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Although the schoolhouse went up quickly and Carl was proud of this he did not supervise
the actual process of construction. This was carried out by a builder called Hertz who was
one of Bluemud's originals. Carl's main task was to keep the gang of men in line and it
was not easy. Now that they had food and freedom in the lower part of the valley the
men's thoughts were increasingly on the women and, though in their own environment
they were easily controlled, at the schoolhouse site there were women about continually
who were equally as interested in them. These women were supposed to be controlled by
Muriel but they were not. Carl circumvented this problem to some extent by using only men who already had been qualified to have mates on the Special Days but, as Carl told O'Grady repeatedly, sooner or later an incident was inevitable. When it came it was much worse than he had feared and he was partly to blame for this as he had been ogling Elizabeth, who had just visited the site, instead of watching the men. The building was almost done and the men were doing finishing work. Johnny Pinter was a Dentonsville metal seeker who had been put to work as a blacksmith because of the shortage of metal workers caused by the foundry construction. He was at the schoolhouse working on the window frames and, not being a regular worker, was less aware of the strictness of the rules than most of the other men. Alice Franklin, an old friend of Johnny's was one of the women hanging around and when she got the chance she went right up to him and gave him a hug. Actually, it was the Sister who saw them first, from the Assembly Hall window where, despite Elizabeth's presence she had been keeping her eyes open for just such an eventuality. 'You two there! What do you think you're doing?' The Sister opened the window and shouted. One of the marshals, his name was Jamie, then saw the couple. He shouted, 'Pinter, get away from that girl. You aren't allowed.' But Johnny, taken with holding female flesh again after the interval of many months, lingered longer than he should and tried to argue. 'I'm only talking to her. There ain't no harm in that.' The Marshal raised the weapon, which he had never fired before. 'Get back, Johnny, you're not allowed.' The couple separated but Jamie continued to train the gun on the miner who backed away. Even as Carl finally saw what was happening the Marshal's finger squeezed the mechanism a little too firmly and Johnny Pinter was no more. Carl had two thoughts at that moment: the first, briefly, concerned the effect of the gun, which he had never seen before; then he was consumed by anger that this incident had disrupted the smooth progress of the building work. His displeasure increased when he looked up and there was Elizabeth watching calmly over the men's heads. She said nothing and in a moment she was gone. |
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