But despite the automatic denial, I knew damn well that it had happened, and I sat there on the steps trying to get it straight in my mind. But I didn’t have the chance to do much straightening out because just when I had got settled down to it, Rila, came driving up the ridge and beside her sat Hiram.
Hiram leaped down as soon as the car had stopped and made straight for Bowser. He didn’t waste any words on me; I’m not sure he even saw me. Bowser came down off the steps at the sight of him and Hiram went down on his knees, throwing his arms around the dog, while Bowser, whimpering and whining in his happiness, washed Hiram’s face with a busy tongue.
Rila rushed up to me and threw her arms around me and there were the four of us, Hiram hugging Bowser and Rila hugging me.
“Isn’t it nice to have Hiram back?” she asked. “The hospital said it was all right for him to leave, but that he had to take it easy and build up his strength. It seems he lost a lot of strength. He’s not to do much work and he …”
“That’s all right,” I said. “Hiram never was what you might call addicted to work.”
“He should take some exercise every day,” she said.
“Walking is the best. And he should have a high-protein diet and there is some medicine that he has to take. He doesn’t like the medicine. Says it tastes awful bad. But he promised to take it if they let him leave. And, oh, Asa, you should see the kind of house we’re going to build. I haven’t got the plans as yet, but I can draw you a rough sketch of it. All fieldstone and lots of big chimneys — there’ll be fireplaces in almost every room. And a lot of glass. Entire walls of thermoglass so that we can look out on this world of ours. Just like we were sitting outdoors. There will be a patio and an outdoor broiler, built of stone just like the house and a stone chimney to carry off the smoke and a swimming pool if it’s something that you’d like.
I think that I would like it. Water from the spring to fill it and that water’s awfully cold, but the contractor said that in a day or two, the sun will warm it and then there’s …”
I saw Hiram and Bowser walking off, heading down the ridge, and they either didn’t hear me shout at them or paid no attention, so I went running after them.
I caught Hiram by the shoulder and turned him around.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked. “Rila says you have to take it easy, not too much exertion.”
“But Mr. Steele,” said Hiram, in all reasonableness, “I just have to see how Stiffy is getting along. I have to let him know I’m back.”
“Not today,” I said . “Tomorrow, maybe. We’ll take a car and see if we can find him.”
I herded the two of them back, Hiram protesting all the way.
“And you,” said Rila, “how did you spend your day?”
“Talking with Catface,” I said.
She laughed gaily. “What did you find to talk about?”
“Quite a lot,” I said.
Then she was off on the matter of the house and I never got a word in edgewise. She talked about it until we went to bed. I’d never seen her so happy and excited.
I told myself that I’d tell her about Catface in the morning, but it didn’t work out that way. Ben got me out of bed, pounding on the door and yelling for me to get out of there.
I staggered out bias-eyed, not dressed.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked. “What is it that can’t wait?”
“The Safari bunch is on the prod,” he said. “They are getting nervous. They want us to go in and see what is holding up Aspinwall and his outfit.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Ben had more to worry about than the overdue safari. He told me about it as we got ready for the trip.
They don’t know if we’re part of the USA or not.”
“We can make as good an argument against being part of the country,” I said, “as anyone can claiming we are.”
“I know,” said Ben, but if that gets to be a part of general argument it is going to strike pretty close to home. I don’t like it, Asa. I don’t like any of it.”
I didn’t like it either, but right at the time, I wasn’t as upset about it as he was.
Rila was determined to go into the Cretaceous with us, and it took us quite a while to convince her she’d better stay behind. She was all burned up at not being allowed to go along. She was outraged; she said she had the right to go.
“Not a chance,” I told her. “You risked your neck once and that’s enough. That time we had to go for broke, but this time, it’s different. We’ll be back in a little while.”
It developed that during all the ruckus, Hiram had sneaked off to go hunting Stiffy. Rila wanted me to go after him, but I said to hell with him; I said that if, right at that moment, I did go after him, I’d most likely shoot him and have it over with.
So Ben and I started out in something of a foul mood. When we hit the Cretaceous, the local weather didn’t help us any. It was hot and stormy and the landscape steamed. A high, hot wind was blowing; the touch of it almost burned you. Great cloud masses, torn apart, raced across the sky, and every once in a while one of the clouds would pull itself together and deliver a five-minute downpour of rain so warm that it seemed to be scalding. Underfoot, the ground was greasy from being soaked by the intermittent downpours, but Ben’s four-wheel drive was a good mudder and we didn’t have too much trouble with it.
The vile weather apparently had tamed down the fauna. Most of them, perhaps, were hiding out in groves of trees. Those that we did disturb went racing away from us, including one small tyrannosaur. We had to drive around a herd of triceratops, who stood with their heads drooping, not bothering to graze, just waiting for the weather to get decent.
The track made by the safari was fairly easy to follow, the wheels of the heavy trucks leaving deep depressions in the soil. In a few places, recent rains had either filled the tracks or washed them out, but where they were missing, it was no great problem to pick them up again.
We found the first campsite about five miles down the river valley. It seemed the safari had stayed there for several days. The campfire locations were thick with ash and there had been a lot of traffic out and back. After some looking, we found the trail the outfit had made in moving out: west over the ridge across the river, then across a prairie for twenty miles or so.
At the end of that twenty miles, the country broke suddenly, plunging down into the valley of the Raccoon River. The trail that we were following snaked crookedly down the hills. As we rounded the sharp angle of a ridge, we came upon the camp. Ben braked the car to a halt and for a moment we sat there, saying nothing. Tents, many of them down, fluttered in the wind. One truck was tipped over on its side. The other was in a ditch, one of those deep gullies so characteristic of the Cretaceous, its nose buried against one wall of the gully, its back canted up at a steep angle.
Nothing moved except the fluttering fabric of the tents. There was no smoke; the campfires had burned out. Here and there were clutters of scattered whiteness lying on the ground.
“For the love of mercy!” said Ben.
Slowly, he took his foot off the brake and let the car ease forward. We crept down the slope and into the camp. The place was littered with debris. Cooking utensils were scattered about the dead fires. Torn clothing was tramped into the ground. Dropped rifles lay here and there. The scattered whitenesses were bones — human bones polished clean by scavengers.