Читать книгу The Lost Wagon Train - Zane Grey - Страница 5

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Bowden’s prairie-schooner had come in for endless attention all along the trail from Independence.

Tullt and Co. had built it especially for John Bowden, and as the plainsman Pike Anderson averted, “shore was a kind of cross between a boat an’ a wagon.” It did not have square ends and straight sides. The former came almost to a point, like the blunt bow and stern of a boat, and the latter sheered up in a perceptible curve. It was large, heavy, strong, set up on wide wheels, and amazed the freighters by the ease with which it could be pulled.

On the front end was painted against the green background in large red letters: TULLT and CO. NO. 1 A.

At Council Grove this wagon came in for its first more than ordinary attention. Bowden appeared rather pleased, for the prairie-schooner had been constructed after his own plans. From one post to another the caravan traveled, always with Bowden’s big wagon to the fore, standing up above the grass like a ship at sea.

Fort Dodge was an important stop on the long trail. Here Bowden expected the soldier escort he had been promised from Fort Leavenworth. But calls for more soldiers to the front in the Civil War made it impossible for Colonel Bradley to oblige him.

“Better wait here until I can give you an escort,” said the officer, curtly. “Indians getting bolder since the war started. There have been some serious fights lately.”

“How long would we have to lay over?” queried Bowden.

“From three to six weeks.”

“Impossible!” ejaculated Bowden, and turned away.

To his niece Cynthia he confided: “I really feel safer out on the prairie than here in these camps. Such a motley crew of men! And they all spot my wagon, just as if their gimlet eyes could pierce that false bottom where I have secreted the gold. Your gold, Cynthia.”

“Uncle, it was terribly risky,” replied the young woman, seriously. “Hauling gold all the way out to California, where gold is supposed to grow on trees! Dad would turn over in his grave if he knew.”

“These are war times, my dear, and if I know Yankees, it’s going to last. We could not trust all this money to paper. It might depreciate. Gold is safe and I’m going to get this——”

“Careful, Uncle,” interrupted Cynthia.

Pike Anderson, the scout whom Bowden had engaged at Independence, came up with a companion.

“Boss, this is Jeff Stover, an’ he wants to throw in with us far as Fort Union.”

“All right with me. Glad to have another man,” returned Bowden, shaking hands with the newcomer, whose open, resolute visage he liked.

“Got my family an’ two drivers,” replied Stover. “From Missouri, an’ due to meet a Texas wagon train at Cimarron Crossin’.”

“That’s interesting,” spoke up Bowden. “What size train?”

“Sixty wagons. Some old plainsmen an’ Injun-fighters with them. You’d be wise to join us. Reckon Blaisdal an’ Cy Hunt will take the Dry Trail.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a cut-off, savin’ near three hundred miles between the Cimarron an’ the Canadian River. Bad trail. Poor camps. Water scant an’ hard to find. Particular pet stampin’-ground for Comanches an’ Kiowas. But with Blaisdal an’ Cy in charge I reckon we’ll go through.”

“Anderson, what do you think of this Dry Trail cut-off?” inquired Bowden, eagerly.

“Damn little good,” blurted out Anderson, his blue eyes narrowing and his scrubby chin bulging. “Shore it’s a cut-off all right. An’ if we met Blaisdal’s outfit an’ if he had sixty wagons, why, I’d say we might risk it.”

“Stover, are you sure of your facts?”

“Betcha. The Texas outfit is due at the Cimarron about the ninth of this month. If you pull out tomorrer we could get to the Cimarron by the eighth shore.”

“Then, if Blaisdal’s train didn’t show up in a day or two we could tackle this Dry Trail ourselves or turn back?”

“Shore. But you needn’t reckon on turnin’ back, Mr. Bowden.”

“We’ll go!” declared Bowden, forcibly. “I can’t ’bide these crowded camps, with their lousy Indians, beady-eyed Mexicans, hard-lipped outlaws, and so on.”

“Wal, I’m givin’ you a hunch thet you might run into more lousy redskins an’ tough nuts out there than you do hyar,” replied Anderson, sarcastically.

“But can’t you take a reasonable chance?” queried Bowden, impatiently.

“Shore, if you give it to me. But this ain’t reasonable. It’s foolhardy.”

“Have you been over this Dry Trail?”

