The Carver brothers cackled suddenly. "They better be! To farm that
land."
Jerry passed back through the valley. A man knocking out stumps waved to
him. A woman in a barnyard swished out her big skirts, shooing chickens.
At that first farm, a trickle of water still ran from the pump....
* * * * *
Wide Bend was a normal community. Along with its natural curiosity there
was a genuine feeling of neighborliness--heightened by the conviction
that these hardworking strangers had thrown their money away on a
hopeless venture. So, one way and another, a fair percentage of the
town's population found excuses in the next few days to get out to Dark
Valley. Bit by bit the reports filtered back to Jerry, and they all
added up about the same.
Joe Merklos and his people were incredibly industrious. Already they had
cleaned up the yards, repaired sagging barns and roofless sheds.
Curtains fluttered at the windows. Cows had appeared, and sheep, even a
few horses. Somehow, perhaps from accumulated seepage, they were still
bringing water from the rusty pumps. And--though it was surely an
illusion--Dark Valley seemed to have taken on a tinge of green again.
Wide Bend's womenfolk brought gifts of home-made preserves, jelly,
canned vegetables ... and came away puzzled. No, they hadn't been badly
received. All was politeness and smiles. But there was--well, a sort of
remoteness about these people. The kids went out of sight the minute you
turned into a place. And you just couldn't get close to the grown-ups.
Dark, they were, and heavy-looking. They smiled a lot, jabbering in an
unknown language. They had beautiful white teeth, but no jewelry or
ornaments, such as gypsies might wear. They always appeared pleased that
you brought them something. But on the way home you discovered you still
had your presents, after all.
The best guess as to the number in the tribe (somehow, that seemed the
best way to describe them) was sixty, give or take a few.
The general verdict was expressed by Henderson at the next club
luncheon. "They're odd, but they're hard workers. Darned good thing for
the community."
Miller, the jeweler, agreed vigorously.
"Self-interest," Jerry murmured, "is a wonderful thing."
They turned on him. "They haven't bought a thing from us! And what if
they did?"
"Kidding, boys. I've got something to sell, too." Then Jerry frowned.
"They haven't bought _anything_?"
Around the table, heads shook.
"Probably," Caruso growled, "they wear their hair long, too."
In the laughter, the matter was forgotten.
But Jerry remembered it that night, sitting on the porch of his house.
There must be hundreds of items--tools and nails and hinges and glass
and wire and sandpaper and oil and rope and seed and salt and
sugar--that the tribe needed. How could they--?
There was a step on the path. "You there?" Caruso called.
"Yep."
The barber sat in the other chair, hoisted his feet to the railing. "You
know how kids are."
"Um."
"That boy of mine, he couldn't stand it about Dark Valley. He was out
there with a couple of pals, poking around."
"Yes?" Jerry didn't realize his voice was sharp.
"Oh, no trouble. But the middle fork of the river's started to run
again!"
* * * * *
For a long time after Caruso had gone, Jerry sat with his cold pipe in
his mouth. There were reasonable explanations for every one of the small
oddities that had cropped up with Joe Merklos and his people. But he
couldn't shake a growing feeling of uneasiness.
Jerry went to bed muttering, for he was a man trained to keep emotion
and fact well separate. But the feeling was still with him when he
awoke, and he recognized it later on Henderson's face.
"We got to get the boys together and talk this thing over," the feed and
fuel owner said.
"What's up?"
"This stuff that's missin'."
Jerry gave a start. He had just spent at least half an hour looking for
this garage lock.
"Every day of this week," Henderson went on heavily, "I've had people in
to replace some little thing that was lost. Hatchets and feeding troughs
and spare parts and panes of glass and things like that. A couple of old
chicken brooders that was stored. Ten salt blocks Anderson had in his
barn."
Just then MacAllister stepped over from his drugstore to join them.
"Dammit," he said plaintively, dusting off his store jacket, "I been in
the basement the last hour looking for an old pipe wrench. I swear I
left it there!"
Jerry met Henderson's glance. "All right," he said. "Let's get the gang
together for lunch today."
Sheriff Watson joined them in the back room of the restaurant. When the
coffee came Jerry rose to explain the purpose of the meeting. "Our
problem," he began, "may amount to nothing at all. Or it could turn out
to be mighty nasty. Hen and I thought it was time to talk it over."
Briefly he recapitulated Dark Valley's reawakening. He described Joe
Merklos and his people--their odd clothing, their independence, their
alien language.
"Point one," he said, "most people don't like strangers."
He described the tribe's arrival without cars or wagons, without even a
mark on the abandoned road. He spoke of the pumps that came to life, the
river that now ran again. The progress the tribe had made seemed almost
beyond human capacity.
"Point two," Jerry said, "most people don't like mysteries." He turned.
"Okay, Hen."
First Henderson explained that none of the tribe had bought supplies of
any kind in Wide Bend. He got corroboration from other businessmen
present. Then, as he summarized the missing articles, heads began to
nod. Faces got red and lists were clenched. Jerry got to his feet again.
"Point three, I don't need to spell out. Much more of this and carloads
of men with guns will be heading for the ridge. There'll be the kind of
trouble we don't want on Wide Bend's conscience."
"Should we let 'em rob us blind?" shouted Tipton.
"No wonder they do so good!" Caruso cried.
"How about the water?" Hammond asked sarcastically. "You think they
stole that, too?"
Someone shouted back, and a heated discussion raged. Jerry finally
banged on the table with a sugar bowl. "Let's hear from the sheriff."
