"Father, this is Dobro Turtlebane," Aidan began, "the feechie friend I have told you about."

"You are very welcome to Sinking Canyons, Dobro," Errol said, extending his right hand. Aidan was afraid for a moment that Dobro would seize his father's hand and shake his arm out of its socket, but instead he fell on Errol's neck and buried his face in the older man's shoulder. "Thank you for them kind words, Mr. Errol," he sobbed. "Any daddy of Aidan's is a daddy of mine. And I ain't had no daddy since the gator down at Devil's Elbow knocked mine out'n a flatboat and et him-and me no more'n a yearling at the time."

Percy continued the introductions. "Dobro, this is Brennus, our eldest brother, and Jasper, my twin." Dobro seized both brothers in a single hug and cried again.

Aidan looked beyond his father and brothers and for the first time realized how many men were living in Sinking Canyons. There must have been sixty or seventy of them, all keeping their distance out of respect for the family reunion. Errol noticed the look of astonishment on Aidan's face. "Our band of outlaws," he said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder. "Didn't Percy tell you?"

Chapter Eleven.

Introductions.

Percy didn't tell me there were so many!" Aidan recognized many of the men, but nearly half were strangers to him. "Who are they?" he asked.

Errol led his sons and Dobro to the cl.u.s.ters of men who had been watching them. "You remember the Greasy Cave boys," he said.

"Of course," Aidan answered. "We saw Arliss before. Ernest. Cedric. Clayton." He shook hands with each in turn. "And Gustus, the foreman." Gustus gave a toothy grin, then broke into an energetic but tuneless version of the song Aidan had composed for the miner-scouts the night they went down to the caverns beneath Bonifay Plain: Oh, the miners brave of Greasy Cave, They did not think it odd To make their way beneath the clay, Where human foot had never trod.

The rest of the miners joined on the chorus, improving it only slightly: Fol de rol de rol de fol de rol de rol De fol de rol de fiddely fol de rol.

"King Darrow got it in his head that you was hiding out in the mines at Greasy Cave," Gustus said. "Thought your old friends was protecting you, which we would have, if ever you had asked us. So he outlawed us."

"Every last one of us," Cedric added.

"Your pap got wind of the outlawing and sent Brennus to fetch those of us what might want to hide out in Sinking Canyons," Gustus continued. "All five of us from the Bonifay adventure come along, plus another eight." He gestured at a group of men, short and stocky like the rest of the Greasy Cave boys, who waved bashfully at Aidan.

"Their skills have been invaluable here in the canyons," Errol remarked. "I don't know how we would have gotten along without them.

"And then there are the Last Campers." Errol gestured toward a group of men all clad in buckskin.

"Ma.s.sey. Floyd." Aidan shook the men's hands vigorously. "Do you still do any timber rafting? Hugh. Isom. Big Haze. Little Haze. Chaney. Burl. Cooky, are you cooking for the men here too?"

"Yeah," the old cook grumbled. "Not that n.o.body appreciates all the trouble I go to. And it ain't easy feeding sixty folks,"-he gestured at Aidan and Dobro-"now sixty-two folks, on the stringy deer and skinny possum what live around here."

"Same old Cooky," Aidan smiled. "Same old grouchy Cooky."

"We got outlawed for 'aiding and abetting a enemy of the king,'" said Ma.s.sey. "You being the enemy of the king, don't you know. Just imagine it: I don't even know what 'aiding and abetting' means, but here I am guilty of it. Shows you never do know. But if I got to be outlawed for something, I like the sound of 'aiding and abetting.' It's a sight better than cattle rustling or poaching."

"Jasper come to fetch us when your pa heard we was outlaws," said Floyd. "And I don't mind telling you it's a heap more fun being in a band of outlaws than outlawing alone."

"These boys have kept us in meat since they got here," Errol added. "They can always find us a deer or a wild hog."

"But nary a alligator," Ma.s.sey remarked wistfully.

Errol gestured toward two older men whom Aidan knew very well. "King Darrow outlawed Lord Cleland and Lord Aethelbert and their sons when they protested our being outlawed. We all came to Sinking Canyons together two years ago, along with Ebbe and the field hands." Ebbe, the stuffy old house servant, bowed to Aidan. He didn't seem quite so stuffy out here in the wilderness, though his tunic was remarkably well kept. Aidan shook hands with the six field hands he had known all his life.

A lot of familiar faces. But there were still plenty of faces Aidan had never seen before. He was surprised to see a dozen men wearing the same standard-issue blue army tunics he, Percy, and Dobro wore. "Soldiers," Errol explained. "Scouts, actually. King Darrow sent a half dozen men to track us in the canyons, and when they found us ..."

