by John F. Carr
He put me in charge of the half squad I was with. He said we were all Dinneh now, that the government had made us all one. And that Tom and Nelson both had confidence in me. One young Navajo didn’t want to be under me, so Frank changed him to his half and gave me Cody George. Then we left.
I’d set my watch to zero on the stop watch mode and we backtracked the sheep trail for almost four hours when we saw up ahead what looked like a long wall or fence. By then it was lighter; Cat’s Eye was still a crescent, but it was getting thicker. So we got down on our hands and knees and crawled; the low shrubs would make us hard to see.
What we’d seen was a fence made by uprooting and piling the big thorn bushes. On the other side of it were shaggy cattle. I remembered reading that the Kazakh colonists were going to take yaks with them. Yaks from the Tibetan Plateau, that could stand severe cold and thin oxygen. We followed the fence in more or less the direction we’d been going before, west, and pretty soon we could hear someone yelling up ahead, not an alarm, but as if he was yelling at the cattle. Closer up, I could see what looked and sounded like a young boy. He had a grub hoe, and seemed to be chopping some kind of plant out of the pasture. There was a gap in the fence, with only one big thorn shrub in it to block it, and when a cow would get close to the gap, the boy would yell and chase her away.
It wasn’t just yelling; it was words. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Kazakh. Kazakh is a Turkic language. This one sounded Indo-European to me. It reminded me of what Lieutenant Toloconnicov had said about the Kazakhs using slaves, and something I’d read about Balt and Armenian indentured laborers being shipped to Haven. If he was a Balt or Armenian, he d probably learned Russian and English in school, so I could talk to him. He’d also probably not feel any loyalty to the Kazakhs.
I told my men to stay where they were and lie low, then moved to the gap in the fence and crawled through past the shrub that blocked it. Mostly the herd boy’s back was toward it, so I crawled to him on hands and knees, slowly, easily, making no quick movements. When I got closer, I could hear him talking to himself, as if he was angry. The hoe was a kind of grub hoe and looked too heavy to be a good weapon, unless he was really strong.
When I was about forty feet away and he still hadn’t seen me, I rose up and started for him in a crouch, still quietly, only rushing the last few feet. I don’t think he knew I was there till I was on him. Then I hit him from behind, throwing him down and landing on him.
He didn’t really struggle; I was surprised at how thin he was inside his cape.
“Don’t yell,” I told him, in slow, distinct English. “If you’re quiet, nothing will happen to you.”
He didn’t make a sound.
“Come to the fence with me,” I said. “I want you to answer questions about your masters.” Then I let go my hold on his head and got off him.
He half turned over so he could look at me. And stared. “Are you—American?” he asked.
“I’m an American Indian,” I told him, and watched his eyes get round. He must have seen old American movies back on Earth. “We don’t have slaves,” I added. “Those we admire, we adopt into the tribe as warriors.”
I’d seen some of those movies too. Sometimes they weren’t even all nonsense. He nodded, then picked up his hoe, and together we trotted to the fence, he kept looking back over his left shoulder as if for somebody coming. I looked too, and saw something I hadn’t noticed before. I should have. By the light of dimday, I saw low buildings humped in the distance. They looked like a large set of buildings.
Crouching by the fence, I asked him, “What were you watching for?”
“Amud,” he said. “It is his shift to keep watch on the herd. He just went to the—ranch, for tea. He’ll be back soon, and if I’m not chopping puke bush, he’ll beat me.”
“We’ll watch for him then,” I said, and began to ask about the ranch and the people there. His eyes were gray and looked too big for his thin face, but they flashed with anger, and once I got him started, he talked without urging. All I had to do was steer. His name was Janis, he said. Most of the Kazakhs had left two truedays earlier—maybe 120 hours as I figured it. They had taken the sheep to summer pastures. The lambs were now old enough to be out during the cold of truenight.
Sometimes there was no truenight between truedays; there was just day, then dimday, then day again. Sometimes there’d be a short truenight, with dimday before or after. But now and then there’d be a long truenight and even in summer it would freeze hard then, the waterholes would freeze over and wet places would freeze on top like concrete.
