"It's not the only devil out there," said Packard when the stories were out.
"So's you say," said Eleanor, her quick eyes less than convinced.
"My Papa said so," Packard returned, staring down at his bandaged hand. "And I believe it, sure as Hell I believe it."
"Then we'd best do something about it."
"Like what?" posed a sour looking individual leaning against the mantelpiece. "What's to be done about the likes of a thing that eats automobiles?"
Eleanor straightened up and delivered a well-aimed sneer at the questioner.
"Well let's have the benefit of your wisdom, Lou," she said. "What do you think we should do?"
"I think we should lie low and let ‘em pass."
"I'm no ostrich," said Eleanor, "but if you want to go bury your head, I'll lend you a spade, Lou. I'll even dig you the hole."
General laughter. The cynic, discomforted, fell silent and picked at his nails.
"We can't sit here and let them come running through," said Packard's deputy, between blowing bubbles with his gum.
"They were going towards the mountains," Davidson said. "Away from Welcome."
"So what's to stop them changing their goddam minds?" Eleanor countered. "Well?"
No answer. A few nods, a few head shakings. "Jebediah," she said, "you're deputy — what do you think about this?"
The young man with the badge and the gum flushed a little, and plucked at his thin moustache. He obviously hadn't a clue.
"I see the picture," the woman snapped back before he could answer. "Clear as a bell. You're all too shit scared to go poking them divils out of their holes, that it?"
Murmurs of self-justification around the room, more head-shaking.
"You're just planning to sit yourselves down and let the women folk be devoured."
A good word: devoured. So much more emotive than eaten. Eleanor paused for effect. Then she said darkly: "Or worse."
Worse than devoured? Pity sakes, what was worse than devoured?
"You're not going to be touched by no divils," said Packard, getting up from his seat with some difficulty. He swayed on his feet as he addressed the room.
"We're going to have them shit-eaters and lynch ‘em." This rousing battle-cry left the males in the room unroused; the sheriff was low on credibility since his encounter in Main Street.
"Discretion's the better part of valour," Davidson murmured under his breath.
"That's so much horse-shit," said Eleanor.
Davidson shrugged, and finished off the whisky in his glass. It was not refilled. He reflected ruefully that he should be thankful he was still alive. But his work-schedule was in ruins. He had to get to a telephone and hire a car; if necessary have someone drive out to pick him up. The "divils", whatever they were, were not his problem. Perhaps he'd be interested to read a few column-inches on the subject in Newsweek, when he was back East and relaxing with Barbara; but now all he wanted to do was finish his business in Arizona and get home as soon as possible.
Packard, however, had other ideas.
"You're a witness," he said, pointing at Davidson, "and as Sheriff of this community I order you to stay in Welcome until you've answered to my satisfaction all inquiries I have to put to you."
The formal language sounded odd from his slobbish mouth.
"I've got business —" Davidson began.
"Then you just send a cable and cancel that business, Mr fancy-Davidson."
The man was scoring points off him, Davidson knew, bolstering his shattered reputation by taking pot-shots at the Easterner. Still, Packard was the law: there was nothing to be done about it. He nodded his assent with as much good grace as he could muster. There'd be time to lodge a formal complaint against this hick-town Mussolini when he was home, safe and sound. For now, better to send a cable, and let business go hang.
"So what's the plan?" Eleanor demanded of Packard.
The Sheriff puffed out his booze-brightened cheeks.
"We deal with the divils," he said.
"How?"
"Guns, woman."
"You'll need more than guns, if they're as big as he says they are —"
"They are —" said Davidson, "believe me, they are."
Packard sneered.
"We'll take the whole fucking arsenal," he said jerking his remaining thumb at Jebediah. "Go break out the heavy-duty weapons, boy. Anti-tank stuff. Bazookas."
General amazement.
"You got bazookas?" said Lou, the mantelpiece cynic.
Packard managed a leering smile.
"Military stuff," he said, "left over from the Big One." Davidson sighed inwardly. The man was a psychotic, with his own little arsenal of out-of-date weapons, which were probably more lethal to the user than to the victim. They were all going to die. God help him, they were all going to die.
"You may have lost your fingers," said Eleanor Kooker, delighted by this show of bravado, "but you're the only man in this room, Josh Packard."
Packard beamed and rubbed his crotch absent mindedly. Davidson couldn't take the atmosphere of hand-me-down machismo in the room any longer.
"Look," he piped up, "I've told you all I know. Why don't I just let you folks get on with it."
"You ain't leaving," said Packard, "if that's what you're rooting after."
"I'm just saying —"
"We know what you're saying son, and I ain't listening. If I see you hitch up your britches to leave I'll string you up by your balls. If you've got any."
The bastard would try it too, thought Davidson, even if he only had one hand to do it with. Just go with the flow, he told himself, trying to stop his lip curling. If Packard went out to find the monsters and his damn bazooka backfired, that was his business. Let it be.
"There's a whole tribe of them," Lou was quietly pointing out. "According to this man. So how do we take out so many of them?"
"Strategy," said Packard.
"We don't know their positions."
"Surveillance," replied Packard.
"They could really fuck us up Sheriff," Jebediah observed, picking a collapsed gum-bubble from his moustache.
"This is our territory," said Eleanor. "We got it: we keep it."
Jebediah nodded.
"Yes, ma," he said.
"Suppose they just disappeared? Suppose we can't find them no more?" Lou was arguing. "Couldn't we just let ‘em go to ground?"
"Sure," said Packard. "And then we're left waiting around for them to come out again and devour the women folk."
"Maybe they mean no harm —" Lou replied.
Packard's reply was to raise his bandaged hand.
"They done me harm."
That was incontestable.
Packard continued, his voice hoarse with feeling.
"Shit, I want them come-bags so bad I'm going out there with or without help. But we've got to out-think them, out manoeuvre them, so we don't get anybody hurt."
The man talks some sense, thought Davidson. Indeed, the whole room seemed impressed. Murmurs of approval all round; even from the mantelpiece.
Packard rounded on the deputy again.
"You get your ass moving, son. I want you to call up that bastard Crumb out of Caution and get his boys down here with every goddam gun and grenade they've got. And if he asks what for you tell him Sheriff Packard's declaring a State of Emergency, and I'm requisitioning every asshole weapon in fifty miles, and the man on the other end of it. Move it, son."
Now the room was positively glowing with admiration, and Packard knew it.
"We'll blow the fuckers apart," he said.
For a moment the rhetoric seemed to work its magic on Davidson, and he half-believed it might be possible; then he remembered the details of the procession, tails, teeth and all, and his bravado sank without trace.
They came up to the house so quietly, not intending to creep, just so gentle with their tread nobody heard them.