They kept to the woods, then, rather than venturing the open—weaponless, for all they had had gone with Celestine.
"Guard-post," Merritt said hoarsely, reckoning position. "Inside's dry enough to burn, once they took it."
And a moment more of moving through the dripping woods put them in clear view of it, fire-stained smoke rolling aloft into the dark. Runners of fire were licking out even to the bridge ropes, fire-dried, a lattice of flame.
There was no enemy in sight, nothing at all moving in the area of the firelight. Bodies lay in the mud in the area of the guard-station, puddles of water reflecting up fire about them.
Amos breathed an oath. Merritt cast a last look in either direction and left cover, aware that the Selbys were both with him, unasked. He scuttled to the side of a dead man, found a rifle in the mud, wiped it off, searched the man's pockets—it was one of the Burnses, Sid—and turned up two shells.
"How many men out here?" he asked of Amos, who was plundering one of the others.
"There was four this side, five the other. Looks like they got them all."
And the bridge went: burnt rope parted, and the structure swayed gracefully downward and away across the canyon, trailing burning fragments like stars.
"Sam, Dad—" Jim called suddenly, from his place nearer the rim. "There's a light moving down there."
Merritt ran to see, Amos close beside him, and they slid in beside Jim, where a large rock marked the beginning of one of the several trails down to the dam. Jim pointed. There was a faint gleam of fire far down the path, that wound down to the site, the diversion dike, from which the big flume carried its thundering load toward the black mass of the dam and over.
"Could be," said Amos, "that it's some of the boys from the farside station come down to hunt out the trouble."
"I hope it is," Merritt said, and started down.
"Sam," said Jim, catching his arm and sliding down to stop him. "You're crazy to go down there."
"What do you want? If they aren't some of ours—"
"You're going to run into more than you bargained for," said Amos. "And you're a lousy shot, Sam, leastwise with one of our kind of guns. You'd better give Jim that thing before you waste what shells we've got. —Jim, you do me a favor, son, and stay up here."
"No, sir," Jim said.
Merritt hesitated a moment; and considered Amos, who had a rifle from one of the dead, and Jim, who had no weapon. He thrust the rifle into Jim's hands and turned and headed downhill, slipping at the turn, recovering. The two Selbys were behind him when he glanced back. He looked forward again. The lights showed, heading out away from the area of the dike. Then they went out of sight. There were some large rocks down there. He moved as rapidly as he dared, running where he could; the path was slick on the descent, clay mixed with scattered gravel. They moved, the three of them, as quickly as they could, using hands to guide them in the dark and to balance against the wind that whipped up at them from the bottom.
"I can't see it anywhere," Jim said when they reached the bottom of the trail, where was the great rush of the river on the one side of them. Merritt gasped for breath and started running the muddy and jagged ground, ran until they had reached the base of the next steps down, past the dike and down into the dark where the spillway took shape; the great timbers of the diversion flume supports rose above them, water cascading down about them in an unending shower—mere fraction of the torrent that roared overhead and thundered off the end of the flume into the pool below the dam. Sound was lost in that place; it quivered in the bones, in the brain.
Then a gleam of light showed far along that earthwork that dammed the river toward the flume, a glimmering like illusion, a trick of the eyes in the night and the curtain of water.
"There!" Merritt screamed, pointing; and close at hand a shadow moved among the supports—only that much warning, out of the tail of the eye. Merritt whirled about and caught it full in the chest, a bruising impact, bearing him backward.
A human voice shouted; that came faintly in the thunder, but he could not answer. His hands were locked at the creature's shoulders, trying to keep that face from his throat, and losing.
A shock jolted through the wiry limbs and the creature let go, staggered up with an almost-silent scream and went for Jim and Amos. Merritt came to his knees and saw another of them coming at them… seized up a handsized rock and lurched from knee to feet, aimed for the back of the one's head with all the power in him.
Even so it took a moment for the creature to fall— slowly, as if the hard-muscled body had a force of its own beyond the shattered brain; and in that slow moment the others closed in.
The rifles went off and hit true, dropped two of them writhing to the ground; and Merritt found himself locked with another. He avoided a first slash at his arm and hit hard enough to stagger the creature. The returned blow came low in the side, a bruising pain. He ignored that and the breathless ache that followed, smashing with dogged fury at the fanged countenance that breathed so close to his face, until the grip weakened and the lifeless body sank down, hands dragging at his clothing even as it fell.
A rifle discharged again, dim in the thunder, collapsing another of the creatures over Jim's prostrate form; and Amos bent down to heave the dead thing off his son—Jim trying weakly to get to his feet. Merritt swaggered away from the support where he was leaning and started to help them, when the movement of lights still showed.
"Give me that gun," he said to Amos, trying to take the weapon, and could not—swayed on his feet when Amos jerked back on it. "They're out there by the dike," he insisted, pleading. "Amos, they're still out there."
"Stay with my boy," Amos said. "Get him out of here."
"Amos—" Merrill protested, but the elder Selby swore and pushed him roughly aside, began to run. Merritt tried to follow: the ache in his side was such that he could not run, his legs shaking under him. He brought up against one of the supports, and Amos had far outdistanced him by now. He staggered instead back to Jim, hauled him up. Jim tried to walk, tried to help him; he hastened, dragging the injured youth a limping course across the face of the dike, back again, to the base of the steps, upward.
A shot sounded feebly in the distance; and another. Merritt stopped and looked back, searching for the lights, heaved at Jim and the two of them climbed another turn of the trail, to open sky.
Another shot.
"He's still all right," Merritt.
Then incredibly there was a great flare of light, a belated shock of sound, and all that great pent-up tide crested white and poured toward the dam, washed up in one great wave and broke, crashed, thundered toward the flume supports and snapped them like kindling, boiling white at their stumps and churning over the unfinished spillway, eroding, ripping great quantities of rock away, widening the breach.
"Dad," Jim was saying, over and over again, and Merritt finally pulled him back, drew him away and up the trail, step by slow step. Sometimes he had to rest, to ease the ache in his side, and it was a long time before they reached the rim.
There he had to stop, sank to his knees and let Jim down, gasped for breath and touched at Jim's blank face.
"Jim. Jim, you hear me?"
Jim murmured something and tried to move.
"Jim, there's no place left. We've got to make it to the station, whatever's there. You understand me? They're all over these woods. Can you hold yourself up?"
For answer Jim tried to rise again, and Merritt made to help him; his hand closed on Jim's arm and Jim made an animal sound of pain, steadied himself, made drunken steps.
By now the pain in his own side had taken on a steady pulse: he was bleeding, he thought, remembered that the one who had attacked him had had a knife and did not want to feel to know. It was not a killing wound; he was still on his feet and a killing wound ought to be numb—he had heard that somewhere in his youth and chose now to believe it. He took a better grip about Jim and turned for the forest road, the way back to the station, putting from his mind what they might meet there, or how many of the People might be left.