By the time Iona and Nalté reached them, picking their way down the rock with the scout's good hand on her elbow at the worst places, it was over. Tull lay on his back with his painted face streaked by sand and sweat, and Klemm knelt on his chest with one knee, and Klemm's right fist was drawn back over the man's face. His own nose was bleeding again, freely, down over his mouth and chin. He was breathing like a bellows.
He held the fist there. Iona watched him hold it. It shook.
"You'd have let them say it was his people," Klemm said. His voice was ragged. "You'd have burned those children and let them say it was his people. You'd have let me believe it. Six more years. All my life."
Tull spat up at him. Klemm did not move.
Then he opened his hand. He looked at it as though it surprised him, the open palm and the thick fingers, and he reached down and took the revolver out of Tull's grip and threw it aside into the sand. He unbuckled his own belt and turned the man over and bound his wrists behind him with it, pulling the leather tight, and then he sat back on his heels in the sand and put both hands over his face.
Iona went past him to Sergeant Holloway.
He was lying where he had fallen, near the cottonwoods, on his back. Tull's ball had gone in high on the right side of his chest, and there was froth at his lips, and his breath came short and wet. But his eyes were open. They went past her to the scout standing over him.
"Nalté," he said.
"Sergeant."
"I aimed for the meat. In your arm. I aimed."
"I know where you aimed," Nalté said. "I have watched you shoot for three years."
Holloway's face twisted. He looked at Iona, at her blouse, at her hand, and she realized she was holding the star out in front of her without having decided to.
"That's MacRae's," he said.