As Chamberlin later told the tale: “Well, whin I heared that damn tearing-linoleum sound, I knowed it was more than just some damn Jerry sniper up in that place, so I just stayed down and hoped old Gardner would have the good sense to do ’er, too. Then I realized it was a BAR firing from the road, too, and all I could figger was old Pettus, he hadn’ been kilt after all and was giving us all covering fire, keeping the damn Jerries down so’s we could get up into grenade range of ’em. So I waved my boys on, slung my M1 and got a pineapple out and ready.”
Milo was down to his seventh magazine when he saw, then belatedly heard the first grenade explosion within the enemy position, at which point he ceased firing, lest he accidentally make a casualty of one of his own men. Slinging the BAR, he slid down the bank to the roadway and was there to greet the two makeshift squads as they came back to their starting point.
When Chamberlin saw Milo, his eyes boggled and he almost dropped the pair of fine Zeiss binoculars he had stripped from off the incomplete body of the now-dead Gefreite.
“Gawd almighty damn!” Gardner exclaimed, letting the holstered broomstick Mauser that had been the MG-gunner’s sidearm dangle in the dust. “Sarge … uhh, Lootenunt, we thought you’s daid, fer shure. I know damn well that bullet hit you—I could see the fuckin’ dust fly up outen your fuckin’ field-shirt. So why the fuck ain’t you daid, huh?”
Milo had no real answer for Gardner’s question, not then, and not now, almost a century after the end of that war. Knowing that he must say something, however, he said that the bullet fired by the sniper had simply torn through his baggy shirt, leaving him unscathed—the first of many such lies he was to tell to explain the unexplainable, over the course of years—and he blamed the bloodstains on his necessary handling of Pettus’ body when he took the BAR and magazine belt from off it. The men believed him, none of them able to think of any other explanation, especially when no wounds could be found anywhere on his body.
Milo recalled that he had sustained at least two, maybe three, more dangerous wounds before the end of the war, more during the Korean thing, several more during his years in Vietnam and a couple after the U. S. Army retired him as overage, when he had gotten bored in retirement and became a mercenary. The wounds all had left scars, but these were faint, tiny, almost-invisible things, and he no longer could remember just where or when or how he had come by any particular one of them.
As he packed away the precious notes of the departed doctor, he thought of how much, how very much, the man might have been able to explain to him of their shared affliction, if only he had known of it. He even thought of immediately mounting up and riding out in pursuit of Bookerman, but then he recalled just how many men, women, children and domestic animals now depended solely upon him, upon his leadership, for their continued survival, and knowing the thoroughness of the German, Milo did not think that he would leave an easy trail to follow. Running him to ground might well take weeks, months, if he could catch up to him at all in totally unfamiliar territory.
If only Bookerman had spoken his suspicions months ago, even weeks or mere days ago, then told of his own, identical experiences, rather than imparting it all in a letter intended to be read after his departure.
“Who was it,” thought Milo Moray morosely, “who said that ‘if only …’ were the saddest words in any language?”
XIII
Arabella Lindsay’s small freckled hand gently squeezed Milo’s bigger, harder hand in sympathy as she beamed, “Oh, my poor Milo, you must have been so very disappointed. Perhaps, for your peace of mind, you should have ridden out after that man, no matter how long it took you to find him. But I, above all others, save maybe Father, can understand why you did not, why you felt that you could not; duty is an exceedingly hard taskmaster, I well know. But it is a shame, nonetheless, for a man or a woman should live around, near to, his or her kindred, not always alone among those different from him or her.
“You never have found, never have come across others like yourself, then?”
Milo sighed, then beamed, “No, although when I learned to use my own telepathy and to help to awaken that dormant trait in other men and women, I assiduously delved their minds in search of certain signs that Bookerman had noted in the margins of some of the pages of the books he had left me. I delved vainly, however; I never found any of the signs in the minds of those around me.”
“And mine, Milo?” Arabella questioned silently. “Have you delved my mind, too?”
“Yes, my dear, it’s become automatic with me. But you are human, just like all of the others, pure human.”
She smiled. “I am glad, Milo. I deeply sympathize with you, but even so I do not think I could bear the long, searching loneliness of being like you. I could not bear to watch while my little cousins and all of my onetime playmates grew up and grew old and finally died and I remained the never-changing same; I think that I should go mad rather quickly. That you have not done so, and that long ago, shows, I think, the immense strength of your character and mind and will. If anyone can end this deadly enmity between the prairie rovers and the people of the fort and the station, I think it must be you, and I cannot but agree with Father that God and God alone must have sent you to us in our time of greatest need.”
The identities of the MacEvedy Station farmers who had chosen to accompany the departing battalion for the nomadic, herding, hunter-gathering life offered by Milo Moray were no longer secret; they could not be, for with the invaluable aid of clan smiths and wainwrights, the farm wagons were being transformed, rebuilt into commodious carts like those of the nomads—with shorter bodies, higher wheels and stronger axles and running gear.
In the cases of the soldier families, carts were having to be built from scratch, using seasoned wood stripped from some interior parts of the fort itself, and from the dismantling of frame outbuildings, the hardware being fashioned of steel from the mortar tubes and baseplates and from the ancient 75mm guns.
When first it had become apparent that more ferrous metal would be needed were the battalion families’ carts to be done properly and the colonel had ordered that the necessary steel be stripped from the last remaining intact source, the director and his son had come bursting into Ian’s office at the fort, the elder MacEvedy white-faced with rage.
“Now dammit, Ian Lindsay, have you completely lost your mind?” he had shouted. “A squad of your men and some three or four of those godless, heathen nomads are at this very minute dismantling one of the cannons, and they refused to stop it when I ordered them to desist, attesting that it was you who said they could. If you strip us of the two cannons, then how can those of us who still are sane put the fear of God into the plains rovers after you and the rest of those lunatics you lead are gone? The mortars are very short-ranged, and I have not yet figured out just how the catapults and spear-throwers are supposed to work.”
There was no longer any trace of either respect or friendship left in the officer’s gaze or voice when he answered. “You’ll no longer need worry yourself about the tension-torsion weapons, for they’ve been broken down for the timbers, rope and hardware, and the spear-throwers, too. The mortars have gone to the forges by now, and both of the cannons and their carriages are on the way. If it develops that we need more metal, the rifles will follow.”
Grant whimpered, but his father demanded in heat, “And just how are those farmers and their families you and your damned troops are deserting here supposed to defend themselves against the next pack of rovers who come along if you choose to selfishly destroy all of the real weapons?”