by Robert Adams
“But, Uncle Milo,” protested Little Djahn Staiklee, “the other boys and me, we all had planned to ride into there tomorrow and bring back a whole mess of them squirrels lives in them big old trees, and maybe some more of them little itsy bitsy antelopes, too.”
Milo shrugged. “If you want to hunt the fringes of the suburbs, fine. Just don’t penetrate into the areas of the wider streets and larger buildings. Okay? And swing wide around the lake, eh? Ride in from due north, and be very, very careful, Little Djahn. Whatever you all do in there, avoid the Dirtmen or any trace of them and do not provoke any violence. If I can, I want to deal with them in peace—after all, there is far more than enough in there for all of us— but if you or one of your brothers is maimed or killed by them, Big Djahn Staiklee will not rest until he has led the warriors down on them with fire and saber and lance and bow and wiped them and their settlement from off the face of the land.”
*
Captain Wahrn Mehrdok chose a splendid spot for the ambush of the looters. He armed every man with a crossbow and plenty of quarrels, a six-foot spear and a big, stout knife of the sort that was used in the harvesting of corn. He put two men in each chosen position, that one might be loosing while the other was recocking his crossbow and inserting a fresh bolt. He made certain that all of the quarrels mounted metal heads (common hunting quarrels had for long been just fire-hardened wooden dowels whittled and stone-rubbed to a point, then fletched, as a means of conserving metals). Then they all had hunkered down to await the return of the looters.
They had waited all through a long, long day, fighting a constant defensive action against hordes of insects, constantly on edge, awaiting word from their pickets that the trespassers were coming. On the ride back to the armory in the glow of the twilight, Wahrn had had to break up two serious fights between sweaty, weary, bored and disgusted men.
Sitting his restive, dancing horse and savagely shaking one of the last two would-be fighters in each of his powerful hands, he had grated, “Save your goddamn fighting for these strangers we’re waiting to kill or you’re both going to be a-fighting me. Is that what you want?”
That was not what those two men or any of the others wanted; that was about the last thing any of them wanted, in fact. All were fully aware that their captain could easily break any more average man in his big, hairy-backed hands. Why, hadn’t he, and when barely more than a big boy, been seen to break the neck of a stud bull with those same hands?
While they were vainly awaiting the return of the looters, a great, huge cat of a type unknown previously in this region and of which there existed no picture or description in the ancient books in the priests’ library slew a calf in the nearer pasture of Djim Dreevuh. Moreover the outsized feline predator had brazenly crouched over the still-jerking calf, tearing at it with long white teeth until one of Djim’s sons had holed it with a quarrel from his crossbow.
Those who had seen the creature averred that it was solid-colored, sort of a dun shade above and with a pure-white belly and chest, and to Wahrn’s mind that meant yet another threat to their livestock, for he knew from strictly forbidden forays into the ruined town that the other cat therein was a spotted one. It was purest idiocy to allow proven stock killers such as the she-bear and now this new cat to den up nearby and yet not be allowed to go into the ruins and slay them; he knew it and the first sergeant and a few others knew it too. Now, if he and they could only win over enough of the other farmers to their way of thinking, he would have a chance, at least, of facing and backing down that hidebound old bastard Mosix.
“And,” he muttered bitterly to himself, “if a bullfrog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass so much.”
After a brief conference with First Sergeant Rehnee, it was decided that that worthy would take the ambush party to a new locale, possibly a little farther north and west of the center of the ruins, on the morrow. It would be Wahrn’s job, he being the best and most experienced hunter of the community, to take a smaller party out and try to backtrack the calf-killer.
Mosix’s emissary had objected loudly, of course, to his rearrangement, but the slender, soft-handed man was easily routed by Wahrn’s half-serious display of bluster, departing the armory as speedily as he could without breaking into a dead run, his fat body jiggling to his accelerated movements, his face white as curds and his ears ringing with the raucous, mocking laughter of the assembled Guardian force.
