Someone hissed at me, off to one side, and I slowed and swung around. I saw that the three of them were grouped beneath an oak with low-growing branches. Bronco was braced on his six legs and doing fairly well. Elmer was climbing down out of the tree, dragging bundles with him.
“I brought them out here and cached them,” he said, “shortly after dark. I had it in my mind something like this might happen.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“Someone threw a bomb,” said Elmer.
“Cemetery bomb,” I said. “They had that case of booze.”
“Payment,” Elmer said.
“I suppose so. I had wondered. It was damn good whiskey.”
“But what about the census taker and the ghosts?” asked Cynthia. “If they were ghosts.”
“Diversion,” Elmer said.
I shook my head. “It gets too complicated. Everyone couldn’t have been in on it.”
“You underestimate our friends,” said Elmer. “What did you say to Bell?”
“Not a great deal. I resisted being taken over.”
Elmer grunted. “That’s lese majeste,” he said.
“What do we do now?” asked Cynthia.
Elmer said to Bronco, “Can you manage for a while without me?”
“If I go slow,” said Bronco.
“Fletch will be with you. He can’t hold you up like I can, but if you should fall he can boost you up. With him helping, you can manage. I have to get some tools.”
“You have your kit of tools,” I said. And that was right. He had all those replacement hands and a lot of other things. They were stored in a compartment in his chest.
“I may need a hammer and some heavier stuff. Those legs of Bronco’s are knocked all out of shape. It may take some hammering and refitting to get them back again. There’s a toolhouse back there. It’s locked, but that isn’t any problem.”
“I thought the idea was for us to get away. If you go back there . .
“They’re all upset. That barn is about to go and they’ll be fighting fire. I can slip in and out.”
“You’ll hurry,” Cynthia said.
He nodded. “I’ll hurry. The three of you go down this hill until you reach a valley, then turn to the right, downstream. You take this pack, Fletch, and Cynthia, you should be able to handle this smaller one. Leave the rest of it for me; I’ll bring it along. Bronco can’t carry anything, the shape he’s in.”
“Just one thing,” I said.
“What is that?”
“How do you know we should turn right, downstream?”
“Because I was out scouting while you were roosting on a fence with your bewhiskered pal and Cynthia was peeling potatoes and performing other housewifely chores. From years of experience I have learned it’s always a good idea to scout out your ground.”
“But where are we heading for?” asked Cynthia.
He told her, “Away from Cemetery. As far as we can get.”
X
Bronco had said that he could manage, but it was slow going. The hillside was steep and rough and it was a long way down to the valley and Bronco fell three times before we reached the valley floor. Each time I managed to heave him up, but it took a lot of work and a lot of time.
Behind us, for a while, a brilliance waved and flickered in the sky and it must have been the barn, for a haystack would have burned out more quickly. But by the time we reached the valley the brilliance was gone. The barn either had burned down or the fire had been put out.
The traveling was easier in the valley. The ground was fairly level, although there were rough stretches here and there. There were fewer trees and the moon shed more light than it had on the heavily-wooded hillside. Off to our left somewhere a stream was flowing. We did not come across it, but every now and then we could hear the chuckle of its water when apparently it flowed across a gravel bar.
We moved through an eerie world of silver magic and from the hills on either side came, at intervals, a far-off whickering and sometimes other sounds. Once a great bird came floating down above us, with not a whisper from its wings, veering to slide off above a clump of trees.
“If only,” Bronco said, “I had got one leg damaged on either side, it would have caused no trouble, but this business of two legs on one side and four legs on the other is most confusing and makes me ridiculously lopsided.”
“You are doing splendidly,” said Cynthia. “Does it hurt?”
“I have no hurt,” said Bronco. “I cannot have a hurt.”
“You think Cemetery did it,” Cynthia said to me. “And so does Elmer, and so, I would suppose, do I. But surely we can’t pose a threat to Cemetery . . .”
“Anyone,” I said, “who does not bow down to Cemetery is automatically a threat. They have been here so long, have held the Earth so long, that they cannot brook the slightest interference.”
“But we are no interference.”
“We could be. If we get back to Alden, if we get off the Earth with what we came to get, we could interfere with them. We could present a picture of the Earth that is not Cemetery. And it just might catch on, it might gain some public and artistic recognition. The people might be pleased to think the Earth was not entirely Cemetery.”
“Even so,” she said, “it would hurt them in no way. They could still carry on their business. There would be nothing really changed.”
“It would hurt their pride,” I said. “But pride is such a little thing to hurt. A purely personal thing. Whose pride? The pride of Maxwell Peter Bell, the pride of other little autocrats the like of Maxwell Bell. Not the pride of Cemetery. Cemetery is a corporation, a massive corporation. It thinks in terms of income, in the annual business volume, in profits and in costs. There is no place in its ledgers for such a thing as pride. It must be something else, Fletch. It can’t be entirely pride.”
She could be right, I told myself. It could be something more than pride, but what?
