The moonlight played tricks with his vision. Things moved in the shadows, images formed and shifted. And when his eyelids slid shut, Varia met him in a garden, a garden surrounded by a palisade like the pioneer forts in his history book. They walked into a house with a windmill by the back porch—it was Will’s—and inside were three other Varias. “We’re your wives,” one of them said, and they pushed him down on a bed and undressed him. He was compliant, but when they pulled his underwear off, there was another set beneath them, and a set beneath them . . . Then he was on his feet. “Varia, he said, “this isn’t going to work. It’s got to be just you and me. I like your sisters all right, but . . .”
“I’m not Varia, I’m Liiset.”
He looked around at the others, then back to the first. “No,” he said, “you’re Varia. Why are you trying to fool me like that?”
She started to cry, and they sat down on a fallen tree by the Sycamore Bend, he with his arms around her. “Honey,” he said, “it’s not going to work with all four of you. It’s not. You’re the only one I want.” Still weeping, she started to fade out of his arms, less substantial than the transparent Varia back on the farm. “Don’t go away!” he cried. “I came all this way to get you back!”
He awoke shouting, lunging to his feet, the heavy buffalo gun clopping against bare bedrock. He didn’t notice, his mind still caught up in the dream. Oh God! he thought, don’t let it be like that! Then blinking, looked around, breathing hard. It was quiet and peaceful, the full moon shining down between sparse trees. This was still Missouri in the U.S. of A., he was sure of it. Had midnight come and gone? The only directions he knew for certain were up and down. The moon could still be east of south, or . . . He found the dipper and the pointers, then the Pole Star faint in the moonlight. Not midnight yet; not for a while. He bent, picked up his rifle and sighted on the moon. The sights were undamaged, hadn’t struck the rock. With a sigh he turned up his collar, sat back down against the pine, and letting his eyes close again, slept.
With a deep thrumming resonance, the gate spit him out of nightmare, rolling across the ground in bright sunlight. He woke like a frightened tomcat, hair on end, and scrambled staggering to his feet, grabbing for a rifle that wasn’t there. So he snatched at his holster, drew the .44, and looked around wild-eyed. Four men stood a little way off, watching him and laughing, talking some foreign lingo he might have heard once before, when Varia and Idri had lashed each other that day in Evansville.
The men started toward him, and bracing his legs against residual dizziness, Macurdy drew his revolver. His wits began to adjust, and he was aware that they carried short spears pointed his way. He pointed the revolver back at them, and when they kept coming, jabbed it in their direction. They stopped eight or ten feet away, spears at the ready. A stride forward and thrust, by any of them, and he’d be meat. One, the leader, said something to him, he had no idea what.
“Stay back,” he answered. “I don’t want to hurt no one.”
The man spoke more sharply, and jabbed the spear at him, its point almost reaching him. Macurdy jumped backward and pulled the trigger—and nothing happened. He felt the hammer release and strike, heard it click, but no shot fired. He pulled again, and again nothing. He knew he’d loaded all six chambers. Staring around, he spied the rifle lying in the grass too far away.
The man had been saying something more. Now the others moved behind Macurdy, who looked at the revolver and swung the cylinder out. From each chamber, a center-fire cartridge peered back at him, two of them indented by the firing pin. The spearmen watched curiously. Reseating the cylinder, he tried again, and once more it clicked, so he slid the weapon back into its holster. Then a spear jabbed his left buttock, and with a yell, Macurdy jumped forward. Once more the leader spoke, beckoning, and Macurdy followed him.