“Onct, an’ thet in early spring—which’s the best time. I’d rather go around the old trail.”

“Are you afraid of Indians and robbers?”

Anderson fastened pale-blue eyes upon his employer and might have intended to make a sharp retort. But he thought better of that, perhaps owing to the presence of Bowden’s niece, standing close, her eyes wide, her lips parted.

“Not for myself,” returned Anderson. “I’ve no kin an’ I’m gettin’ along. One time or another is all the same to me. But, Mr. Bowden, you’ve got wimmen an’ kids in this wagon train. An’ this hyar pretty niece of yourn. I’d shore hate to see thet golden haid all gory where thet crown of hair shines now.”

“My God, man! Stop such talk! All I’ve heard since I got to Independence was Indians, raids, burned wagon trains, scalped men, and girls carried off into captivity. And we haven’t seen a hostile Indian.”

“Wal, if you look around hyar you’ll see two, right in Dodge,” returned Anderson, crisply.

Bowden turned. Two lean Indian riders stood at ease near at hand. They had long black hair, youthful dark faces of which nearly all points were sharp. Their scant garments were buckskin soiled by long service. One was naked to the waist. Neither, apparently, had any weapons. Their ponies, ragged, wild, fleet-looking mustangs, stood tethered to a hitching-rail.

“Ha! Those Indian boys hostile,” scoffed Bowden.

“Kiowas. An’ every Kiowa on the plains is hostile,” certified the frontiersman.

“Anderson, will you continue in charge of my train?”

“Yes, sir. I had no idee of quitten’. Jest reckoned it my duty to tell you. An’ last I’m shore advisin’ you to leave Miss Bowden hyar till a train with a guard of soldiers comes along.”

“Oh, why, Mr. Anderson?” cried the girl, in dismay.

“Wall, somewhere out hyar thar’s a fine strappin’ young Westerner thet I don’t want you to miss meetin’,” drawled the scout.

“Indeed there’s no such thing,” retorted the girl, with a vivid blush, which enhanced her singular beauty.

“Wal, there ought to be. An’ like as not you’ll never meet him if you take such chances.”

“Uncle John, let us wait for a safer caravan,” she said, convinced by the scout’s earnestness.

“Nonsense! Just think. We can be in California three weeks sooner.”

“Mebbe you can. I shore hope so. I’ll do my best,” concluded Anderson, soberly, and he led Stover away. As he passed the two Kiowas he gave them a scrutiny which apparently was unnoticed. Nevertheless, Bowden observed that as soon as the freighter disappeared the Indians lounged in the direction they had taken.

Bowden’s wagon train arrived at the Crossing of the Cimarron at dusk on the evening of the 9th of the month. No lights on either side of the wide pale belt of sand and water!

The night was sultry and warm. Sheet lightning flashed along the dark battlements of bluffs to the south. An oppressive silence and melancholy pervaded the vast plain. For the first time Bowden experienced a strange sensation such as he imagined was like the uncanny chill old folk were wont to say they felt when some one stepped across their grave.

They went into camp, and as usual drove the fifty-three wagons, two abreast, in a close circle, leaving an opening for the stock. All oxen and horses were put to grazing under guard. Bundles of firewood had been hauled from the last camp. Cheery fire, deep voices of men, prattle of children, color and movement and life disrupted the solitude and loneliness of the Cimarron.

“Blaisdal an’ Hunt shore ought to be hyar ’bout tomorrer or next day, I reckon,” Stover went around saying in a loud voice, as if to reassure himself.

Bowden observed that Pike Anderson kept out of his way, a silent, grim man who attended to innumerable tasks. The freighters and pioneers who were crossing the Great Plains for the first time appeared jovial and merry. The experienced had little to say. After supper the former produced their pipes and prepared for a comfortable smoke and talk around the camp fires.

“All fires out!” ordered Anderson, tersely. “I want twenty men—volunteers to go on guard. Our stock will be driven inside.”

“What the hell!” declared a farmer from Illinois.

The other remained silent.

“Wal, if you won’t volunteer, I’ll have to pick you out,” went on the trail boss. “Smith an’ Hall. Dietrich an’ Stover. Wallin’ an’ Bowden.” Anderson went on until he had named ten couples. “Keep two together. Spread around the wagons. No smokin’. Watch an’ listen.... You’ll be relieved at twelve o’clock.”

