moved in with her sister and her husband and their kids, and stayed on, a polygamy-though not the only one. No laws about marriage or sex-no laws about anything for many years-except that incurring the disapproval of your neighbors, such as by giving your wife a black eye, meant risking Coventry, about the worst thing that can happen to a pioneer short of being lynched.

But migrants tend to be both horny and easy about it. Superior intelligence always includes strong sexual drive, and the pioneers in Happy Valley had been through a double screening, first in a decision to leave Earth and then in deciding to tackle Hopeless Pass. So we had real survivors in Happy Valley, smart, cooperative, industrious, tolerant-willing to fight when necessary but not likely to fight over trivial matters. Sex is not trivial, but fighting over it is usually pretty silly. It's characteristic only of a man who isn't sure of his manhood, which didn't describe any of these men; they were sure of themselves, no need to prove it. No cowards, no thieves, no weaklings, no bullies-the rare exception didn't last long enough to count. Either dead like that first three, or ran away from us like that idiot who took a poke at his wife.

These rare purgings were always quick and informal. For many years the only law we had was the Golden Rule, unwritten but closely followed.

In such a community functionless taboos about sex couldn't last; they didn't tend to be brought into our valley in the first place. Oh, close inbreeding wasn't well thought of; these pioneers were not ignorant of genetics, nor of conception control. But the attitude was pragmatic; I don't think I ever heard anyone speak out against incest that was just a jolly romp with no outcome. But I recall one girl who married her half brother openly and had several children by him-I assume that they were his. There may have been gossip, but it did not get them ostracized. Any marriage pattern was treated as the private business of the partners in it, not something to be licensed by the community. I recall two young couples who decided to combine their farms, then built a house big enough by adding to the larger of their two houses and making the other into a barn. Nobody asked who slept with whom; it was taken for granted that it was then a four-cornered marriage, and no doubt had been one before they enlarged that house and pooled their goods. Nobody's business but theirs.

Among such people the plural of "spouse" is "spice." A pioneer community, poor in everything else, always makes its own recreations-with sex at the top of the list. We had no professional entertainers, no theaters (unless you count the amateur theatricals started by our kids), no cabarets, no diversions dependent on sophisticated electronics, no periodicals, few books. Certainly those meetings of the Happy Valley Dance Club continued as gentle orgies after it was too dark to dance and the younger children were bedded down for the night-how else? But it was all quite gentle; a couple could always go sleep in their own wagon and ignore the quiet luau elsewhere. No compulsion either way-shucks, they didn't even have to attend the dances.

But no one stayed away from those weekly dances if he or she could make it. It was particularly nice for young people; it gave them a chance to get acquainted and do their courting. Perhaps most first babies were conceived at our dances; there was opportunity. On the other hand, a girl did not have to get knocked up just through a romp if it didn't suit her. But a girl was likely to marry by fifteen, sixteen, and their bridegrooms weren't much older-late first marriage is a big-city custom, never found in a pioneer culture.

Dora and I? But, Minerva dear, I told you earlier.

(Omitted)

-started the freight schedule to the outside the year Gibbie was born and Zack was, oh, eighteen I think-I have to keep converting New Beginnings years into standard years. Anyhow he was taller than I was, not much short of two meters and massed maybe eighty kilos, and Andy was almost as big and strong. There was pressure on me not to wait as I knew Zack might get married any day-and I could not send a wagon over the pass just with Andy. Ivar was only nine-a big help around the farm but not big enough for this job.

But I could not find teamsters other than in my own family. There were only about a dozen families in the valley; they had not been there long, and did not as yet feel the press to buy things that I did.

I wanted three new wagons, not just because my three were wearing out but because Zack would need one when he married. So would Andy. And I might have to dower Helen with one, if and when. The same applied to plows and several sorts of metal farm equipment. Prosperous as we were, Happy Valley could not be entirely self-supporting without a metals industry-which is to say: not for many years. I had another long list of things to buy-

(Omitted)

-on a quarterly schedule. But the food that fifty-odd farms could ship out could not buy much at the other end in competition with farmers who did not have the expense of shipping by mule train over the Rampart and across the prairie; I still subsidized our link with civilization by writing drafts on John Magee to be debited against my partnership in the Andy J. and thereby brought things into the valley we would not otherwise have bad. Some I kept-Dora got in-house running water from that first trip our own boys made, just in time to keep my promise to her, as Zack got Hilda pregnant right after they got back, and their first baby, Ingrid Dora, and the completion of Dora's bathroom, arrived about together. Other things I sold to other farmers for labor. But the Buck strain of mules, strong, intelligent, and all of them capable of being taught to talk, eventually corrected our balance of trade, once those two wells were drilled on the prairie and I could count on running a string of mules to Separation Center without losing half of them. This meant medicines, books, and many other things for our valley.

