k of a chap 1 child

	Galceran let out a bloodthirsty yell. He raised his snow-mattock high above his head and swung it murderously. It was Jaime who stopped him. He jumped forward with a wail and , grabbing Galceran's sleeve, deflected the blow. Then he lurched backwards, doubled over convulsively, and vomited. He had seen, just in time, that the monster was a human child. * * * * * * * * * * * * * A child. It had hair matted into a thick pall that spread over its back and shoulders - that was what they had taken for fur. Otherwise it was naked. The terrible fangs with which it had slaughtered lambs and cut free from the entrapping net were only an old, rusty knife. It held the knife between its teeth. It ran away on all fours, zigzag in the space left by the line of men. It tried to run between the two of them. But they were armed with nets and poles and caught it easily. Holding it by the hair, and beating it till it howled, they forced it to drop the knife. Then they bundled it up and carried it, slung from the longest pole, and dumped it into a sheep-pen made of wattles outside the shepherds' cave. It fought them all the way. In the pen it ran from corner to corner, round and round, with a loping four-footed gait. It ran on the bent back knuckles of its hands and on bent forward toes. Huge hardened overgrown nails protruded from its hands and feet. They watched it in silence for a while and then retreated, averting their eyes, occupying themselves with making supper. At first light the nevados would return to the treading floor. 'Shall we fed it?' said Salvat, as they ate. 'Feed it?' said Luis. 'It's full of our lamb already!' But Salvat sliced a length of meat from the bone on the spit and took it on the end of his knife to the penned and running child. It sniffed at the offering, recoiled, and trampled it untasted, in the dirt. They tried bread, with a like result. At last, gagging slightly, Galceran took it the bucket of raw offal left from the evisceration of the roast carcass, and it ate. 'How old is it?' Juan asked. 'Hard to say. Nine? Younger? Older? It's all skin and bone and rage,' said Galceran. 'How has it survived?' another of the nevados asked. 'A wolf has suckled it,' said Old Luis, wiping his knife on a hunk of bread. 'Is such a thing possible?' 'It might be. There have always been stories.' 'What are we going to do with it?' Galceran asked. 'Don't ask me,' said Luis. 'To my mind your first thought was the best.' 'I would have killed it....' 'You should have done.' 'But that would be murder!' cried Jaime. 'Murder....' 'It would have been merciful,' said Luis. 'Bit it's too late now.' 'Is it? said Salvat. 'How many are we?' asked Luis. 'Twelve nevados and three of us. Could we be sure that not one of fifteen people, as long as any of us live, would breathe a word to a wife, a bishop, to a priest in the confessional, to a mother, a sweetheart by moonlight? Never, when living, drunk, or dying?' Glancing meaningfully at Jaime as he spoke, Luis made very clear where he thought the dangerous member of the party was sitting. 'There was just that one moment, when Galceran could truthfully have said that he did not know what it was - and the moment is gone. One whisper from any of us if we kill it now, and we would all hang.' 'You're right, of course,' said Salvat. 'A pity.' 'It would be murder!' Jaime insisted. 'God would know, even if we all kept mum for ever!' 'Holy Catalida!' said Old Luis. 'Do you think there could be a God - supposing that there is a God - with no more common sense than a bishop? Do you think that ....thing is one of us?' But the older men looked at one another. Luis was right. Something which they might have risked doing if they had been alone - grizzled heads only, in the mountains - was far too risky with a mawkish youth as witness, one with a tender conscience, the smell of his mother's piety still hanging round him. Just then the thing begin to howl. It set up a blood-curdling baying, that rang round the summits above them. With the hairs prickling on their scalps, they rose from the circle round the fire in which they had been sitting and went outside. A half-moon cast barely perceptible shadows, and the child sat on its haunches in the middle of the pen, just visible, its head thrown back, howling full-throated. Far, far off, the cry was answered, faintly. A brother brute had heard it, from a distant cave. Someone lit a torch. The child cowered away from the light, as if afraid. In the flickering light it looked more terrible than ever - covered with blood from the offal bucket and hiding its face in its hair. Galceran drew his knife and vaulted over the fence into the pen. 'I'm going to cut its hair,' he said. 'Don't, Galceran, you'll spoil it!' said Juan. 'Spoil it?' Galceran paused, amazed. 'We could earn a pretty penny taking that round the markets and charging for a look,' said Juan. 'The wolf-boy. Think of it.' 'Pah!' said Galceran. 'You disgust me.' And he advanced on the child. Terrified, it fought back. It took four of them, in the end, to hold it down, small though it was, while Galceran hacked through the pall of hair, cutting it off at the neck. They held torches to light the struggle. Before it was done, Jaime retired to the back of the cave, and curling up on his pallet wept bleakly and silently. He was thrown into the pit of dejection by the knowledge that a child could become no more than a wolf - worse - less than a wolf, for a wolf at least is natural. He gagged on his own tears at what he had seen under the bright torches, as Galceran tore away the masking hair. The child was a girl.