The Return | Page 4

to doubt the wisdom of it. It was probably reluctance to admit this to himself that had brought on the strained feelings between himself and his old friend the gunsmith.
"I'll have to drill the Irregulars, today," he said. "Birdy Edwards has been drilling them, while we've been hunting. But I'll go up and see Alex about a new hatchet and fixing my rifle. I'll have a talk with him."
He stepped forward to the edge of the porch, still munching on a honey-dipped piece of corn bread, and glanced up at the sky. That was a queer bird; he'd never seen a bird with a wing action like that. Then he realized that the object was not a bird at all.
His father was staring at it, too.
"Murray! That's ... that's like the old stories from the time of the wars!"
But Murray was already racing across the parade ground toward the Aitch-Cue House, where the big iron ring hung by its chain from a gallows-like post, with the hammer beside it.
* * * * *
The stockaded village grew larger, details became plainer, as the helicopter came slanting down and began spiraling around it. It was a fairly big place, some forty or fifty acres in a rough parallelogram, surrounded by a wall of varicolored stone and brick and concrete rubble from old ruins, topped with a palisade of pointed poles. There was a small jetty projecting out into the river, to which six or eight boats of different sorts were tied; a gate opened onto this from the wall. Inside the stockade, there were close to a hundred buildings, ranging from small cabins to a structure with a belfry, which seemed to have been a church, partly ruined in the war of two centuries ago and later rebuilt. A stream came down from the woods, across the cultivated land around the fortified village; there was a rough flume which carried the water from a dam close to the edge of the forest and provided a fall to turn a mill wheel.
"Look; strip-farming," Loudons pointed. "See the alternate strips of grass and plowed ground. Those people understand soil conservation. They have horses, too."
As he spoke, three riders left the village at a gallop, through a gate on the far side. They separated, and the people in the fields, who had all started for the village, turned and began hurrying toward the woods. Two of the riders headed for a pasture in which cattle had been grazing, and started herding them, also, into the woods. For a while, there was a scurrying of little figures in the village below, and then not a moving thing was in sight.
"There's good organization," Loudons said. "Everybody seems to know what to do, and how to get it done promptly. And look how neat the whole place is. Policed up. I'll bet anything we'll find that they have a military organization, or a military tradition at least. We'll have to find out; you can't understand a people till you understand their background and their social organization."
"Humph. Let me have a look at their artifacts; that'll tell what kind of people they are," Altamont said, swinging his glasses back and forth over the enclosure. "Water-power mill, water-power sawmill--building on the left side of the water wheel; see the pile of fresh lumber beside it. Blacksmith shop, and from that chimney I'd say a small foundry, too. Wonder what that little building out on the tip of the island is; it has a water wheel. Undershot wheel, and it looks as though it could be raised or lowered. But the building's too small for a grist mill. Now, I wonder--"
[Illustration: ]
"Monty, I think we ought to land right in the middle of the enclosure, on that open plaza thing, in front of that building that looks like a reconditioned church. That's probably the Royal Palace, or the Pentagon, or the Kremlin, or whatever."
Altamont started to object, paused, and then nodded. "I think you're right, Jim. From the way they scattered, and got their livestock into the woods, they probably expect us to bomb them. We have to get inside; that's the quickest way to do it." He thought for a moment. "We'd better be armed, when we go out. Pistols, auto-carbines, and a few of those concussion-grenades in case we have to break up a concerted attack. I'll get them."
The plaza and the houses and cabins around it, and the two-hundred-year-old church, were silent and, apparently, lifeless as they set the helicopter down. Once Loudons caught a movement inside the door of a house, and saw a metallic glint. Altamont pointed up at the belfry.
"There's a gun up there," he said. "Looks like about a four-pounder. Brass. I knew that smith-shop was also a foundry. See that little curl of