Horses of the North Page 11

  "She said that her God-given mind-reading talent had caused her to sense that his mind was unnatural, inhuman, not the mind of a mortal man with an immortal soul. She—"

  "Arabella said nothing of the sort, Emmett," said Lindsay. "I think you must have a very selective, inventive memory. But go on with it, get it all out. What else is your 'evidence' that Milo Moray is the devil's disciple?"

  Looking a bit abashed, MacEvedy said, "Well, he may not be exactly that, he may simply be a werewolf or a vampire, but both kinds of monsters are servants of Satan.

  "You must recall all the horror that ensued after she shot him, put a bullet right through his chest, which would have been the certain death of any natural man. As you may remember, I once used a .380 to dispatch a wounded wild boar, when we were hunting together. I know well what those bullets can wreak on the flesh of natural creatures of God's world.

  "But he not only did not die, Ian, we all of us watched while that grievous wound first ceased to bleed, then began to close up and heal itself. Gerald only confirmed to me what I knew as I watched the impossible happen: no one but Satan, the Fallen Angel, could have been responsible, so it must have been Satan who sent Milo Moray here to tempt us, to delude us, to steal away our souls and lead us all down to the fiery pits of the deepest, infernal regions of hell."

  Lindsay shook his head slowly. "It seems that I learn more about you with every passing day, Emmett, and most of what I've been recently learning is to your detriment, lowering even farther my opinion of you. Emmett, Gerald Falconer is a superstitious fool, a hypocrite, a type of man whom his father or his grandfather would disown. You must, deep down inside you, be every bit as superstitious as is he—otherwise you wouldn't listen to his dredged-up horror stories and hoary legends.

  "Hell, man, all of us heard those tales when we were children, and they scared us, as those who told them meant them to do, but when we began to grow up, we began to realize just what those old tales were and they ceased to scare us . . . most of us. Look, you say that Moray might be a vampire, a bloodsucking living corpse, but think back on those particular tales, Emmett. Vampires have to, it's said, move about only by night because sunlight will kill them. How many days has Moray walked and ridden and stood about this fort and station under the glaring sun, do you think? Did he shrivel up and die? Not hardly, Emmett.

  "You attest that there can be but one evil reason for Moray's being the most singular type of man that he most assuredly is: namely, that only Satan could have gifted him with the unheard-of physical properties that he owns. But Emmett, Emmett, both you and Falconer have clear forgot that there is One more powerful even than Satan. I am firmly convinced that for all his different and seemingly unreligious ways, Moray has been touched by God. The Scriptures tell us that 'the Lord moves in wondrous ways, His wonders to perform,' and 0 believe that Moray is one of those wonders of God, just as I believe that his arrival here, in our time of darkest trouble and deepest despair, was another such Wonder."

  "I knew in advance that you would fail," said Gerald Falconer. "The devilish beast has too far cozened Colonel Lindsay for your poor powers to counteract. But I have here that which will truly slay the beast, send him back to his hellish master in the pit."

  Opening a small box of carven cedarwood, the preacher took from it a polished brass pistol cartridge. Where the dull gray lead bullet should have been there now was the gleam of burnished silver. Moreover, the nose of the bullet had been carefully made flat and a cross had been deeply inscribed thereon.

  "I pored over the ancient books, that my memories might be exact, before I cast this bullet and put it in the case over as much powder as it would hold. A bullet of pure silver marked with a cross is sovereign against witch, warlock, vampire or werewolf.

  "This cartridge will fit your revolver—your son fetched me the case from your home, so I know. It is your duty as station director and your honor as a true, God-fearing, Christian man to put paid to the beast, to kill this Satanic thing who calls himself Milo Moray."

  Chapter VII

  "Oh, Milo," Arabella Lindsay silently beamed, "I'm so very excited about Father's decision. I can hardly wait to ride out of this place of bitterness and hunger and death and start living the free and beautiful-sounding life that your people always have known. Capull can run out there, run as long and as far as he wishes, and never again be forced to endure a box stall."

