The World Ends In Hickory Hollow (16 page)

Seeing my wave, he signaled back. They would ride around the fencerow and take the besiegers on the other sides by surprise. Annie caught my elbow and raised her eyebrows. Somehow, in these circumstances, words weren't really necessary. I nodded, and we turned back into the now-blistering garden to look for the missing.

We found Bill slumped against a peach tree, a crimson groove along his skull bleeding freely. He was out, so we put a pressure bandage over the wound, tying it tightly with a strip of Annie's shirttail. A small girl was crumpled ominously under a frame full of berry vines.

Annie moved her gently, feeling for a heartbeat. I could tell that she had found one by the sudden relaxation of her tense back.

Phyllis, this child, had a broken shoulder. The slug had shattered bones and torn muscles. She was bleeding badly, and it was impossible to see how to stop it, placed as we were. As we stooped there,
Suzi
came softly up behind us and looked the situation over.

"You put her on my shoulder," she said quietly. "I'll carry her to
Jessups
', down the road. Then you come, when all is done. "
Suzi
was small, but so was Phyllis, so we lifted her carefully onto the slender shoulder, packing the wound with the rest of Annie's shirt and part of mine. She set off sturdily, and I smiled at Annie with all the reassurance I could find.

The third child, Ron, was hard to find. We finally crawled through the orchard, searching every inch of the ground. He was buried under a heavy-leaved branch from a plum tree that had been literally cut off its mooring by gunfire. Somewhere out there one of those creatures must have had an automatic, pilfered from the Army.

Ron was unwounded except for a knot on his head where the branch had struck him. We tugged him back to the shelter of the thick fencerow hedge before examining him thoroughly, and by then the sporadic fire had died away entirely. We laid him beside his father, and Annie sat beside them while I crept to the yard gate to reconnoiter.

Our three cavalrymen were sitting their horses in a line, watching something toward the river woods. I gathered that our enemies were in full retreat, so I hailed them.

"We need to get Bill down to
Jessups
'. He's hurt.
Suzi
is carrying one of the other children down there. too. Is it safe to move from here?"

Lucas raised his hand, then rode slowly toward the river, his gun across the pommel of his saddle. Zack and Josh trotted toward me, and Zack called out, "They're going toward the river. I think they've had enough for now. Lucas is just seeing that they keep going."

He dismounted and gave me a quick hug as he entered the gate. Josh, just behind him, grinned. But they both got busy when they saw Bill's gray face.

By the time Lucas returned from his patrol, we had Bill and Ron loaded onto one of the horses. We went up the drive to find the other three still safely tethered. It was a relief to mount again and move away from the burning house and kindling fruit trees into the smoke-free air of spring. Yet I caught Annie looking back toward the column of black with regret on her face.

"We worked so hard ... we had to fight so hard to keep it. Now it's gone. What'll we do, Luce?"

My mind went into gear. "There's a house, empty, just upriver, not a half mile from us. I don't know whose it was, but it's tight and whole. We can always scrounge anything you need, and your cattle are safe. I saw them all bunched in a thicket as we came down through the woods. You'll be all right. We're going to be a colony, now, not just chance neighbors."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

We caught up with
Suzi
on the way. She had had to stop and lean against a tree, but she hadn't dared to put Phyllis down, for fear of causing even more bleeding. Zack had them both in hand before
Suzi
really knew we were there. He put her up on his horse, then walked beside her, carrying the child.
Suzi
swayed in the saddle, her olive face paled to paper whiteness.

"Arm ... hurts," she said, as he led her mount down the
Jessups
' drive.

I nodded and looked back at Zack. He jerked his chin, and I galloped ahead to warn the
Jessups
of our coming. They were both on the patio, watching the boil of smoke from the
Fanchers
' house. Horace greeted me with a booming cry of, "We just now spotted the smoke, or we'd have been over! What happened? More
Ungers
?"

"More
Ungers
," I agreed, dismounting and slipping the bit so that the gray could graze. "We saw the smoke before noon, and Lantana and
Suzi
and I came running while Jim went for the men. There must have been a bunch of '
em
around the house ... I never saw any except for those on the upper side of the house, but it sounded like a war while the men were rousting them out of the bushes toward the river. Anyway, Bill's hurt ... scalp wound. Lost a lot of blood. " I paused.

"The little girl, Phyllis, is badly hurt. Chest and shoulder wound. We didn't have a chance to explore it, but I think she's still bleeding. One of the boys got knocked out by a falling branch, but I don't think he's much to worry about."

Carrie glanced sharply at the approaching cavalcade, then she turned toward the house. Her call brought both her daughters flying from the rear garden, and I was relieved to see that Grace seemed to have recovered well from her wound. Laura, however, still wore a strained look, and she was far too thin.

Then
Sim
Jackman
came hobbling from the kitchen door, and I gazed at him open-mouthed. He looked, as indeed he was, if he had been broken all to pieces and put back together with glue by an inexperienced hand. He moved stoutly, for all that, and had us all hustling wood for hot water, blankets, and alcohol for the wounded before we could say hello.

Horace and Josh bore Bill into the flagged kitchen. He was beginning to come around, though he was still a frightening shade of ashen gray. As soon as his eyes opened they glanced wildly about for his family, and Annie laid her hand on his shoulder.

"All here, honey, she said. "None dead.."

Then he lay back and let Lantana and Carrie work loose a makeshift bandage in order to clean his wound. They carefully kept him turned so he couldn't see Phyllis, who had been placed on the dining table.

Sim
and I bent over her and I cut away her coveralls and shirt. There was no need to loosen dried blood–it hadn't dried and was still oozing slowly from the ugly spot in her shoulder.

