The two nomads stood glaring and snarling before the drawn revolvers
that pointed at them from the doorways of the room. For an instant it
looked as if they were going to draw their own weapons and make a
pitched battle of it right there in the Council chamber. Then their
glances fell on their comrade, writhing in pain on the floor. They
raised their hands in slow surrender.
"If we're not back by sundown, you'll be wiped out!"
"When will the attack begin if you do go back?" asked Hilliard bitterly.
"Two hours before sundown? We thank you for the information about your
timetable, at least. We have 3 hours to prepare a defense of the town."
He nodded to the policeman. "Take them away. Put them in cells and tie
them up until this is over."
When they had been removed he turned back to the group. "I've had
nightmares," he said, "and this has been one of them. I guess if I had
been the Mayor some people think I ought to have been, we would have
been drilling and rehearsing our defenses for weeks. I had planned to do
so soon. I thought we'd have more time; that's my only excuse.
"The Sheriff and I have done a little preliminary planning and thinking.
We've made an estimate of weapons available. From what Jack Nelson and
Dan Sims report on hunting licenses issued locally a year ago, there
must be about two thousand deer rifles in town. They also guess about
four or five hundred 22's. We're lucky to live in hunting country.
"Dan and Jack have about two hundred guns of all kinds and sizes in
their rental and selling stock, and they've got nearly all the
ammunition in the valley. They had stocked up for the hunting season,
which we never had this year, so their supply sounds as if it would be
pretty good. You've got to remember the difference in requirements for
bagging a deer and carrying on a war. We have very little ammunition
when you consider it from that angle.
"The police, of course, have a few guns and some rounds. I'm placing
Sheriff Johnson in full charge of defense. The police officers will act
as his lieutenants." The Mayor stepped to a wall chart that showed the
detailed topography of Mayfield and its environs. "This is your battle
map right here, Sheriff. Come up and start marking off your sectors of
the defense perimeter and name your officers to take charge of each. I
hope somebody is going to say it's a good thing we've got the
barbed-wire defense line before this meeting is over!
"I want a rider to leave at once to bring back the wood detail. All
their horses will be turned over to the police officers for use in their
commands. I want fifty runners to go through town and notify one man in
each block to mobilize his neighbors, with all weapons available, and
lead them to the sectors which the Sheriff will designate. Each man will
bring all the ammunition he owns. Additional stores will be distributed
by wagon to the sectors. Above everything else, each man must be warned
to make each shot count."
The room was silent, and there was no protest or disagreement. Mayor
Hilliard, the man who had made fancy speeches, seemed to have vanished.
Hilliard, the dynamic, down-to-earth leader had taken his place. For a
moment no one in the room was more surprised than Hilliard himself.
"There's one thing I want to make absolutely clear," he said after a
pause. "You people who are working at the laboratory on College Hill are
to keep away from the front-lines and away from all possible danger.
That's an order, you understand?"
"No," said Professor Maddox abruptly. "It's our duty as much as anyone
else's to share in the defenses."
"It's your duty to keep your skins whole and get back into the
laboratories as quickly as you can and get things running again! We
haven't any special desire to save your necks in preference to our own,
but in the long run you're the only hope any of us has got. Remember
that, and stay out of trouble!"
The Sheriff made his appointments in rapid-fire sequence, naming many
who were not present, ordering messengers sent to them. Ken volunteered
to ride after the wood detail.
"I guess it's safe enough to let you do that," the Mayor said. "Make it
fast, but don't break your neck."
"I'll take it easy," Ken promised.
Outside, he selected the best of the three police horses and headed up
out of town, over the brittle snow with its glare ever-reminding of the
comet. When he was on higher ground, he glanced back over the length of
the valley. The nomads were not in sight. Not in force, anyway. He
thought he glimpsed a small movement a mile or two away from the
barrier, at the south end of the valley before it turned out of sight at
the point, but he wasn't sure. Once he thought he heard a rifle shot,
but he wasn't sure of that, either.
As he appeared at the edge of the forest clearing, Mark Wilson, foreman
of the detail, frowned irritably and paused in his task of snaking a log
out to the road.
"You'll ruin that horse, besides breaking your neck, riding like that in
this snow. You're not on detail, anyway."
"Get all your men and horses up here right away," Ken said. "Mayor's
orders to get back to town at once." He told briefly the story of what
had happened.
Mark Wilson did not hesitate. He raised a whistle to his lips and
signaled for the men to cease work and assemble. One by one they began
to appear from among the trees. The horses were led along, their
dragging harnesses clanking in the frozen air. "We could cut for 2 more
hours," they protested. "No use wasting this daylight and having to cut
by lantern."
"Never mind," said Wilson. "There's something else to do. Wait for the
rest."
When all had assembled he jerked his head toward Ken. "Go ahead," he
said. "You tell them."
