Darkness was dropping on the tumbled hills. Somewhere in the distant river valley an owl laughed irrationally. The first stars, small and quiet, came out in the east and in the west the green-tinged glow that marked the passing of the sun was fading into night.
The pile of twigs was laid before the boulder and other wood lay near at hand to keep the campfire going through the night. But if the gun wouldn’t work, there would be no fire.
Grant cursed under his breath, thinking of chilly sleeping and cold rations.
He tapped the gun on the rock again, harder this time. Still no soap.
A twig crunched in the dark and Grant shot bolt upright.
Beside the shadowy trunk of one of the forest giants that towered into the gathering dusk, stood a figure, tall and gangling.
«Hello,» said Grant.
«Something wrong, stranger?»
«My gun—» replied Grant, then cut short the words. No use in letting this shadowy figure know he was unarmed.
The man stepped forward, hand outstretched.
«Won’t work, eh?»
Grant felt the gun lifted from his grasp.
The visitor squatted on the ground, making chuckling noises. Grant strained his eyes to see what he was doing, but the creeping darkness made the other’s hands an inky blur weaving about the bright metal of the gun.
Metal clicked and scraped. The man sucked in his breath and laughed.
Metal scraped again and the man arose, holding out the gun.
«All fixed,» he said. «Maybe better than it was before.»
A twig crunched again.
«Hey, wait!» yelled Grant, but the man was gone, a black ghost moving among the ghostly trunks.
A chill that was not of the night came seeping from the ground and travelled slowly up Grant’s body. A chill that set his teeth on edge, that stirred the short hairs at the base of his skull, that made goose flesh spring out upon his arms.
There was no sound except the talk of water whispering in the dark, the tiny stream that ran just below the campsite.
Shivering, he knelt beside the pile of twigs, pressed the trigger. A thin blue flame lapped out and the twigs burst into flame.
Grant found old Dave Baxter perched on the top rail of the fence, smoke pouring from the short-stemmed pipe almost hidden in his whiskers.
«Howdy, stranger,» said Dave. «Climb up and squat a while.»
Grant climbed up, stared out over the corn-shocked field, gay with the gold of pumpkins.
«Just walkin’?» asked old Dave. «Or snoopin’?»
«Snooping,» admitted Grant.
Dave took the pipe out of his mouth, spat, put it back in again. The whiskers draped themselves affectionately, and dangerously, about it.
«Diggin’?» asked old Dave.
«Nope,» said Grant.
«Had a feller through here four, five years ago,» said Dave, «that was worse’n a rabbit dog for diggin’. Found a place where there had been an old town and just purely tore up the place. Pestered the life out of me to tell him about the town, but I didn’t rightly remember much. Heard my grandpappy once mention the name of the town, but danged if I ain’t forgot it. This here feller had a slew of old maps that he was all the time wavin’ around and studying, tryin’ to figure out what was what, but I guess he never did know.»
«Hunting for antiques,» said Grant.
«Mebbe,» old Dave told him. «Kept out of his way the best I could. But he wasn’t no worse’n the one that was tryin’ to trace some old road that ran through this way once. He had some maps, too. Left figurin’ he’d found it and I didn’t have the heart to tell him what he’d found was a path the cows had made.»
He squinted at Grant cagily.
«You ain’t huntin’ no old roads, be you?»
«Nope,» said Grant. «I’m a census taker.»
«You’re what?»
«Census taker,» explained Grant. «Take down your name and age and where you live.»
«What for?»
«Government wants to know,» said Grant.
«We don’t bother the gov’ment none,» declared old Dave. «What call’s the gov’ment got botherin’ us?»
«Government won’t bother you any,» Grant told him. «Might even take a notion to pay you something some day. Never can tell.»
«In that case,» said old Dave, «it’s different.»
They perched on the fence, staring across the fields. Smoke curled up from a chimney hidden in a sunny hollow, yellow with the flame of birches.
A creek meandered placidly across a dun autumn-colored meadow and beyond it climbed the hills, tier on tier of golden maple trees.
Hunched on the rail, Grant felt the heat of the autumn sun soak into his back, smelled the stubbled field.
A good life, he told himself. Good crops, wood to burn, plenty of game to hunt. A happy life.
He glanced at the old man huddled beside him, saw the unworried wrinkles of kindly age that puckered up his face, tried for a moment to envision a life like this—a simple, pastoral life, akin to the historic days of the old American frontier, with all the frontier’s compensations, none of its dangers.
Old Dave took the pipe out of his face, waved it at the field.
«Still lots of work to do,» he announced, «but it ain’t agittin’ done. Them kids ain’t worth the power to blow ’em up. Huntin’ all the time. Fishin’ too. Machinery breakin’ down. Joe ain’t been around for quite a spell. Great hand at machinery, Joe is.»
«Joe your son?»
«No. Crazy feller that lives off in the woods somewhere. Walks in and fixes things up, then walks off and leaves. Scarcely ever talks. Don’t wait for a man to thank him. Just up and leaves. Been doin’ it for years now. Grandpappy told me how he first came when he was a youngster. Still comin’ now.»
Grant gasped. «Wait a second. It can’t be the same man.»
«Now,» said old Dave, «that’s the thing. Won’t believe it, stranger, but he ain’t a mite older now than when I first saw him. Funny sort of cuss. Lots of wild tales about him. Grandpappy always told about how he fooled around with ants.»
«Ants!»
«Sure. Built a house—glass house, you know, over an ant hill and heated it, come winter. That’s what grandpappy always said. Claimed he’d seen it. But I don’t believe a word of it. Grandpappy was the biggest liar in seven counties. Admitted it hisself.»
A brass-tongued bell clanged from the sunny hollow where the chimney smoked.
The old man climbed down from the fence, tapped out his pipe, squinting at the sun.
The bell boomed again across the autumn stillness.
«That’s ma,» said old Dave. «Dinner’s on. Squirrel dumplings, more than likely. Good eatin’ as you ever hooked a tooth into. Let’s get a hustle on.»
A crazy fellow who came and fixed things and didn’t wait for thanks. A man who looked the same as he did a hundred years ago. A chap who built a glasshouse over an ant hill and heated it, come winter.
It didn’t make sense and yet old Baxter hadn’t been lying. It wasn’t another one of those tall yarns that had sprung up and still ran their course out here in the backwoods, amounting now to something that was very close to folklore.
All of the folklore had a familiar ring, a certain similarity, a definite pattern of underlying wit that tagged it for what it was. And this wasn’t it.
There was nothing humorous, even to the backwoods mind, in housing and heating an ant hill. To qualify for humor a tale like that would have to have a snapper, and this tale didn’t have one.
Grant stirred uneasily on the cornshuck mattress, pulling the heavy quilt close around his throat.
Funny, he thought, the places that I sleep in. Tonight a cornshuck mattress, last night an open campfire, the night before that a soft mattress and clean sheets in the Webster house.
The wind sucked up the hollow and paused on its way to flap a loose shingle on the house, came back to flap it once again. A mouse skittered somewhere in the darkened place. From the bed across the loft came the sound of regular breathing—two of the Baxter younger fry slept there.