The Return Page 2

  II

  Murray Hughes walked around the corner of the cabin into themorning sunlight, lacing his trousers, with his hunting shirtthrown over his bare shoulders. He found, without much surprise,that his father had also slept late. Verner Hughes was justbeginning to shave.

  Inside the kitchen, his mother and the girls were clattering potsand skillets.

  Outside the kitchen door, his younger brother, Hector, wasnoisily chopping wood.

  Going through the door, he filled another of the light-metalbasins with hot water, found his razor, and went outside again,setting the basin on the bench.

  Most of the ware in the Hughes cabin was of light-metal. Murrayand his father had mined it in the dead city up the river, from aplace where it had floated to the top of a puddle of slag, backwhen the city had been blasted, at the end of the hard times.

  It had been hard work, but the stuff had been easy to carry downto where they had hidden their boat. And, for once, they'd had notrouble with the Scowrers.

  Too bad they couldn't say as much for yesterday's hunting trip!

  As he rubbed lather into the stubble on his face, he cursed withirritation. That had been a bad-luck hunt, all around.

  They had gone out before dawn, hunting into the hills to thenorth. They'd spent the day at it, and shot one small wild pig.Lucky it was small, at that. They'd have had to abandon afull-grown one, after the Scowrers had began hunting them. Six ofthem, as big a band as he'd ever seen together at one time, hadmanaged to cut them off from the stockade. He and his father hadbeen forced to circle miles out of their way.

  His father had shot one, and he'd had to leave his hatchetsticking in the skull of another, when his rifle had misfired.

  That meant a trip to the gunsmith's, for a new hatchet and tohave the mainspring of the rifle replaced. Nobody could afford tohave a rifle that couldn't be trusted, least of all a hunter andprospector.

  On top of everything else, he had had a few words with AlexBarrett, the gunsmith, the other day.

  Well, at least that could be smoothed over. Barrett would be gladto do business with him, once the gunsmith saw that hardtool-steel he had dug out of that place down the river. Hardeststeel either he or his father had ever found, and it hadn't beenatom-spoiled, either.

  He cleaned, wiped and stropped his razor and put it back in thecase. He threw out the wash-water on the compost pile and wentinto the cabin, putting on his shirt and his belt. Then he passedthrough to the front porch, where his father was already eatingat the table.

  The people of the Toon like to eat in the open. It was somethingthey'd always done, just as they'd always like to eat together inthe evenings.

  He sweetened his cup of chicory with a lump of maple sugar andbegan to sip it before he sat down, standing with one foot on thebench and looking down across the parade ground, past theAitch-Cue House, toward the river and the wall.

  "If you're coming around to Alex's way of thinking--and mine--itwon't hurt you to admit it, son," his father said.

  Murray turned, looking at his father with the beginning of anger,and then he grinned. The elders were constantly keeping the youngmen alert with these tests. He checked back over his actionssince he had come out onto the porch.

  ... to the table, sugar in his chicory, one foot on the bench ...which had reminded him again of the absence of the hatchet fromhis belt and brought an automatic frown ... then the glancetoward the gunsmith's shop, and across the parade ground ... theglance including the houses into which so much labor had gone,the wall that had been built from rubble and topped with pointedstakes, the white slabs of marble that marked the graves of theFirst Tenant and the men of the Old Toon....

  He had thought, at that moment, that maybe his father and AlexBarrett and Reader Rawson and Tenant Mycroft Jones and the otherswere right: there were too many things here that could not bemoved along with them, if they decided to move.

  It would be false modesty, refusal to see things as they were, notto admit that he was the leader of the younger men, and the boys ofthe Irregulars. He had been forced to face the responsibilities ofthat fact since last winter.

  Then, the usual theological arguments about the proper order ofthe Sacred Books and the true nature of the Risen One had beenreplaced by a violent controversy when Sholto Jiminez and BirdyEdwards had reopened the old question of the advisability ofmoving the Toon and settling elsewhere.

  He had been in favor of the idea himself and found that the otheryoung men had followed his lead. But, for the last month or so,he had begun to doubt the wisdom of it.

  It was probably reluctance to admit this to himself that hadbrought on the strained feelings between himself and his oldfriend, the gunsmith.

  "I'll have to drill the Irregulars, today," he said. "BirdyEdwards has been drilling them while we've been hunting. But I'llgo up and see Alex about a new hatchet and fixing my rifle. I'llhave a talk with him."

  He stepped forward to the edge of the porch, still munching on ahoney-dipped piece of cornbread, and glanced up at the sky. Thatwas a queer bird; he had never seen a bird with a wing actionlike that.

  Then he realized that the object was not a bird at all.

  His father was staring at it, too.

  "Murray! That's ... that's like the old stories from the time ofthe wars!"

  But Murray was already racing across the parade ground toward theAitch-Cue House, where the big iron ring hung by its chain from agallows-like post, with a hammer beside it.