Ken repeated in detail everything that had happened. He outlined the
Mayor's plan of defense and passed on the order for them to take all
mounts to City Hall, to go by their own homes on the way and pick up
such weapons as they owned. "You'll get your further orders there," he
finished.
The group was silent, as if they could not believe it was actually
happening. Mark Wilson broke the spell that seemed to be over them.
"Come on!" he cried. "Get the lead out of your shoes and let's get down
there! Sunset's the deadline!"
There was a rush of motion then. They hitched up the necessary teams and
climbed aboard the half-filled sleds. There was no excitement or
swearing against fate and their enemies. Rather, a solemn stillness
seemed to fill each man as the sleds moved off down the hard, frozen
roadway.
Almost, but not quite the same pervading stillness was present in the
town when Ken returned. There was a stirring of frantic activity like
that of a disturbed anthill, but it was just as silent. The runners
moved from block to block. In their wake the alarmed block leaders
raced, weapons in hand, from house to house, arousing their neighbors.
Many, who had already completed the block mobilization, were moving in
ragged formations to the sector ordered by the block runner according to
Sheriff Johnson's plan.
Ken did not know what was planned for the many weaponless men who were
being assembled. They would be useless at the frontline. There was need
for some at the rear. He supposed Johnson would take care of that later
when every weapon was manned at the defense barrier.
He stopped at his own house. His mother greeted him anxiously. He could
see she had been crying, but she had dried her tears now and was
reconciled to the inevitable struggle that was at hand.
"Your father came in a few minutes ago, and left again," she said. "He's
been placed in charge of distribution of medical supplies under Dr.
Adams. He wants you and the other boys of the club to help in arranging
locations for medical care. Meet him at Dr. Adams' office."
"Okay, Mom. How about packing a load of sandwiches? I may not be back
for a long time. I don't know what arrangements they are making for
feeding the people on duty."
"Of course. I'll make them right away." She hurried to the kitchen.
Maria said, "There must be something I can do. They'll need nurses and
aides. I want to go with you."
"I don't know what they've planned in that department, either. They
ought to have plenty of room for women in the food and nursing details."
His mother came with the sandwiches and placed them in his hands. "Be
careful, Ken." Her voice shook. "Do be careful."
"Sure, Mom."
Maria got her coat. Mrs. Larsen let her go without protest, but the two
women watched anxiously as the young people rode toward town on the
police horse.
At the doctor's office, Ken found his father surrounded by an orderly
whirl of activity. "Ken! I was hoping you'd get back soon. You can help
with arrangements for hospital care, in assigned homes. The rest of your
friends are out on their streets. Take this set of instructions Dr.
Adams has prepared and see that arrangements are made in exact
accordance with them at each house on the list."
"I can help, too," said Maria.
"Yes. Dr. Adams has prepared a list of women and girls he wants to
assign as nurses and aides. You can help contact them. Get the ones on
this list to meet here as quickly as possible and they'll be assigned to
the houses which the boys are lining up."
The comet was setting earlier now, so that its unnatural light
disappeared almost as soon as the sun set below the horizon. In the
short period of twilight, tension grew in the city. Everything possible
had been done to mount defenses. An attack had been promised if the
nomad emissaries did not return. Now the time had come.
Darkness fell with no sign of activity in any direction. It seemed
unreasonable that any kind of night attack would be launched, but
Hilliard and Johnson warned their men not to relax their vigilance.
The pace of preparatory activity continued. Blankets, clothing and food
were brought to the men who waited along the defense perimeter. Medical
arrangements were perfected as much as possible.
Ken and his father made their quarters in another room of the building
where Dr. Adams' office was. There was no heat, of course, but they had
brought sleeping bags which were unrolled on the floor. After the
sandwiches were gone their rations were canned soup, to be eaten
directly from the can without being heated.
Maria was quartered elsewhere in the building with some of the women who
were directing the nurses' activities.
Through the windows could be seen the campfires which Johnson had
permitted to be built at the guard posts. Each had a wall of snow ready
to be pushed upon it in case of any sign of attack.
"We'd better get some sleep," Professor Maddox said finally to Ken.
"They'll take care of anything that's going to happen out there tonight.
We may have a rough day tomorrow."
Ken agreed, although he did not feel like sleeping. After hours, it
seemed, of thrashing restlessly he dozed off. He thought it was dawn
when he opened his eyes again to the faint, red glow reflected on the
walls of the room. He was unaware for a moment of where he was. Then he
saw the glow was flickering.
He scrambled to his feet and ran to the window. In the distance the glow
of burning houses lit the landscape. The rapid crack of rifle fire came
faintly to his ears.
Professor Maddox was beside him. "How could they do it?" Ken exclaimed.
"How could they get through our lines and set fire to the houses?"
On the southern sector of the defense line Sheriff Johnson's men
crouched behind their improvised defenses. The glow of the fire blinded
them as they attempted to pierce the darkness from which the attack was
coming.
