Hans had Black hitched to the cart and was waiting outside the door. His
wings calmly folded, Captain Klaus sat on the back of the seat. Ramsay
climbed up, and Hans slapped the reins over the horse's back. They
started up the sand beach--there was a corduroy road but the sand was
smoother--toward Three Points.
Ramsay grinned impishly as they drove through the town, because he felt
the questioning glances of the towns people. Devil Chad controlled all
this, and Devil Chad had made it very clear that Ramsay was not wanted
in Three Points. Maybe Hans wasn't wanted either but, as Pierre LeDou
had pointed out, the fishermen and farmers cared little what anyone else
thought. Ramsay looked about, hoping to see Devil Chad, but he was
nowhere in sight. A little disappointed, he relaxed beside Hans.
They drove through the village and up a rutted little road that wound
among gloomy hemlocks. Ramsay saw a doe with a fawn at her side, staring
at them. As they drew near the doe raised her white tail over her back
and disappeared. Hans grinned at her.
"They shoot the mammas with the babies," he said, "just like they do the
papas with the horns. There is no more right in that than there is in
netting a spawning fish."
"You mean because the babies will die?"
"Yaah. Then, after there aren't any more deer, people just do not
understand it. Some awful disease, they say, carried them off. They do
not know that their own lack of sense carried them off. It is the same
with fish. Those who seine in the spawning season kill maybe two hundred
for every one they take. When there are not any more fish, they will
invent a terrible disease that carried them off."