As upon the past nights, with all the folk of the camp gathered around the central firepit digesting their meal and keeping their hands busy with individual projects of one kind or another—one of the young warriors fletching arrows, two others grinding ancient brass key blanks against rough-grained pebbles to make arrowheads, others honing the cutting edges and points of weapons and tools on finer-grained stones, one tap-tap-tapping one of the big silver rings found in the ruins with a small wooden mallet up a tapered brass dowel to make it large enough to fit over a horn bow ring.
Djoolya, squatting beside Milo and using one of the fine shiny steel needles she had found and some of the brightly colored threads to apply embroidered designs to one of his cloth shirts, spoke aloud, “Love, I want to know what happened after that enemy woman who had been your lover died and your chief gave you his leave to depart his camp. So will you again open your memories to us, this night?”
Across the firepit, Myrah Linsee, her fingers all heavy with the flashiest of the rings, sat embroidering one of her own shirts, not any of her young husband’s clothing. She said, “I remember from all that we had out of Uncle Milo’s memories last year, on the autumn hunt. I think I know what happened next. I think Uncle Milo wed the widow of his friend, Jethroh, the woman called Mahrteen. Am I right, Uncle Milo? Am I? Am I?”
“Yes, you are, Myrah,” he said. “I had sworn to my dying friend that I would take care of his wife and their children, you see, and a man or a woman of honor must always fulfill pledges. Yes, I went to Martine Stiles, wooed her and married her.
“But here, enter into my memories before I talk myself hoarse, needlessly.”
Chapter VI
It was not until shortly after he and Martine were married that Milo discovered just how wealthy had been his late buddy Jethro, and then he was stunned, staggered. Certain at first that he had misunderstood, he switched from the English they had been speaking to her native tongue, French.
“How much, Martine?”
She shrugged languidly, in a way that seems to be unique to speakers of Romance languages, and replied, “Fifteen millions, my Milo, more or less, of course; the figure is now some five months old. Telephone the accountant in New York, on Monday morning; he can give you the exactness. But that does not include certain small properties Jethro acquired here and there over the years, or this farm, either, for that matter.”
“He once told me,” said Milo, “that he owns a villa near Nice.”
Martine frowned and nodded. “Yes. I have ordered it repaired. It is said to have been damaged severely in the war. There is another, presently being leased profitably, in Switzerland. There is the little house he bought in South Carolina before he went to England, a piece of undeveloped beachfront property in North Carolina, his townhouse in New York City, the estate that was his father’s on Long Island, New York, and the home his father and mother used in winter in Miami, Florida. He also inherited his elder brother’s homes, one in Connecticut and one in Cuba, the home of his uncle in Bermuda and the home of his sister somewhere in California.”
“Those are not included in the fifteen million, eh?” he said dryly. “Then, pray tell me just what is included, Martine.”
“Let us see if I can to remember.” She closed her eyes and began to tick her fingers. “There is the ranch in New Mexico and the one in Montana, of course. Various petrol wells in a number of places are owned wholly or in part. There are mines that produce copper or silver or something of those sorts—one is in Utah, one is in Nevada and one is somewhere in South America, I beli
eve … or is it two? I don’t recall, Milo.
“There are part ownerships in coal mines, in iron ore mines and in some other ore whose name I cannot think but who is used to make the metal called aluminium, I believe. There are part ownerships in some canneries of fish and other things, but I don’t to remember just where they are and … oh, yes, one of them is in Argentina, adjacent to the biggest of the ranches of cattle. There is another ranch, almost as big, of sheep, but I cannot think of where.
“If you will but to telephone Monsieurs MacLeish and Birnbaum, they can send you papers that will tell you all these things in greater detail.”
Milo did better than that. He packed a bag, drove to the station in Washington and took a train up to New York City, arriving in midafternoon. A taxi driver’s suggestion wound him up in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. It was nice, but he found the prices of everything to be outrageous. He telephoned ahead, then took another taxicab to the offices of the Stiles estate’s accountants.