From a half-dozen different points fireballs were being lobbed out of
the darkness. Ineffective on the snow-laden roofs, many others crashed
through the windows and rolled on the floors inside. Such targets became
flaming infernos within minutes.
They were all unoccupied because the inhabitants had been moved closer
to the center of town for protection.
A fusillade of shots poured out of the darkness upon the well-lighted
defenders. They answered the fire, shooting at the pinpoints of light
that betrayed the enemy's position, and at the spots in the darkness
from which the flaming fireballs came. It was obvious that the attackers
were continuously moving. It was difficult to know where the launching
crews of the fireball catapults were actually located in that
overwhelming darkness.
Sheriff Johnson was on the scene almost at once. He had once been an
infantry lieutenant with combat experience. His presence boosted the
morale of the defenders immediately.
"Hold your fire," he ordered the men. "Keep under cover and wait until
you can see something worth shooting at. Try to keep the fire from
spreading, and watch for a rush attack. Don't waste ammunition! You'll
find yourselves without any if you keep that up."
Reluctantly, they ceased firing and fell back to the protection of their
barricades. Patrolman John Sykes, who was lieutenant of the sector, had
been in the National Guard, but he had never seen anything like this.
"Do you think they'll rush us?" he asked. "Tonight, I mean, in the
dark."
"Who knows? They may be crazy enough to try anything. Keep your eyes
open."
The flames quickly burned out the interiors of the houses that had been
hit. As the roofs crashed in, their burden of snow assisted in putting
out the fires, and there was no spreading to nearby houses.
In his room, Ken dressed impatiently. It was useless to try to sleep any
more. "I wish they'd let us go out there," he said. "We've got as much
right as Johnson or any of the rest."
His father remained a motionless silhouette against the distant
firelight. "As much right, perhaps," he said, "but more and different
responsibilities. Hilliard is right. If we were knocked down out there
who would take over the work in the laboratory? Johnson? Adams?
"In Berkeley there are thousands fighting each other, but with French
and his group gone, no one is fighting the comet. I don't think it is
selfish to say we are of infinitely more value in the laboratory than we
could ever be out there with guns in our hands."
He turned and smiled in the half-darkness. "That's in spite of the fact
that you have the merit badge for marksmanship and won the hunting club
trophy last year."
After an hour the attack ceased, apparently because the defenders
refused to waste their fire on the impossible targets. Sheriff Johnson
sent word around for his men to resume rotation of watch and get all the
sleep possible before the day that was ahead of them.
The fires burned themselves out shortly before dawn. Their light was
followed soon by the glow of the comet rising in the southeast. Ken
watched it and thought of Granny Wicks. It wouldn't be hard, he thought,
to understand how a belief in omens could arise. It wouldn't be hard at
all.
The sky had cleared so that the light of the comet bathed the entire
countryside in its full, bitter glory. At sunrise the faint trickles of
smoke rose from hundreds of wood fires, started with the difficult green
fuel, and stringent breakfasts were prepared. A thought went through
Ken's mind and he wondered if anybody was taking note of the supply of
matches in town. When they ran low, coals of one fire would have to be
kept to light another.
It was 9 o'clock, on a day when ordinarily school bells would have been
sounding throughout the valley. The first war shouts of the attacking
nomads were heard on the plain to the south. About thirty men on
horseback raced single file along the highway that bore the hard, frozen
tracks of horses and sleds that had moved to and from the farms down
there.
Patrolman Sykes watched them through his glasses. His command rang out
to his company. "Hold fire." He knew the nomads would not hope to break
through the barbed wire on such a rush. It looked as if they planned an
Indian-style attack as the line began breaking in a slow curve something
less than 100 yards away.
"Fire!" Sykes commanded. Volleys of shots rang out on both sides almost
simultaneously. The lead rider of the nomads went down, his horse
galloping in riderless panic at the head of the line. The hard-riding
column paralleled the barrier for 200 yards, drawing the fire of
adjacent guard posts before they broke and turned south again. It was,
evidently, a test of the strength of the defenses.
"Every shot counts!" Sykes cried out to his men. As the attackers rode
out of effective range he sighted four riderless horses. Beside him, in
the barricade, one of his own men was hit and bleeding badly. A
tourniquet was prepared until two men of the medical detail arrived with
an improvised stretcher.
Sykes sat down and rested his head on his arms for a moment. The air was
well below freezing, but his face was bathed with sweat. How long? he
asked himself silently. How long can it go on? First the comet, then
this. He roused at a sudden cry beside him.
"They're coming back," a man shouted. Sykes stood up and raised his
fieldglasses to his eyes. From around the point a fresh group of riders
was pouring toward the town. At least three times as many as before.
In a flash, he understood their intent. "They're going to come through!"
he cried. "They're going to come right through the barrier, no matter
what it costs them!"