"Perhaps they were just moving by," Shmi offered when she was certain the others had caught on. "Heading back out into the open desert where they belong."

"We'll go out to the Dorrs' in the morning," Cliegg said to Owen. "We'll get all the farmers organized, and maybe get a call in to Mos Eisley, as well." He looked to Shmi and nodded. "Just to make sure." "In the morning," Owen agreed.

At dawn the next day, Owen and Cliegg started out from the compound before they had even eaten a good breakfast, for Shmi had gone out ahead of them, as she did most mornings, to pick some mushrooms at the vaporators. They expected to pass her on their way out to the Dorrs' farm but instead found her footprints, surrounded by the imprints of many others, the soft boots of the Tuskens. Cliegg Lars, as strong and tough a man as the region had ever known, fell to his knees and wept.

"We have to go after her, Dad," came a suddenly solid and unwavering voice. Cliegg looked up and back to see Owen standing there, a man indeed and no more a boy, his expression grim and determined.

"She is alive and we cannot leave her to them," Owen said with a strange, almost supernatural calm.

Cliegg wiped away the last of his tears and stared hard at his son, then nodded grimly. "Spread the word to the neighboring farms."

Chapter Three

"There they are!" Sholh Dorr cried, pointing straight ahead, while keeping his speeder bike at full throttle.

The twenty-nine others saw the target, the rising dust of a line of walking banthas. With a communal roar, the outraged farmers pressed on, determined to exact revenge, determined to rescue Shmi, if she was still alive among this band of Tusken Raiders.

Amidst the roar of engines and cries of revenge, they swept down the descending wash, closing fast on the banthas, eager for battle.