"Had much '
sperience
with gunshot wounds?" the old man asked, as I straightened my back and laid the scissors aside.

"Not much," I answered. "This is way beyond me,
Sim
. We need a doctor, I'm afraid."

"I been
tendin
' to hunters that shot each other accidental for over thirty years," he told me. He lifted an
Xacto
knife and a large pair of tweezers from the pan in which we had boiled them and leaned over the child again. "They made pure D messes out of each other,
sho
'
nuff
. I've seen worse '
uns
than this, by a long shot."

But I could tell from the set of his jaw that digging slugs out of a seasoned hunter was a far different thing from the task now before him. Phyllis's golden-tawny skin had a bluish undertone, and her breath came in shallow gasps.

"Ain't a artery,"
Sim
muttered. "Wouldn't be here now if it was. Just a really nasty mess down there. Pieces of bone all in it. Kin you see to pick out some of it on your side, while I try for the slug?"

I plied my tweezers and held my hand steady and my mind detached. One day I might well have to do the same for one of my own children, and I intended to know the right way to go about it. We were working so closely that I could follow the motions of his knife and his pincers without neglecting my own task.

The bone shards gleamed in the light of the lamps that Carrie had set in their hoops in the chandelier overhead. The blood was redder than natural, the instruments brighter. Still, I picked out fragments and watched the misshapen chunk of lead emerge from the tender flesh and clink into the pan that Zack held. Then floods of alcohol–made by the directions we had left with Horace–cleaned the hole, and what seemed to be yards of damp cotton went into it.

"Soaked them bandages in comfrey tea," said Lantana behind me. "Mighty good for healing."

She pushed me aside, then
Sim
, and took over the final bandaging, wrapping wide strips of what I knew must be an irreplaceable sheet about chest and shoulder and neck, until Phyllis couldn't possibly move about enough to rip anything open. Then we laid the child back and watched, breathless, for a long time. No blood came through, then or later.

Annie, with iron control, had stood back and let us take her child into our less-than-expert hands and work for her life. Now she folded quietly into a rocking chair, her face as ashy as her husband's had been. Carrie and Lantana zipped into action, and soon we each held a cup of mint tea well laced with "drinking alcohol."

By now Bill had come around, though he was–and would be – pretty wobbly. There was no way to hide from him the serious condition in which Phyllis now existed, but he took it well. There's no denying that our fortifying tea helped in that respect, and not only Bill.

We were all shaken and sick. The menace of the Unger community, that we had buried away from our thoughts with work, now stared us directly in the eyes. Something must be done. Once we had the
Fanchers
settled wherever they decided to go; once we had reinforced the
Jessups
as much as could be done; once we barricaded our own complex of homes so that no other sneak attack could catch us unaware, then we must go on the offensive ourselves.

It was now midafternoon. The weather, which had been almost hot, as April is in East Texas, now held the muggy feel that precedes a thunderstorm. We knew that some of us, at least, must return home to reassure those left behind, as well as to reinforce them in case the
Ungers
tried another foray.

Lantana elected to stay for a while and help care for the wounded, a choice much appreciated by Carrie Jessup.
Suzi
wanted nothing except to go home to her brood of children. Josh and Horace felt that his added rifle would make enough to hold the
Jessups
' house if new trouble should arise. So four of us mounted the horses and moved off into the now-cloudy afternoon, though my own thoughts kept wandering back to the eight-year-old who still lay within the grasp of death.

As we turned down the Sweetbriers' drive, Lucas cleared his throat, a sure sign that he was preparing to impart an idea. "You know, it's dangerous business going into those woods down by the river, with the
Ungers
licking their wounds. 'Round by the road is ridiculous. But if we cut straight through the fields and pastures behind all these places, we'd make it a lot straighter way, with no woods for anybody to set up an ambush in. Have to cut a lot of fences, but that's just good for the cattle, except just
Fanchers
' and
Londowns
' spreads. We can put in gaps there, that we can close behind us.

It was so obvious–and so bright–that it had escaped us all until now, So we painfully cut barbed wire with pliers, as we had no wire cutters handy, making a straight shoot toward our own farm. At Bill's first fence we carefully parted the wire, tied onto the loose ends a stout hickory sapling, made two loops of wire that we had saved when coming through nonstrategic fences, and closed it by setting either end of the pole into a loop, which was no easy task, and left the fence nicely tight.

"Have to bring some staples to reinforce the wire on both posts," Zack decided. "But we can do that when we come back after Lantana."

The new route, even with the delays involved, got us home before sundown. Not a sign of anything hostile could be seen the whole way, and we found things quiet, though alert, at home.

Amazingly, Nellie, the children, and Mom Allie had finished the canning, short-handed though they were. This was a blessing, for we knew that the next day must be spent in fortifying our enclave. There was no longer any way we could avoid facing the necessity. It must be done, and now, lest we find ourselves in such a fix as the
Fanchers
had faced..

We rose before sunrise, all three households.
Suzi
, though in pain, would not be left out, so we set her to weaving leather lattices to hang inside the windows. Not only would they catch shattered glass, but we also hoped that they would make it harder to see anyone moving in the house. With summer upon us, it would be impossible to stay in the houses with the shutters closed.

The rest of us set our minds to those selfsame shutters. Our cabin was fitted with stout ones, into which we now bored loop-holes. The other house was also supplied with shutters with loopholes. We blessed our tin roofs, for it was upon the
Fanchers
' shingled one that the
Ungers
' flung torch had started the fire that destroyed their home. In order to give even more protection from fire, we banked dirt up the walls of both houses, almost to the overhang of the roof. Maud found herself harnessed to the slip, dragging big scoops of soil up from the near field for us to shovel against the logs.