The People

"I know," I said, "but Mother managed to work out all her difficulties. You will too. You wait and see. Besides, a lot of kids that aren't Blends don't develop their Gifts until later. Just be patient." Then I sighed without sound, thinking that to tell Remy to be patient was like telling the Cayuse to flow uphill.
It wasn't until we were at the supper table that I remembered my find of the day. "I found gold today!" I said, feeling a flush of pleasure warming my face. "Real unmanufactured gold!"
"Well!" Father's fork paused in mid-air. "That's pretty good for a second week. When do we start carting it away? Will a bucket do, or shall I get a wheelbarrow?"
"Oh, Father, don't tease," I said. "You know this isn't gold-like-that country! It was just a short wire of it, six feet inside a granite slope. But now I know what gold feels like-and silver and-and something slender and shiny-"
I broke off, suddenly not wanting to detail all my findings. Fortunately my last words were swallowed up in activity as Remy cleared the table so Mother could bring in the dessert. It was his table week and my dishes week.
Remy put in the next morning hacking and grubbing to clear the underbrush out of some of the campsites along Cayuse Creek. Very few people ever come this far into the wilderness, but the Forestry Service has set up several camp places for them just in case, and Father had this area this summer. Any other year he'd be spending his time in his physics lab back with The Group, trying to find gadgets to help Outsiders do what The People do without gadgets.
Anyway, Father released Remy after lunch and I talked him into going metal Sensing with me.
"Shall I bring Father's bucket?" he teased. "It might be diamonds this time!"
"Diamonds!" I wrinkled my nose at him. "I'm metal Sensing, goon-child. Even you know diamonds aren't metal!"
I didn't do much Sensing on the way out, what with his chasing me over the ridge for my impertinence to my elders-he's a year older-and my chasing him up-creek for chasing me across the ridge. We were both laughing and panting by the time we got to the Chimneys.
The Chimneys? "Wait-" I held out my hand and we stopped in mid-flight. "I just remembered. Remy, what's slender and shiny and not iron and complicated?"
"What do you mean, slender? How slender? How complicated?" Remy sat cross-legged in the air beside me. "Is it a riddle?"
"It's a riddle, all right, but I don't know the answer." And I told him all about it.
"Well, let's go over and see," he said, his eyes shining, his ears fairly quivering with interest. "If it's something at the Selkirk, at least we know where it is." We started off again. "Can't you remember anything that'd give you any idea of its size?"
"No-o-o," I said thoughtfully. "It could be most any size from a needle up to-up to-" I was measuring myself alongside my memory. "Gee, Remy! It could be higher than my head!"
"And shiny?" he asked. "Not rusted?"
"Shiny and not rusted."
We were soon hovering over the old Selkirk mine, looking down on the tailings dump, the scant clutter of falling-apart shacks at the mine opening.
"Somewhere there-" I started, when suddenly Remy caught me by the arm and we plummeted down like falling stars. I barely had time to straighten myself for landing before we were both staggering into the shelter of the aspens at the foot of the dump.
"What on earth!" I began.
"Hush!" Remy gestured violently. "Someone came out of the shack up there. An Outsider! You know we can't let Outsiders see us lifting! And we were right overhead!"
"I didn't even know there was anyone in the area," I said.
"No one has checked in since we got here this spring. Can you see them from here?"
Remy threaded his way through the clump of aspen and was peering out dramatically, twining himself around the trunk of a tree that wasn't nearly big enough to hide him.
"No," he said. "The hill hides him. Or them. I wonder how many there are."
"Well, let's stop lurking like criminals and go up and see," I said. "It's only neighborly-"
The trail up to the Selkirk was steep, rocky, and overgrown with brush and we were both panting when we got to the top.
"Hi!" yelled Remy, "anybody home?" There was no answer except the squawk of a starred jay. "Hey!" he yelled again, "anyone here?"
"Are you sure you saw someone?" I asked, "or is this another-"
"Sure I saw someone!" Remy was headed for the sagging shack that drooped against the slope of the hill.
It was too quick for me even to say a word to Remy. It would have been forever too late to try to reach him, so I just lifted his feet out from under him and sent him sprawling to the ground under the crazy paneless window of the shack. His yell of surprise and anger was wiped out by an explosive
roar. The muzzle of a shotgun stabbed through the window, where smoke was eddying.
"Git" came a tight, cold voice. "Git going back down that trail. There's plenty more buckshot where that came from."
"Hey, wait a minute." Remy hugged the wall under the window. "We just came to see-"
"That's what I thought." The gun barrel moved farther out. "Sneaking around. Prying-"
"No," I said. "You don't yell 'hi' when you're sneaking. We just wondered who our neighbors were. We don't want to pry. If you'd rather, we'll go away. But we'd like to visit with you-" I could feel the tension lessening and saw the gun waver.
"Doesn't seem like they'd send kids," the voice muttered, and a pale, old face wavered just inside the window. "You from the FBI?" the old man asked.
"FBI"? Remy knelt under the window, his eyes topping the sill. "Heck, no. What would the FBI be wanting up here?” "Allen says the government-" He stopped and blinked. I caught a stab of sorrow from him that made me catch my breath. "Allen's my son," he said, struggling with some emotion or combination of emotions I hadn't learned to read yet.
"Allen says nobody can come around, especially G-men-" He ran one hand through his heavy white hair. "You don't look like G-men."
"We're not," I laughed. "You just ask your son."
"My son?" The gun disappeared and I could hear the thump of the butt on the splintered old floor of the shack.
"My son-" It was a carefully controlled phrase, but I could hear behind it a great soaring wall. "My son's busy," he said briskly. "And don't ask what's he doing. I won't tell you. Go on away and play. We got no time for kids."
"We just wanted to say 'hi,'" I hastened before Remy could cloud up at being told to go play. "And to see if you need anything-"
"Why should we need anything?" The voice was cold again and the muzzle of the gun came back up on the sill, not four inches from Remy's startled eyes. "I have the plans. Practically everything was ready-" Again the hinting stab of sorrow came from him and another wave of that mixture of emotions, so heavy a wave that it almost blinded me and the next thing I knew, Remy was helping me back down the trail. As soon as we were out of sight of the shack, we lifted back to the aspen thicket. There I lay down on the wiry grass and, closing my eyes, I Channeled whatever the discomfort was, while Remy sat by sympathetically silent.
"I wonder what he's so tender of up there," he finally said after I had sighed and sat up.
"I don't know, but he's suffering from something. His thoughts don't pattern as they should. It's as though they were circling around and around a hard something he can't accept nor deny."