He shook his head helplessly. My God, he thought, all this from two men with nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon but get half-drunk and start arguing....
Someone screamed—Mary's scream, suddenly choked off!
McCullough ran back across the yard and up the steps, raging at himself for having left Mary and the children alone in the house. There was no one in the front room, but through the kitchen door he could see a native with his back turned, peering out the kitchen window.
McCullough's gun was hanging over the door, on pegs set into the logs, a gun made from the first steel smelted on Centaurus II. He reached down the gun as he stepped in the door.
There were two natives in the kitchen; one with a roughed-up look who might have been the one Watts had kicked, watching Mary as she huddled in a corner by the stove with her arms about the two children; the other still looking out the window. Both spun around to face him as McCullough burst into the room.
For a moment they eyed each other in silence, the two Centaurans and the Earthman.
"You hurt, Mary?" McCullough asked.
She was frightened almost speechless, but she managed a squeak and a negative shake of her head.
McCullough took his eyes from the natives for a moment and studied her searchingly. "You sure?" he asked. She nodded. Some of the color was coming back in her face again now, and she looked all right.