  "Our life is undoubtedly free ... as you comprehend freedom, 'Bella," Milo beamed, "but it is a freedom that you may in time come to truly curse—freedom to die of heat or of thirst or of cold and exposure, freedom to drown in a river crossing where there is no shallow ford, freedom to be consumed in prairie fires such as often occur in late summer and autumn when lightning strikes tinder-dry grasses or a dead cottonwood tree, freedom to be eaten alive by wolves or bears or predatory big cats, freedom to . . ."

  "Goodness, Milo, it cannot be so bad, so gloomy a life as you picture. Your people seem happy enough with it, after all."

  "They've none of them ever known any other kind of life, 'Bella, but you have known comforts and safeties of which they have never so much as dreamed. The time may well come when you will heap abuse upon me for persuading your father to give over all this and come with me and the clans-folk, You may well come to yearn for the settled life and bitterly regret leaving such, you know. And our customs are drastically different from those to which you have been brought up. For instance, how will you feel when your husband brings a second wife into your yurt? Or a slave concubine captured in some raid or other?"

  Arabella's shock showed in her face as she beamed, "But , . . but why, Milo, why would any man do such a thing?"

  "Because we are not monogamous, as are you and your people and most Christians, for that matter, for all that your own holy book is chock-full of polygamy and chattel slavery."

  "Why aren't you happy with just one wife at a time, you and your people, Milo? And how did you ever get your womenfolk to tolerate such an arrangement?" She wrinkled her freckled brow in clear puzzlement.

  "For one paramount reason, to begin, 'Bella: better than one out of every three children born in my tribe dies either in infancy or, at best, before it is ten years of age. There is strength and safety only in numbers when you lack stone walls to hide behind, and a woman can bear but once in two or three years, if she is to properly nurture the last child she bore, so it was long ago decided that were we to practice monogamy, it would not be too long before we were become so small and weak that we would cease to exist as a tribal entity.

  "Our women were mostly born into polygamous society, so there is no question about it in their minds. Besides, there are never enough hands to do all the daily chores necessary to maintain a nomadic household; multiple wives, a slave girl or two and a plentitude of small children make individual workloads far the lighter in day-to-day existence on the prairie.

  "Another important reason for the practice of polygamy and concubinage in nomad tribes is the all-too-frequent death of women in childbirth, or shortly thereafter. It is a sad enough occurrence to suddenly lose a loved and valued member of a household, without losing the newborn babe—if it survived her—and any still-dependent children because no other women are resident to quickly take them to suck or otherwise care for them."

  Arabella nodded slowly, then demanded. "But Milo, do not the men die, as well? What then becomes of their many women and the children?"

  "Yes," he said, "perhaps as many men as women die each and every year, and others are crippled. Mostly, men and older boys die in war or raidings or the hunt. Some suffer death and disablement while guarding our herds from predators. Others are killed or injured by domestic animals or by mischance, as when a galloping horse happens to fall. Illnesses of assorted kinds take away some, and ill-tended wounds a few more. And there are many other fatal perils facing male clansfolk every day and night of their lives. But I believe your question had to do with the fate of a woman whose husband had died.
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br />   "Well, if he chanced to leave one or more sons of warrior age, the household simply goes on as before, with the likely addition of the new wife of this new man of the household. If all of the children are too young to follow that course and if the deceased is survived by an unmarried male sibling, it is quite common for that brother or half brother to marry the widows, adopt the immature children and assume ownership of the slaves and horses and other effects, and the household continues almost as before."

  "But what of the cattle and sheep and goats the dead man owned?" Arabella probed. "Who gets those, Milo?"

  "Aside from his horses and his hunting hounds, 'Bella, neither he nor any other individual member of the tribe owns livestock personally. The herds, with the sole exceptions of draft oxen, are owned by the tribe as a whole, and their produce—milk, meat, hides, tallow, wool and hair, horn, sinew and suchlike—is all divided as equally as can be amongst the clans and households.