"When you found us, you mean," laughed one of the scouts.

"When we found them, then," Errol smiled, "they decided that life among outlaws was better than life in King Darrow's army."

But that accounted for only half of the soldiers in the group. "Where did the other half dozen come from?" Aidan asked.

"They're the search party," Errol said, smiling. "The ones King Darrow sent out to find the first party."

"And they deserted too?" Aidan asked.

Errol's smile faded. "These men are not deserters. They are men of honor. Understand this, Aidan, and do not doubt it: We remain King Darrow's most loyal subjects. It would have been no loyalty to King Darrow if these soldiers had handed us over to certain death, leaving only time-servers and flatterers in Darrow's service. No, by disobeying King Darrow's orders these men have done him a great service, whether the king knows it or not."

Aidan gave his father a long and watchful look. Errol had always taken a dim view of deserters, had always insisted on unswerving obedience to the king. Was this the same father he had always known, now saying that disobedience to the king was service to the king? Yes, things had changed in the years Aidan had been away.

"And who are they?" Aidan asked, pointing at a tight knot of eight or ten men gathered apart from the rest of the group and talking among themselves.

Errol paused before speaking. "They joined us only recently. I don't know most of their names. They're outlaws like us."

"They may be outlaws," Jasper muttered, "but they're not like us."

Errol gave his son a sharp look. He obviously didn't intend to speak candidly in the hearing of the whole group. "Marvin," Errol called toward the group. "You and the boys come say h.e.l.lo to my son Aidan."

Marvin was a mountain of a man. His face was as round as the full moon and pocked like the moon too. It bulged against a ma.s.sive quid of tobacco in his left cheek. He was bald on top, with long, thin hair straggling down the back of his neck. He moved slowly, deliberately toward Aidan, but his eyes were quick. He offered what he meant for a smile. It looked more like a sneer; it showed his big, brown-stained teeth.

Towering over Aidan, Marvin extended a hand. Aidan reached out his own hand to shake; sausage-thick fingers wrapped around it and squeezed with a crushing force that nearly brought tears to Aidan's eyes. "I'm Marvin," the big man said. He pointed at the ragtag group of dirty men he had just come from. "This here's the boys."

He looked at Aidan with an appraising eye and gave a snort that suggested he was none too impressed. "Ain't you supposed to be the Wilderking or something?" Two or three of his cronies snickered.

Aidan didn't know how to respond to Marvin's remark, so he didn't respond at all. Dobro, meanwhile, was admiring the long hair that draped down the back of Marvin's neck. It was the most feechiefied haircut he had seen on a civilizer, and he felt an immediate connection.

Marvin noticed him staring. "What are you looking at, Snaggletooth?" he snarled.

"I was just likin' your hairdo," Dobro said. "Ain't a lot of civilizers got that much style."

Marvin squinted at Dobro, not sure whether or not this scrawny fellow was making fun of him. "Coming from a feller as ugly as you, I don't know how to take that."

Dobro shrugged. "Take it however you want to take it. It don't make me no never mind."

Marvin found himself getting annoyed at the nonchalant att.i.tude of this ugly runt, who obviously wasn't intimidated by him. "Say, boy," he said, looking intently at Dobro, "how'd you get so ugly?"

"I reckon he's a feechie," said one of Marvin's followers. "Ain't I always said the Wilderking would come back with feechies?"

Dobro nodded at Marvin. "He got it right. I might look like a civilizer-scrubbed pink and with my mane lopped off-but I'm feechie born and bred." There was nothing civilized about the green smile he directed at Marvin, or the acrid breath he exhaled in a self-satisfied sigh.

"Well, I don't believe in feechiefolks," Marvin insisted. "And if I did, I don't reckon I'd think too highly of them." He squirted a jet of tobacco juice on the ground in front of Dobro's bare feet and wiped his thumb across his grinning lips.

Dobro eyed Marvin, trying to figure out what was the proper civilizer response to such a challenge. He figured he couldn't go wrong if he responded in kind, so he worked up a nice, foamy glob of spit and let it fly right between the big man's boots.

Marvin flew into a rage. He raised a huge fist and brought it down like a sledge hammer. It surely would have cracked Dobro's skull if it had connected, but the feechie was too quick for him. He scrambled between Marvin's legs and scurried up his back. Dobro reached one arm around the big man's neck in a choke hold. His free thumb he stuck in Marvin's eye. Marvin staggered, roared, and rained blows on Dobro, but he couldn't do any real damage to the wiry feechie. When Dobro reared back and b.u.t.ted the back of Marvin's head, the big man crumpled to the ground in a senseless heap.

