The Long Tomorrow

From time to time, at particular points, they would find groups of men encamped and waiting for them, and they would stop to trade, and at one place, where another stream trickled into South Fork and there was a village of four houses, they picked up two more wagons loaded with hides and dried beef. And Len asked,when he was sure he was alone with Hostetter, “Don’t these people ever get suspicious? I mean, about where we’re going.”

Hostetter shook his head.

“They don’t have to. They know.”

“They we’re going to Bartorstown?” said Len incredulously.

“Yes,” said Hostetter, “but they don’t know they know it, You’ll see what I mean when you get there.”

Len did not ask any more, but he thought about it, and it didn’t seem to make any kind of sense.

The wagons lumbered on through the heat and the glare. And on a late afternoon when the Rockies hung blue and misty like a curtain across the west, there came a sudden shout from up ahead. It was flung back all along the line, from driver to driver, and the wagons jolted to a stop. Hostetter reached back for a gun, and Len asked, “What is it?”

Hostetter said, “I suppose you’ve heard of the New Ishmaelites.”

“Yes.”

“Well, now you’re going to see them.”

Len followed Hostetter’s gesture, squinting against the reddening light. And on top of a low and barren bluff he saw a gathering of people, perhaps half a hundred of them, looking down.

18

He jumped to the ground with Hostetter. The driver stayed put, so he could move the wagon into a defensive line if the order came. Esau joined them, and some other men, and the old chap with the bright eyes and the mighty shoulders, whose name was Wepplo. Most of them had guns.

“What do we do?” asked Len, and the old man answered, “Wait.”

They waited. Two men and a woman came slowly down from the bluff and the leader of the train went just as slowly out to meet them, with a half a dozen armed men behind to cover him. And Len stared.

The people gathered on the bluff were like an awkward frieze of scarecrows put together out of old bones and strips of blackened leather. There was something horrible about seeing that there were children among them, peering with a normal childlike wonder and excitement at the strange men and the wagons. They wore goatskins, very much like old Bible pictures of John the Baptist, or else long wrappings of dirty white cloth like winding sheets. Their hair hung long and matted down their backs, and the men had beards to their waists. They were gaunt, and even the children had a wild and starveling look. Their eyes were sunken, and perhaps it was only a trick of the lowering sun, but it seemed to Len that they burned and smoldered with an actual glow, like the eyes he had seen once on a dog that had the mad sickness.

“Will they fight us?” he asked.

“Can’t tell yet,” said Wepplo. “Sometimes yes, other times no. Depends.”

“What do you mean,” demanded Esau, “it depends?”

“On whether they’ve been ‘struck’ or not. Mostly they just wander and pray and do a lot of real holy starving. But then all of a sudden one of ’em’ll start screaming and frothing and fall down kicking, and that’s a sign they’ve been struck by the Lord’s special favor. So the rest of ’em whoop and screech and beat themselves with thorny branches or maybe whips —whips, you see, is the only personal article their religion allows them to own—and when they’re worked up enough they all pile down and butcher some rancher that’s affronted the Lord by pampering his flesh with a sod roof and a full belly. They can do a real nice job of butchering, too.”

Len shivered. The faces of the Ishmaelites frightened him. He remembered the faces of the farmers when they marched into Refuge, and how their stony dedication had frightened him then. But they were different. Their fanaticism roused up only when it was prodded. These people lived by it, lived for it, and served it without rhyme, reason, or thought.

He hoped they would not fight.

They did not. The two wild-looking men and the woman—a wiry creature with sharp shin bones showing under her shroud when she walked, and a tangle of black hair blowing over her shoulders—were too far away for any of their talk to be heard, but after a few minutes the leader of the train turned and spoke to the men behind him, and two of them turned and came back to the train. They sought out a particular wagon, and Wepplo grunted.

“Not this time. They only want some powder.”

“Gunpowder?” asked Len incredulously.

“Their religion don’t seem to call for them starving quite to death, and every gang of them—this is only one band, you understand—does own a couple of guns. I hear they never shoot a young cow, though, but only the old bulls, which are tough enough to mortify anybody’s flesh.”

“But powder,” said Len. “Don’t they use it on the ranchers, too?”