Ben pulled on his cigar with stiff lips, and said slowly, "Well, we might, Jim. We just might. Two out o' seven ain't bad." He puffed out smoke. "We been running in luck, so far, what with nobody ever coming back loaded for bear. Reckon that means the other five didn't see us, low as they was; probably didn't even know they was being shot at."
"They musta found bulletholes, though," Tom Pace said. "Afterwards. Not a chance we'd all miss—" he bobbed his beard at old Jim—"'specially with Dan'l Boone here plugging away. They'd know they was shot at, all right. Might even find rifle bullets."
"Maybe they did," Ben said. "Nobody ever come snooping back, though."
"Wouldn't know where to, would they?" Windy Harris said. He and Fat Sam Hogan had stopped playing checkers, and had been listening. "Smoky Creek looks dead as Sodom. Buildings all down, and stuff knee-deep in the streets. Bridge down, and the road out. And the valley is way the hell out o' the way ... no call for them to suspect it more'n anyplace else. Less, even. They'd likely figure somebody took a potshot from a hill ... and there's a pack o' hills between here'n outside.
"Looks like," Ben said. "We just got to keep it that way. We got a good plan: if the plane's up high, we just freeze under cover; if it comes down low a time or two, we figure we're likely spotted and start shooting. We shoot, and maybe it shoots too, and we pray."
"It's a good plan," Jim Liddel said, looking out the window. "We got two."
Windy Harris got up and stretched out his arms.
"Two ain't enough," old Jim said bitterly.
"Well," Windy said, "I hope we keep on getting 'em—them as sees us, anyway. Hope nobody ever knows we're here. It's peaceful here. Way off by ourselves, nothing to do but get up and go to bed, and do what we want in between." He sent tobacco juice into the cuspidor by the door. "Right now, me, I guess I'll go fishing down by the creek—promised Maude I'd bring home a cat or two for supper. Anybody come along?"
Tom Pace shook his head, and old Jim looked like he'd like to go, if he only could—and Ben said, "Maybe I'll be down a little while later, Windy. Keep to the trees."