The baby was in its basket beside the bed—Gregg could see the movement of tiny fists—but Morna had gone.
Unable to accept the evidence of his eyes, Gregg walked all around the square room and even looked below the bed. Morna’s clothes, including her cloak, were missing too, and the only conclusion Gregg could reach was that she had risen during the hours of darkness, dressed herself and left the house. To do so she would have had to pass within a few feet of where he was sleeping on the floor of the main room without disturbing him, and he was positive that nobody, not the most practised thief, not the most skilful Indian tracker, could have done that. But then—the slow stains of memory began to spread in his mind—he was thinking in terms of normal human beings, and he had proof that Morna was far from normal.
The baby went on crying, its eyes squeezed shut, protesting in the only way it knew how about the absence of food and maternal warmth. Gregg stared at it helplessly, and it occurred to him that Morna might have left for good, making the infant his permanent responsibility.
“Hold on there, little fellow,” he said, recalling that he had not checked outside the house. He left the bedroom, went outside and called Morna’s name. His voice faded into the air, absorbed by the emptiness of the morning landscape, and his horse looked up in momentary surprise from its steady cropping of the grass near the water pump. Gregg made a hurried inspection of his two outbuildings—the distilling shack and the ramshackle sentrybox that was his lavatory—then decided he would have to take the baby into town and hand it over to Ruth. He had no idea how long a child of that age could survive without food and he did not want to take unnecessary risks. Swearing under his breath, he turned back to the house and froze as he saw a flash of silver on the trail at the bottom of the hill.
Morna had just come round the spur of rock and was walking towards him. She was draped in her ubiquitous cloak which had returned to its original colour, and was carrying a small blue sack in one hand. Gregg’s relief at seeing her pushed aside all his fears and reservations of the previous night, and he ran down the slope to meet her.
“Where have you been?” he called, while they were still some distance apart. “What was the idea of running off like that?”
“I didn’t run off, Billy.” She gave him a tired smile. “There were things I had to do.”
“What sort of things? The baby’s crying for a feed.”
Morna’s perfect young face was strangely hard. “What’s a little hunger?”
“That’s a funny way to talk,” Gregg said, taken aback.
“The future simply doesn’t exist for you, does it?” Morna looked at him with what seemed to be a mixture of pity and anger. “Don’t you ever think ahead? Have you forgotten that we have … enemies?”
“I take things as they come. It’s all a man can do.”
Morna thrust the blue sack at him. “Take this as it comes.”
“What is it?” Gregg accepted the bag and was immediately struck by the fact that it was not made of blue paper, as he had supposed. The material was thin, strong, smooth to the touch, more pliable than oilskin and without oilskin’s underlying texture. “What is this stuff?”
“It’s a new waterproof material,” Morna said impatiently. “The contents are more important.”
Gregg opened the sack and took out a large black revolver. It was much lighter than he would have expected for its size, and it had something of the familiar lines of a Colt except that the grips were grooved for individual fingers and flared out at the top over his thumb. Gregg had never felt a gun settle itself in his hand so smoothly. He examined the weapon more closely and saw that it had a six-shot fluted cylinder which hinged out sideways for easy loading—a feature he had never seen on any other firearm. The gun lacked any kind of decoration, but was more perfectly machined and finished than he could have imagined possible. He read the engraving on the side of the long barrel.
“Colt .44 Magnum,” he said slowly. “Never heard of it. Where did you get this gun, Morna?”
She hesitated. “I’ve been up for hours. I left this near the road where you first saw me, and I had time to go back for it.”
The story did not ring true to Gregg, but his mind was fully occupied by the revolver itself. “I mean, where did you get it before? Where can you buy a gun like this?”
“That doesn’t matter.” Morna began walking towards the house. “The point is—could you use it?”
“I guess so,” Gregg said, glancing into the blue bag which still contained a cardboard box of brass cartridges. The top of the box was missing and many of the shells had fallen into the bottom of the bag. “It’s a right handsome gun, but I doubt if it packs any more punch than my Remington.”
“I would like you to try it out.” Morna was walking so quickly that Gregg had difficulty in keeping up with her. “Please see if you can load it.”
“You mean right now? Don’t you want to see the baby?” They had reached the flat area in front of the house, and the child’s cries had become audible.
Morna glanced at her wrist and he saw that the gold ornament was burning with a steady crimson light. “My son can wait a while longer,” she said in a voice which was firm and yet edged with panic. “Please load the revolver.”
“Whatever you say.” Gregg walked to his buckboard and used it as a table. He cleared a space in the straw, set the gun down and—under Morna’s watchful gaze—carefully spilled the ammunition out of the blue bag. The centre-fire shells were rather longer than he had ever seen for a handgun and, like the revolver itself, were finished with a degree of perfection he had never encountered previously. Their noses shone like polished steel.
“Everything’s getting too fancy—adds to the price,” Gregg muttered. He fumbled with the weapon until he saw how to swing the cylinder out, then slipped in six cartridges and closed it up. As he was doing so he noticed that the cardboard box had emerged from the bag upside down, and on its underside, stamped in pale blue ink, he saw the brief inscription—OCT 1978. He picked it up and held it out to Morna.
“Wonder what that means.”
Her eyes widened slightly, then she looked away without interest. “It’s just a maker’s code. A batch number.”
“It looks like a date,” Gregg commented, “except that they’ve made a mistake and put …” He broke off, startled, as Morna knocked the box from his hands.
“Get on with it, you fool,” she shouted, trampling the box underfoot. Her pale features were distorted with anger as she stared up at him with white-flaring eyes. They confronted each other for a moment, then her lips began to tremble. “I’m sorry, Billy. I’m so sorry … it’s just that there’s almost no time above us … and I’m afraid.”
“It’s all right,” he said awkwardly. “I know I’ve got aggravating ways—Ruth’s always telling me that—and I’ve been living alone for so long …”
Morna stopped him by placing a hand on his wrist. “Don’t Billy. You’re a good and kind man, but I want you … right now, please … to learn to handle that gun.” Her quiet, controlled tones, somehow gave Gregg a greater sense of urgency than anything said previously.
“Right.” He turned away from the buckboard, looking for a suitable target, and began to ease the revolver’s hammer back with his thumb.
“You don’t need to do that,” Morna said. “For rapid fire you just pull the trigger.”
“I know—double action.” Gregg cocked the gun regardless, to demonstrate his superior knowledge of firearms practice, and for a target selected a billet of wood which was leaning against the heavy stone water trough about twenty paces away. He was lining the gun’s sights on it when Morna spoke again.