It was queer, he thought, that a house should be all alone out here. In all the miles he’d traveled in the desert he’d seen no sign of life beyond the sixteen little ratlike things that marched in single file, no sign of artificial structure other than the eight milk-glass contraptions resting in their cradles.
He climbed into the pickup and put it into gear. Ten minutes later he drew up in front of the house, which still lay within the shadow of the hillock.
He got out of the pickup and hauled his rifle after him. Towser leaped to the ground and stood with his hackles up, a deep growl in his throat.
“What’s the matter, boy?” asked Taine.
Towser growled again.
The house stood silent. It seemed to be deserted.
The walls were built, Taine saw, of rude, rough masonry crudely set together, with a crumbling, mudlike substance used in lieu of mortar. The roof originally had been of sod and that was queer, indeed, for there was nothing that came close to sod upon this expanse of desert. But now, although one could see the lines where the sod strips had been fit together, it was nothing more than earth baked hard by the desert sun.
The house itself was featureless, entirely devoid of any ornament, with no attempt at all to soften the harsh utility of it as a simple shelter. It was the sort of thing that a shepherd people might have put together. It had the look of age about it; the stone had flaked and crumbled in the weather.
Rifle slung beneath his arm, Taine paced toward it. He reached the door and glanced inside and there was darkness and no movement.
He glanced back for Towser and saw that the dog had crawled beneath the truck and was peering out and growling.
“You stick around,” said Taine. “Don’t go running off.”
With the rifle thrust before him, Taine stepped through the door into the darkness. He stood for a long moment to allow his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.
Finally he could make out the room in which he stood. It was plain and rough, with a rude stone bench along one wall and queer unfunctional niches hollowed in another. One rickety piece of wooden furniture stood in a corner, but Taine could not make out what its use might be.
An old and deserted place, he thought, abandoned long ago. Perhaps a shepherd people might have lived here in some long-gone age, when the desert had been a rich and grassy plain.
There was a door into another room and as he stepped through it he heard the faint, far-off booming sound and something else as well – the sound of pouring rain! From the open door that led out through the back he caught a whiff of salty breeze and he stood there frozen in the center of that second room.
Another one!
Another house that led to another world!
He walked slowly forward, drawn toward the outer door, and he stepped out into a cloudy, darkling day with the rain streaming down from wildly racing clouds. Half a mile away, across a field of jumbled, broken, iron-gray boulders, lay a pounding sea that raged upon the coast, throwing great spumes of angry spray high into the air.
He walked out from the door and looked up at the sky and the rain drops pounded at his face with a stinging fury. There was a chill and a dampness in the air and the place was eldritch – a world jerked straight from some ancient Gothic tale of goblin and of sprite.
He glanced around and there was nothing he could see, for the rain blotted out the world beyond this stretch of coast, but behind the rain he could sense or seemed to sense a presence that sent shivers down his spine. Gulping in fright, Taine turned around and stumbled back again through the door into the house.
One world away, he thought, was far enough; two worlds away was more than one could take. He trembled at the sense of utter loneliness that tumbled in his skull and suddenly this long-forsaken house became unbearable and he dashed out of it.
Outside the sun was bright and there was welcome warmth. His clothes were damp from rain and little beads of moisture lay on the rifle barrel.
He looked around for Towser and there was no sign of the dog. He was not underneath the pickup; he was nowhere in sight.
Taine called and there was no answer. His voice sounded lone and hollow in the emptiness and silence.
He walked around the house, looking for the dog, and there was no back door to the house. The rough rock walls of the sides of the house pulled in with that funny curvature and there was no back to the house at all.
But Taine was not interested; he had known how it would be. Right now he was looking for his dog and he felt the panic rising in him. Somehow it felt a long way from home.
He spent three hours at it. He went back into the house and Towser was not there. He went into the other world again and searched among the tumbled rocks and Towser was not there. He went back to the desert and walked around the hillock and then he climbed to the crest of it and used the binoculars and saw nothing but the lifeless desert, stretching far in all directions.
Dead-beat with weariness, stumbling, half asleep even as he walked, he went back to the pickup.
He leaned against it and tried to pull his wits together.
Continuing as he was would be a useless effort. He had to get some sleep. He had to go back to Willow Bend and fill the tank and get some extra gasoline so that he could range farther afield in his search for Towser.
He couldn’t leave the dog out here – that was unthinkable. But he had to plan, he had to act intelligently. He would be doing Towser no good by stumbling around in his present shape.
He pulled himself into the truck and headed back for Willow Bend, following the occasional faint impressions that his tires had made in the sandy places, fighting a half-dead drowsiness that tried to seal his eyes shut.
Passing the higher hill on which the milk-glass things had stood, he stopped to walk around a bit so he wouldn’t fall asleep behind the wheel. And now, he saw, there were only seven of the things resting in their cradles.
But that meant nothing to him now. All that meant anything was to hold off the fatigue that was closing down upon him, to cling to the wheel and wear off the miles, to get back to Willow Bend and get some sleep and then come back again to look for Towser.
Slightly more than halfway home he saw the other car and watched it in numb befuddlement, for this truck that he was driving and the car at home in his garage were the only two vehicles this side of his house.
He pulled the pickup to a halt and stumbled out of it.
The car drew up and Henry Horton and Beasly and a man who wore a star leaped quickly out of it.
“Thank God we found you, man!” cried Henry, striding over to him.
“I wasn’t lost,” protested Taine. “I was coming back.”
“He’s all beat out,” said the man who wore the star.
“This is Sheriff Hanson,” Henry said. “We were following your tracks.”
“I lost Towser,” Taine mumbled. “I had to go and leave him. Just leave me be and go and hunt for Towser. I can make it home.”
He reached out and grabbed the edge of the pickup’s door to hold himself erect.
“You broke down the door,” he said to Henry. “You broke into my house and you took my car –”
“We had to do it, Hiram. We were afraid that something might have happened to you. The way that Beasly told it, it stood your hair on end.”
“You better get him in the car,” the sheriff said. “I’ll drive the pickup back.”
“But I have to hunt for Towser!”
“You can’t do anything until you’ve had some rest.”
Henry grabbed him by the arm and led him to the car and Beasly held the rear door open.
“You got any idea what this place is?” Henry whispered conspiratorially.