Sir Howard was thinking how warm the water gurgling in his right ear was when something hit him in the left eye. "Damn!" he whispered. "Trying to blind me?"
"What did I do?" came the answer from up ahead.
"Stuck your toe in my eye. Why don't you keep on your own side of the rope?"
"I am on my own side. Why don't you keep your face out of my foot?"
"So that's it, huh? I'll fix you, young lady! You're not ticklish, are you?" He pulled himself forward hand over hand. But the girl dived like a seal. Holding the rope, the knight raised his hand to peer over the starlit water. Then two slim but startlingly strong hands caught his ankles and dragged him under.
When he came up and shook the water out of his head he heard a frantic hiss from Haas: "For gossake, cut out the water-polo game, you two. You sound like a coupla whales on a drunk!"
They were silent. The only sounds, besides the little night noises of insect and frog, were the heavy breathing of the horses and the gurgle of water sliding past them.
Time ticked past slowly. The shore seemed to get no closer. Then suddenly it loomed before them, and they were touching bottom. After the quiet, the splashing of the horses through the shallows sounded like Niagara.
They lay on the beach. Sally Mitten said: "Can you see?" She was making marks in the sand. "Here's the reservoir, and here we are. My people and I live up in the Adirondacks. Now we can get there this way, by the Sacandaga Lakes. There's a good road up to Speculator and Piseco. But there's lots of traffic for just that reason. People going up to fish on the Sacandaga Lakes. And we want to be seen as little as possible. We'd better stay on this side of the Sacandaga River and follow the west branch to Piseco Lake. Then I know a trail from there to our place by way of the Cedar Lakes. It's hard going, but we're not likely to meet anybody.
"I normally come down to Amsterdam by way of Camp Perkins and Speculator; there's an old road down the Jessup in pretty good shape. We buy most of our supplies at Speculator; I only go down to Amsterdam once a month or so. And it would be just my luck to be there when that—" She stopped.
"How do you get to Amsterdam?" asked Sir Howard. "That looks like a pretty long walk."
"It is; I have a bicycle. I mean I had a bicycle. The last I saw of it it was standing on the sidewalk at Amsterdam. It'll be gone by now. And I left my only decent hat at Kelly's castle. It's a good two-day trip. It'll take us much longer, since we're not following the good roads." She carefully rubbed out the map. "We'll want to obliterate our tracks on the beach, and the horses', too."
"Why do you suppose the hoppers are so concerned about Kelly?" he asked. "They don't usually interfere in man-to-man quarrels."
"Don't you know? They were backing him. Not openly; they don't do things that way. Schenectady's barony was getting too big, so they set Kelly up in business to break it up. Divide et impera."
"What?"
"Divide and rule. That's their whole system—keeping men split up into little quarreling States the size of postage stamps."
"Hm-m-m. You seem to know a lot about them."
"I've been studying them for a long time."
"I suppose so. What you say gives me a lot to think about. Say, do you suppose your . . . uh . . . people will want to have a couple of strangers with our fearful records?"
"On the contrary, Sir Howard—"
"I'd rather you dropped the 'Sir.' "
"Yes? Any particular reason?"
"Well—I don't know just how to say it, but . . . uh . . . it seems rather silly. I mean, we're all comrades together. Uh . . . you and Haas are as good men as I am, if you know what I mean, in the time I've known you."
"I think I understand." She was smiling quietly in the dark. "What I was saying was, you and he are just the sort of people we're looking for; men who have dared raise their hands against them. There aren't many. It sets you apart from other people, you know. You couldn't ever quite go back to the way you were."
While they talked, the stars had been dimming. And now a mottled yellow disk was rising from behind the blackness of the skyline, washing their skins with pale gold.
"Good heavens," said Sally Mitten, "I forgot about the moon! We'll have to get dressed and get out of here, quickly. I'm dry, thank goodness. Lyman—why, he's asleep!" The Westerner lay prone, his head pillowed on his arm, his breath coming with little whistlings.
