“They came by air. And they have the house surrounded,” Dard reported in a matter-of-fact voice. Now that the worst had at last happened he was surprisingly calm. “But they don’t have their trap completely closed—as they are going to discover!”
He brushed past Lars and jerked open the cupboard doors. Dessie stood beside her father, and now Dard threw her a bag.
“Food—everything you can pack in,” he ordered. “Lars, here!”
From the pegs he pulled down all the extra clothing they had. “Get dressed to go out.”
But his brother shook his head. “You know I can’t make it, Dard.”
Dessie went on stuffing provisions into the hag “I’ll help you, Daddy,” she promised “’just as soon as I can.”
Dard paid no attention to his brother. Instead he ran to the far end of the room and raised the trap door of the cellar.
“Last summer,” he explained as he came back to gather up the clothing, “’I found a passage down there behind the wall. It leads out to the foundations of the barn. We can hide there—“
“They know we are here They’ll be looking for a move such as that,” objected Lars.
“Not after I cover our trail.”
He saw that Lars was pulling on the remnants of a coat. Dessie was almost ready to go and now she helped her father not only to dress but to crawl across the floor to the hole. Dard gave her a pine knot torch before he went to work.
The doors and all the downstairs shutters were barred. Those ought to hold just long enough—
He took a small can from the cupboard and poured its long-saved contents liberally about the room. Then he withdrew to the head of the cellar ladder before hurling a second blazing torch into the nearest patch of liquid. A billow of fire sent him hurtling down with just enough time to pull the trap door shut behind him.
As he shoved aside the rotting bins which concealed the opening to the passage, he could hear the crackling above, and smoke drifted down through the flooring cracks.
A moment later Dessie scuttled into the passage ahead as Dard hauled Lars along with him. Over their heads the house burned. These outside might well believe that their prey burned with it. At the very least the blaze would cover their escape for the precious minutes which meant the difference between life and death.
2: HIDING OUT
BEFORE THEY REACHED the outlet below the barn, Dard brought them to a halt. There was no use emerging into the arms of some snooping Peaceman. It was better to stay in hiding until they could see whether or not the enemy had been fooled by the burning house.
The passage in which the three crouched was walled with rough stone and so narrow that the shoulders of the two adults brushed both sides. It was cold, icy with a chill which crept up from the bare earth underneath through their ill-covered feet to their knees and then into their shivering bodies. How long they could stay there without succumbing to that cold Dard did not know. He bit his lip anxiously as he strained to hear the sound from above.
He was answered by an explosion, the sound and shock of which came to them down the passage from the house. And then there was a slightly hysterical chuckle from Lars.
“What happened?” began Dard, and then answered his own question, “The laboratory!”
“Yes, the laboratory,” Lars said, leaning against the wall. There was relaxation in both his pose and voice. “They’ll have a mess to comb through now.
“All the better!” snapped Dard. “Will it feed the fire?”
“Feed the fire! It might blow up the whole building. There won’t be enough pieces left for them to discover what was inside before the blast.”
“Or who might have been there!” For the first time Dard saw a ray of real hope. The Peacemen could not have known of this passage, they probably believed that the dwellers in the farmhouse had been blown up in that explosion. The escape of the Nordis family was covered-they now had a better than even chance.
But still he waited, or rather made Lars and Dessie wait in hiding while he crept on into the barn hole and climbed up the ladder he had placed there for such a use as this. Then, making a worm’s progress crawling, he crossed the rotting floor to peer out through the doorless entrance.
The outline of the farmhouse walls was gone, and tongues of blue-white flame ate up the dark to make the scene day-bright. Two men in the black and white Peace uniforms were dragging a third away from the holocaust. And there was a lot of confused shouting. Dard listened and gathered that the raiders were convinced that their prey had gone up with the house, taking with them two officers who had just beaten in the back door before the explosion. And there had been three others injured. The roundup gang was hurrying away, apprehensive of other explosions. Peacemen, who prided themselves on their lack of scientific knowledge, were apt to harbor such suspicions.
Dard got to his feet. The last man, trailing a stun rifle, was going around the fire now, keeping a careful distance from the chemically fed flames, such a distance that he plunged waist deep through snow drifts. And a few moments later Dard saw the ‘copter rise, circle the farm once, and head west. He sighed with relief and went back to get the others.
“All clear,” he reported to Lars as he supported the crippled man up the ladder. “They think we went up in the explosion and they were afraid there might be another so they left fast—“
Again Lars chuckled. “They won’t be back in a hurry then.”
“Dard,” Dessie was a small shadow moving through the gloom, “if our house is gone where are we going to live now?
“My practical daughter,” Lars said. “We will find some – other place …. “
Dard remembered. “The messenger you were expecting! He might see the blaze from the hills and not come at all!”
“And that’s why you’re going to leave him a sign that we’re still in the land of the living, Dard. As Dessie points out we haven’t a roof over us now, and the sooner we’re on our way the better. Since our late callers believe us to be dead there’s no danger in Dessie and I staying right where we are now, while you do what’s necessary to bring help. Follow the wall in the top pasture to the corner where the old woods road begins. About a quarter of a mile beyond is a big tree with a hollow in it. Put this inside.” Lars pulled a piece of rag out of his wrappings. “Then come back here. That’ll bring our man on down even if he sees an eruption going on. It tells him that we’ve escaped and are hiding out waiting to make contact. If he doesn’t come by morning—we’ll try moving up closer to the tree.”
Dard understood. His brother daren’t attempt the journey through the snow and brush at night. But tomorrow they could rig some kind of a board sled from the debris and drags Lars into the safety of the woods. In the meantime it was very necessary to leave the sign. With a word of caution to them both, Dard left the barn.
By instinct he kept to the shadows east by the trees and brush which encroached on the once fertile fields. Near the farm buildings was a maze of tracks left by the Peacemen, and he used them to hide the pattern of his own steps. Just why he took such precautions he could not tell, but the wariness which had guided every move of his life for years had now become an ingrown part of him. On the other hand, now that the raid he had feared for so long had come, and he and his were still alive and free, he felt eased of some of the almost intolerable burden.
As he tramped away from the dying fire the night was very still and cold. Once a snowy owl slipped across the sky, and deep in the forest a wolf, or one of the predatory wild dogs, howled. Dard did not find it difficult to locate Lars’ tree and made sure that the rag was safe in the black hollow of its trunk.
The cold ate into him and he hurried on his back trail. Maybe they might dare light a small fire in the cellar pit, just enough to keep them from freezing until morning. How close was the dawn, he wondered, as he stumbled and clutched at a snow-crowned wall to steady himself. Bed—sleep—warmth—He was so tired—so very tired—
Then a sound ripped through the night air. A shot! His face twisted and his hand went to the haft of the knife. A shot! Lars had no gun! The Peacemen—but they had gone!