“I can understand a bit of why Falconer dislikes me, of course, Arabella. You weren’t around the day that he demanded to know to just what brand of Christianity my tribe subscribed and I told him bluntly that we are not any of us any form of Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Jain or anything else that he would recognize, that we neither support nor tolerate parasitic priests or preachers, that the only things we consider to be in any way sacred are the beneficial, life-giving forces of Nature—the sun and the wind, principally—those and the Laws of our tribe. At that point he sprang up, stared at me as if trying to will me to death, then stomped out of your father’s office, trying to bear off the door with him, to judge by the force with which he slammed it. Very shortly afterward, MacEvedy left on some flimsy-sounding excuse or other.
“But MacEvedy, he’s obviously an intelligent adult man, and I find it hard to credit that he truly believes me to be a warlock or werewolf. So what in the world does he really have against me, Arabella. You know himbetter, have known him far longer, than I.”
“I think, Milo, that he fears you, fears you because he is convinced that you just might persuade Father and the rest of the battalion to leave with you for a new life of herding. If the battalion leaves, he and his people will also have to leave or face death or slavery at the hands of the prairie rovers, for few of them have ever bothered to learn how to fight, always having depended upon Father and the battalion to defend them, the station and the farms.
“Here at the station, Emmett MacEvedy is a big frog in a very small puddle—the only three people with any real authority here are he, Father and the Reverend Mr. Falconer, all of whom inherited the same posts and commands held by their fathers, their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers. I think that Emmett MacEvedy fears that if he is forced to leave, he will devolve into a small frog in a much larger puddle, and as I do know the man, I much doubt that he could bear such a descent to lessened power over people, the status to which he was born and reared.”
“I offered him exactly the same status as I offered your dad, Arabella,” said Milo. “That of a clan chief, which is the most powerful office that is held by any of our folk in the tribe. He’d still have dominion over his own people—that is, unless he proved himself a poor leader or deficient in some other vital ability and, through mere self-preservation, his clan decided to depose him and elect a new and better chief.”
“And that last is probably just what terrifies him, Milo. His late father was a real organizer, a born leader of men, like my own father, but—and I have heard Father say this over and over again—not only is Emmett lacking leadership ability, he also is often possessed by faulty judgment. His son is no whit better than his sire in any way, and, moreover, both are utterly selfish. Only Emmett’s heredity has kept him in his exalted position, and only that same factor will see his otherwise completely incompetent son assume the position upon his demise. He knows full well that he would not long remain a chief in your tribe, the people would replace him and Grant very quickly, once removed from the station and inherited office. Many of the farmers already hate Emmett and Grant, and with good and sufficient reasons.
“When first the harvests began to fail, he and his son so abused their positions as to begin to appropriate foodstuffs from out the common stocks and hoard them away in secret places for their own personal use. For almost three years, these two watched their own people grow thinner and more sickly day by day, week by week, month by month, watched young babes and children and old people die after the last of the seed grain had been made into bread flour and half the poor cavalry chargers had been slaughtered to keep at least some of the people alive until the traders came, yet they never even admitted to holding their hoards, far less offering to share it out amongst those suffering and dying for want of food.
“The truth came out only when an officer of the battalion apprehended this precious pair surreptitiously milling some of their hoarded grain by night and marched them straight to my father. Now, Father and Emmett grew up together, Milo, and were old friends, in addition to the fact that their positions had always required them to work together closely almost on a daily basis, so he had thought that he knew Emmett as well as he knew any man at the station. When he so suddenly discovered his old friend’s cupidity, he waxed furious, so furious that I thought for several minutes that he was going to shoot Emmett and Grant on that very spot.
“He did not, of course, though perhaps he should have. He would have been fully justified in those executions, and no man or woman in the fort or the station would have faulted him for it. But he regained control of himself and demanded that the two of them immediately tell where their various hoardings were cached, that his soldiers might fetch them out and distribute them to the people. Instead, Emmett offered to evenly split the stolen stores with Father, noting that as they were the leaders of fort and station, it was necessary and in all ways proper that they two should remain always better fed and therefore more mentally agile than their inferiors.
“Milo, Father’s eyes shot sparks of fire, then. He drew his revolver, cocked the hammer and put the muzzle hard against the left ear of Emmett MacEvedy—it looked as if he were trying to actually push the barrel into his head through the earhole. I still can hear the words he spoke then, in a chilling tone that I never before had heard him use to any person, for any reason or under any circumstances.”
She opened her memories then that Milo might hear just what she’d heard, just as she had heard it.
“You sorry piece of scum,” Colonel Ian Lindsay had grated in tones as cold as the grin of a winter wolf, “You’re a disgrace to the memory of your father, you know. You’re a disgrace to the office you hold. You’re a disgrace to mankind in general, you selfish, heartless greedy thing.
“Only because of our lifelong relationship, that which I foolishly deluded myself into calling ‘friendship,’ do I refrain from blowing your worthless brains all over the wall behind you, yours and your darling son’s, as well.
“For the rest of this night, the two of you are going to bide locked up in one of the strongrooms below-stairs, here in the fort. At dawn, you both are going to lead me and a platoon of my men to all of your hidey-holes. When we have collected all the foodstuffs, we are going to assemble the people in the fort quadrangle and distribute every last grain of it to those for whom it was stored and originally intended.
“Be you warned, Emmett, if you try to balk my purpose, here detailed, in any way, I will surely kill you. You, too, Grant—godson or no, I shall fill your well-fed belly with metal it will not be able to digest.”
He then called back into the room the officer who had caught the midnight millers and brought them to him. “Leftenant, have a brace of men called up here and escort the director and his son down to the ground level. Instruct Sergeant Brodie to fit them both with his heaviest sets of fetters, and then confine them to separate strongrooms for the night. They are to be provided with water and nothing else—they are both well fed enough, as they stand, better fed by far than the rest of us, so they should be able to bide for a while off their fat, I should imagine. Should either of them try to escape or should they create a disturbance, both you and Sergeant Brodie have my express permission to beat them.”
Closing her memories, Arabella silently beamed, “The foodstuffs were all found out and equally distributed by my father and Emmett, in his role of director of the station, but word of what had actually occurred on that night leaked out anyway, and now Emmett is a most unpopular man to the most of his very own people, while the officers and other ranks openly sneer at him to his very face.