Dobro was feeling a little woozy himself. b.u.t.ting Marvin's ma.s.sive head was very much like b.u.t.ting a tree. When Marvin's followers made a circle around him, Dobro was a little unsteady on his feet. But his mouth was still working fine. "I weigh 'bout 125 when I'm friendly," he shouted, "But now I'm angrified, I weigh about seven hundred!"

Marvin's gang all raised their fists and made menacing faces, but none of them wanted to be the first to take on the wild man who had felled their leader. "I can pick the ticks off'n all you boys," Dobro roared. "All at once or one at a time, whichever suits you better."

Marvin's boys seemed relieved when Errol pushed through them and grabbed the raging feechie by the shoulders. "Enough," the old man yelled, barely able to suppress a smile. "That's probably enough introductions for one day."

With much effort, Marvin's men dragged their leader to the shady spot and revived him with stream water. The other men surrounded Dobro; they were fascinated by him-a real-live feechie-and awed at his efficient whipping of a man so much larger than himself. Dobro basked in their admiration and kept them royally entertained with his peculiar observations about civilizer life and customs.

The men would have surrounded Aidan, of course, except his father had whisked him away immediately after he had settled Dobro.

"Who are those people?" Aidan asked as father and son walked up the canyon toward the camp and sleeping quarters. "Marvin and his gang? Where did they come from?"

"I'm not sure where they came from," Errol answered. "They came to the canyons a couple of months ago, claiming to be on the run from King Darrow, so we took them in. That was Aethelbert's idea-thought they would be good fellows to have on our side in a fight." Errol shook his head. "They were on their best behavior for a while, but I've about decided they're just common criminals."

"Or spies?" Aidan asked.

"I've considered that," Errol said, "but I don't think so. I'm not sure they've got enough sense to make spies."

"Maybe not," Aidan agreed. "But that Marvin may not be as stupid as he looks."

"Yes, Marvin's trouble. He's trouble if he stays, and he may be more trouble if we send him away."

"Because he knows we're in Sinking Canyons," Aidan said.

"Actually, I'm starting to think everybody in Corenwald knows we're in Sinking Canyons. King Darrow most certainly knows. The problem is that Marvin and his crowd know where most of our hiding places are." They walked past a wide, deep place in the canyon stream. "The miners dug that," Errol remarked. "It's where we do our washing. Looks natural, doesn't it?"

He pointed to a crevice in the side of the canyon, no different from hundreds of cracks in the canyon wall. "This is our main hideout and storage area," he said.

Aidan followed his father through the crack in the wall. It was so narrow they couldn't walk through side by side. But just a few steps in, beyond the first turn, the little crack broadened into a rounded tunnel, obviously dug by human hands. "This is the miners' work again," Errol said, his voice echoing against the walls.

It wasn't, properly speaking, a tunnel, but a widening of the crevice, which continued above their heads all the way up to the canyon rim and to the sunlight above. They continued deeper into the canyon wall until the tunnel opened into quite a large, round room. A shaft of sunlight made its way a hundred feet down from the canyon rim to illuminate the place. A few wisps of smoke curled up from a banked fire in the center of the room and slithered up the crevice as if it were a chimney. It was all strangely beautiful.

Errol pointed up into the sunlight. "Sometimes when we have been to the villages to trade, we lower supplies down by ropes.

"This crevice is actually the beginning of a new branch of the canyon. As years go by, it will open more and more. Someday this won't be much of a hiding place. But surely we will have no need of a hiding place by then. For now, it serves just fine."

Errol pointed at five tunnel entrances that opened onto the large chamber, joining like spokes on a hub. "Sleeping chambers and storage rooms," he explained.

"The miners dug all this?" Aidan asked. "How long did it take?"

"Not as long as you'd think," Errol answered. "The rest of us couldn't carry out the sand nearly as quickly as they could dig it. They're used to chipping their way through rock. This sand and clay is child's play for them."

Aidan looked up at the sliver of sky visible through the crack in the ceiling. "Doesn't the rain get in here?"

"In here, yes," Errol said. "But not up there." He pointed up one of the tunnels. He picked up one of the pine knot torches that lay stacked in piles beside the wall and poked it around in the banked fire until it lit. "Follow me," he said, and he stooped to walk up the tunnel.

