The People

"The-the water-" His voice was barely audible.
"It's all over the place!" I said. "It's floated the house off the foundations and you should see the pond! And the stream! And it's cold!"
"I'm thirsty," he said. "I want a drink, please."
He drained the cup of cold water and his lips turned upward in a ghost of a smile. "Shall waters break out!"
"Plenty of water," I laughed. Then I sobered. "What were you doing out in it, anyway?
Mama and Father were sitting on the floor beside us now.
"I had to lift the dirt out," he said, touching my wrist. "All night I lifted. It was hard to hold back the loose dirt so it wouldn't slide back into the hole. I sat on the porch and lifted the dirt until the rock was there." He
sighed and was silent for a minute. "I was not sure I had strength enough. The rock was cracked and I could feel the water pushing, hard, hard, under. I had to break the rock enough to let the water start through. It wouldn't break! I called on the Power again and tried and tried. Finally a piece came loose and flew up. The force of the water-it was like-like-blasting. I had no strength left. I went unconscious."
"You dug all that out alone!" Father took one of Timmy's hands and looked at the smooth palm.
"We do not always have to touch to lift and break," said Timmy. "But to do it for long and heavy takes much strength." His head rolled weakly.
"Thank you, Timothy," said Father. "Thank you for the well."
So that's why we didn't move. That's why Promise Pond is here to keep the ranch green. That's why this isn't Fool's Acres any more but Full Acres. That's why Cahilla Creek puzzles people who try to make it Spanish. Even Father doesn't know why Timmy and I named the stream Cahilla. The pond had almost swallowed up the little box before we remembered it.
That's why the main road across Desolation Valley goes through our ranch now for the sweetest, coldest water in the Territory. That's why our big new house is built among the young black walnut and weeping willow trees that surround the pond. That's why it has geraniums windowsill high along one wall. That's why our orchard has begun to bear enough to start being a cash crop.
And that's why, too, that one day a wagon coming from the far side of Desolation Valley made camp on the camping grounds below the pond.
We went down to see the people after supper to exchange news. Timmy's eyes were open now, but only light came into them, not enough to see by.
The lady of the wagon tried not to look at the deep scars on the side of Timmy's face as her man and we men talked together. She listened a little too openly to Timmy's part of the conversation and said softly to Mama, her whisper spraying juicily, "He your boy?"
"Yes, our boy," said Mama, "but not born to us."
"Oh," said the woman. "I thought be talked kinda foreign." Her voice was critical. "Seems like we're gettin' overrun with foreigners. Like that sassy girl in Margin."
"Oh?" Mama fished Merry out from under the wagon by her dress tail.
"Yes," said the woman. "She talks foreign too, though they say not as much as she used to. Oh, them foreigners are smart enough! Her aunt says she was sick and had to learn to talk all over again, that's why she sounds like that." The woman leaned confidingly toward Mama, lowering her voice.
"But I heard in a roundabout way that there's something queer about that girl. I don't think she's really their niece. I think she came from somewhere else. I think she's really a foreigner!"
"Oh?" said Mama, quite unimpressed and a little bored.
"They say she does funny things and Heaven knows her name's funny enough. I ask you! Doesn't the way these foreigners push themselves in-"
"Where did your folks come from?" asked Mama, vexed by the voice the lady used for "foreigner."
The lady reddened. "I’m native born!" she said, tossing her head. "Just because my parents-It isn't as though England was-" She pinched her lips together. "Abigail Johnson for a name is a far cry from Marnie Lytha Something-or-other!"
"Lytha!" I heard Timmy's cry without words. Lytha? He stumbled toward the woman, for once his feet unsure. She put out a hasty hand to fend him off and her face drew up with distaste.
"Watch out!" she cried sharply. "Watch where you're going!"
"He's blind," Mama said softly.
"Oh," the woman reddened again. "Oh, well-"
"Did you say you knew a girl named Lytha?" asked Timmy faintly.
"Well, I never did have much to do with her," said the woman, unsure of herself. "I saw her a time or two-"
Timmy's fingers went out to touch her wrist and she jerked back as though burned. "I'm sorry," said Timmy. "Where are you coming from?"
"Margin," said the woman. "We been there a couple of months shoeing the horses and blacksmithing some."
"Margin," said Timmy, his hands shaking a little as he turned away. "Thanks."
"Well, you're welcome, I guess," snapped the woman. She turned back to Mama, who was looking after us, puzzled.
"Now all the new dresses have-"
"I couldn't see," whispered Timmy to me as we moved off through the green grass and willows to the orchard. "She wouldn't let me touch her. How far is Margin?"
"Two days across Desolation Valley," I said, bubbling with excitement. "It's a mining town in the hills over there. Their main road comes from the other side."
"Two days!" Timmy stopped and clung to a small tree.
"Only two days away all this time!"
"It might not be your Lytha," I warned. "It could be one of us. I've heard some of the wildest names! Pioneering seems to addle people's naming sense." "I'll call," said Timmy, his face rapt. "I'll call and when she answers-!"
"If she hears you," I said, knowing his calling wouldn't be aloud and would take little notice of the distance to Margin.
"Maybe she thinks everyone is dead like you did. Maybe she won't think of listening."
"She will think often of the Home," said Timmy firmly, "and when she does, she will hear me. I will start now." And he threaded his way expertly through the walnuts and willows by the pond.
I looked after him and sighed. I wanted him happy and if it was his Lytha, I wanted them together again. But, if he called and called again and got no answer
I slid to a seat on a rock by the pond, thinking again of the little lake we were planning where we would have fish and maybe a boat-I dabbled my hand in the cold water and thought, this was dust before Timmy came. He was stubborn enough to make the stream break through.
"If Timmy calls," I told a little bird balancing suddenly on a twig, bobbing over the water, "someone will answer!"
Meris leaned back with a sigh. "Well!" she said, "thank goodness! I never would have rested easy again if I hadn't found out! But after Timmy found The People, surely his eyes-"
"Never satisfied," said Mark. "The more you hear the more you want to hear-"
"I've never Assembled much beyond that," said Bethie. Then she held up a cautioning hand. "Wait-"Oh," she said, listening. "Oh dear! Of course." She stood up, her face a pale blur in the darkness of the patio. "That was Debbie. She's on her way here. She says Dr. Curtis needs me back at the Group. Valancy sent her because she's the one who came back from the New Home and 'Peopled all over the place,' as she says. I have to leave immediately. There isn't time for a car. Luckily it's dark enough now. Debbie has her part all Assembled already so she can-"
"I wish you didn't have to leave so soon," said Meris, following her inside and helping her scramble her few belongings into her small case.
"There is so much-There's always so much-You'll enjoy Debbie's story." Bethie was drifting steplessly out the door. "And there are others-" She was a quickening shadow rising above the patio and her whispered "Good-by," came softly down through the overarching tree branches. "Hi!" The laughing voice startled them around from their abstraction. "Unless I've lost my interpretive ability, that's an awfully wet, hungry cry coming from in there!" "Oh, 'Licia, honey!" Meris fled indoors, crooning abject apologies as she went. "Well, hi, to you, then." The woman stepped out of the shadows and offered a