There were fifty or sixty Kazakhs with this ranch. Fifteen or sixteen of them were still here at their year-round headquarters. There were also eight indentured laborers—seven Latvians and a Russian—whose contracts the Kazakhs had bought from the Bureau of Relocation. Indentured laborers were the same as slaves. Three of the Latvians were women or girls, and two of them were pregnant by Kazakhs. Their babies would die because the air was so thin, Janis said, and maybe the mothers. The Kazakhs didn’t care enough about them to take them to Shangri-La for birthing. Besides, Kazakh women were supposed to arrive from Earth, later in the year, brides for the stockmen.
Of the Kazakhs still at the headquarters, three tended the cattle here in the pasture, one on a shift. Six tended the horse herd. The rest looked after the headquarters. Those not on duty would be sleeping or loafing.
And yes, they were always armed. They carried a short, curved sword and a pistol. Those out tending herds, like Amud, also carried a whip and a rifle.
That was as far as Janis had gotten when I saw someone riding out from the buildings. “He’s coming,” I said to Janis. Stay here. Pretend you’re napping. When he comes over to beat you, I’ll kill him. I have warriors with me. We’ll kill the rest of the Kazakh, take their cattle and horses, and free your people. You can come with us if you want.”
Then I crawled back past the gate bush and hid myself behind the hedge, to wait where I could see Janis through the gap. Two minutes earlier I’d felt confident. Now my guts felt tight and hot; it all seemed like a terrible mistake. Nelson had told us to scout; we were to learn, come back and report. What I was planning to do was kill fifteen or sixteen armed Kazakhs and steal their cattle and horses. With five men, a boy, and only one gun—three guns if we got Amud’s. Maybe I could still change my mind, sneak away and go to the main force.
But Amud would whip Janis, and Janis would probably tell; he would feel betrayed. And—Did the Kazakhs have radios? Could they call in the crews from their outstations? Or police from somewhere, or Marines?
The Kazakh rode up on his shaggy pony and uncoiled his whip to wake Janis. I shot him in the chest, and he fell off his horse like a sack. The pony was well trained; he hardly moved.
I waved to bring my five men to me and we crawled through the gap. The sight of his dead ex-master didn’t bother Janis; he looked excited. The Kazakh was armed, as Janis had said. I gave the boy the sword, gave the Kazakh’s military rifle to a Navajo named Arnold and the pistol to Cody George. Then I told all of them what I wanted them to do, and nobody argued. They all looked as if they thought I knew what I was doing. After I’d put on the Kazakh’s sheepskin cloak and cap, I got on the pony, helped Cody get on behind me, and told Janis to follow alongside. The others went back through the gap to do what I’d told them.
The ranch buildings were low and mostly oblong and their roofs were rounded. They were made of construction flex, but riding up to them, you couldn’t tell, because thick outer walls of sods had been built around them for insulation, and thick sod pads had been laid on the roofs. Their windows were small and there weren’t very many. Besides the finished buildings, there was almost a village of small round buildings nearby that weren’t finished yet, for when the Kazakh brides arrived. The flex walls were up and there were piles of turf waiting to be set.
Janis was skinny but tough and used to the thin air. He’d jogged alongside me and had had breath enough t
o talk and answer questions. There was no radio at the headquarters, he’d said. That was hard to believe of volunteer colonists and I still half expected to see an antenna on a roof, but all I saw was a windmill. The breeze had died and the windmill wasn’t moving. As we rode up, there was a smell I would come to know as the smell of dung fires. Somewhere a compressor was thudding; probably they had a power pump for water when there was no wind. I drove the pony with my left hand and kept my right inside my cloak, holding my revolver, in case anyone came out and saw that something was wrong.
As I rode in among the buildings, I could see a building with a lean-to on one side. A corner of the building was in the way, but I could hear a hammer clanging on iron; it had to be the smithy. The smith was Russian, Janis had told me, an indentured laborer whom the Kazakhs had given privileges. Janis didn’t like him, perhaps because he had privileges, or maybe because he was Russian.