“They are used to ruling,” I said. “They can buy anything they want. They hired someone to throw that bomb at Bronco, even when there was a chance that others would get hurt. Because they don’t care, you see. Just so they get what they want, they do not really care. And they get things cheap. Because of who they are, no one can question what they offer. We know the price of that bomb and it was cheap enough. A case of whiskey. Maybe, if they are to keep an upper hand, they must demonstrate, very forcibly, what happens to those people who slip beneath their thumb.”
“You keep saying ‘they’,” said Cynthia. “There is no ‘they’ here, there is no Cemetery. There is only one man here.”
“That is true,” I said, “and that is why pride could be a factor. Not so much the pride of Cemetery as the pride of Maxwell Bell.”
The valley spread before us, a broad road of grasses, broken by little clumps of trees and rimmed in by the dark and wooded hills. Off to the left was the stream, but it had been some time since we had heard any sound of it. The ground was level and Bronco was able to proceed without too much trouble, although it was painful for me, if not for him, to witness his awkward, hobbling gait. But even so, without any trouble he was able to keep up with our human walking.
There was no sign of Elmer. I held my wrist close to my face and my watch said that it was almost two o’clock. I had no idea when we had left the clearing, but thinking back on it, it seemed to me that it could not have been much later than ten, which meant we’d been four hours on the road. I wondered if something might have happened to Elmer. It would not have taken him much time to break into the toolhouse and get whatever he might need. He would have had to pick up the packs we’d left behind and he’d be hauling quite a load, but even so, the weight should not slow him too much and he’d still travel fairly fast.
If he didn’t show up by daylight, I decided, we’d have to find some place where we could hole up and keep a watch for him. Neither Cynthia nor myself had had any sleep to speak of since we’d reached the Earth and I was beginning to fe
el it and I supposed that she was, too. Bronco didn’t need to sleep. He could keep a watch for Elmer while we did some sleeping.
“Fletcher,” Cynthia said. She had stopped just ahead of me and I bumped into her. Bronco skidded to a halt.
“Smoke,” she said. “I smell smoke. Wood smoke.”
I smelled no smoke.
“You’re imagining it,” I said. “There is no one here.”
The valley didn’t have the feel of people. It had the feel of moonlight and grass and trees and hills, of light and shadow, night air and flying things. Back in the hills there was the whickering every now and then and other nighttime noises, but there were no people, no sense or feel of people.
Then I smelled the smoke, the faintest whiff of it, an acrid tang in the air, there one moment, gone the next.
“You’re right,” I said. “There is a fire somewhere.”
“Fire means people,” Bronco said.
“I’ve had my belly full of people,” Cynthia said. “I don’t want to see anyone for another day or two.”
“Me, either,” Bronco said.
We stood there, waiting for another whiff of smoke, but it did not come.
“There might be no one around,” I said. “A tree struck by lightning days ago and still burning. An old camp fire that no one bothered to put out, still smouldering.”
“We should get under cover,” Cynthia said, “not stay standing out here where anyone can see us.”
“There is a grove over to the left,” said Bronco. “We could get there rather rapidly.”
We turned toward the left, heading for the grove, moving slowly and cautiously. And I thought how silly it would all seem when daylight came, for the fire that produced the smoke could be several miles away. Probably there was no reason to be fearful of it, even so. Provided they were there, whoever had built that fire might be very decent people.
Almost at the grove we stopped to listen and from the direction of the grove came the sound of running water. That was good, I thought. I was getting thirsty. The trees more than likely grew along the stream that ran down through the valley.
We moved in among the trees, half blinded by the denseness of the shadows underneath them after the bright moonlight in the open and as we moved into the shadows some of them rose up and clubbed me to the ground.
XI
I had fallen into a lake somehow and was sinking for the third and final time, strangling, with water on my face and water up my nose and no way I could breathe. I gagged and gasped and opened up my eyes and water streaming from my hair ran down across my face.
I saw that I was not in any lake, but rather on dry land and in the light of a fire that burned a little ways away I could see the dark figure of a man who held a wooden bucket in both hands and I knew that he had thrown a bucket full of water in my face.
I couldn’t see his face too well, with his back turned to the firelight, but he flashed a set of white teeth at me, yelling something in an angry voice I did not understand.
There was a terrible ruckus going on off to my right and when I turned my head in that direction I saw that it was Bronco, flat upon his back, with a lot of yelling men around him, dodging in and out, trying to get at him. But they weren’t getting at him too well, for even with two busted legs, Bronco had six that weren’t busted and all six of them were busily lashing out at the men around him.
I looked around for Cynthia and saw her by the fire. She was sitting rather awkwardly on the ground and one arm was lifted strangely and I saw that a big man who stood beside her had the raised arm in his grasp and when she tried to get to her feet he twisted it and she sat down again, rather solidly.
I started to get up and as I did the man with the bucket rushed me, swinging the bucket as if he meant to brain me. I didn’t get clear up, but did manage to get my feet in under me and was in a crouch, and when I saw the bucket coming at me, I shifted to one side and stretched out an arm. The bucket barely missed me and then, as he came charging in, I had him by the legs. As he fell toward me, I hunched down one shoulder and caught him at the knees and he went catapulting over me to land with a crash behind me. I didn’t wait to see what had happened to him or what he might be doing, but launched myself across the few feet that separated us at the man who had Cynthia by the arm.