  "But, 'Bella, we only butcher our stock for meat in times of direst need. More have been slaughtered here to feed and restore your people to health than the tribe would normally kill in a year or more; it was a major sacrifice for the tribe, but I thought it necessary, under the circumstances, and was able to influence the clan chiefs to support me in it. Even then, the herds were carefully culled so that the best stock remained alive to breed more of their superior kind.

  "We usually take only milk, wool and hair from our stock, the rest of our sustenance being derived of hunting and trapping game and foraging for wild plants, augmented by fishing and seining if we chance to be near lakes, ponds or larger running water. Hunting and trapping also give us hides for leather, furs for winter garments, sinew and bone for various uses, antler and horn, down and feathers for filling quilted padding and for the fletchings of arrows. Glue is rendered from fish and from the feet of hooved beasts, both wild and domesticated. The paunches of deer and others of the larger grass-eaters are treated and cured and then used to line waterskins. Intestines of the bigger beasts are cleansed and stretched and cured and then used as watertight storage containers. You see, 'Bella, we are a thrifty people, wasting nothing of any conceivable utility. As chancy as our life can be, it's a case of 'waste not, want not.' "

  "Milo, if this nomadic herding and hunting life is so very hard and dangerous, why did you first set the tribe to such a life? Why did you not settle them somewhere and farm, instead?"

  He grimaced, beaming, "Oh, I tried hard to do just that, in the very beginning, some century or so back, 'Bella. Indeed I did, I tried hard, believe me; I tried not just the once in the one place but several times in widely scattered locations. But the hideous explosive weapons with which the War that immediately preceded the Great Dyings was carried on must have vastly altered the high wind currents that control the climate here on earth, causing many once-productive areas to become near-deserts over a space of only a few years and also drowning many and many a square mile of arable land beneath new lakes or vastly broadened rivers and other waterways. The first three generations of the tribe wandered from place to place, farming a few years here and a few more there, only to finally have to move on due to unfavorable conditions of many differing varieties. As they and I slowly were forced by circumstances to adapt to a nomadic existence, I decided that that was the only feasible way of the future, and we gradually achieved to our current life and customs.

  "Here—come into my memories and learn just how it was long ago and far, far away to the south and west."

  The spring came in earlier than usual, and Milo, Paul Krueger and their people and herds moved out eastward from the southern fringes of the shrinking Lake Tahoe, but they had not proceeded far at all, not quite to Silver Springs, when the rearguard came roaring in to announce that they were being pursued by a large pack of bikers, loaded for bear and burning up the steadily decreasing distance.

  In the empty streets and buildings of the dead town, ambush points were set up and manned. Their backs were to the wall, and both men and women—who all had of course heard of the atrocities wreaked upon the former slaves of the Tahoe City bunch-were prepared to fight to the last spark of life, asking no quarter and expecting to receive none.

  The filthy, long-haired and -bearded pack came pouring into the town along its main street, with no scouts or flankers, all of them cocksure in their numbers, arms and rabid ferocity. And they were butchered like so many rats in a barrel. Bullets and buckshot and arrows came at them from all four sides—right, left, front and rear, both on their level and from above their heads. As the impetus of the followers packed them in between the dead or dying or wounded and confused vanguards and those still speeding into the town, hand grenades were hurled among them, the resultant explosions not only spreading a dense and deadly wave of shrapnel, but setting fire to several motorcycles as well.

  The bikers tried hard to return fire with their automatics, pistols, riot guns and heavier weapons, but were hampered by their exposed positions and the nearly complete lack of any targets at which to aim. The few casualties taken by the embattled farmer-folk were mostly accidental or pure chance hits.

  By the time the survivors of the outlaw band—less than half of the original force—finally decided to pack it in and began to stream, run, walk, hobble or crawl out of town, back toward the west and safety, the street between the bullet-pocked facades of the buildings was heaped with still or writhing bodies and the long-dry gutters were running with sticky red blood.