"You can't blame him," said Sir Howard. "It's his first in thirty-six hours. But I'll fix that." He leaned over the recumbent form and raised his arm, the hand open and slightly cupped. Sally Mitten grabbed his wrist. "No! That'll make a noise like a gunshot! They'll hear it in Amsterdam!" She gurgled with suppressed laughter. "But it does seem a shame to waste such a chance, doesn't it?"
"You're limping, Howard," said Sally Mitten. She was sitting in his saddle, with the bottom of her trousers gathered in by string tied around her ankles. Behind her the knight's armor, the pieces neatly nested together and lashed into a compact bundle, rode Paul Jones' broad rump. The pile of steel gave out little tinny noises.
"No, I'm not," he said. "At least, not much. It's just another blister." He was walking in front of his horse, wearing a pair of riding boots from which four days of plowing through Adirondack brush had permanently banished the shine, and using his lance as an overgrown walking stick. He wore a red beret pulled down over his ears. Lyman Haas brought up the rear, swaying easily in the saddle and rolling a cigarette. Though the temperature was nearly eighty, all three wore gloves (Sally Mitten's being several sizes too large) and had their shirt collars turned up. They slapped constantly at their faces.
"Just another blister! You stop right now, young man, and we'll fix it. Have you any bandages? You don't do any more walking today. Those breeches and boots are all very well for riding, but not for walking around these parts."
"It's nothing, really. Besides, it's my turn to walk. The schedule says I walk for half an hour yet."
"Get your lasso out, Lyman; he's going to be stubborn."
"Better do what the lady says," said Haas. "Sure, miss, he's got iodine and gauze in one of the pockets of that saddle. That there's a magic saddle. You just wish, and say hocus-pocus, and push a button, and whatever you want pops out. You see why How uses an outsize horse; no ordinary critter could carry all that stuff. I sometimes think maybe he oughta rented an elephant from the railroad."
"Just like the White Knight," said Sally Mitten. "And me without even a toothbrush of my own!"
"The who?" asked Sir Howard.
"The White Knight; a character in a book called 'Through the Looking Glass.' Does your equipment include any mousetraps or beehives? His did."
"That a fact?" said Haas. "Sounds to me like the guy was plumb eccentric. Now, How, you brace your other foot on this here root and I'll pull. Unh!" The boot came off, revealing two large toes protruding through a hole in the sock. "Say," said the Westerner, sniffiing, "you sure that foot ain't dead? Damn!" He slapped at his cheek.
"I should have warned you it was black-fly time," said Sally Mitten. "They'll be gone in a few weeks."
"I haven't got a mousetrap," said Sir Howard, "but I have a clockwork mechanical razor and a miniature camera, if they'll do. And a pair of bird glasses. You know, my hobby's prowling around looking for yellow-billed cuckoos and golden-winged warblers. My brother Frank used to say it was my only redeeming trait." He slapped at his jaw, decorated with streaks of dried blood from fly bites. "Perhaps I ought to have kept my suit on. It would at least keep these bugs out, unless they can bite through steel." He slapped again. "This trail is more like a jungle than any I ever saw. Why doesn't somebody get an ax and a scythe and clean it out?"
Sally Mitten answered: "That's just the point. If it were a nice clear trail everybody'd use it, and we don't want that. We've even planted things on trails we didn't want people to use."
Haas said: "It's thicker'n any brush I ever seen. It's different out my way; the timber, what they is, grows nice and far apart, so you can
get through it 'thout being a snake." He lit his cigarette and went on: "This is what you call mountains, is it? I'm afraid you Yanks don't know what real mountains are. You take the Mt. Orrey you showed me; in Wyoming we wouldn't bother to give a little molehill like that a name, even. Say, Miss, have we got much more swamps to wade through? It's a wonder to me how you can walk around at night in this country 'thout falling into some mudhole or pond. I'd think the folks would have growed web feet, like a duck."
"No," said Sally Mitten, "we're through with the Cedar Lakes. If you look through the trees up ahead you can see Little Moose Mountain. That's where we're going." She slapped her neck.
