Emma brought it and, very gently, Barbara transferred Ellis's bandaged
head from her lap to the pillow. She stood and for a long moment looked
down at him while Ellis moaned fretfully and moved. Then she took his
rifle and went to the south wall.
"Bobby!" Joe protested.
"Ellis showed me how to shoot, Daddy, and I will."
Joe looked vexedly at her but said nothing. The children lay prone on
the living-room floor, curled tightly against the bottom log. But Emma
and Martha Winterson sat quietly at the table. These women had men
defending the cabin. If one of the men needed help suddenly, they did
not want first to have to get up from the floor. Joe took his post at a
rear window.
He had disposed his force in what he considered the wisest fashion. When
the Indians came, as he was sure they would come, it would probably be
out of the forest at the rear and down the slope. It was right that Joe
should be there to draw at least their first fire. This was his house;
he was the one to defend it. Joe worried about Barbara and Tad, but the
least likelihood of attack was from either side. Winterson was well
placed in front. He had already proved his ability to gauge distance and
to hit what he aimed at.
Out in the mowed area, a grasshopper took lazy wing and settled fifteen
feet from where it had started. A robin that probably had been sitting
on the house swooped on the insect and bore it away. Gophers scurried
back and forth, and a crow alighted in the field. The fields hadn't
changed and the day was like any day. It was hard to believe that, just
beyond the mowed area, lay men who would kill everyone in the house if
they were able to do so. Joe's eyes roved the tall grass farther up the
slope. He concentrated on one place.
He thought he saw the grass sway there. It moved ever so slightly, then
was still. Joe relaxed taut muscles. He had never shot at another man
with the intent to kill and until now he had considered himself
incapable of doing so. But the terrible anger still had him in its grip
and he could kill these men. The grass moved again, and Joe knew without
a doubt that there was something in it that should not be. He stepped
back, sighted and shot. A crawling Indian threw himself upward so that
his whole torso was revealed and fell back. The grass stopped moving.
"Did you get him?" Tad called excitedly. "Did you get him, Pa?"
"I don't think so."
He tried to keep his voice calm, but it was taut and strained. He felt
surging joy because he had killed one of the enemies who had come to
destroy them. He remained too much the civilized man to speak of that to
his son.
"I thought I heard a shot!"
The bloody bandage contrasting oddly with his dark hair, Ellis was
sitting up. For a moment he did not move, but stared at something that
only he saw. Plowing a furrow beside his head, the bullet had shocked
him into unconsciousness. Leaving her post, Barbara knelt and put her
arms around him.
"Ellis! Lie down!"
"I--Bobby! Where did you come from?"
"Please lie down!"
"I--Oh! I know now!"
Her arm remained about him as he rose to shaky feet, swayed and
recovered his balance. He reached up with one hand to push the bandage a
little farther up his head and looked wonderingly at the blood on his
fingers. He said, as though that were an astonishing thing,
"They nicked me!"
Emma and Martha Winterson hovered anxiously about, and Joe said, "Better
stay down, Ellis."
"I--I'm all right now. Bobby, my rifle!"