"How should I know how to do their beastly weaving?" she said.
"Beastly savages."
He asked her what savages were.
When they got back to their house, Pope was waiting at the door, and he came in with them.
He had a big gourd full of stuff that looked like water; only it wasn't water, but something with a bad smell that burnt your mouth and made you cough.
Linda drank some and Pope drank some, and then Linda laughed a lot and talked very loud; and then she and Pope went into the other room.
When Pope went away, he went into the room.
Linda was in bed and so fast asleep that he couldn't wake her.
Pope used to come often.
He said the stuff in the gourd was called mescal; but Linda said it ought to be called soma; only it made you feel ill afterwards.
He hated Pope.
He hated them all-all the men who came to see Linda.
One afternoon, when he had been playing with the other children-it was cold, he remembered, and there was snow on the mountains-he came back to the house and heard angry voices in the bedroom.
They were women's voices, and they said words he didn't understand, but he knew they were dreadful words.
Then suddenly, crash! something was upset; he heard people moving about quickly, and there was another crash and then a noise like hitting a mule, only not so bony; then Linda screamed.
"Oh, don't, don't, don't!" she said.
He ran in.
There were three women in dark blankets.
Linda was on the bed.
One of the women was holding her wrists.
Another was lying across her legs, so that she couldn't kick.
The third was hitting her with a whip.
Once, twice, three times; and each time Linda screamed.
Crying, he tugged at the fringe of the woman's blanket.
"Please, please."
With her free hand she held him away.
The whip came down again, and again Linda screamed.
He caught hold of the woman's enormous brown hand between his own and bit it with all his might.
She cried out, wrenched her hand free, and gave him such a push that he fell down.
While he was lying on the ground she hit him three times with the whip.
It hurt more than anything he had ever felt-like fire.
The whip whistled again, fell.
But this time it was Linda who screamed.
"But why did they want to hurt you, Linda?" he asked that night.
He was crying, because the red marks of the whip on his back still hurt so terribly.
But he was also crying because people were so beastly and unfair, and because he was only a little boy and couldn't do anything against them.
Linda was crying too.
She was grown up, but she wasn't big enough to fight against three of them.
It wasn't fair for her either.
"Why did they want to hurt you, Linda?"
"I don't know.
How should I know?"
It was difficult to hear what she said, because she was lying on her stomach and her face was in the pillow.
"They say those men are their men," she went on; and she did not seem to be talking to him at all; she seemed to be talking with some one inside herself.
A long talk which she didn't understand; and in the end she started crying louder than ever.
"Oh, don't cry, Linda. Don't cry."
He pressed himself against her.
He put his arm round her neck.
Linda cried out. "Oh, be careful.
My shoulder!