Janis pointed at one of the largest building, next to the windmill. “That’s where the Kazakhs live,” he said. Then he pointed at another: “And that is the horse stable.” He started toward it, as I’d instructed him. His hand was inside his long cape, holding Amud’s short curved sword; his job was to kill the stable boss, a Kazakh with an arthritic hip, and get his gun and sword.
A Kazakh came out of an outbuilding and crossed to another, not fifty meters away. He never paid any attention to Cody and me; I suppose he was used to everything being all right. Janis saw him too, and pretended he was going to another long building, maybe a lambing shed. Cody and I got off the pony just outside the door of the Kazakh bunkhouse and I looped the reins around a hitching rail there. Then we walked in.
The door opened into a fairly wide, shallow room with pegs around the wall for cloaks and wet boots. It would keep cold air from rushing into the rest of the house when the door was open. Then we went through the inner door, my eyes sweeping around. It opened into the main part of the house, which was mostly one big room with sleeping robes around the sides, and at one end a kitchen not separated by a wall. There were men sleeping, and three men around a blanket in the middle of the floor, playing some game. We started shooting at once, first at the men gambling, then at others as they rolled to their feet from their beds. The two women working in the kitchen were screaming. There were six men there, and we shot them all, right away.
“Cody,” I said, “go outside and see if anyone’s coming.” I hoped no one had heard the shooting through the thick walls. While I reloaded my pistol, I walked over to the women, talking Russian at them the best I could. They’d already quieted. Both of them were naked—the Kazakhs kept them that way—and one looked about six months pregnant; I don’t think she was sixteen yet. I’d read the Koran; these Kazakh settlers weren’t very good Muslims.
“Where do they keep their rifles?” I asked.
Both women began talking at once, then the young one quieted. The older woman was pointing toward a corner of the building. In that room, she told me, also in Russian. One of the men we’d shot would have the key on his belt. Carrying a butcher knife, she went with me to look for the key. After we looked at a Kazakh, she would slash his throat, even if he looked dead. She was a little bit crazy.
We checked out the three by the blanket without finding the key. I took the holstered pistol from one of them and put it on my belt as a spare. Then I heard two shots outside, not loud at all through the sod walls, and I ran over and opened the outer door, just enough to see out. Cody was crawling out from under a big man in shirt sleeves, and there was a hammer lying on the ground. The blacksmith, I decided. Cody was having trouble getting free; it looked like one of his arms might be broken. Then a Kazakh came running around the corner of a building, and I shot at him and missed. He ducked back out of sight. Cody didn’t come to the bunkhouse like I thought he would. Instead he ran into the building across the way, which would let him find targets of his own. There was more shooting, I couldn’t see where.
From where I was, I could only see in one direction and it didn’t seem like a good idea to pop out. Besides, one of us needed to be here and hold the armory with its rifles. Back in the main room, I saw the older woman opening the armory door. The pregnant girl had put on a pair of pants from a dead Kazakh and was buckling on his pistol belt. I could see a ladder fastened to a wall, and a trapdoor above it in the roof. From the roof I’d be able to see around. But first I needed to see the armory and get a rifle. I couldn’t hit much with a pistol except up close; with a rifle I could reach out.
In the armory were rifle racks, one of them almost full. I took one, an obsolete military model and checked to see if the magazine was full. It was. I took two spare magazines from an open box, put them in a deep pocket in my Kazakh cloak, and went back out of the armory. The pregnant girl was standing by the inner door with a pistol in her hand, as if waiting for someone to come in from outside. I called to her to be careful, to kill only Kazakhs.
Then I went to the ladder and climbed it. The trapdoor opened below the roof ridge on the side away from most of the buildings. I could hear some shouting but no shooting, and crawled to the ridge on my belly. From there I could see across the buildings and into the horse pasture on the far side. One of the herdsmen on shift was just sitting on his horse about four hundred meters away about as far as I could make him out by dimday. He seemed to be looking in my direction. There should have been another one, but I couldn’t see him.
