"Don't talk like that to me," the child said sharply--and he remembered
what she thought she was.
"Sorry," he said.
"What I came about," she said calmly, "was the ex-plosion. Can you make
an ex-plosion like you said? Back there at the jeep?"
What in God's name was she talking about?
"Back there," she said with exaggerated patience, "you was thinking
about putting all the cartridges together and blowing up the whole damn
shebang. Remember?"
He did, vaguely. One of a hundred schemes that had drifted through his
head.
"I'd sure like to see that ex-plosion," she said. "The way _she_ got
things figured, I'd almost just as soon get exploded myself as not."
"I might blow up the logs here and get out," he said slowly. "I think
you'd be a mighty handy person to have along, too. Can you get me about
a hundred of the machine gun cartridges?"
"They'll miss 'em."
"Sneak me a few at a time. I'll empty them, put them together again and
you sneak them back."
She said, slow and troubled: "_She_ set the power of the goddess to
guard them."
"Listen to me, Martha," he said. "I mean _listen_. You'll be doing it
for me and they told me the power of the goddess doesn't work on
outsiders. Isn't that right?"
There was a long pause, and she said at last with a sigh: "I sure wish I
could see your eyes, Charles. I'll try it, but I'm damned if I would if
Dinny didn't stink so bad." She slipped away and Charles tried to follow
her with his mind through the darkness, to the silly little rope of vine
with the feathers and bones knotted in it--but he couldn't. Too tense
again.
Kennedy stirred and muttered complainingly as an icy small breeze cut
through the chinks of the palisade, whispering.
His eyes, tuned to the starlight, picked up Martha bent almost double,
creeping toward the smithy-prison. She wore a belt of fifty-caliber
cartridges around her neck like a stole. Looked like about a dozen of
them. He hastily scooped out a bowl of clean sand and whispered: "Any
trouble?"
He couldn't see the grin on her face, but knew it was there. "It was
easy," she bragged. "One bad minute and then I checked with you and it
was okay."
"Good kid. Pull the cartridges out of the links the way I showed you and
pass them through."
She did. It was a tight squeeze.
He fingered one of the cartridges. The bullet fitted nicely into the
socket of an arrowhead. He jammed the bullet in and wrenched at the
arrowhead with thumb and forefinger--all he could get onto it. The brass
neck began to spread. He dumped the powder into his little basin in the
sand and reseated the bullet.
Charles shifted hands on the second cartridge. On the third he realized
that he could put the point of the bullet on a hearth-stone and press on
the neck with both thumbs. It went faster then; in perhaps an hour he
was passing the re-assembled cartridges back through the palisade.
"Time for another load?" he asked.
"Nope," the girl said. "Tomorrow night."
"Good kid."