(Omitted)

Lazarus Long did not intend to surprise his wife. But neither of them ever knocked on their own bedroom door. Finding it closed, he opened it gently against the possibility that she might be napping. Instead he found her standing at the window, mirror angled to the light, carefully plucking a long gray hair.

He watched her in shocked dismay. Then steadied himself and said, "Adorable-"

"Oh." She turned. "You startled me. I didn't hear you come in, dear."

"I'm sorry. May I have that?"

"Have what, Woodrow?"

He went to her, bent down and picked up the silver hair. "This. Beloved, every hair of your head is precious to me. May I keep it?"

She did not answer. He saw that her eyes were filled with tears. They started to overflow. "Dora, Dora," he repeated urgently, "why are you crying, beloved?"

"I'm sorry, Lazarus. I did not intend for you to see me doing this."

"But why do it at all, Dorable? I have far more gray hair than you."

She answered what he had not said, rather than what he did say. "Dearest, I can't help it that I know when someone is-well, 'fibbing' I must call it since you have never lied to me."

"Why, Dorable! My hair is gray."

"Yes, sir. You did not mean to surprise me, I know...and I did not mean to snoop when I cleaned your study. I found your cosmetics kit, Lazarus, more than a year ago. It's sort of a fib, isn't it?-when you do something to make your crisp red hair look gray? Something like what I do, I suppose, when I pluck hairs that are gray."

"You've been plucking gray hairs since you learned that I have been aging myself? Oh, dear!"

"No, no, Lazarus! I've been plucking them for ages.Much longer than that. Heavens, darling, I'm a great-grandmother-and look it. But what you do-careful as you are with it- and kind as it is for you to try-and I do appreciate it!-doesn't make you look my age; it just makes you look prematurely gray."

"Possibly. Although I'm entitled to gray hair, Dorable-my hair was snow-white not many years before you were born. It took something much more drastic than cosmetics-or plucking hairs-to make me look young again. But there never seemed to be any reason to mention it."

He stepped up to her, put an arm around her waist, took the mirror and tossed it on the bed, turned her toward the window., "Dora, your years are an achievement, not something to hide. Look out there. Farmhouses right up to the hills and many more we can't see from here. How many of our Happy Valley people are descended from your slim body?"

"I've never counted."

"I have; more than half of them-and I'm proud of you. Your breasts are baby-chewed, your belly shows stretch marks-your decorations of honor, Adorable One. Of valor. They make you more beautiful. So stand straight and tall, my lovely, and forget about silver hairs. Be what you are, and be it in style!"

"Yes, Lazarus. I don't mind them myself-I did it to please you."

"Dorable, you can't help pleasing me, you always have. Do you want me to let my own hair go back to natural? It's not dangerous for me to be a Howard-here in Happy Valley with my own kin all around me."

"I don't care, darling. Just don't do it on my account. If it makes it easier for you-First Settler and all that-to look a little older, then do it."

"It does make it easier-when I deal with other people. And it's no trouble; I know the routine so well I could do it in my sleep. But, Dora-listen to me, darling. Zack Briggs will call at Top Dollar sometime in the next ten years; you saw John's letter. It's not too rate to go to Secundus. There they can make you look like a young girl again if that's what you want, and tack a good many extra years on, too. Fifty. Maybe a hundred."

She was slow in answering. "Lazarus, are you urging me to do this?"

"I'm offering it. But it's your body, most dear one. Your life."

She stared out the window. " 'More than half of them,' you said."

"With the percentage increasing. Our kids breed like cats. And so do their kids."

"Lazarus, truly we settled this many, many years ago. But it is even more so now. I don't want to leave our valley even to visit the outside. I don't want to leave our children. Nor our children's children, nor their children. And I certainly would not want to come back looking like a young girl...to watch the births of our great-great-grandchildren. You're right; I've earned my gray hairs. And now I'll wear them!"

