But he stuck it out.
He squatted there, staring at the no-face with the fringe of worms, and he got cold all over and his stomach doubled up on him and he was stiff with fright - and the fright got worse when it seemed to him that the keening of the thing was coming from the worms.
Mose was a stubborn man. One had to be stubborn to run a runty farm like this. Stubborn and insensitive in a lot of ways. But not insensitive, of course, to a thing in pain.
Finally he was able to pick it up and hold it in his arms and there was nothing to it, for it didn’t weigh much. Less that a half-grown shoat, he figured.
He went up the woods path with it, heading back for home, and it seemed to him the smell of it was less. He was hardly scared at all and he was warm again and not cold all over.
For the thing was quieter now and keening just a little. And although he could not be sure of it, there were times when it seemed as if the thing were snuggling up to him, the way a scared and hungry baby will snuggle to any grown person that comes and picks it up.
Old Mose reached the buildings and he stood out in the yard a minute, wondering whether he should take it to the barn or house. The barn, of course, was the natural place for it, for it wasn’t human - it wasn’t even as close to human as a dog or cat or sick lamb would be.
He didn’t hesitate too long, however. He took it into the house and laid it on what he called a bed, next to the kitchen stove. He got it straightened out all neat and orderly and pulled a dirty blanket over it, and then went to the stove and stirred up the fire until there was some flame.
Then he pulled up a chair beside the bed and had a good, hard, wondering look at this thing he had brought home. It had quieted down a lot and seemed more comfortable than it had out in the woods. He tucked the blanket snug around it with a tenderness that surprised himself. He wondered what he had that it might eat, and even if he knew, how he’d manage feeding it, for it seemed to have no mouth.
‘But you don’t need to worry none,’ he told it. ‘Now that I got you under a roof, you’ll be all right. I don’t know too much about it, but I’ll take care of you the best I can.’
By now it was getting on toward evening, and he looked out the window and saw that the cows he had been hunting had come home by themselves.
‘I got to go get the milking done and other chores,’ he told the thing lying on the bed, ‘but it won’t take me long. I’ll be right back.’
Old Mose loaded up the stove so the kitchen would stay warm and he tucked the thing in once again, then got his milk pails and went down to the barn.
He fed the sheep and pigs and horses and he milked the cows. He hunted eggs and shut the chicken house. He pumped a tank of water.
Then he went back to the house.
It was dark now and he lit the oil lamp on the table, for he was against electricity. He’d refused to sign up when REA had run out the line and a lot of the neighbors had gotten sore at him for being uncooperative. Not that he cared, of course.
He had a look at the thing upon the bed. It didn’t seem to be any better, or any worse, for that matter. If it had been a sick lamb or an ailing calf, he could have known right off how it was getting on, but this thing was different. There was no way to tell.
He fixed himself some supper and ate it and wished he knew how to feed the thing. And he wished, too, that he knew how to help it. He’d got it under shelter and be had it warm, but was that right or wrong for something like this? He had no idea.
He wondered if he should try to get some help, then felt squeamish about asking help when he couldn’t say exactly what had to be helped. But then he wondered how he would feel himself if he were in a far, strange country, all played out and sick, and no one to get him any help because they didn’t know exactly what he was.
That made up his mind for him and he walked over to the phone. But should he call a doctor or a veterinarian? He decided to call the doctor because the thing was in the house. If it had been in the barn, he would have called the veterinarian.
He was on a rural line and the hearing wasn’t good and he was halfway deaf, so he didn’t use the phone too often. He had told himself at times it was nothing but another aggravation and there had been a dozen times he had threatened to have it taken out. But now he was glad he hadn’t.
The operator got old Dr. Benson and they couldn’t hear one another too well, but Mose finally made the doctor understand who was calling and that he needed him and the doctor said he’d come.
With some relief, Mose hung up the phone and was just standing there, not doing anything, when he was struck by the thought that there might be others of these things down there in the woods. He had no idea what they were or what they might be doing or where they might be going, but it was pretty evident that the one upon the bed was some sort of stranger from a very distant place. It stood to reason that there might be more than one of them, for far traveling was a lonely business and anyone - or anything - would like to have some company along.
He got the lantern down off the peg and lit it and went stumping out the door. The night was as black as a stack of cats and the lantern light was feeble, but that made not a bit of difference, for Mose knew this farm of his like the back of his hand.
He went down the path into the woods. It was a spooky place, but it took more than woods at night to spook Old Mose. At the place where he had found the thing, he looked around, pushing through the brush and holding the lantern high so he could see a bigger area, but he didn’t find another one of them.
He did find something else, though - a sort of outsize bird-cage made of metal lattice work that had wrapped itself around an eight-inch hickory tree. He tried to pull it loose, but it was jammed so tight that he couldn’t budge it.
He sighted back the way it must have come. He could see where it had plowed its way through the upper branches of the trees, and out beyond were stars, shining bleakly with the look of far away.
Mose had no doubt that the thing lying on his bed beside the kitchen stove had come in this birdcage contraption. He marveled some at that, but he didn’t fret himself too much, for the whole thing was so unearthly that he knew he had little chance of pondering it out.
He walked back to the house and he scarcely had the lantern blown out and hung back on its peg than he heard a car drive up.
The doctor, when he came up to the door, became a little grumpy at seeing Old Mose standing there.
‘You don’t look sick to me,’ the doctor said. ‘Not sick enough to drag me clear out here at night.’
‘I ain’t sick,’ said Mose.
‘Well, then,’ said the doctor, more grumpily than ever, ‘what do you mean by phoning me?’
‘I got someone who is sick,’ said Mose. ‘I hope you can help him. I would have tried myself, but I don’t know how to go about it.’
The doctor came inside and Mose shut the door behind him.
‘You got something rotten in here?’ asked the doctor.
‘No, it’s just the way he smells. It was pretty bad at first, but I’m getting used to it by now.’
The doctor saw the thing lying on the bed and went over to it. Old Mose heard him sort of gasp and could see him standing there, very stiff and straight. Then he bent down and had a good look at the critter on the bed.
When he straightened up and turned around to Mose, the only thing that kept him from being downright angry was that he was so flabbergasted.
‘Mose,’ he yelled, ‘what _is_ this?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mose. ‘I found it in the woods and it was hurt and wailing and I couldn’t leave it there.’
‘You think it’s sick?’
‘I know it is,’ said Mose, ‘It needs help awful bad. I’m afraid it’s dying.’