Out in the mowed area, a grasshopper took lazy wing and settled fifteen feet from where it had started. A robin that probably had been sitting on the house swooped on the insect and bore it away. Gophers scurried back and forth, and a crow alighted in the field. The fields hadn't changed and the day was like any day. It was hard to believe that, just beyond the mowed area, lay men who would kill everyone in the house if they were able to do so. Joe's eyes roved the tall grass farther up the slope. He concentrated on one place. He thought he saw the grass sway there. It moved ever so slightly, then was still. Joe relaxed taut muscles. He had never shot at another man with the intent to kill and until now he had considered himself incapable of doing so. But the terrible anger still had him in its grip and he could kill these men. The grass moved again, and Joe knew without a doubt that there was something in it that should not be. He stepped back, sighted and shot. A crawling Indian threw himself upward so that his whole torso was revealed and fell back. The grass stopped moving. "Did you get him?" Tad called excitedly. "Did you get him, Pa?" "I don't think so." He tried to keep his voice calm, but it was taut and strained. He felt surging joy because he had killed one of the enemies who had come to destroy them. He remained too much the civilized man to speak of that to his son. "I thought I heard a shot!" The bloody bandage contrasting oddly with his dark hair, Ellis was sitting up. For a moment he did not move, but stared at something that only he saw. Plowing a furrow beside his head, the bullet had shocked him into unconsciousness. Leaving her post, Barbara knelt and put her arms around him. "Ellis! Lie down!" "I--Bobby! Where did you come from?" "Please lie down!" "I--Oh! I know now!" Her arm remained about him as he rose to shaky feet, swayed and recovered his balance. He reached up with one hand to push the bandage a little farther up his head and looked wonderingly at the blood on his fingers. He said, as though that were an astonishing thing, "They nicked me!" Emma and Martha Winterson hovered anxiously about, and Joe said, "Better stay down, Ellis." "I--I'm all right now. Bobby, my rifle!" She choked back a sob. "Ellis, no!" "I'm all right now. I'll watch the south wall." She said determinedly, "We'll both watch the south wall," and she stood very close beside him in the event that he needed her suddenly. Time dragged on. Rifle cradled in his arm, Winterson came back to stand beside Joe. He peered at the tall grass. "See anything?" "Nothing's moved for a couple of hours. Do you think they've gone?" "No, I don't," Winterson declared. "They don't like hot lead and they aren't going to expose themselves to it. They're out in the brush cooking up some new kind of deviltry. When they get it cooked, they'll serve it to us."