Dick shrugged. "All right, we'll do it the hard way. Tell them -- "
He was interrupted by a shout of warning from across the canyon. He caught a glimpse of a dark figure in the doorway of one of the huts, one arm raising a stick; then the hut erupted in a shower of splinters. The guns across the canyon were firing almost continuously; every shot was going into the same hut. The primitive's body leaned out, and Dick had time to see the long bow in one hand before it toppled and crashed below. Something dark began to drip from the woven bottom of the hut.
Dick turned distastefully away.
"Tell them," he said, "the same thing will happen to any of them that try that again. Tell them to stay in their huts till we say to come down."
Johnny Partridge translated, in another high-pitched gush of syllables. There was silence.
Dick pointed to the nearest hut. "This one first."
The Indian moved nearer, shouted again. After a moment the curtain moved and a timid, hating face peeped out. The primitive tossed down a rope-and-stick ladder, climbed down it and stood empty-handed, looking from face to face with a feral alertness. Dick gestured to the soldier on his left. "Up you go."
The soldier saluted and scrambled up the ladder. There was an instant howl when he disappeared inside; the hut shook violently, and after a moment the soldier reappeared, struggling with another primitive. They toppled out, but both saved themselves by clutching at the doorway. The soldier, uppermost, gave the primitive a boot down, and she -- it was a female -- sullenly descended beside the male. Like him, she was black-haired and yellowish-skinned; she had broad shoulders and pendulous breasts. Neither wore anything but a strip of bark, fore and aft.
"Anything up there?" Dick demanded.
The soldier hesitated. "I didn't have time to look good, misser."
"Up you go, then." The soldier climbed, disappeared, put his head out. "Nothing here, misser." He came down.
"All right. They can go up again. Tell them we don't want their women."
When the Indian translated, the two primitives looked incredulous. They glanced at each other, then slowly climbed the ladder.
There was a struggle at the next hut, and the next; then it grew easier. Every hut in the village was emptied and examined.
The Gismo was not there.
Johnny Partridge barked a question at the last hutful of primitives, a male, female and a half-grown boy. The male answered briefly. Johnny Partridge asked another question. The male said something short and pithy, and then spat.
The Indian's eyes were glittering as he turned to Dick. "I ask him, where white man big medicine cross. He say he don't know. Then I ask him where old holy man. He say old man dead. Big liar. Find old man, find big medicine cross!"
Dick peered into the forest beyond the village. There was nothing to be seen; they might waste days beating around these woods.
"Big cowards," said Johnny Partridge. "Little bit hurt, they talk, okay?"
Dick hesitated. "Go ahead."
Johnny Partridge stepped forward, seized the boy and jerked him away from his parents. The boy stumbled and fell to his knees. Holding him by the hair, Johnny Partridge put a knife against his throat.
The parents came forward a step, with cries of alarm, then stopped, looking at the soldiers' leveled rifles. Johnny Partridge asked his question; the boy said something in a high, strangled voice. The Indian asked again. The knifepoint nicked the skin; the boy felt blood running down his chest. He spoke again in a terrified gabble.
Johnny Partridge looked pleased. The parents uttered sounds of horror; guttural questions came from every side of the clearing, and the parents shouted in reply. In a moment the village was in an uproar.
"Come on," said Johnny Partridge, jerking the boy to his feet. "We go quick, he show place."
Dick saw angry faces glaring down from the hut doorways in every direction. A gun barked from across the canyon, and a warning shot splintered through one of the huts. The gabble of voices grew louder.
As Johnny Partridge pushed the boy forward, the parents fell on him. They swayed together in a tangle of limbs. At Dick's motion, one of the soldiers stepped up and clubbed them with his rifle butt, one after the other. Johnny Partridge was streaming with blood from a torn ear and a scratch over one eye, but he had kept his grip on the boy's arm. They moved on.
The boy was sobbing, almost doubled over with his hand held by the Indian in the small of his back. He led the way past a muddy spring into the forest. After a few yards they came to another clearing, rudely planted with stunted corn. Beyond that, an almost imperceptible trail led deeper into the trees.
The clamor behind them swelled again. They heard a fusillade of shots, then a crashing in the forest on either side. Running footsteps came up behind them. Turning, Dick saw the soldier beside him swing up his rifle, heard the crash of the shot, loud among the trees, and saw the running primitive pitch forward.
Voices were calling on either side. "Better hurry it up," said Dick to Johnny Partridge. The Indian nodded, and they swung off at a trot. The firing had stopped.
The trail bent and ended suddenly in front of a sandstone cliff. In the cliff was a cave opening, closed by a hide curtain. The curtain twitched aside and a primitive leaned out, bow in hand. One of the soldiers went down with a feathered arrow in his shoulder. The other two fired together and the primitive fell, bringing the curtain down with him. Dick heard a long wail of despair from the woods.
Inside, the cave was dark and smoky; it smelled of excrement, rotten meat, garbage and other things. On one side, the floor was heaped with skins, ugly, earth-colored pots and jars, a clutter of smaller articles. From a pole jammed across the roof of the cave hung a green side of meat, swarming with flies.
At the rear, the cave narrowed and there was another hide curtain. In front of this stood an old male.
He was emaciated, dirty and unkempt: his wild eyes stared out of a tangle of grayish hair. He was dressed in a garment made of cloth, that might once have been magnificent by the primitives' standards, but it was frayed and tattered now, gray and greasy and stiff with dirt; his bony chest showed through it and it hung in festoons to his knees. He waved his clawed hands at them, mouthing something toothlessly. His mad eyes rolled; he did a little shuffling dance, back and forth in front of the hide curtain.
"Crazy man," said Johnny Partridge, respectfully. "Very old, very holy."
"Get him out of the way," Dick said.
The nearest soldier made a pass with his rifle butt; the old male leaped nimbly back and disappeared through the curtain. At Dick's gesture, another soldier ripped the curtain down.
In the dancing light that came from a wick in a little pot of oil, the old male was grimacing and gibbering with fear, flinging out his arms and then drawing them back. There was not much else in the cave: just a kind of rude altar scooped out of the sandstone, and on the altar, standing upright, a cross of wood.
Just that. Not a Gismo.
Two pitiful crossed sticks, bound together by sinew, with a snakeskin dangling from either side.
16
As it turned out, the primitives' arrowheads had been poisoned. They had extracted the arrow from the soldier who was hit, without any trouble, but an hour later the fellow died in tetanic convulsions. That offered an opportunity.
They made camp when night fell, on an elevated slope which would be hard to attack without warning. The sky was clear. Dick felt the earth swinging ponderously under him; the air was still fresh with the powdery smell of sage. In the darkness and silence, Dick felt himself paradoxically close to Buckhill. Remembered scenes came vividly into his mind: the green lawns; the early-morning shadows under the stable eaves; the sparkle of sun on the lake. He thought he understood now for the first time how much Buckhill was worth- -- how much his father had willingly paid, and his father before him.