Wolves of the Calla

Louder agreement. The stomp of shor'boots on the plain pine floorboards. And a few cries of Hear him, hear him !

'Besides,' Neil Faraday said, standing and holding his vast and filthy sombrero in front of him, 'they never steal all our children.' He spoke in a frightened let's-be-reasonable tone that set Tian's teeth on edge. It was this counsel he feared above all others. Its deadly-false call to reason.

One of the Manni, this one younger and beardless, uttered a sharp and contemptuous laugh. 'Ah, one saved out of every two! And that make it all right, does it? God bless thee!' He might have said more, but Henchick clamped a gnarled hand on the young man's arm. The young one said no more, but he didn't lower his head submissively, either. His eyes were hot, his lips a thin white line.

'I don't mean it's right,' Neil said. He had begun to spin his sombrero in a way that made Tian feel a litde dizzy. 'But we have to face the realities, don't we? Aye. And they don't take em all. Why my daughter, Georgina, she's just as apt and canny—'

Tar, and yer son George is a great empty-headed galoot,' Ben Slightman said. Slightman was Eisenhart's foreman, and he did not suffer fools lightly. He took off his spectacles, wiped them with a bandanna, and set them back on his face. 'I seen him settin on the steps in front of Tooky's when I rode down-street. Seen him very well. Him and some others equally empty-brained.'

'But—'

'I know,' Slightman said. 'It's a hard decision. Some empty-brained's maybe better than all dead.' He paused. 'Or all taken instead of just half.'

Cries of Hear him and Say thankee as Ben Slightman sat down.

'They always leave us enough to go on with, don't they?' asked a smallhold farmer whose place was just west of Tian's, near the edge of the Calla. His name was Louis Haycox, and he spoke in a musing, bitter tone of voice. Below his mustache, his lips curved in a smile that didn't have much humor in it. 'We won't kill our children,' he said, looking at the Manni. 'All God's grace to ye, gentlemen, but I don't believe even you could do so, came it right down to the killin-floor. Or not all of ye. We can't pull up bag and baggage and go west—or in any other direction—because we leave our farms behind. They'd burn us out, all right, and come after the children just the same. They need em, gods know why.

'It always comes back to the same thing: we're farmers, most of us. Strong when our hands are in the soil, weak when they ain't. I got two kiddies of my own, four years old, and I love em both well. Should hate to lose either. But I'd give one to keep the other. And my farm.' Murmurs of agreement met this. 'What other choice do we have? I say this: it would be the world's worst mistake to anger the Wolves. Unless, of course, we can stand against them. If 'twere possible, I'd stand. But I just don't see how it is.'

Tian felt his heart shrivel with each of Haycox's words. How much of his thunder had the man stolen? Gods and the Man Jesus!

Wayne Overholser got to his feet. He was Calla Bryn Sturgis's most successful farmer, and had a vast sloping belly to prove it. 'Hear me, I beg.'

'We say thankee-sai,' they murmured.

'Tell you what we're going to do,' he said, looking around. 'What we always done, that's what. Do any of you want to talk about standing against the Wolves? Are any of you that mad? With what? Spears and rocks, a few bows and bahs? Maybe four rusty old sof calibers like that?' He jerked a thumb toward Eisenhart's rifle.

'Don't be making fun of my shooting-iron, son,' Eisenhart said, but he was smiling ruefully.

'They'll come and they'll take the children,' Overholser said, looking around. 'Some of em. Then they'll leave us alone again for a generation or even longer. So it is, so it has been, and I say leave it alone.'

Disapproving rumbles rose at this, but Overholser waited them out.

'Twenty-three years or twenty-four, it don't matter,' he said when they were quiet again. 'Either way it's a long time. A long time of peace . Could be you've forgotten a few things, folks. One is that children are like any other crop. God always sends more. I know that sounds hard. But it's how we've lived and how we have to go on.'

Tian didn't wait for any of the stock responses. If they went any further down this road, any chance he might have to turn them would be lost. He raised the opopanax feather and said, 'Hear what I say! Would ye hear, I beg!'

'Thankee-sai,' they responded. Overholser was looking at Tian distrustfully.

And you're right to look at me so , the farmer thought. For I've had enough of such cowardly common sense, so I have .

'Wayne Overholser is a smart man and a successful man, Tian said, 'and I hate to speak against his position for those reasons. And for another, as well: he's old enough to be my Da'.'

' 'Ware he ain't your Da',' Garrett Strong's only farmhand—

Rossiter, his name was—called out, and there was general laughter. Even Overholser smiled at this jest.

'Son, if ye truly hate to speak agin me, don't ye do it,' Overholser said. He continued to smile, but only with his mouth.

'I must, though,' Tian said. He began to walk slowly back and forth in front of the benches. In his hands, the rusty-red plume of the opopanax feather swayed. Tian raised his voice slightly so they'd understand he was no longer speaking just to the big farmer.

'I must because sai Overholser is old enough to be my Da'. His children are grown, do ye kennit, and so far as I know there were only two to begin with, one girl and one boy.' He paused, then shot the killer. 'Born two years apart.' Both singletons, in other words. Both safe from the Wolves, although he didn't need to say it right out loud. The crowd murmured.

Overholser flushed a bright and dangerous red. 'That's a rotten goddamned thing to say! My get's got nothing to do with this whether single or double! Give me that feather, Jaffords. I got a few more things to say.'

But the boots began to thump down on the boards, slowly at first, then picking up speed until they rattled like hail. Overholser looked around angrily, now so red he was nearly purple.

'I'd speak!' he shouted. 'Would'ee not hear me, I beg?'

Cries of No, no and Not now and Jaffords has the feather and Sit and listen came in response. Tian had an idea sai Overholser was learning—and remarkably late in the game—that there was often a deep-running resentment of a village's richest and most successful. Those less fortunate or less canny (most of the time they amounted to the same) might tug their hats off when the rich folk passed in their buckas or lowcoaches, they might send a slaughtered pig or cow as a thank-you when the rich folk loaned their hired hands to help with a house or barn- raising, the well-to-do might be cheered at Year End Gathering for helping to buy the piano that now sat in the Pavilion's musica . Yet the men of the Calla tromped their shor'boots to drown Overholser out with a certain savage satisfaction.

Overholser, unused to being balked in such a way—flabbergasted, in fact—tried one more time. 'I'd have the feather, do ye, I beg !'

'No,' Tian said. 'Later if it does ya, but not now.'

There were actual cheers at this, mostly from the smallest of the smallhold farmers and some of their hands. The Manni did not join in. They were now drawn so tightly together that they looked like a dark blue inkstain in the middle of the hall. They were clearly bewildered by this turn. Vaughn Eisenhart and Diego Adams, meanwhile, moved to flank Overholser and speak low to him.

You've got a chance , Tian thought. Better make the most of it .

He raised the feather and they quieted.

'Everyone will have a chance to speak,' he said. 'As for me, I say this: we can't go on this way, simply