'They let you know?'
'Sure,' said Big Brute. 'We keep one another posted.'
'Telepathy,' said Cynthia, softly. 'It has to be telepathy.'
'But telepathy…'
'A survival factor,' she said. 'The people who were left on Earth after the war would have needed survival factors. And with mutations, there might have been a lot of factors. Fine things to have if they didn't kill you first. Telepathy would have been good to have and it would not have killed you.'
'Tell me,' I said to Big Brute, 'what happened to Elmer-to the other two who were with us?'
'The metal things,' said Jed.
'That's right. The metal things.'
Big Brute shook his head.
'You mean that you don't know?'
'We can find out.'
'Well, then, you find out.'
'Look, mister,' said Jed, 'we need a bargaining point. This is our bargaining point.'
'The wolf is ours,' I said. 'And the wolfs right here.'
'Maybe we shouldn't be sitting here dickering,' said Big Brute. 'Maybe we should throw in together.'
'That's why you came sneaking up on us, to throw in with us?'
'Well, no,' said Jed. 'Not exactly. We had blood in our eye, for sure. You busted up our camp and run us off and then you took our horses. There ain't nothing more low-down 'than running off a man's horses. We weren't feeling it very friendly, to tell the truth.'
'But things have changed now. You are willing to be friendly?'
'Look at it this way,' said Big Brute. 'Someone set the wolves on you and the only ones who could have sent out the wolves was Cemetery and we sort of calculate anyone Cemetery doesn't like has to be a friend of ours.'
'What have you got against Cemetery?' Cynthia asked. She had moved over to the fire, standing beside Big Brute, with the stew pan in her hand. 'You've been stealing from Cemetery. You've been digging up the graves. Seems to me you would be out of business if it wasn't for Cemetery.'
'They don't play fair,' Jed whined. 'They set traps for us. All sorts of wicked traps. They cause us all sorts of trouble.'
Big Brute was still bewildered. 'How come you made up with that wolf?' he asked. 'Those things aren't supposed to make friends with anyone. They're man-killers, every one of them.'
Cynthia was still standing beside Big Brute, but she wasn't looking at him. She was looking across the creek to the hill. I wondered rather idly what she was looking at, but it was only a passing thought.
'If you want to throw in with us,' I said, 'how about beginning by telling us where to find the metal beings.'
I didn't really trust them; I knew we couldn't trust them. But I thought it was worth going along with them a ways if they could give us some idea of Elmer and — Bronco's whereabouts.
'I don't know,' said Big Brute. 'I honestly don't know if we should tell you that or not.'
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cynthia move. Her arm came up and I saw what she meant to do, although I couldn't understand, for the life of me, why she was doing it. There was no way for me to stop her, and even if there were, I would not have done it, for I knew she must have good reason. There was only one thing for me to do and I did it. I lunged for Jed's rifle, which lay on the rocky floor beside him and as I moved, Cynthia brought the stew pan down as hard as she could manage, on top of Big Brute's head.
Jed snatched at his gun, both of us grabbing hold of it. We rose to our feet, both of us hanging onto it, wrestling for it, trying to jerk it from the other's grasp.
Events were happening much too fast for me to take any lasting notice of them. I saw Cynthia, Big Brute's rifle clutched in her hands and at the ready. Big Brute was crawling around the floor on his hands and knees, shaking his head, as if he were attempting to rattle his brains back together into a solid mass, and a little way beyond him the stew pan lay canted on its side, battered out of shape. Wolf was a streak of churning silver, racing across the cave, heading for the entrance, and out on the opposite hillside dark figures were running. And somewhere out there, too, dull pops were sounding and humming bees came into the cave to thud against its walls.
Jed's face was all twisted up, either in fear or anger (I could not decide which, but, strangely, in the midst of all that was going on, I found the time to wonder). His mouth was open, as if he might be yelling, but he wasn't yelling. His teeth were yellowed fangs and his breath was foul. He wasn't as big as I was, nor as heavy, but he was a wiry customer, quick and tough and full of fight, and I knew, even as I fought for it, that he'd finally get that gun away from me.
Big Brute had tottered to his feet and was backing slowly away from the fire, staring with horrified fascination at Cynthia, who pointed his rifle at him.
It all seemed to have gone on for a long while, although I don't imagine it had been more than a few seconds, and it seemed as if it might keep on forever. Then, quite suddenly, Jed buckled in the middle. He loosed his grip on the gun and slid sidewise, tumbling to the floor, and I saw then the slow seep of red that stained his back.
Cynthia yelled at me, 'Fletch, let's get away! They are shooting at us!'
But they were, I saw, not shooting any longer. They were fleeing for their lives, small dark figures of leaping, dodging men scrambling up the hillside. Two or three of them, I saw, were busily climbing trees. Up the hill, after them, flashed a steel machine and as I watched, it caught one of them in its sharp, steel jaws and shook the body for an instant before it tossed it to one side.
There was no sign of Big Brute. He had gotten clean away.
'Fletch, we can't stay here,' said Cynthia, and I quite agreed with her. It was no place to stay, with the ghouls snapping at our heels. Now, while Wolf had them on the run, was the time to get away.
She already had reached one corner of the cave and was scrambling down the hillside, and I followed her. I lost my footing on the steepness of the rubble and, flat upon my back, skidded almost to the creek before I could gain my feet again. When I fell I dropped the gun and was turning back to get it when something went buzzing past my ear and threw up a small spurt of earth and rock on the inclined bank not more than three feet ahead of me. I rolled over rapidly and looked up to the ridge. A puff of blue smoke was floating up from a tree where a scarecrow figure crouched.
I forgot about the gun.
Cynthia was running down the narrow hollow that carried the creek and I ran after her. Behind me a couple of guns went off, but the balls must have flown far wide of us, for I didn't hear them hum nor did I see them strike. In a few more seconds, I told myself, we'd be out of range. Homemade guns carrying balls of lead powered by homemade powder could not have had much carrying power.
The narrow valley was tortuous traveling. The hills came down steeply on either side, in a sharp V formation, and there was no level ground. The surface was cluttered by massive boulders that through the ages had come rolling down the hillsides. In some places gigantic trees grew in the narrowness of the notch between the hills. There was no sort of trail to follow; nothing in its right mind would travel down this valley short of sheer necessity. It was a matter of finding the best path that one could, dodging around the rocks and trees, leaping the brook when it swung across one's path.
I caught up with Cynthia when she was slowed down by an enormous pile of boulders, and after that we went together. I saw that she didn't have Big Brute's gun.
'I dropped it,' she said. 'It was heavy. It kept getting in my way.'
'It's just as well,' I said. And it was just as well. Each of the guns carried a single charge and we had no balls or powder to reload (even if we'd known how to reload) once that charge was fired. They were awkward things to handle and I had a hunch a man would have to do a lot of shooting with them before he could come anywhere near hitting what he was aiming at.
We came to a place where another little V-shaped valley came into the one we had been following.
'Let's go up that one,' Cynthia said. 'They know we came down this one.'
I nodded. If they followed, they might suspect we had chosen the easier course, continuing down the hollow