That’s when I heard three shots below, in the bunkhouse, two of them almost at the same time. I stayed where I was, hoping that the women would take care of things down there. There was more shooting from a building near the horse stable. A Kazakh ran out, around the corner of the door and waited, pistol in hand, as if he thought someone might follow him out. I raised my rifle and aimed as well as I could, given the distance and the light. Then I squeezed off a single round, and he fell. No one shot at me, and it occurred to me that if a Kazakh saw me, he might not be sure I wasn’t another Kazakh.
Another one came trotting toward the bunkhouse, half-bent over, also holding his pistol. There was another advantage for us: Except for herdsmen on shift, probably none of them had a rifle with him. I shot him down, too, and someone shot twice in my direction, someone I hadn’t seen. One bullet hit sod near my face and threw dirt on me, so I crawled back and rolled to my right a couple of meters, then moved back up just enough to over and see someone running from a shed and into cover behind another one.
It looked as if he was going to get around behind me. For just a second I thought about going back down through the trapdoor, but what good could I be there? I needed to be where I could find targets. So I stayed where I was. If someone did get around behind me, he wouldn’t be able to see me from close up because of the eaves, and maybe he couldn’t shoot well with a pistol.
One place I couldn’t see at all was the ground close in front of the bunkhouse. Then I heard more shooting from inside. Right after that a window broke, as if someone wanted to get in that way. I knew the windows were double paned, because there was a sash at the outer end of the window hole and another one at the inner end. They’d be hard to crawl through. Then there was a shot from somewhere across the way, and I heard a yell of pain from in front, by the window. It had to be Cody that shot him—Cody with what I had thought might be a broken arm.
Right after that there were three quick shots from behind me, pretty far away—rifle shots, I thought. I didn’t hear any bullets hit. From the corner of my eye I saw someone run from a building toward the Kazakh I’d shot near the stable. I didn’t think it was a Kazakh; it was someone without a cap, someone baldheaded. He bent as he reached the Kazakh, just long enough to pull off his pistol belt and pick up his gun, then he shouted something and ran inside. I decided he must be one of the Latvians.
What happened next might have been from someone seeing my breath puff in the chilly air. There was a short burst of rifle fire, and one or more bullets hit just in front of me. One went through the sod, hit the flex bel
ow and glanced back up through the sod again to knock off the Kazakh cap I was wearing. Then I heard feet trotting as if coming to the bunkhouse from in front, so I rolled over the top, and with someone shooting at me again, I slid down the other side feet first, to drop off the edge. It wasn’t a long drop, less than two meters. My feet hadn’t hit the ground yet when I saw the two Kazakhs, and when I landed, I emptied half a magazine in their direction. They both fell, and I ran to the outer door of the bunkhouse, hearing more shooting and the dull thud of slugs hitting sod-covered flex.
I was in the cloakroom, panting as if I’d run a hundred meters, before I remembered the women. I called to them in English. “It’s me! The American.” But I still didn’t try to go through the inner door. Instead I did some quick mental arithmetic. I’d killed a Kazakh in the cow pasture. Then Cody and I had shot six more inside. And I’d shot one near the stable and two just out front. And Cody’d shot at least one other. That made eleven, eleven of, say, sixteen. And there’d been other shooting. How many were left? Had the women killed any?
So I called out, “How many from outside did you women kill?” The answer came in Russian: “One.” So there shouldn’t be more than four Kazakhs left, it seemed to me. Just then there was more shooting outside, and I stood beside the door, listening for whatever would tell me anything. After awhile I heard someone, Janis, call out in English. “Indian!”
I answered without showing myself: “Yes?”
“I killed two, and I don’t know where there are any more. Some of my friends have guns now. What should we do next?”
“What about the herdsmen with the horses?”
“We just shot one of them. I don’t know about the other.”
That might have been the one who’d been shooting at me. “Get his rifle,” I called.
