Part 2

McCullough watched them go, uneasy under his surface stolidity. He liked to be on good terms with his neighbors, not enough to give in to them on anything he felt strongly about, but he knew this would be held against him, and it worried him, more for the sake of Mary and the kids than for himself.

He sensed his wife standing behind him.

"What did they want?" she asked.

He told her.

"But, John, why? Haven't we had enough trouble today? Do you _have_ to get in a fight with your neighbors over a stupid native? What difference does it make to you?"

McCullough shook his head helplessly. "I don't know. I just don't like the idea, that's all."

His wife stared wordlessly at him for a moment. She went into the kitchen and sat down at the table and began crying again. The children ran to her and began whimpering also. McCullough prowled restlessly about the living-room, stooping now and then to peer out the windows as men shouted and ran by. The native lay silent on the cot, unmoving except for his eyes which followed McCullough.

McCullough stopped and studied the Centauran resentfully. Goddam natives, he thought, all they cause is trouble. He bent over and loosened the strap on the leg until fresh blood started to ooze out and then tightened it again. The Centauran winced a little and closed his eyes briefly, but made no other sign. Ought to have morphine, McCullough thought, but would morphine work on a Centauran? He didn't know.

He pulled a chair over to the window, where he could watch both doors and the cot, and sat down with the gun across his knees. The riot was apparently still booming along. Men trotted by outside now and then, singly or in little groups, calling to each other. Once several went by with another Centauran corpse slung hand and foot to a pole. There were no women or children in sight, those houses with blinds had them down, the tent-flaps were tightly drawn. There was no indication of any attempt by the authorities to halt the riot. Possibly Tallant had not gotten through, or possibly Watts was right, the Administration was keeping hands off.

After a while Mary came in and stood by the chair. Her eyes were still red, but she was no longer crying. "You want something to eat now?" she asked dully. "The roast is done."

"Yeah, I guess so," he said. He avoided her eyes.

She fixed a plate and brought it to him and sat down to watch him eat.

"You think there'll be more trouble?" she asked. "They surely won't bother us again, will they?"

McCullough chewed thoughtfully. He thought there would be more trouble, but he did not like to worry his wife unduly. "Well," he hedged, "that Henry's kind of a bull-headed fellow."

"Don't you be bull-headed too, John. I know you have to do what you think is right, but please be careful."

He reached out and took her hand in his. "Honey, I'm sorry. I know it's mighty tough on women sometimes, but a man just can't give in on some things, that's all." He looked down, pleased as always by the contrast of her small, pale, delicate fingers lying in his large blunt chocolate-brown hand. The contrast seemed especially important today, for reasons he could not quite place.

Was there some special significance in a black man married to a white woman, a black man setting his will against white men, not as an enemy, but as an equal? Back a couple of hundred years ago, he knew, on Earth--but the thought eluded him, he was not a very articulate or subtle thinker and he could not pin it down.

"Don't you worry, Mary," he said, "it'll turn out all right."

* * * * *

It was almost sundown when Watts came back. McCullough was checking the tourniquet on the native's leg when he heard a commotion in the street outside.

"John McCullough," a voice bellowed. "Come out!"

Watts' voice, McCullough thought. He picked up his gun, but then he thought he would not feel right facing the men outside, who were after all his neighbors, with a gun in his hands. He looked around. The double-bitted axe he had been using to trim the logs around his window-frames leaned against the wall by the door.

"Get in the bedroom, Mary," he said. "Pull the mattress off the bed and lie down behind it with the kids."

He took the axe and walked out the door onto the steps, squinting his eyes against the setting sun. The street was full of men in front of his house, perhaps half a hundred or so. Watts and a short stout man stood halfway up the path to the door. McCullough studied them in silence.

"Well?" he said finally.

"This man here's a deputy marshal, John," Watts said. "We'll take your prisoner and that body now, if you don't mind."

The stout man grinned placatingly. "That's right, Mr. McCullough, I've deputized Mr. Watts here and several others to help restore order. We've rounded up all the rioters except that one you've got in there."

"You got a warrant?" McCullough asked.

"Well, no, I don't really think--"

"Then get off my property. Go on, get!" McCullough came down the steps and began to walk slowly toward Watts and the marshal. "Get out of my yard!" he said. He did not raise his voice.

"You're bucking the law now, John McCullough," Watts warned.

"Get out of my yard!" McCullough said again. He was about three steps away from Watts. He took another step.

Watts had been carrying a pistol in his hand. His arm started to swing up. McCullough let out a wordless bark: "_Haugh!_" and the axe flipped in a short swift arc. He stepped over Watts' body, the axe again dangling limply from his hand with a few thin threads of blood spattering from it. "Get out of my yard!" he said.

The nearer men backed away slowly, not really frightened, but uncertain. Single men have faced down mobs many times, but more have been killed by them. In a saner moment, McCullough may have known this, but his ductless glands were in full control now. He did not really care, he rather hoped, if he thought at all, that there _would_ be a fight. He knew he could kill any man who stood against him.

Off to one side, a dozen yards away, a man tentatively lifted a pistol. McCullough caught the movement from the corner of his eye and turned and began walking toward the man, head a little forward, bright, slightly unfocussed eyes intent in his expressionless face. The men between the two moved back, leaving a clear path.

The man with the pistol glanced to either side and saw he now stood alone, all alone. There is a nightmare some men know--the implacable deadly-eyed enemy coming with the red, wetly gleaming steel while you stand all alone with the pistol that poufs weakly with the bullets dribbling from the muzzle. The man jerked the trigger and spun about and ran without waiting to see where his shot had gone, and the charge snapped two feet over McCullough's head.

McCullough turned again toward the main body of the mob and walked slowly forward, his eyes searching the faces around him hungrily. "Get out of my yard!" he said woodenly.

The men he faced were not cowards, few men on that world were, and they had been killing natives all afternoon, their blood was up; but this was different, this was one of their own kind they faced now. If they had been able to see him as another outcast, as a traitor aiding the enemy against them, it would have made things easier. In spite of what Watts had said, however, they knew this was not true. McCullough was not a 'native-lover', he was not upholding the Centaurans, what he was upholding was the right of a citizen to hold his own opinion and keep his home as his castle--two rights which are extremely important in any frontier culture.

It put them in a very difficult moral position, and the physical pressure of McCullough's steady advance did not give them much time to settle the dilemma. Half a dozen men were elbowing their way back through the press now, the marshal had disappeared, there was no one to start things, and they kept fading back. McCullough never varied his pace, but the distance between him and the nearest man increased steadily. He stopped in the street before his house, but the mob kept moving under its own momentum for another fifty yards, and some still kept moving. A knot of perhaps a dozen stopped at the corner and muttered among themselves for a few minutes. One man started to raise a gun, and another knocked it down. They stood there a little longer, and McCullough leaned on his axe watching them, and then they moved off after the others, men dropping off here and there as they passed their own homes.

The riot was over.