Children of Tomorrow by Arthur Leo Zagat (little readers .TXT) 📕

The sun struck brightness through Dikar’s eyelids and though the night had held very little sleep for him, he was instantly awake. He flung out his arm to waken Marilee—found only the fur of the bed-covering!

He rolled over. She wasn’t there beside him. She wasn’t anywhere in the little house. Dikar was on his feet, his eyes wide, his heart bumping his ribs. The door of the house darkened and Marilee stood there.

“Marilee!” Dikar exclaimed. “I thought—What’s the matter?” She had hold of the doorpost, as if to hold herself up by it. There was green under the bronze of her skin and her forehead was wet with sweat. “Marilee!” Dikar made the single long stride that took him to her. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Wrong?” Her eyes refused to meet his. “Nothin’, Dikar.” She laughed, but it was not the merry tinkle that her laugh always was. “Listen, sleepyhead. The Boys are already on their way to the bathing pool.” Gay shouts, the threshing of many bodies through the brush, came to him. “Go quick, or they’ll be through before you have rubbed the sand from your eyes.”

“Marilee.” Dikar’s hand was on her shoulder. “What-?” She jerked free of his hold, faced him, her lips tight and white.

“Go, you fool!” she yelled at him and thrust past him into the house, threw herself on the bed. “Let me alone.”

Dikar stared at her, unbelieving. Never before had she yelled at him in anger, never before had her morning smile failed him. She lay face down, unmoving.

“Marilee,” Dikar named her. “If I’ve done somethin’ to make you angry at me, I ask your pardon, but what have I done?”

“Nothin’.” He could hardly hear her. “You have done nothin’,” she sobbed. “But please go, Dikar. Please leave me alone.”

Dikar turned slowly away, heard his name called from outside. “Comin’,” he answered red-bearded Johnstone, who called from the little house where he lived with Annjordan, “Last one in the bathing pool’s a yellow belly.”

They ran through the dew-sprinkled greenery, downhill to where a stream leaped from a ledge into a shining pool that foamed with the flashing limbs, the brown torsos of the Boys of the Bunch.

Dikar dived low into the icy water, swam to the opposite bank, stood up, shaking his head to clear his sight, the shining drops spattering about him. He saw Tomball, squat and shaggy under the foaming waterfall, saw Jimlane swimming nearby. Dikar dived again, swam under water to where the drooping, slender boughs of a willow dipped into the pool and made a screen behind which he came up unseen.

The Boys’ House was empty when Dikar went into it by the door away from the clearing, He darted to Tomball’s bed, lifted the coverings from it, pressed hands on grass-filled bag under them. There was no hard lump inside the bag. He looked under the cot—a darkening of the light straightened him, whipped him around.

Tomball stood spraddle-legged just inside the open door from the woods. His hands were stretching a bow taut, and laid across the bow was a stone-pointed hunting arrow that could kill a deer—or a Boy.

“Got you,” Tomball grunted, his eyes, small and red, hating Dikar. “This is Fredalton’s bonarrer. Nobody saw me leave the bathing pool just like nobody except me saw you, an’ I’ll be back there before they find you.” The head of the arrow was pulled back to the curve of the bow’s wood. Dikar’s muscles tightened to dodge the arrow, but he knew he could not hope—

Whang!

Tomball’s arrow was broken in two parts, was clattering to the floor! Dikar threw himself headlong down the length of the Boys’ House, tripped over the bow that Tomball had flung in his path. Thrust at the floor to get up and saw another arrow quivering in the wall toward the clearing, saw Tomball dive out of the door toward the woods, got to that door only in time to see Tomball vanish in the brush.

Dikar shook his head to clear it of its stunned surprise that he was still alive, that Tomball’s arrow had broken at the exact moment it was loosed at him.

“Dikar!” Billthomas, slender brown body wet-shining, face gray-white, was suddenly there in front of him. “He didn’t hurt you?” There was a bow in his one hand, the other reached out to Dikar. “He didn’t-?”

“No, Billthomas,” Dikar said, guessing now the meaning of that second arrow. “Thanks to you.” His voice was steady enough, but inside him he was shaking, knowing suddenly how close he had been to death. “That was as fine a shot as ever was made on the Mountain.”

Billthomas’ blue eyes shone with the praise. “It was nothin’, Dikar. The sun was on Tomball’s bonarrer through the other door, makin’ it a good mark, an’ I was only ten paces away. Any of the Boys could have hit it.”

“How did you come here, just in time?”

“Carlberger ducked Jimlane,” Billthomas answered. “While he was under Tomball got to shore. I saw him from the other end of the pool an’ I followed, I stopped to pick up my bonarrer where I’d hidden it near by, like you told us to last night. That let Tomball get out of sight, but I tracked him. When I got to the edge of the woods he was already in here, was pullin’ tight his bow. But why’re we wastin’ time? I’ll call the Bunch to hunt him down—”

“No!” Dikar commanded. “No, Billthomas. I will not have the Bunch know that one of them has tried to kill an other. For then there will be only two things left for the Bunch to do. Either they must stone him from the clearing; an’ that will make certain of his hate for the Bunch, with no hope that he will ever change; or they must kill him, which is worse. That the Bunch shall kill one of themselves coldly and with thought before, is more dreadful than that Tomball should have tried to kill me, excited an’ angry.”

“But, Dikar-?”

“But nothin’! This is a thing I will take care of myself, in my own way, an’ it will remain a secret between you an’ me. You will not call the Bunch.” Dikar said sharply, his eyes commanding. “You will call Jimlane only. The two of you must track Tomball an’ keep him always in sight, but you will not let him know you are around unless he does one of the things I talked about last night, or unless he tries again to hurt one of the Bunch. If that should happen, stop him, but hurt him as little as you can help, an’ tell me about it. Get me?”

“I get you, Dikar.”

“Then call Jimlane, an’ get busy.”

“Yes, Dikar.” Billthomas was gone into the woods and Dikar heard the trill of a lark from where Billthomas had vanished, three times, and from far off he heard the answering three trills of a lark, and he knew that Billthomas had called Jimlane, and that there would not be a moment from now on that Tomball would not be under the eyes of the two youngsters. But Dikar’s forehead was furrowed and his heart heavy within him as he turned to pluck Billthomas’ arrow from the wall and the pieces of Tomball’s arrow from the floor, and went out into the woods to hide them.

It was queer, he thought, how he had talked to Billthomas the way he did just now, without thinking about what he was going to say beforehand. It was as if someone else had talked with his voice, someone much wiser than he was.

It was queer, too, how he knew now that what he had said was the right thing to say. How he knew now, sure as that his name was Dikar, that what he was doing was the best thing for the Bunch.

And for Tomball too. After what had happened Tomball would stay away from the Bunch, afraid of what Dikar would do if he came