"Maybe it was r - " Richard began.
"You hesh your mouth," his father rode in before Richard could go any further. His voice had been cold and furious and frightened all at the same time. And Richard did hesh his mouth - closed it so fast and hard, in fact, that Abby had heard it snap shut. Then her father said to her, "Let's take you on over to the pump, Abagail, honey, and wash that mess out."
It was a year later that Luke told her what their father hadn't wanted Richard to say right out loud: that the weasel must almost surely have been rabid to do a thing like that, and if it had been, she would have died one of the most horrible deaths, aside from outright torture, of which men knew. But the weasel had not been rabid; the wound had healed clean. All the same, she had been terrified of the creatures from that day to this, terrified in the way some people are terrified of rats and spiders. If only the plague had taken them instead of the dogs! But it hadn't, and she was -
Your blood is in my fists.
One of them darted forward and tore at the rough hem of the towsack.
"Hi! " she screamed at it. The weasel darted away, seeming to grin, a thread of the bag hanging from its chops.
He had sent them - the dark man.
Terror engulfed her. There were hundreds of them now, gray ones, brown ones, black ones, all of them smelling chicken. They lined both sides of the road, squirming over each other in their eagerness to get at some of what they smelled.
I got to give it to them. It was all for nothing. If I don't give it to them, they'll rip me to pieces to get it. All for nothing.
In the darkness of her mind she could see the dark man's grin, she could see his fists held out and the blood dripping from them.
Another tug at the bag. And another.
The weasels on the far side of the road were now squirming across toward her, low, their bellies in the dust. Their little savage eyes glinted like icepicks in the moonlight.
But whosoever believeth on Me, behold, he shall not perish... for I have put My sign on him and no thing shall touch him... he is Mine, saith the Lord...
She stood up, still terrified, but now sure of what she must do. "Get out!" she cried. "It's chicken, all right, but it's for my company! Now you all git! "
They drew back. Their little eyes seemed to fill with unease. And suddenly they were gone like drifting smoke. A miracle, she thought, and exultation and praise for the Lord filled her. Then, suddenly, she was cold.
Somewhere, far to the west, beyond the Rockies that were not even visible on the horizon, she felt an eye - some glittering Eye - suddenly open wide and turn toward her, searching. As clearly as if the words had been spoken aloud she heard him: Who's there? Is it you, old woman?
"He knows I'm here," she whispered in the night. "Oh help me, Lord. Help me now, help all of us."
Dragging the towsack, she began to walk home again.
They showed up two days later, on July 24. She hadn't got as much done as she would have liked in the way of preparations; once again she was lame and almost laid up, able to hobble from one place to another only with the aid of her cane and hardly able to pump water up from the well. The day after killing the chickens and standing off the weasels, she had fallen asleep for a long time in the afternoon, exhausted. She dreamed she was in some high cold pass in the middle of the Rockies, west of the Continental Divide. Highway 6 stretched and twisted between high rock walls that shaded this gap all day long, except from about eleven forty-five in the morning until about twelve-fifty in the afternoon. It was not daylight in her dream but full, moonless dark. Somewhere, wolves were howling. And suddenly an Eye had opened in all that darkness, rolling horribly from one side to the other while the wind moved lonesomely through the pines and the blue mountain spruce. It was him, and he was looking for her.
She had awakened from that long, heavy nap feeling less rested than she had when she lay down, and again she prayed to God to let her off, or at least change the direction He wanted her to go in.
North, south, or east, Lord, and I'll leave Hemingford Home singing Your praises. But not west, not toward that dark man. The Rockies ain't enough to have between him and us. The Andes wouldn't be enough.
But it didn't matter. Sooner or later, when that man felt he was strong enough, he would come looking for those who would stand against him. If not this year, then next. The dogs were gone, carried off by the plague, but the wolves remained in the high mountain country, ready to serve the Imp of Satan.
And it was not just the wolves that would serve him.