"That's the girl I married! That's my durable Dora!" He moved his hand up higher, cupped a breast and tickled a nipple. She jumped, then relaxed to it. "I knew your answer, but I had to ask. My darling, age cannot wither you, nor custom stale your infinite variety. Where other women satiate, you most make hungry!"

She smiled. "I'm not Cleopatra, Woodrow."

"Wench, that's your opinion. But what's your opinion against mine? Rangy Lil, I've seen thousands and thousands more women than you have-and I say that you make Cleopatra look homely."

"Blarney tongue," she said softly. "I'm sure you've never had a woman turn you down."

"True only because I never risk being turned down; I wait to be asked. Always."

"Are you waiting to be asked? All right, I'm asking. Then I'd better start dinner."

"Don't be in such a hurry, Lil. First I'm going to dump you on that bed. Then I'm going to flip your skirt up. Then I'm going to see if I can find any gray hair at that end. If so, I'll pluck them for you."

"Beast. Scoundrel. Lecherous old goat." She smiled in delight. "I thought we weren't going to bother any more with plucking gray hairs?"

"We were speaking of hair on your head, Great-Grandmother. But this other end is as young as ever-and better than ever-so we'll most carefully pluck any gray from your pretty-your pretty brown curls."

"Sweetest old goat. If you can find any, you're welcome. But I've been plucking that end even more carefully than my scalp. Let me slip this dress off."

"Wups! Hold it. That's Rangy Lil, the horniest bitch in Happy Valley, always in a hurry. Get your dress off if you wish, but I'm going to find Lurton and tell him to saddle up Best Boy and go beg supper and a shakedown from his sister Marje and Lyle. Then I'll be back to pluck those disgraceful gray curls. Supper will be late, I'm afraid."

"I don't mind if you don't, beloved."

"That's my Lil. Darling, there isn't a man in the valley who wouldn't grab you and try to find another valley if you gave him the slightest encouragement-that includes your own sons and your sons-in-law--every male here down to fourteen."

"Oh, not true! Blarney again."

"Want to bet? On second thought we won't waste time plucking gray hairs at either end. When I get back from telling our youngest son to get lost for the night, I want to find you wearing just rubies and a smile. Because you're not going to cook supper; we're going to scrape up a cold picnic instead and take it and a blanket up on the roof and enjoy the sunset."

"Yes, sir. Oh, darling, I love you! E.F.? Or F.F.?"

"I'll leave that choice to Rangy Lil."

(Circa 39,000 words omitted)

Lazarus opened the bedroom door very quietly, looked in, looked inquiringly at his daughter Elf-a strikingly beautiful middle-aged woman with flaming red curls shot slightly with gray. She said, "Come in, Papa; Mama's awake."

She stood up to leave, taking with her a supper tray.

He glanced at it, subtracted in his mind what was still on it from what he had seen leave the kitchen on it-got a sum which was too near zero to please him. But he said nothing, simply went to the bedside, smiled down at his wife. Dora smiled back. He leaned over and kissed her, then sat down where Elf had been. "How is my darling?"

"Just fine, Woodrow. Ginny-no, Elf. Elf brought me the tastiest supper. I enjoyed it so much. But I asked her to put my rubies on me before she fed me--did you notice?'

"Of course I did, beautiful. When did Rangy Lil ever eat supper without her rubies?"

She didn't answer, her eyes closed. Lazarus kept quiet, watched her respiration, counted her heartbeats by watching a pulse in her neck.

"Do you hear them, Lazarus?" Her eyes were open again.

"Hear what, Dorable?"

"The wild geese. They must be right, over the house."

"Oh. Yes, certainly."

"They're early this year." That seemed to tire her; she closed her eyes again. He waited.

"Sweetheart? Will you sing 'Buck's Song'?"

"Certainly, 'dorable Dora." Lazarus cleared his throat and started in:

"'There's a schoolhouse

By the pawnshop

Where Dora has her lessons,

"'By the scboolhouse

There's a mule yard

Where Dora's friend Buck lives.'"

She closed her eyes again, so he sang the other verses very softly. But when he finished, she smiled at him. "Thank you, darling; that was lovely. It's always been lovely. But I'm a little tired-if I drop off to sleep, will you still be here?"

"I'll always be here, dearest. You sleep now." She smiled again, and her eyes closed. Presently her breathing grew slower as she slept.

Her breathing stopped.

Lazarus waited a long time before he called in Ginny and Elf.