"He compelled you to let him take the picture," urged David gently. "And then...."
"I saw one of the pictures afterward. My aunt had it. I wanted to destroy it, because I hated it, and I hated him. But she said it was necessary for her to keep it. She was sick then. I loved her. She would put her arms around me every day. She used to kiss me, nights, when I went to bed. But we were afraid of Hauck—I don't call him 'uncle.' She was afraid of him. Once I jumped at him and scratched his face when he swore at her, and he pulled my hair. Ugh, I can feel it now! After that she used to cry, and she always put her arms around me closer than ever. She died that way, holding my head down to her, and trying to say something. But I couldn't understand. I was crying. That was six months ago. Since then I've been training Tara—to kill."
"And why have you trained Tara, little girl?"
David took her hand. It lay warm and unresisting in his, a firm, very little hand. He could feel a slight shudder pass through her.
"I heard—something," she said. "The Nest is a terrible place. Hauck is terrible. Brokaw is terrible. And Hauck sent away somewhere up there"—she pointed northward—"for Brokaw. He said—I belonged to Brokaw. What did he mean?"
She turned so that she could look straight into David's eyes. She was hard to answer. If she had been a woman....
She saw the slow, gathering tenseness in David's face as he looked for a moment away from her bewildering eyes—the hardening muscles of his jaws; and her own hand tightened as it lay in his.
"What did Hauck mean?" she persisted. "Why do I belong to Brokaw—that great, red brute?"
The hand he had been holding he took between both his palms in a gentle, comforting way. His voice was gentle, too, but the hard lines did not leave his face.
"How old are you, Marge?" he asked.