7
Sally Mitten said she was going to run ahead to warn her people. The next minute she was scrambling up the steep shoulder of the mountain, pulling herself up by branches and bushes. The two men continued their slow switchback ride. Haas said: "Danged if I don't think it'd be easier to cut right across country than to try to follow what they call a trail around here."
Sir Howard watched the girl's retreating figure. It dwindled to thumb-size. He saw no sign of human habitation. But a man came out of some poplars, and then another. Even at that distance the knight could make out embraces and back-slappings. He felt a slight twinge of something or other, together with a devouring curiosity as to what sort of "people" this mysterious girl might have.
When he and Haas finally reached the level space on which the three stood, she was still talking animatedly. She turned as they dismounted, and introduced them. "This," she said, "is Mr. Elsmith, our boss." They saw a man in his late forties, with thin yellow hair, and mild brown eyes behind glasses. He gripped their hands with both of his in a way that said more than words. "And this Eli Cahoon." The other man was older, with white hair under the world's oldest felt hat. He was dressed in typical north-woods fashion, his pants held up by one gallus and rolled up at the bottoms to show mud-caked laced boots. "Lyman, you've been calling us York Staters Yankees; Eli's the genuine article. He comes from Maine."
Sir Howard had been looking through the poplars. He saw that what he had first thought to be a cave was actually a good-sized one-story house, almost buried under tons of soil blending into the mountainside, and artfully camouflaged with vegetation. You couldn't see it at all until you were right on top of it.
The man named Cahoon moved his long jaw, opened his thin mouth to show crooked, yellow snags, and spat a brown stream. "Nice wuck," he said, "gettin' our Sally outa that castle." His forearms were thick and sinewy, and he moved like a cat.
"Wasn't nothing to it," drawled Haas. "I just called 'em names to make 'em mad, and How, here, walked in and tuck her while they was out chasing me."
Sir Howard was surprised to see that Elsmith was up and fully dressed already. The man smiled at him, showing a pair of squirrel teeth. Somehow he reminded the knight of a friendly rabbit.
"We keep early hours here," he said. "You'd better get up if you want any breakfast. Though how you can eat anything after the dinner you put away last night I don't just see."
Sir Howard stretched his huge muscles. It was wonderful to lie in a real bed for a change. "Oh, I can always eat. I go on the principle that I might be without food some day, so I'd better take what's offered. To tell the truth, we were all about ready to try a birch-bark salad with pond-scum dressing when we arrived. And we'd have been hungrier yet if Haas hadn't shot a fawn on the way up."
During breakfast Sir Howard, who was not, these days, an unobservant young man, kept his eyes and ears open for clues to the nature of this menage. Elsmith talked like a man of breeding, by which the knight meant a member of his own predatory feudal aristocracy. In some ways, that was. Sir Howard decided that he was probably a decayed nobleman who had offended the hoppers and was hiding out in consequence. Sally Mitten called him "Uncle Homer." On the other hand, Elsmith and the girl had something about them—a tendency to use unfamiliar words and to throw mental abstractions around—that set them apart from any people the knight had ever known. Cahoon—who pronounced his name in one syllable—was obviously not a gentleman. But on the rare occasions when he said anything at all, the statements in his tight-lipped Yankee accent showed a penetrating keenness that Sir Howard wouldn't have expected of a lower-class person.
After breakfast Sir Howard lounged around, his pipe going, speculating on his own future. He couldn't just sit and impose on these people's hospitality indefinitely, rescue or no rescue. He was sure they'd expect something of him, and wondered what it would be.
He was not left in doubt long.
"Come along, Van Slyck," said Elsmith. "We're putting in some potatoes today."
Sir Howard's jaw sagged, and his class prejudice came to the surface with a rush. "Me plant potatoes?" It was a cry more of astonishment than resentment.
"Why, yes. We do." Elsmith smiled slightly. "You're in another world now, you know. You'll find a lot of things to surprise you."
If the man had spoken harshly, the knight would have probably marched out and departed in dudgeon. As it was, his inchoate indignation evaporated. "I suppose you're right. There's a lot of things I don't know."