Watson hoisted his big frame, and sighed. "Jerry's right, boys. We got a
nasty situation building up. Right now, my old woman's so mad at the
Dark Valley people she could spit. And why? Only because she can't
figger 'em out."
He brushed his mustache and looked at Tipton. "Them people are human
bein's, ain't they?"
Tipton scowled, but nodded.
"Anything they done that couldn't be explained by natural causes, no
matter how silly or complicated?"
Tipton thought about it, and had to shake his head.
"Believe me, boys, the only thing to get excited about is the stuff
that's missin'. If they're pinchin' it, we can catch 'em, and punish
'em. They may be foreigners but they sure as hell have to obey the law
of the land!"
"Now," Hammond said, "we're talking sense."
"Give me a list of what's missin'," Watson added, "an' I'll go to Dark
Valley this afternoon and take a look around the place."
"Everybody satisfied?" Jerry asked.
Everybody was.
* * * * *
Sheriff Watson frowned at the list as Jerry drove into the first
barnyard. They scattered chickens, ducks, and children--seen blurrily as
they scrambled to hide. They remained a few minutes, ostensibly
visiting, then went on to the next farm, and the next....
Beyond the last one, on the rise that led to the Carver cabin, Jerry
stopped the car. They looked at one another. Watson rubbed his face
irritably. "I'm beat, Jerry. There's somethin' here I can't get my hands
nor my head onto."
"I know."
The sheriff banged one big hand against the crumpled list. "That butter
churn of Mulford's. By God, I saw it! Same brand, same color. Even had
scratches around the base where that old cat of his sharpened her
claws."
"I know," Jerry said again. "But it had a letter 'Z' cut into it. Worn
and weathered, so you'd swear it had been there for years and years."
"That spring-toothed harrow of Zimmerman's."
"Except the one we saw had twelve teeth instead of fifteen. And even the
man who made it couldn't find where it had been altered or tampered
with."
It had been the same with a score of other things. Each one slightly
changed, just different enough to make identification impossible to
prove.
Slowly, Jerry said, "Wood gets weathered, metal oxidizes, honest wear is
unmistakable. And these all take time, which can't be faked."
His implication hung in the air. If the things had been stolen, then
altered to avoid identification, whoever did it had more than human
ability.
"Magic," Watson muttered.
"There's ... no ... such ... thing!"
"No, there absolutely ain't."
They sat looking with troubled eyes out over Dark Valley, till Jerry
said abruptly, "I'm going on up to see the Carvers."
Watson reached for the door handle. "They don't have no use for me. I'll
wait here. I got plenty to think about."
Jerry nodded. The sheriff would be remembering the seeds already
sprouting in the kitchen gardens. The leaves that had jumped out on the
old fruit trees. The lambs and calves capering in pastures washed with
the green of new grass.
The road was smooth, its ditches cleared and deepened. Bright clothing
napped on shiny new clotheslines (those were on the list, but how can
you identify a roll of wire?). Cordwood was stacked in every yard. New
shingles spotted the roofs, the windows held glass again, fresh paint
glistened on porches. In the fields, corn and oats and hay were shooting
upward....
Jerry found the Carvers waiting for him, their wrinkled old faces tense.
They didn't answer his greeting, just jerked their heads. They led him
past the cabin, through open brush, and halted at a bare place. Slowly,
Jerry sank to his knees.
Except for its size, it could have been a splayed-out cougar print. But
it was two feet across, and pressed more than an inch into the hard, dry
soil.
Finally Ed Carver nudged Jerry. The gnarled finger pointed to a twig of
wild lilac eight feet off the ground. Caught on the twig were several
coarse black hairs, six inches long. Jerry looked from them back to the
Carvers, then down at the ground again. He didn't speak. What was there
to say?
As they started back toward the cabin, Ed Carver said harshly, "We found
that two nights ago."
Jerry brooded for some distance, then he said, "Ned Ames has the best
hunting dogs in the country."
They looked at him disgustedly.
"Dammit, you have to do something! Come back to town with me. We'll get
some of the boys together, and hunt it down."
They had passed the cabin and reached the car. The Carver brothers
looked out over Dark Valley and shook their heads. "We've lived alone,"
Ed said. "We'll fight alone."
When Jerry told the sheriff about the giant spoor, Watson gave a
derisive snort. "Those old coots got bats in their belfries!"
"But I saw the print."
Watson dismissed such evidence with a wave of his hand. "They made it
up, probably. Forget it till you see the animal itself. You'll have time
to believe it then. We got enough to worry about already."
Jerry couldn't forget it. But there was a kind of reassurance in such
hearty skepticism. With each passing minute, that huge print seemed more
unreal.
* * * * *
Halfway through the valley they stopped to look at the river. The bed
was half full--muddy, debris-laden, with a sheen of dust on the surface.
But it was water--wet, tangible, undeniable.
Watson took off his hat and rubbed his head and swore.
"Good afternoon."
They turned. Joe Merklos was smiling at them.
"Hello," Jerry said. Watson just glowered.
Merklos moved beside them and looked down. His brilliant teeth flashed.
"Good, is it not?" The guttural words came out flat, one at a time, as
though shaped carefully.
"Better than money, in this part of the world." Jerry's eyes narrowed.
"Did you know about the water when you bought the valley?"
Merklos smiled again. He was bare-headed, dressed in dark trousers and a
loose, short-sleeved blouse. His neck and muscular forearms gleamed
bronze in the sunlight. "You like what we do here?" he asked in his
deep, hesitant manner.
"You've done wonders," Watson said shortly.