Bowden wheeled from his camp fire to stride up to his wagon. Cynthia sat on the high seat and appeared to be fascinated by the dark empty space beyond the river.

“What do you think, Cynthia?” he said, in querulous surprise. “That gloomy Anderson ordered me to do guard duty till midnight.”

“Uncle John, you must not shirk your share,” replied the young woman, gravely.

“Shirk! ... That hadn’t occurred to me,” returned Bowden, irritably. “But that Anderson thinks it necessary riles me.”

“How little we know of Western ways. Uncle, all along I have felt something strange creeping upon me. And tonight it possesses me.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. But there’s something out there.... When I was little I was afraid of the shadows—of the things that lived in the dark. Tonight it has come back. How terribly lonely and still it is—away from the camp!”

“Child, you’ve grown nervous from the talk of this crabby old plainsman.”

“I dare say. But Uncle dear, I’m no longer a child, except in these nameless fears. I’m twenty-four.”

“No one would guess it,” replied Bowden, climbing up on the wagon to reach in for his rifle. It was a clumsy heavy gun, a Colt revolving seven-shot arm in prevailing use on the frontier. But he would have preferred a musket.

“Go to bed, Cynthia,” he advised.

“Not yet. Oh, I have been so excited and thrilled by this wonderful adventure!” she exclaimed. “Tonight for the first time I can’t enjoy it.”

Bowden gazed up at the fair face, at the wide violet eyes shining so beautifully in the camp-fire light, at the wave of golden hair above the broad high forehead and level brows; and all at once he seemed stricken with a realization that he was mostly responsible for his niece’s presence here in this wild, uncertain country. He strode away with worry beginning to gnaw at his old assurance.

Blaisdal’s caravan did not show up the next day, which was the 10th. On the following morning Anderson sent two men with a field-glass to scout from the hilltops ten miles south. That was a hot, tedious, wearing day on those left behind to wait. Toward sunset the riders returned. Smith, the older of the two scouts, had been some years on the frontier.

“Nothin’ comin’ on thet trail to the south. I could see forty miles of it,” he reported.

Anderson ground out a curse that, to judge from the hard glance he flashed on Stover, must have been meant for that worthy.

“Ahuh. What I expected,” he muttered.

“Then you saw nothing?” demanded Bowden, incredulously. He seemed to resent this unexpected report.

“Wal, I didn’t say thet,” replied the scout.

Anderson took a stride which placed him in front of Bowden, and he laid a heavy hand on Smith’s knees.

“What’d you see?”

“Wal, for one think I made out two Injun riders way to the south of hyar.”

“Riders!”

“Shore. Injuns ridin’ ’cross country, haidin’ south. I watched them till they went out of sight. Pike, you know how a redskin rides when he’s goin’ somewhere. Long, even, swingin’ lope!”

“An’ was thet all?”

“Nope. I seen what I reckoned was smoke risin’ above a hill.”

“Smoke!”

“Shore. Way off, forty, mebbe fifty miles beyond where I last seen the Injun riders.”

“Smoke!” ejaculated Bowden, blusteringly. “What of that?”

Neither Westerner paid any attention to him.

“What kind of smoke?” queried Anderson, gruffly.

“Wal, it come from a fire, thet’s shore,” rejoined Smith, with a short laugh.

“Was it a steady column of smoke—like from a camp fire?” went on Anderson.

“Nope. Jest yellow puffs, few an’ far between.... But, Pike, they wasn’t plain at all, even through the glass. An’ I couldn’t see them with my naked eye.”

“You mean they might have been dust?”

“I ain’t shore. But if you ask me I’d say I wouldn’t take any chances.”

Anderson whirled abruptly to the leader of the caravan. “Bowden, I advise you not to take the Dry Trail.”

“Thet’s not new from you, Anderson. You’ve been against it since we arrived at Dodge.”

“Thet was only caution. I’m advisin’ you now,” rejoined the plainsman, significantly.

“You want to turn back?” demanded Bowden, hotly.

“Yes.”

“Why? Because Smith here saw a couple of Indians and imagines he saw smoke?” queried Bowden, scornfully.

“Thet’s why,” shot back Anderson, in a different tone.

“That does not please me,” went on Bowden. “We are taking the Dry Trail.”

