Al and Measure stopped in a stretch of woods between Hatchs' and Bjornsons' farms, where the last storm knocked down a tree half onto the road. They could get by all right, being on horseback as they were, but you don't leave a thing like that for somebody else to find. Maybe somebody in a wagon, hurrying to make home before dark on a stormy night, maybe that's who'd come by next, and find the road blocked. So they stopped and ate the lunch Ma packed for them, and then set to work with their hatchets, cutting it free from the few taut strands of wood that clung to the ragged stump. They were wishing for a saw long before they were done, but you don't carry a saw with you on a three-hundred-mile trip on horseback. A change of clothes, a hatchet, a knife, a musket for hunting, powder and lead, a length of rope, a blanket, and a few odd tokens and amulets for wardings and fendings. Much more than that and you'd have to bring a wagon or a pack horse.

After the trunk was free, they tied both horses to it and pulled it out of the way. Hard work, sweaty work, cause the horses weren't used to pulling as a team and they bothered each other. Tree kept snagging up on them, too, and they had to keep rolling it and chopping away branches. Now, Al knew he could've used his knack to change the wood of that tree inside, to make it split apart in all the right places. But that wouldn't have been right, he knew. The Shining Man wouldn't've stood for that– it would've been pure selfishness, pure laziness, and no good to anybody. So he hacked and tugged and sweated right alongside Measure. And it wasn't so bad. It was good work, and when it was all done it was no more than an hour. It was time well spent.

They talked somewhat during the work, of course. Some of the conversation turned on the stones about Red massacres down south. Measure was pretty skeptical. “Oh, I hear those stories, but the bloody ones are all things somebody heard from somebody else about somebody else. The folks who actually lived down there and got run out, all they ever say is that Ta-Kumsaw come and run off their pigs and chickens, that's all. Not a one ever said nothing about no arrows flying or folks getting killed.”

Al, being ten years old, was more inclined to believe the stories, the bloodier the better. “Maybe when they kill somebody, they kill the whole family so nobody talks about it.”

“Now you think about it, Al. That don't make sense. Ta-Kumsaw wants all the White people out of there, don't he? So he wants them scared to death, so they pack up and move, don't he? So wouldn't he leave one alive to tell about it, if he was doing massacres? Wouldn't somebody've found some bodies, at least?”

“Well where do the stories come from, then?”

“Armor-of-God says Harrison's telling lies, to try to get people het up against the Reds.”

“Well, he couldn't very well lie about them burning down his house and his stockade. People could plain see if it got burnt, couldn't they? And he couldn't very well lie about it killing his wife and his little boy, could he?”

“Well of course it did burn, Al. But maybe it wasn't fire arrows from Ta-Kumsaw started that fire. You ever think of that?”

“Governor Harrison isn't going to burn down his own house and kill his own family just so he can get people hot against the Reds,” said Al. “That's plain dumb.”

And they speculated on and on about Red troubles in the south part of the Wobbish country, because that was the most important topic of conversation around, and since nobody knowed anything accurate anyway, everybody's opinion was as good as anybody else's.

Seeing how they weren't more than a half mile from two different farms, in country they'd visited four or five times a year for ten years, it never even came to mind they ought to keep their eyes open for trouble. You just don't keep too wary that close to home, not even when you're talking about Red massacres and stones about murders and torture. Fact is, though, careful or not there wasn't much they could've done. Al was coiling ropes and Measure was cinching up the saddles when all of a sudden there was about a dozen Reds around them. One minute nobody but crickets and mice and a bird here and there, the next minute Reds all painted up.

It took a few seconds even at that for them to be afraid. There was a lot of Reds in Prophetstown, and they came pretty regular to trade at Armor-of-God's store. So Alvin spoke before he even hardly looked at them. “Howdy,” said Alvin.

They didn't howdy him back. They had paint all over their faces.

“These ain't no howdy Reds,” said Measure softly. “They got muskets.”

That made it sure these weren't no Prophetsotwn Reds. The Prophet taught his followers never to use White man's weapons. A true Red didn't need to hunt with a gun, because the land knew his need, and the game would come near enough to kill with a bow. Only reason for a Red to have a gun, said the Prophet, was to be a murderer, and murdering was for White men. That's what he said. So it was plain these weren't Reds that put much store in the Prophet.

Alvin was looking one right in the face. Al must've showed his fear, cause the Red got a glint in his eye and smiled a little. The Red reached out his hand.

“Give him the rope,” said Measure.

“It's our rope,” said Al. As soon as he said it he knew it didn't make no sense. Al handed both ropes to him.

The Red took the coils, gentle as you please. Then he tossed one over the White boys' heads, to another Red, and the whole bunch of them set to work, stripping off the boys' outer clothes and then tying their arms behind them so tight it was pulling on their shoulder joints something painful.

“Why do they want our clothes?” Al asked.

In answer, one of the Reds slapped him hard across the face. He must've liked the sound it made, because he slapped him again. The sting of it brought tears to Al's eyes, but he didn't cry out, partly cause he was so surprised, partly cause it made him mad and he didn't want to give them no satisfaction. Slapping was an idea that caught on real good with the other Reds, cause they started in slapping Measure, too, both of the boys, again and again, till they were half-dazed and their cheeks were bleeding inside and out.

One Red babbled something, and they gave him Al's shirt. He slashed at it with his knife, and then rubbed it on Al's bleeding face. Must not have got enough blood on it, because he took his knife and slashed right across Al's forehead. The blood just gushed out, and a second later the pain hit Al and for the first time he did cry out. It felt like he'd been laid open right to the bone, and the blood was running down in his eyes so he couldn't see. Measure yelled for them to leave Al alone, but there wasn't no chance of that. Everybody knew that once a Red started in to cutting on you, you were bound to end up dead.

Minute Al cried out and the blood started coming, them Reds started laughing and making little hooting sounds. This bunch was out for real trouble, and Al thought back to all the stories he heard. Most famous one was probably about Dan Boone, a Pennsylvania man who tried to settle in the Crown Colonies for a while. That was back when the Cherriky were against the White man, and one day Dan Boone's boy got kidnapped. Boone wasn't a half hour behind them Reds. It was like they were playing with him. They'd stop and cut off parts of the boy's skin, or poke out an eye, something to cause bad pain and make him scream. Boone heard his boy screaming, and followed, him and his neighbors, armed with their muskets and half-mad with rage. They'd reach the place where the boy'd been tortured, and the Reds were gone, not a trace of a track in the wood, and then there'd come another scream. Twenty miles they went that day, and finally at nightfall they found the boy hanging from three different trees. They say Boone never forgot that, he could never look a Red in the eye after that without thinking on that twenty-mile day.