Bending humbly over his row in the potato patch, he asked Elsmith; "Do you raise all your own stuff?"
"Just about. We have some hens, and we raise a shoat each year. And Eli pots a deer now and then. There's a set of vegetable trays around the mountain a way; carefully hidden, of course. You'd never find them unless I showed you the place. It's surprising how many vegetables you can raise in a small space that way."
"Raising vegetables in trays? I never heard of that."
"Oh, yes, once upon a time tray agriculture was widely practiced by men. But the hoppers decided that it saved too much labor and abolished it. They don't want us to have too much spare time, you know. We might get ideas."
In Sir Howard's mind such statements were like lightning flashes seen through a window, briefly illuminating a vast country whose existence he had never suspected.
He asked: "Are you Sally's uncle?"
"No. She's really my secretary. Her father was my closest friend. He built this place. Eli worked for him, and stayed on with me when Mr. Mitten died six years ago."
In the afternoon Elsmith announced that that would be all the potatoes for today, and that he had correspondence to attend to. In the living room, Sir Howard noticed a stack of water-color landscapes against one of the plain timber walls. "Did you paint those?" he asked.
"Yes. They're smuggled down to New York, where an artist signs his own name to them and sells them as his."
"Sounds like a dirty trick."
"No; it's necessary. This artist is a good friend of mine. We don't need much cash here, but we've got to have some, and that's one way of getting it. Eli traps for furs in the winter for the same reason.
"Look, I've got to dictate to Sally for a couple of hours; why don't you look over some of these books?" He pointed to the shelves that covered most of one wall. "Let's see . . . I'd recommend this . . . and this . . . and these."
The books were mostly very old. Their yellow pages seemed to have been dipped in some sort of glassy lacquer. As a preservative, thought Sir Howard. He started reading reluctantly, more as a courtesy to his host than anything. Then sentence after startling sentence caught his attention—
He was startled when Elsmith, standing quietly in front of him, said: "How do you like them?"
"Good Lord, have I been reading for hours? I'm afraid I haven't gotten very far. I've never been much of a reader, and I had to keep looking things up in the dictionary.
"To be frank, I don't know what to think of them. If they're true, they upset all the ideas I ever had. You take this one by Wells, for instance. It tells a story of where men came from that's entirely different from what I learned in school. Men practicing science—governments I never heard of running whole continents—no mention of hoppers ruling over them—I just can't grasp it all."
"I expected that," said Elsmith.
"You know, Van Slyck, there comes a time in most men's lives when they look around them and begin to suspect that many of the eternal truths they learned at their mothers' knees are neither eternal nor true.
"Then they do one of two things. Some resolve to keep an open mind, to observe and inquire and experiment, and to try to find out what is the nature of Man and the universe. But most of them feel uncomfortable. To get rid of the discomfort, they suppress their doubts and wrap themselves in the dogmas of their childhood. To avoid any repetition of the discomfort, they even suppress—violently—people who don't share the same set of beliefs.
"You, my boy, are faced with that choice now. Think it over."
After dinner Sir Howard said to Elsmith: "In one of those books I was looking over, it said something about how important it was to get all the information you could before making up your mind about something. And what I've seen and heard in the last week makes me think I haven't got much information about things, after all. For instance, just who or what are the hoppers?"
Elsmith settled himself comfortably and lit a cigar. "That's a long story. The hoppers appeared on earth about three hundred years ago. That was the year 1956, in the system of reckoning they used in those days. Nobody knows just where they came from, but it's fairly certain that they came from a planet outside the Solar System."
"The what?"
"The—I suppose you learned in school that the sun goes around the earth, didn't you? Well, it doesn't. The earth and the other visible planets go around the sun. I won't try to explain that to you now, some of these books do it better than I could. We'll just say that they came from another world, far away, in a great flying machine.
"At that time the state of mankind was about what it tells about in the last chapters of those history books.
"The hoppers landed in an almost uninhabited part of South America, where there was nobody to see them except a few savages who didn't matter. There couldn't have been more than a few hundred hoppers in the ship.
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