"If we waste our supplies in a false effort—"
"Everything on Hestia is limited; our land is limited. Tom's right: we haven't got the time for you to be sure as you'd like."
Merritt cast a glance at Amos Selby, questioning; and the riverman gave a slight lift of the brows and shrugged and looked at the table.
"Amos," Merritt insisted.
"Well," said Amos, "I tell you this: I got faith in your good sense, Sam, but I also know what's going to wash down on us come spring, and I couldn't choose."
"We got the people," said Porter, "and we know what we choose to do. You haven't got any choice, Merritt. None."
Merritt pushed back from the table and looked at them and down the length of it, at all the silent faces, and at the women and children who stood silent in the room. Then he turned and started for the stairs.
"Merritt!" Porter shouted at him; and when he failed to turn in that selfsame instant, a man left the end of the table to block the stairway.
Merritt turned about then and looked at Porter, unhurriedly.
"If you have some idea about destroying the plans," said Porter, "you'd better think again. —Vance, you get upstairs and see what you can find in his papers."
"Wait a minute now," said Amos, leaving his chair. "I don't think that's called for."
"Not in my house, no," said Burns. "I think Mr. Merritt appreciates the desperate feeling our people have—isn't it so, Mr. Merritt? I can't think you'd be so reckless."
Merritt let go his breath slowly. "You'll remember later it's against my advice we're going ahead. I'll tell you about it."
"We're content with that," said Porter, "so long as we get started. I've waited too long for Earthmen to make up their minds. You people never settle on an answer you like, no, not for fifty years, while people and their stock are drowning. You people are used to sitting where it's safe and making theories because you got leisure for it. Well, I've had enough waiting. So has everyone else on Hestia; and I suggest those plans had better work, Mr. Merritt."
"If they don't," said Merritt, "you can get together and draw up some of your own. —Move your man, Porter. I'm going upstairs."
Porter said nothing, but Burns gave him a hard look and Porter finally gave a jerk of his hand that removed his kinsman from the stairway.
One of the cattle lowed, a sound out of place in the middle of the night; and Merritt turned over in bed, restless with the upset in the house. The sound worried at him; he kept an ear attuned for several dim minutes after, somewhere between sleep and waking, not sure he had heard it or how worth an alarm it was: his credit was low enough in the house.
Then there was a general stirring in the pens, sure sign that something was amiss in the yard. Merritt hurled himself clear of the covers and started dressing. One of the dogs barked furiously, then yelped into silence.
"Wake up!" Merritt yelled down the hall, and slipped his other foot into his boot and started running, himself and one of Porter's men at the head of the stairs before the alarm was even sounded. Folk were stirring out from all sides; and by now the barracks outside must be alerted: there was shouting from outside.
And other sounds: the splintering of wood, heavy bodies moving as some of the cattle broke free, bawling in panic. Lights flared inside: torches and lanterns lit from the hearth. Children huddled in stifled panic at their mothers' sides.
"Watch that door," Burns ordered. "Sam Merritt—you got that outsider gun of yours?"
"Here," Merritt called back, pushing his way to the fore. "I'll take the yard if I've got some help."
Three men volunteered and pushed after him; and others slipped the bar on the front door and let them out into the bare-earth yard, within the walls.
Lights were on in the slit-windowed barracks: no one there was opening doors. The heavy-bodied shapes of several cattle huddled in a corner of the wall, then with the unpredictability of herd beasts, darted in wild panic to open space, dodging in confusion about them, a rush of hooves in the dark. Merritt stepped out when it was over, scanned the shadows and the rim of the wall for intruders, and saw nothing.
"Come on," he said to his companions, and led the way around the corner to the back of the house, where the cattle pens were.
Sheep were loose too, cornered and climbing over one another as if they hoped to scale the wall in that corner of the irregular yard; and there were dead ones and dead cattle on the ground, and the black dog too, like a puddle of shadow on the dirt.
"Throats were cut," said one of the men who had knelt to inspect a dead sheep.
Voices broke forth behind them, doors open from the main house and the barracks, men coming out armed, bringing torches and lanterns.
And the light fell on a dark shape head-high in the center of the vacated sheepfold: a black thing on a pole, upright in the earth. Merritt seized a lantern from a man near him and advanced to inspect the object, then with an oath struck the pole down. Lady's head rolled free of the stake, staring sightlessly into the darkness.
"It's one of the dogs," someone said. "How"d they do that so quiet?"
There was a rising note of panic in the voice. Merritt rounded on it. "She was missing this evening," he said quickly. "Keep it down. Keep your eyes open. We don't know we're not being watched right now."
"But why the dog—like this? Why go to all that trouble?"
"I'd guess," said someone else, a deeper voice, that carried, "that it was a warning that don't need much translation. The dog's a human animal. It's the dogs they hate most."
"Get a shovel," said Merritt. "No need for the kids to see this. We'll salvage the sheep and the cattle—drag the carcasses out of the way so we can get the others back into the pens."
The doors to the main house were letting out a flood of others now: the voices of women were among them. Merritt left the men at work for a moment and went back to head them off; Meg was there with her father, and most of all he did not want that.
"How many did we lose?" Burns asked.
"About half a dozen," Merritt said, and took Meg's arm in a hard grip. "Get the kids back inside, will you? It's a mess out here."
"I heard a dog bark once. Did Lady—?
He hesitated on a lie, thought of Meg waiting and waiting for the animal. "She's dead, Meg. Both the dogs, I'm afraid. I'm sorry."
She made one sudden start of tears that she quickly gulped under control; but she did not try to go to see. He was glad of that.
"Get inside," he asked of her, and when she was gone he looked at Burns, and at Porter, who had joined them.
"They've never passed the gate before," said Burns.
"Whatever they are," said Merritt, and his own hands were shaking, "it was a bladed weapon that did that damage; and they're men enough to use tools and symbols."
"We knew they'd come when men started gathering here in numbers," said Porter, "and when trees started falling. I'm afraid it's the start, not the final blow. You wanted a convincing reason why we can't wait, Merritt. I don't think I need to explain this one."
Chapter 6
"Just about clear, Mr. Merritt."
Merritt looked from the chasm to the young workman-farmer—George Andrews, from one of the smaller farms—and drew back a little from the edge.