There he was treated like visiting royalty, effusively greeted by a high-grade flunky and ushered immediately into a conference room already occupied by both senior partners, Fergus MacLeish and Bruno Birnbaum, hot coffee, hot tea and an assortment of fine wines and spirits.
After the greeting and congratulatory formulae were spoken, Milo got down to cases. “Gentlemen, I want to know in detail just what are my wife’s holdings relative to the estate of her deceased first husband, Brigadier General Jethro Stiles. Understand, I had known for years that Jethro was personally quite wealthy and came of a very well-to-do family, too, but despite the fact that we were buddies, he never went into his personal financial data with me. And, of course, I never would’ve thought of asking, buddies or not—that was his business.”
“We can … and will give you some information, Mr. Moray.” MacLeish replied guardedly, adding, “But perhaps you also should talk with the late General Stiles’ brokers, attorneys and bankers, as well. In that way, you can be assured of having the … ahhh, the totality of the holdings.”
“Yes, Mr. Moray,” Birnbaum took up. “You see, our firm only deals with taxes and, therefore, only those assets that fall under the scansion of the Department of the Treasury.”
“That is,” said MacLeish, “domestic incomes, only.”
“Just how much is the total worth of the estate, gentlemen? Do you know?” asked Milo bluntly.
MacLeish looked at Birnbaum and Birnbaum looked at MacLeish, then both began to leaf through the stacks of manila folders. At length, MacLeish held a whispered consultation with Birnbaum, then closed the last folder and answered.
“In the neighborhood of twenty-one million dollars, Mr. Moray. But please understand, the figure only represents domestic holdings, and very little of the figure is fluid. Most of it is in land, buildings and equipment, cattle, sheep, horses and such, crops not yet harvested, fishing boats, machinery, that sort of thing.”
“Of course,” Birnbaum added, “if you and Mrs. Sti—ahhh, Mrs. Moray should be in need of cash just now, it might be wise to speak with the late general’s personal attorney to whom he entrusted, I am given to understand, the keys to certain safety-deposit boxes as well as the numbers to certain Swiss accounts.”
Milo got the same treatment when he mentioned his name to the receptionist of the law firm and assumed that the accountants must have telephoned ahead of him. Although it was a slightly luxurious office rather than a conference room into which a secretary ushered him and although only a single man awaited him, there still was hot coffee, hot tea and a larger selection of booze than the previous offerings.
“So you’re Milo Moray, hey?” said John Bannister, while shaking hands. “Poor Jethro often spoke and wrote about you. God bless you, you were and are the best friend he ever had. Just how and where did he die? Do you know?”
“He died in my arms, Mr. Bannister, shot in the back by a Hitler Youth sniper all of about fourteen years old, on the street of a little town in Germany, at the very tail end of the war, more’s the pity,” said Milo solemnly. “And only a few minutes before, I had been pooh-poohing his presentiments that he soon would be dead.
“And, by the way, he entrusted to me a large sealed envelope to be delivered to his attorneys on his death, but no name was given and the accountants mentioned that you are not the only law firm he retained.”
“No, they were wrong, Mr. Moray. I was Jethro’s only attorney. The other firm represented his late father and the estate, which did not come into Jethro’s sole ownership until his younger sister died in 1934. After he and I weighed and discussed the matter, it was our mutual decision to allow them to continue to manage the bulk of the estate matter, for, after all, they knew it in depth and had more than adequate personnel. At that time, my own staff was not so large, you see.
“But back to Jethro’s presentiment, yes, I saw that several times in my squadron, during the war. I was a Marine Corps fighter pilot. I believe you were an infantry officer. First lieutenant? Or am I wrong?”
Milo nodded. “I was discharged in the rank of major, Mr. Bannister, but, yes, I was an infantry officer … and an infantry sergeant, before that, a Regular, like Jethro.”
Bannister’s pale, thin lips twisted into a wry, lopsided smile. “Did Jethro ever tell you exactly why he chose to virtually entomb himself in the enlisted ranks of a peacetime army, Mr. Moray?”