"Even if it floods," Errol explained, "these chambers stay dry. The tunnels are dug on an upward slope." The sloping tunnel reached a plateau, from which connected three chambers. "You and Dobro will sleep here on the left with your brothers and me." Errol pointed to the chamber on the right. "Here are Marvin and the boys, where I can keep a close eye on them. And there at the end of the tunnel, a provisioning room." He held his torch in the room to show Aidan great bags of flour, rice, and dried beans stacked in neat rows.

It was an impressive feat of engineering and effort. But it was a long way from the life Aidan felt his father deserved. "Father, I'm sorry," he said. "This is all my fault-your being outlawed, your living in a hole in the ground."

"It's not your fault, Aidan," Errol said. "You do what you have to do. We all do. Life in the canyons isn't what I had expected, but it's a very good life in its way.

"Just a few years ago, this place seemed like alien soil, no more like Corenwald than the moon. But now it feels as if this is the only Corenwald that's left. For us, the land of the free and true has shrunk down to this one barren, G.o.dforsaken spot. Here we live free and true. We live like Corenwalders, something we couldn't do anymore in the Corenwald we used to know. Here, among us outlaws, Corenwald survives."

Chapter Twelve.

Floodwaters The men were telling stories by the fire one breezy afternoon when the storm came. "My Uncle Armand was the finest feller you'll ever meet," began Isom, "but, man, was he ugly."

Little Haze had heard this tale many times at Last Camp, but nevertheless he obligingly asked Isom the question the old deer hunter was hoping someone would ask: "How ugly was he, Isom?"

Isom winked his thanks to Little Haze over the fire. "Poor Armand. Before he married Aunt Flossie, she'd only let him come courting after dark, and even then she'd only let him come as far as the porch. The porch lantern was broke, don't you see."

"That's some kind of ugly, if your sweetie can't even stand to look at you," remarked one of the Greasy Cave boys.

"That ain't the half of it," Isom continued. "Uncle Armand was cutting across Flossie's pasture one day on his way to the big road-her daddy's farm was next door to his, don't you see-and he heard the sound of smacking and smooching behind a big bank of blackberry bushes. Armand was curious by nature, and he wasn't in no particular hurry, so he peeped around the bush and seen Flossie kissing her milk cow square on the mouth. Armand hollers, 'Flossie, what ails you? Why you smooching a milk cow?' Flossie felt a little bashful, but she could tell Armand wasn't going nowhere till he had a answer. She told him, 'Sugar, I knowed you was going to want to kiss me after we got married. I'm just working up my gumption.'"

The crowd roared at that, which encouraged Isom to press on. "Being ugly's how Armand made his living, don't you see."

Percy was fascinated. "How can a fellow make a living by being ugly?"

"When folks around the village was sitting down for supper, he'd show up," Isom explained, "and he was so astonishing ugly, they'd throw biscuits at him, chicken legs, whatever they had to hand, trying to scare him off. On a good day he'd catch a whole roast beef to carry home for Aunt Flossie and them ugly babies of theirs. One time he come home with the prettiest silver tea set you ever saw."

"It's always a pleasure to hear about folks making the most of their G.o.d-given abilities," Ma.s.sey observed. This philosophical remark was hardly out of the old alligator hunter's mouth when a tremendous clap of thunder shattered the air and the rain began-not gradually building in intensity but driven in sheets by the wind, as suddenly and almost as violently as the thunder itself.

The men ran for the shelter of their hiding crevice and the tunnels the miners designed for just such an emergency as this. One at a time they pushed through the narrow opening, pelted not merely by rain, but also by the mud that glanced off the canyon walls. Within seconds the floor of the entry tunnel was a fast-moving creek well over the men's ankles; for the rain that fell on a wide swath of the plain above funneled into this crevice and tumbled down from the canyon rim a hundred feet in a rushing cataract, shooting down the tunnel to join the growing torrent that had been the braided stream.

The rain kept coming unabated. The men had to push against a growing current to get to the main chamber and the safety of the tunnels. The water was soon shin high; everyone's boots were full of water, and the wet clay made for terrible footing. Twice men slipped and bowled down three or four men behind them before they could get to their feet again.

Aidan and Dobro were at the back of the line, the anchor and last defense for anyone in danger of being swept into the current that raged in the main canyon. Dobro himself slipped once, his bare toes losing their purchase when he stepped in clay. But Aidan caught him by the tunic as he swept past and was somehow able to keep his own footing.

"I know you've had a hankering to swim, Dobro," Aidan shouted over the rushing of water, "but this isn't a good time!"

A flash of lightning lit Dobro's terrified face. "Time to leave these neighborhoods!" he yelled.