Andre Norton - THE STARS ARE OURS

But right on her inquiring "Dardie?" came another sound and his hand clamped right across her lips. Someone was coming along the woods trail, singing tunelessly.

The messenger?

Before Dard's hope was fully aroused it was dashed. He saw a flash of red around a bush and then the wearer of that bright cap came into full view. Dard's lips drew back in a half-snarl.

Lotta Folley!

Dessie struggled in his arms and he let her crawl to one side of the tiny shelter. But, though he brought up the rifle, he found he could not aim it. Hew Folley-betrayer and murderer-yes. His daughter-though she might be of the same brutal breed-though he might be throwing away freedom and life-he could not kill!

The girl, a sturdy stout figure in her warm homespuns and knitted cap, halted panting beneath the very tree he must watch. If she glanced up now-if her woodsight was as keen as his-and he had no reason to doubt that it was.

Lotta Folley's head raised and across the open expanse of snow her eyes found Dard's strained face. He made no move in a last desperate attempt to escape notice. After all he was in the half-shadow of the shelter, she might not see him- the protective "playing dead" of an animal.

But her eyes widened, her full mouth shaped a soundless expression of astonishment. With a kind of pain he waited for her to cry out.

Only she made no sound at all. After the first moment of surprise her face assumed its usual stupid, slightly sullen solidity. She brushed some snow from the front of her jacket without looking at it, and when she spoke in her hoarse common voice, she might have been addressing the tree at her side.

"The Peacemen are huntin'."

Dard made no answer. She pouted her lips and added,

"They're huntin' you."

He still kept silent. She stopped brushing her jacket and her eyes wavered around the flees and brush walling in the old road.

"They say as how your brother's a stinkman-"

"Stinkman," the opprobious term for a scientist. Dard continued to hold his tongue. But her next question surprised him.

"Dessie- Dessie all right?"

He was too slow to catch the little girl who slipped by him to face the Folley girl gravely.

Lotta fumbled in the breast of her packet and brought out a packet folded in a piece of grease-blotted cloth. She did not move up to offer it to Dessie but set it down care- fully on the end of a tree stump.

"For you," she said to the little girl. Then she turned to Dard. "You better not stick around. Pa tol' the Peacemen about you." She hesitated. "Pa didn't come back las' night-"

Dard sucked in his breath. That glance she had shot at him, had there been knowledge in it? But if she knew what lay in the barn-why wasn't she heading the hue and cry to their refuge? Lotta Folley, he had never regarded her with any pleasure. In the early days, when they had first come to the farm, she had often visited them, watching Kathia, Dessie, with a kind of lumpish interest. She had talked little and what she said suggested that she was hardly more than a moron. He had been contemptuous of her, though he had never showed it.

"Pa didn't come back las' night," she repeated, and now he was sure she knew-or suspected. What would she do? He couldn't use the rifle-he couldn't

Then he realized that she must have seen that weapon, seen and recognized it. He could offer no reasonable explanation for having it with him. Folley's rifle was a treasure, it wouldn't be in the hands of another-and surely not in the hands of Folley's enemy-as long as Folley was alive.

Dard caught the past tense. So she did know! Now- what was she going to do?

"Pa hated lotsa things," her eyes clipped away from his to Dessie. "Pa liked t' hurt things."

The words were spoken without emotion, in her usual dull tone.

"He wanted t' hurt Dessie. He wanted t' send her t' a work camp. He said he was gonna. You better give me that there gun, Dard. If they find it with Pa they ain't gonna look around for anybody that ran away."

"But why?" he was shocked almost out of his suspicion.

"Nobody's gonna send Dessie t' no work camp," she stated flatly. "Dessie-she's special! Her ma was special, too. Once she made me a play baby. Pa-he found it an' burned it up. You-you can take care of Dessie-you gotta take care of Dessie!" Her eyes met his again compellingly. "You gotta git away from here an' take Dessie where none of them Peacemen are gonna find her. Give me Pa's rifle an' I'll cover up."

Driven to the last rags of his endurance Dard met that with the real truth.

"We can't leave here yet-"

She cut him off. "Some one comin' for you? Then Pa was right-your brother was a stinkman?"

Dard found himself nodding.

"All right," she shrugged. "I can let you know if they come again. But you see to Dessie-mind that!"

"I'll see to Dessie." He held out the rifle and she took it from him before she pointed again to the packet.

"Give her that. I'll try to git you some more-maybe tonight. If they think you got away they'll bring dogs out from town. If they do-" She shuffled her feet in the snow.

Then she stood the rifle against the hollow tree and unbuttoned the front of her jacket. Her hands, clumsy in mittens, unwound a heavy knitted scarf and tossed it to the child.

"You put that on you," she ordered with some of the authority of a mother, or at least of an elder sister. "I'd leave you my coat, only they'd notice." She picked up the rifle again. "Now I'll put this here where it belongs an' maybe they won't go on huntin'."

Speechless Dard watched her turn down trail, still at a loss to understand her actions. Was she really going to return that rifle to the barn-how could she, knowing the truth? And why?

He knelt to wind the scarf around Dessie's head and shoulders. For some reason Folley's daughter wanted to help them and he was beginning to realize that he needed all the aid he could get.

The packet Lotta had left contained such food as he had not seen in years-real bread, thick buttered slices of it, and a great hunk of fat pork. Dessie would not eat unless he shared it with her, and he took enough to flavor his own meal of the wretched fare they had brought with them. When they had finished he asked one of the questions which had been in his mind ever since Lotta's amazing actions.

"Do you know Lotta well, Dessie?"

She ran her tongue around her greasy lips, collecting stray crumbs.

"Lotta came over often."

"But I haven't seen her since ____________________ " he stopped before mentioning Kathia's death.

"She comes and talks to me when I am in the fields. I think she is afraid of you and-Daddy. She always brings me nice things to eat. She said that some day she wanted to give me a dress-a pink dress. I would very much like a pink dress, Dardie. I like Lotta-she is always good-inside she is good."

Dessie smoothed down the ends of her new scarf.

"She is afraid of her Daddy. He is mean to her. Once he came when she was with me and he was very, very mad. He cut a stick with his knife and he hit her with it. She told me to run away quick and I did. He was a very bad man, Dardie. I was afraid of him, too. He won't come after us?"

He persuaded Dessie to sleep again and when she awoke he knew that he must have rest himself and soon. Impressing upon her how much their lives depended on it, he told her to watch the tree and awaken him if anyone came.

It was sunset when he aroused from an uneasy, nightmare-haunted sleep. Dessie squatted quietly beside him, her small grave face turned to the trail. As he shifted his weight she glanced up.

"There was just a bunny," she pointed to small betraying tracks. "But no people, Dard. Is-is there any bread left? I'm hungry."

"Sure you are!" He crawled out of the shelter and stretched cramped limbs before unwrapping the remains of Lotta's bounty.