He saw me coming and let go of her arm and clawed at his belt for a knife, but he was slow in getting it and I let him have it squarely on the chin, bringing my fist up from somewhere near my boot tops. I swear the blow lifted him a full foot off the ground and his body, stiff as any pole, went toppling backward. He hit the ground and lay there and I reached down and grabbed Cynthia to help her to her feet, although I suspect she had no need of help.
Even as I helped her to her feet there was a bellowing behind me and as I swung around to face it I saw that the men who had been ganging up on Bronco had left him and were moving in on me.
From that moment when the bucket of water had struck me in the face and revived me from the blow upon the head, I had been too busy to take in much of the details of the situation we were in, but now I had the time to notice that the men who were advancing upon me were an unsavory lot. Some of them were dressed in what I supposed were buckskins and some of them wore fur caps upon their heads and even in the feeble firelight I could see they were a ragged and a dirty lot and that they moved in slouching crouches, not upright and forthright as a man should walk. Some of them carried guns of some sort and here and there there were flashes of metal from drawn knives and, all in all, I decided, I did not have much chance to stand against them.
“You better get out of here,” I said to Cynthia. “Try to find a place to hide.”
There was no answer from her and when I looked around to see why she had not answered, I saw that she was stooping and groping on the ground. She rose from her stoop and in each hand she clutched a club, awkward lengths of tree limbs that she had snatched off a pile of fuel that apparently had been hauled in to feed the fire. She thrust one out at me and, with a two-handed grip upon the other, ranged herself beside me.
So we stood there, the two of us, with the clubs clutched in our hands, and it might have been a brave gesture of a sort, but I knew how ineffectual it would be.
The group of men had stopped at the sight of us suddenly armed with clubs, but any time they wanted, they could close in and get us. Some few of them, perhaps, would take their lumps, but they’d overwhelm us by sheer numbers.
A big brute, who stood slightly in the front, said, “What’s the matter with you two? Why you got the clubs?”
“You jumped us,” I said.
“You sneaked up on us,” said the man.
“We smelled the smoke,” said Cynthia. “We were not sneaking up.”
Somewhere off to the left there were snorting noises and the sound of feet or hooves tramping on the ground. There were animals somewhere in the grove of trees beyond the fire.
“You were sneaking,” the man insisted. “You and that great beast of yours.”
While he talked others in the group were shifting off to either side. They were getting in position to take us from the flanks.
“Let us talk some sense,” I said. “We are travelers. We didn’t know that you were here and . .
There was a sudden rush of feel from either side of us and from somewhere in the woods rang out a ululating cry that stopped the sudden rush—a wild and savage war cry that froze the blood in one and made the hair stand up. Out of the screen of woods broke a towering metal figure, moving very fast, and at the sight of it the pack that had been about to swarm in on us were running for their lives.
“Elmer!” Cynthia shrieked, but he paid no attention to us. One of the fleeing men had stumbled when he had set out to run and Elmer snapped him up in the middle of his stride, lifted his twisting, frantic body high into the air and threw him out into the darkness. A gun exploded and there was a hollow thud as the ball hit Elmer’s metal body, but that was the only shot the fleeing
men took the time to fire. They went crashing into the woods beyond the fire, with Elmer close upon their heels. They were yelling out in fright and between the yells one could hear the splashing as they fought their way across the stream that lay beyond the camp site.
Cynthia was running toward the struggling Bronco and I ran after her. Between the two of us, we got him on his feet.
“That was Elmer,” Bronco said, once we got him up. “He will give them hell.”
The cries and whoops were receding in the distance. “There be more of them,” said Bronco, “tethered in the woods. They have no ill in them, however, for they are but simple creatures.”
“Horses,” said Cynthia. “There must be quite a lot of them. I think these people must be traders.”
“Can you tell me exactly what went on?” I asked her. “We were just entering the woods and there were some shadows. Then I came to with someone throwing water in my face.”
“They hit you,” Cynthia said, “and grabbed me and dragged us to the fire. They dragged you by the heels and you were a funny sight.”
“I imagine you died laughing.”
“No,” she said, “I wasn’t laughing, but you were funny.”
“And Bronco?”
“I was galloping to your rescue,” Bronco said, “when I tripped and fell. And there, upon my back, I gave a good account of myself, would you not say so? As they clustered all about me, I got in some lusty licks with my trusty hooves.”
“There was no sign of them,” said Cynthia. “They lay in wait for us. They saw us coming and they laid in wait for us. We couldn’t see the fire, for it was in a fairly deep ravine and . . .”
“They had sentries out, of course,” I said. “It was just our luck that we fell foul of them.”
We moved down to the fire and stood around it. It had fairly well died down, but we did not stir it up. Somehow we felt just a little safer when there was not too much light. Boxes and bales were piled to one side of it and on the other side a pile of wood that had been dragged in as fuel. Cooking and eating utensils, guns and blankets lay scattered all about.
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