As for Enos, he gave up trying to outshout the metallic clangor finally, and just prayed on to himself, his thin lips moving, but no sound issuing from them.
When he at last had a rough shoe ready for preliminary fitting, Jo had his twin and several other men tie the ox with his head between the front and rear wheels of a wagon. The ox liked not one bit of it and bawled loudly, over and over again.
This last was just too much for Enos. He arose and stamped over to the well-occupied knot of men, his cadaverous face working in frustration.
“All of you, do you hear me? Stop that noise. Stop doing anything and fall to your knees while I pray God for deliverance. Put down that … ahhAAARRRGGGHH!”
Jon ever after claimed it to have happened by the purest mischance. He and another man, each holding one end of a pole, had placed it forward of the hock and used it to lift the lower leg of the bound ox clear of the ground so that Jo could easily get at it for the first fitting. When Enos Penwalt shouted that everyone should drop everything, he simply let go his end of the pole … which then landed with the full weight of the ox’s leg propelling it squarely across Enos’ broganed foot.
For once, Enos did not pray. The tall, spare man rather rolled on the ground, clutching at his foot and squalling his agony almost loudly enough to drown out the bawlings of the ox.
Within another couple of hours, Jo and his sweating, cursing scratch force had gotten the barely tractable bovine shod. Within that same amount of time, Enos Penwalt’s foot had become terribly discolored and immensely swollen, and the twins had discussed camping in place until the swelling had subsided sufficiently for Enos to at least get his shoe back on, but on being convinced by a couple of the older volunteers that there existed considerably more than a possibility that one or more of the bones in Enos’ foot were broken, the brothers decided that the sooner a real doctor saw the suffering man, the better.
By rearranging wagonloads, by utilizing some of the led stock as pack animals, a space was made to convey the injured man on a bed of blankets and conifer tips laid on the floorboards of one of the wagons. The track they followed was but infrequently used, rough at the best and overgrown in more places than not; moreover the wagon was utterly springless, built for strength and wearability, not comfort, but it was the best type of transport they knew how to provide.
“Ever time them wheels turn, it’s gonna hurt Enos like blue blazes,” Jon opined.
Jo just shrugged. “At least it’ll give him suthin’ to pray for, brother. And that alone oughta make him happy.”
The dog-tribe had not one but rather three chiefs, each the theoretical equal of the others, although the eldest—a short, stocky man of middle years—seemed to do most of the talking for them and the tribe. Clad in gaudy finery, they rode in to meet with Chiefs Morai, Krooguh and Skaht at a meeting ground laid out well away from the clans camp.
For all that few weapons were in evidence to the casual glance, everyone well knew that everyone else was heavily armed, and, consequently, nerves were strung bowstring-tight, while ultimate courtesy was become the order of the day; for everyone there also knew that as often as similar meetings had resulted in friendship and alliance between Kindred and non-Kindred, they had just as often resulted in pitched battles.
The agreement had stipulated that each chief might bring to the meeting, itself, no more than two advisers, although up to a score of his warriors might await him beyond the confines of the meetingplace. So eighteen nomads sat in the council circle deciding their mutual future, while some sixscore warriors squatted near their horses all around the perimeter. caressing their weapons and eying their counterparts warily, alert for any slightest hint of treachery.
Morai had brought along one warrior each from Skaht and from Krooguh as advisers. Skaht had his brother and another subchief, and Krooguh had with him Djahn and Tim Staiklee of Krooguh.
But all fears of imminent carnage were laid to rest when the dog-tribe spokesman—Kehvin Burk—arose and spoke his mind. “We are from the north, have always been, and the only reason we moved south this spring was in hopes of finding tribes of you cat-people to help us … help yourselves, too, for that matter. Problem is these damned farmers. They’re moving farther and farther out into the prairies, killing off, all the game, burning off the grasses and plowing up the land. You may not have seen too many of the buggers down south, here, but up north, they’re becoming thick as flies on a fresh-skinned carcass … and, mark my words, your turn will come, and maybe one hell of a lot sooner than you think. These farmers hate and fear all of us herding people, be we cat-people or dog-people, and no mistaking; so it’s a pure case of either we hang together now or we hang separate and high, later, but not too much later.
“Now, I’ve said what I came to say. Let’s hear from one of you cat-folk chiefs, say I.”
Wearing a broad, very friendly smile, Chief Milo of Morai arose. “Chief Kehvin, you echo my very own sentiments with regard to these abominable Dirtmen, these farmers, these foul despoilers of the prairies and plains …”
The conclave went on for all of that day and well into the night, then for several days and nights after. Before it was done, it had been joined by the chiefs of two more Kindred clans—Makaiuh and Fahrmuh—and a firm, mutually agreed-upon decision had been reached.
Milo Morai, Claim Skaht and Fahrmuh would join forces with the dog-tribe and return with them to the north to deal with the Dirtmen there, to try to persuade the agriculturalists that their attempted westward expansions were unhealthy if not downright fatal.
Meanwhile, Clan Makaiuh, the chief of which had not been excessively keen on trekking north this spring anyway, would move back southeast with Clan Krooguh to explore the possibilities of hunting and raiding in that sector.
Once the decisions were made, they were quickly enacted, for the large numbers of stock had all but exhausted the easily available graze. Within days, the clans were on the move.
XII
The spring became summer and that summer became autumn, then winter came once more and Wind sent blizzards howling down from the far north to slay men and women, children and babes, horses and cattle, sheep and goats.
But in the orderly, inevitable progression of the seasons, even the coldest and deadliest of winters at long last became spring again, with rushing streams of snowmelt temporarily turning portions of the prairie into one, vast sogginess before the thirsty roots of the billions of grasses sucked up the moisture and the land was once more covered from horizon to limitless horizon in an endless clothing of shades of rippling green.
And as season followed season, relentlessly so did year follow year on the prairie as on all of the earth.
The Horseclans roamed the prairies and the high plains, setting up their yurts or tents near to spring or creek or river only for the length of time it took the horses and stock to exhaust the nearby graze and their hunters—human and feline—the game and wild plants that made up much of their normal sustenance. Then the clans would pack up and move on. To north or to south, to east or to west, they moved, wherever the graze and the hunting and, sometimes, the raiding seemed best.
The life was in no way idyllic, far from it, in fact. Folk died in every season and in a multitude of ways, some of them exceedingly painful and protracted. The weak—very young or aged or injured from whatever cause—quickly succumbed to diseases, and there had been occasions when these diseases had extirpated all or most of entire clans of supposedly healthy folk, especially in winter camps, when the clanspeople were perforce packed tooth to jowl and contagions spread with terrifying rapidity.