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I had crawled some more. Now the Kazakhs looked as if they weren't going to chase the people anymore. They gathered in a loose group two or three hundred meters away, as if talking to one another. Then they separated, and went to round up the horses they could see standing around. I started crawling on my belly again, till I came to a couple of big thorn shrubs. There I put a fresh magazine in my rifle. If one of the Kazakhs came close, I'd get up and shoot him, then shoot as many more as I could.
I got pretty cold, lying there on the ground. After a little while, when nothing had happened, I got to my knees. I saw the Kazakhs trotting off with some spare horses behind them. My horse was gone. When they were too far to see, I got up and went to look for the one whose horse I'd shot, who'd landed on his feet. I couldn't find him. I started walking toward where the people should be, and the cattle herd.
They had left the small water hole, and on horseback and foot were herding the cattle into the head of the small arroyo that grew to become the canyon. I was in time to help them. When all the cattle were in the arroyo, headed downward to where the rest of the people were, the armed men brought up the rear, in case some Kazakhs came. I was with them. Nelson saw me, and we talked. He'd heard what had happened, heard enough of it to know I was responsible. He said I was truly one of the Di
When we got to the main encampment, we kept going, taking the herd down to the desert basin below. The Di
We brought almost fourteen hundred sheep down from the plateau. Pretty soon a force of Kazakhs came to punish us and take back their livestock. They used the same canyon we had used, but we had left men behind with rifles, to watch from side canyons. When the Kazakhs passed by, they followed them, and when truenight came, they crept into the Kazakh camp from up-canyon. The Kazakhs had sentries out below but not above, so our warriors went in among them and killed some of them in their sleep, with knives. Each time they killed one, they put his rifle in the stream. By the time an alarm was raised, about a dozen of the Kazakhs were dead. The rest left, went back up to the plateau. By then they would have seen that we were many people, and wouldn't know we had only the rifles we'd taken from them. Afterward we took their rifles out of the stream and cleaned them the best we could. The ammunition we had, we hoarded in case the Kazakhs came back.
After that we traveled for quite a while, slowly, driving our herds. Till the weather started to get colder. We wanted to be far from the Kazakhs, and perhaps find better land. Meanwhile we learned to make bows and arrows, and spear casters, and bolos, and learned to use them. We learned to drive muskylope into box canyons, where they were trapped.
Quite a few of the women who gave birth that first year died, and most of the newborn, but that was only part of it. We got so worried about the women that Tom Spotted Horse said only the men should eat unknown things. But that was too late for Marilyn. She died of a poison root. Then Marcel was killed by a tamerlaine, and for a time, I wished to die also. In the first long Haven winter, more than half of the Di
That was a long time ago. Tom Spotted Horse was killed in a rockfall, and I was named master sergeant," which is what the Di
The young people think this world is good. Except for the Kazakhs, years ago, you are the first outsider we've seen since the shuttles left us on the mesa. The CoDo Marines have never found us; I don't think they ever looked; I don't think they care. We may be here forever.
The lights in the viewing room dimmed, and the officers from the Bureau of Relocation shared final satisfied looks with the executives of the advertising agency.
This screening was being held for their very special guest; seated in the center of the auditorium was Edgar Paulsen, the representative from the CoDominium Information Council. Paulsen was a pensive, ferret-faced bureaucrat who frowned a lot without ever telling anyone what was bothering him. Most people who dealt with him considered Paulsen an easily distracted, even absent-minded man, which was a very grave mistake. In fact, he was certifiably brilliant, and if his moods and expressions changed rapidly, it was because he routinely summoned up complex problems he needed to deal with, brooded a moment, solved the problem in his head and moved on to the next one.
Paulsen was here today to review the latest effort from the public relations department of BuReloc. Flanking him were Brian Callan, the junior BuReloc executive who had commissioned the ad spot, and Scott Saintz, senior partner of the Saintz-Raddison agency, which had produced it.
Neither man took the ad too seriously; BuReloc was not a public enterprise. As a CoDominium entity, its powers exceeded the constitutional authority of any nation where it operated, and it operated everywhere. Still, public resistance to BuReloc "excesses" was on the rise, and something needed to be done.
The result was the thirty-second hobo-spot being premiered today in its final form. The project had been arduous, since Paulsen's office had insisted on location shooting and complete physical accuracy. Over the past year, Saintz-Raddison's people had worked closely with BuReloc execs, traveling throughout the CoDominium for locations, and the two offices had developed good working relations. Today's screening was as much a wrap party for them as it was a presentation for Paulsen, and they were all looking forward to the celebration that would follow.