Two days’ travel across the dry undulating prairie, with the gray bluffs to the west imperceptibly rising clearer, convinced even the redoubtable Bowden that the rigors of this cut-off had not been exaggerated.

Anderson failed altogether to find water at the second camp. Next day the caravan went on with horses and cattle wearing to bad shape. The sun shone hot. There was no breeze, except down in the bare swales where whirls of dust rose as if by magic. No living creature, not even a raven or a lizard, appeared to Bowden’s searching gaze. The heat lifted in shining veils from the gray grass, the pale mirages wavered in the distant flat reaches. Hazy bluffs, sometimes blue, and again dimly outlined, lifted their ramparts, and seemed to raise a menacing obstacle to the progress of the wagon train. Bleached skulls of cattle and buffalo marked the uncertain trail, which appeared to spread wide over the plain.

Before the sun set, Anderson, riding ahead to reconnoiter, found a waterhole in a shallow rocky gully. At the head of it a bowl protected by rocks caught the trickle from the ledge. Here was drink for beast and man. Bowden was heard to state that he had never appreciated water.

The weary freighters camped, slept, and guarded by turns, awoke and hitched up for the trail. Camp succeeded camp, meager in water and grass, though having enough to enable the animals to pull on. Skull Rock, named from a ghastly buffalo head stuck upon a rock, proved to be dry. If, on the morrow, after the longest and hardest pull, they did not find water at Tanner’s Swale, they faced a catastrophe.

Nevertheless, after a cool night the stock started without distress. Anderson made the most of the early-morning hours, then slowed up and at midday halted to rest. He had been a silent taciturn man for two days, never speaking except to give an order. While he drove Bowden’s No. 1 A wagon at the front of the caravan he was observed constantly to watch the gray mounting escarpment rising like a wall. Probably the trail ran along its base as it would to the west.

Noon found them resting. As Anderson gave the word to start again, Smith approached him in haste.

“Pike, I seen smoke signals shore,” he said in a low voice.

“What of it? I been seein’ ’em all mawnin’—tell that —— Stover!”

Bowden heard this exchange of words, which he let pass without comment. But his stubborn obtuseness had given way to apprehension. Later when he addressed his guide he received no response whatever.

Wearily the oxen and horses hauled off the miles. At midafternoon the caravan was still five miles from Tanner’s Swale and perhaps half as far from the foothill which ran parallel to the trail. The bluff at nearer view was a steep yellow hill with a ragged rim extending along the summit, broken in places.

The wagons creaked, the wheels rolled, the horses plodded, the drivers flicked listless whips.

“Ha! There they are!” suddenly shouted Anderson, in a voice that had a sardonic ring.

“Who? Where?” called out Bowden, climbing out to the front seat.

Anderson halted his yoke of oxen. Whip in hand, he pointed toward the top of the hill.

“Oh, Uncle! What is it?” cried Cynthia, emerging from the canvas portal of the wagon.

“I can’t see anything,” rasped Bowden.

Anderson kept pointing until the foremost wagons behind rolled up to halt abreast, then he leaped to the ground.

Smith, Hall, Dietrich, Walling, Hones, and other drivers viewed him with certainty and concern. Anderson’s dark face had lost a shade of its bronze.

“Where’s thet —— Stover?” he called.

“Laggin’ behind. Not so damn keen as he was fust off,” replied some one.

“What you see, Anderson?”

“Why’re you holdin’ us up?”

Smith answered all such queries by a violent start and a piercing voice: “By Gawd! Look at thet line of Injuns! ... I felt it in my bones!”

Everyone’s gaze followed the direction indicated by Smith’s rigid arm. Cynthia Bowden uttered a low cry of terror. Her uncle stared with dropping jaw and popping eyes. The other drivers uttered various ejaculations of alarm, dismay, anger, amazement, according to their temperaments.

Sharp eyes could discern a long dotted line of moving objects darkly silhouetted against the pale-blue sky. Mustangs! Riders! How tiny they appeared—how snail-like they moved! They were Indians. By straining his eyes Bowden could make out the wild lean riders, the wild long-maned ponies. He was struck dumb. Indian riders. He was so astonished that the significance did not dawn upon him. What a line! It extended along the horizon of the plateau as far as he could see, and still that was not the end. They were moving in the same general direction as his wagon train.

“Turn back!” shouted Bowden, involuntarily.

