He did, vaguely. One of a hundred schemes that had drifted through his head.
"I'd sure like to see that ex-plosion," she said. "The way she got things figured, I'd almost just as soon get exploded myself as not."
"I might blow up the logs here and get out," he said slowly. "I think you'd be a mighty handy person to have along, too. Can you get me about a hundred of the machine gun cartridges?"
"They'll miss 'em."
"Sneak me a few at a time. I'll empty them, put them together again and you sneak them back."
She said, slow and troubled: "She set the power of the goddess to guard them."
"Listen to me, Martha," he said. "I mean listen. You'll be doing it for me and they told me the power of the goddess doesn't work on outsiders. Isn't that right?"
There was a long pause, and she said at last with a sigh: "I sure wish I could see your eyes, Charles. I'll try it, but I'm damned if I would if Dinny didn't stink so bad." She slipped away and Charles tried to follow her with his mind through the darkness, to the silly little rope of vine with the feathers and bones knotted in it—but he couldn't. Too tense again.
Kennedy stirred and muttered complainingly as an icy small breeze cut through the chinks of the palisade, whispering.
His eyes, tuned to the starlight, picked up Martha bent almost double, creeping toward the smithy-prison. She wore a belt of fifty-caliber cartridges around her neck like a stole. Looked like about a dozen of them. He hastily scooped out a bowl of clean sand and whispered: "Any trouble?"