  Mounting captured motorcycles and horses, armed now with a plentitude of weapons of all types, Milo, Krueger and most of the men pursued and harried the retreating bikers, cutting down stragglers with ruthless abandon. As they drew up to within range of the main bunch, they dismounted to fire long bursts at the tires of the speeding bikes, blowing quite a few, then killing the thus stranded human animals at leisure. Some of the former slaves did not kill the unlucky few who fell into their hands quickly, but rather stripped them of clothing, staked them out under the pitiless sun, maimed them in ways that sickened even Milo, then left them to die slowly of exposure, pain and blood loss, if thirst or coyotes did not do the job first. Yet when Paul Krueger and others of the men would have put a halt to the barbarities and granted the captives a quick death, Milo took the part of the freed slaves.

  "Paul, gentlemen, God alone knows all that those poor bastards and their fellows—dead and alive-suffered at the brutal hands of bikers, maybe even some of those they've now got at their mercy. You surely don't think that they've recounted ail that was done to them, or even the worst things, do you? No, let them alone, for now, what they're performing here is a sort of emotional catharsis for them, as well as a long-overdue revenge for the loved ones and friends who are no longer alive to savor it."

  Krueger and the others, after stripping the dead bikers of weapons, ammunition and any other needed items, draining the damaged bikes of gasoline and removing sound tires and wheels, left in disgust, leaving Milo and the freed slaves plus a few of his own people to continue trailing the much-reduced force of raiders.

  There was one short, sharp skirmish with a contingent of bikers who had stopped at a crossroads service station and were in process of trying to siphon gasoline out of an underground storage tank, but the exchange of fire was very brief; the bikers just left their dead and seriously wounded and took off up the road to the west with as much speed as they could coax from their engines.

  Milo and his party halted there at the site of the skirmish for long enough to dispatch the wounded bikers, strip them and themselves complete the task of raising enough fuel from the subterranean tank to refill all of their own bikes and the five-gallon cans that several men carried strapped behind them as a reserve supply.

  After that, they never again caught up to the fleeing mob of survivors, though here and there along the roadway they found evidences that the pack still rode ahead of them—men dead or dying of wounds, damaged bikes or undamaged ones with empty fuel tanks, weapons, ammunition, supplies and
equipment abandoned in order to lighten loads.

  On the southern outskirts of Reno, Milo called a halt to the pursuit and turned about, heading back to Silver Springs. His guesstimate was that some eight hundred to a thousand bikers had descended on the ambush points. Of those, a good four hundred to five hundred had died in that little slice of hell that he and Paul and the rest had made of that main street of the town; those killed along the road and in the skirmish at the service station, plus the dead and dying they had found along the way, added up to half the number that had gotten out of the town alive, anyway. And the skirmish had proved one thing if nothing else: the outlaw bikers had had a bellyful of fighting, for once, and desired nothing more than escape. He felt certain that they had seen the last of the predatory cyclists. The pack had not too many fangs left to break on so tough and dangerous a quarry; his experience with their unsavory breed was that they were bullies who if hurt badly enough by a chosen victim would run away to find another less capable of self-defense.

  On the trip back, they topped off their tanks at the same service station, put a couple of cases of motor oil and some assorted lubricants and tools into the two trailer carts that they had found left behind by the enemy, then headed east once more, pausing only occasionally as the sun sank lower and lower behind them to run down and slay the few stray dismounted bikers they spotted wandering about or skulking in the roadside brush. The victory had been complete, the enemy's rout, utter.

  After a long, slow march, with frequent stops of varying lengths, since there no longer existed the horrendous pressure of pursuit by the vengeful bikers, the migrants reached what had been the State of Idaho, crossed the Snake River to the famous Snake River Plain and settled down to farming and ranching for a while. They stayed for over ten years, during which time old Paul Krueger died, to be succeeded in authority by his fortyish son, Harry, a rancher.