“Too late, boss,” replied Anderson, with an almost grim satisfaction. “If thet bunch surrounds us out on the open prairie, we’re gone goslin’s.”

“Are they—hostile?” faltered Bowden.

“Haw! Haw! Haw!” roared the scout, harshly.

“Mr. Bowden, all these plains Indians are hostile—when they outnumber the whites,” spoke up Smith.

“Outnumber?” echoed Bowden.

The last wagons came lumbering up to be halted by the wide barricade. Stover, with other teamsters, including his two men, came thumping forward.

“Ha!” ejaculated Anderson, giving Stover a hard slap on the breast. “Do you see them Injuns?”

“Hell yes!” shouted Stover. “We got to be makin’ tracks.”

“Where?”

“Back along the trail.”

“Say, I reckoned you knew Injuns.”

“You bet I do.”

“Wal, you ought to know thet if thet bunch surrounds us on the prairie they’ll kill every damn soul of us.”

“If we can rustle back across the Cimarron we——”

“You’re drunk or crazy,” retorted Anderson, angrily.

“Men, stop arguing,” ordered Bowden. “What can we do?”

“Only one thing. Make Tanner’s Swale,” returned Anderson, tersely. “It’s about five miles. Water there, an’ good cover. We can make a stand. I reckon we’ve time.”

“Anderson, I’m goin’ back with my men,” spoke up Stover, dry-lipped. “Any of you fellars want——”

“You’re what?” shouted Anderson, jumping as if stung.

“I’m goin’ back. Come on, Bill—Zeke,” Stover rejoined, making a stride.

Anderson spun him round like a top. “—— —— —— ——! You got us into this mess. An’ you reckon you’ll leave us, huh?”

“Thet’s what I said.”

“Stover, I’m curious aboot you,” replied Anderson, slowly. “I ain’t so damn shore thet you’re what you say you are.”

“No matter now, we’re turning back. Go on an’ git scalped!”

“Man, you ain’t goin’ back!”

“By Gawd, I am!”

“Not a step.... An’ if you knowed the West you wouldn’t say thet. Else you’re a renegade pardner of them Injuns!”

“Aw hell!” snorted Stover, ashen of face. “Lemme by!”

“You ain’t gettin’ by,” returned the scout, low and hard.

“Out of my way, man!”

“Fellars, give us room,” ordered Anderson.

The circle split on each side, leaving a wide space for the two men. Bowden uttered a feeble protest. Some other freighter called out: “It ain’t no time for us to fight amongst——”

“Anderson, I’ll bore you,” roared Stover, suddenly crooking his right arm. That move spurred the scout into action too swift for the eye. Spurt of red and bellow of gun accompanied it. Stover’s wrench for his gun ceased as quickly and he fell forward suddenly.

“Thar!” rasped out Anderson, fire-eyed and violent, as he wheeled to leap at Stover’s two teamsters. “Drive your wagons out hyar ahaid. Rustle. Or so help me——”

The two men rushed back without a word and leaped upon their wagons.

“Search him, Smith,” ordered Anderson. “Rest of you file out of hyar. We got time to make the Swale.”

Bowden staggered to his own wagon to find Cynthia with her white face covered by her hands.

“Oh, Uncle! How—awful!” she cried.

“Cynthia!—you—saw?” rejoined Bowden, huskily.

“I couldn’t—help it.”

“Damn these crude Westerners! ... Girl, I suspect we’ll see worse. Brace up.... We’ve got to fight!”

He climbed aboard and drew his niece within the canvas shelter. Cynthia dropped her hands from a pale but composed face.

“We should have listened to Anderson,” she said, gravely, dark troubled eyes upon her uncle.

The wagon lurched and rolled on. Anderson had resumed his seat and whip. There were wagons ahead and alongside. Gruff shouts and curses attested to the hurry of the teamsters. It was a slight downgrade over hard road. Soon the wagons were rolling and careening. Bowden peered out. The gray bluff rose against the blue sky. He could see the long line of Indian riders. What was this that he had so foolhardily rushed into? Stories of Indian atrocities returned to fill him with dread and remorse. He had actually needed a sight of hostile savages to bring reality home to him. The wagon jolted over rough places. Dust rose in yellow clouds. Far ahead over the barren prairie a black patch of timber marked the end of the open country. A gap showed between two sharp-banked ridges. The gray promontory loomed higher.