“No.” Milo shook his head. “Other than to say that that life was his penance for some heinous crime committed long ago, in his youth. He was very close-mouthed when he wanted to be, which was most of the time, about his inherited affairs, that is. Hell, I never even knew that he was married until well after the war had started, when he took me down to Virginia and introduced me to Martine and his kids.”
With a single, slow nod, the attorney said, “Very much against the expressed wishes of his father, his mother and his uncle, Jethro Stiles left Dartmouth and sailed to France in 1915 as a driver with an American ambulance company, but once there, he wrangled his way into a French infantry regiment. Martine’s father was initially his platoon leader and, later, his company commander; her grandfather was the commanding officer of his division. He was, I am told, quite a good combat soldier for the French, garnering a number of awards for valor. Unlike many Americans who started out fighting for the French or the British in that war, he did not transfer over to the U.S. Army when America entered the war, but remained with his regiment until the Armistice.
“At the age of twenty-one, in 1919, Jethro came back to the United States, his interrupted college courses and his fraternity life. In some ways, the war and his experiences in it as a French infantryman had matured him, but in others he still was no more than he had been when he had left, four years before—a callow undergraduate scion of a wealthy family, born to privilege, and arrogantly irresponsible.
“With his automobile and his expensive, fashionable clothing, with his worldly-wise and free-spending manner, he dazzled and seduced a working-class townie girl.
“He had mastered certain hand-to-hand combat techniques during the war, of course, and also had learned savate. When the girl’s two elder brothers ambushed him and made to do him bodily injury, he all but killed them. No charges were brought by the authorities, for both of the young men were possessed of long police records for boozing, brawling, petty theft and similar offenses, but the girl’s family ordered her to stay away from Jethro.
“She did not, of course, and their affair was carried on until he finally got her pregnant. There was never any consideration of marriage, of course, for she was just too far beneath him, so he persuaded her, made arrangements and drove her clear down to Boston to undergo an abortion. But something went wrong. She hemorrhaged on the way back to Hanover, and she died in a hospital in Manchester.
“In the wake of the autopsy, the authorities at all levels went for Jethro’s scalp with a vengeance. Her brothers came after him a second time, and that time he had to kill one of them and he paralyzed
the other, although he was shot twice during the fracas.
“With Jethro hospitalized under police guard, his father and his elder brother, Jeremiah, came up to New Hampshire and began to pull in political markers and grease palms right and left. They ended in plunking down a bail bond, in cash, that was a staggering sum for that time and place, took him down to New York until he was more or less recovered of his wounds, then put him aboard a ship bound for Europe. After more monies had changed hands, all of the charges against Jethro were quietly quashed, but he chose to stay in Europe until 1928. When he did come back, he met only once with his father, his uncle and his brother, then he journeyed a thousand or more miles across the country and enlisted in the United States Army.”
Milo shook his head. “Jesus, to have heard Jethro tell the little he ever did tell, you’d’ve thought he’d done some really terrible things. It wasn’t—couldn’t have been—his fault if some back-alley abortionist fucked up. And as for the other, if a couple of hoods had attacked me with guns, I’d’ve likely done my utter damnedest to kill or paralyze them, too. Mr. Bannister, I knew Jethro as only a military buddy can know another, and I’m here to tell you that he was a good man, a damned good man—decent, caring for those who depended upon him …”
“I know, I know, you don’t need to tell me.” Bannister held up a palm. “Mr. Moray, Jethro was not only my client, he was my friend, as well. All that you say about him was true, of course, you know it and I know it, but he did not, could not. He brooded on those three deaths—the paralyzed man died a couple of years later—and he could not seem to ever shake the feeling that he bore an ongoing guilt for all of it. He was obsessed, I think.
“But poor Jethro has joined the majority, now. What about the envelope of which you spoke earlier?”
Milo opened the briefcase that Brigadier General Jethro Stiles had been carrying on the day he had died, removed the crushed and crackly envelope and slid it across the desk, wordlessly.