The sun set a strange sinister red. Bowden’s wagon train had reached the coveted swale and had drawn the fifty-three wagons, two abreast, into a circle in the thick timber. High banks surrounded the swale, reaching above the tops of the trees. A stream ran through the middle of this oval hollow. Oxen and horses had been turned loose down the swale. Grass and willows grew abundantly. Owing to a boxing of the gulch below, the stock could not be driven out at that end. A stampede was here most difficult to effect. A well-armed determined group of men could withstand any ordinary Indian attack. Time and again this swale had resounded to the boom of freighters’ guns and the war-cries of infuriated Indians.

Dusk that followed the sunset had likewise a deep red glow.

“Cook an’ eat an’ drink,” had been Anderson’s order. “For tomorrow ye die! Haw! Haw! ... But we might be too busy when mawnin’ comes—if we ever see daylight again.”

Several fires burned brightly and men and women moved noiselessly around them. Children huddled in a group, wide-eyed and silent, watching every move of the men. Bowden sat on a log, his head in his hands. Cynthia helped around the camp fire nearest to her wagon. Before dark the three scouts returned.

“Nary sign or sound of them Injuns,” reported one.

“Vamoosed. I reckon they didn’t see us,” said the second.

Smith, the last in, had been absent from camp since the caravan had arrived at the swale. His face was gray behind his uncut beard. His eyes had a glint.

“Step aside hyar, you fellars,” he whispered, huskily.

Those who heard him moved as one man to a point where Bowden sat upon the log.

“No sense lettin’ the wimmen an’ kids hear,” he said, clearing his throat and surveying the still faces in a half-circle before him. “I’ve been hyar before ... know the lay of land. Climbed thet hill. There’s another swale down the other side. Old stampin’-ground for redskins. But no wagons can git down there.... I heerd the devils before I seen them. Had to crawl a ways over the top—under the brush.... Hyar’s your field-glass, Mr. Bowden. I shore wish I hadn’t had it.... Wal, I’ll bet I seen three hundred ponies. Then, down in the swale, what ’peared like a thousand Injuns. Some of them was war-dancin’. But farther down, where I seen most of the Injuns—they was Kiowas—it struck me kinda strange. What’n hell was they doin’, I says to myself? Then I remembered the glass. Fust off I spotted white men, ——! An’, fellars, what do you reckon they was doin’?”

No one ventured an opinion. Anderson ordered Smith to end their suspense.

“Wal, them white men was dealin’ out likker to the Injuns!” concluded Smith, impressively.

“How’d you know it was drink?” demanded Anderson, hoarsely. “It might have been soup.”

“Shore. I thought of thet. But soup doesn’t make Injuns leapin’, boundin’, dancin’ demons.”

“Some white renegades gittin’ the redskins drunk!” ejaculated Anderson, wiping the sweat off his brow. “It’s been done before.”

“Pike, wouldn’t you reckon thet means they’ll attack us soon?” queried Smith. “Injuns usually wait till just before daybreak.”

“There’s a white man’s hand in this deal,” replied Anderson, ponderingly. “The moon’s about full an’ comin’ up now. Soon as it clears thet bluff it’ll be most as light as day. I reckon then we can expect hell to pop.”

“Anderson, we can pop some hell ourselves,” spoke up a brave man. “We got three wagon-loads of rifles an’ ammunition an——”

“Who’s got thet?” demanded the scout.

“We have—Kelly, Washburn, an’ myself. We didn’t tell Bowden what we was haulin’ when we fell in with his outfit at Council Grove.”

“Wal, fust off thet sounded awful good. But it ain’t so good. We might stand off a big force of Injuns, an’ white outlaws, too, if they fought in the way frontiersmen are used to. But any redskins even half drunk will rush us. They’ll crawl like snakes in the grass. You’ll have to kill them to stop them.”

“These rifles we’re haulin’ are the new Colt’s revolvin’ chamber. Seven shots in two minutes.”

“Ahuh. Let’s deal out aboot three of these guns an’ plenty of ammunition to each man. Put the wimmen an’ kids in the inside wagons. Then all of us, two men together, spread out all around under the wagons an’ lay down to wait. It’s a fight for your lives, men. Our only hope is to keep ’em outside the circle. Think of the little ones an’ their mothers. You never can tell. We’ve got one chance in a thousand.”