“If there’s going to be a showdown, it’s gotta be here.”
The beach here was about thirty yards wide, the sand almost level, and undercut banks of sawgrass forming the landward edge in a series of little hummocks and headlands. While Tom stayed with the machine, testing starter and generator contacts, Kelly walked up one of the little mounds, stood up on it and scanned the beach back the way he had come. Suddenly he began to shout and wave his arms.
“What’s got into you?”
“It’s Al!” Kelly called back. “With the pan tractor!”
Tom dropped what he was doing, and came to stand beside Kelly. “Where’s the Seven? I can’t see.”
“Turned on the beach and followin’ our track. Al! Al! You little skunk, c’mere!”
Tom could now dimly make out the pan tractor cutting across directly towards them and the beach.
“He don’t see Daisy Etta,” remarked Kelly disgustedly, “or he’d sure be headin’ the other way.”
Fifty yards away Al pulled up and throttled down. Kelly shouted and waved to him. Al stood up on the machine, cupped his hands around his mouth, “Where’s the Seven?”
“Never mind that! Come here with that tractor!”
Al stayed where he was. Kelly cursed and started out after him.
“You stay away from me,” he said, when Kelly was closer.
“I ain’t got time for you now,” said Kelly. “Bring that tractor down to the beach.”
“Where’s that Daisy Etta?” Al’s voice was oddly strained.
“Right behind us.” Kelly tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “On the beach.”
Al’s pop eyes clicked wide almost audibly. He turned on his heel and jumped off the machine and started to run. Kelly uttered a wordless syllable that was somehow more obscene than anything else he had ever uttered, and vaulted into the seat of the machine. “Hey!” he bellowed after Al’s rapidly diminishing figure. “You’re runnin’ right into her.” Al appeared not to hear, but went pelting down the beach.
Kelly put her into fifth gear and poured on the throttle. As the tractor began to move he whacked out the master clutch, snatched the overdrive lever back to put her into sixth, rammed the clutch in again, all so fast that she did not have time to stop rolling. Bucking and jumping over the rough ground the fast machine whined for the beach.
Tom was fumbling back to the welder, his ears telling him better than his eyes how close the Seven was — for she was certainly no nightingale, particularly without her exhaust stack. Kelly reached the machine as he did.
“Get behind it,” snapped Tom. “I’ll jamb the tierod with the shackle, and you see if you can’t bunt her up into that pocket between those two hummocks. Only take it easy — you don’t want to tear up that generator. Where’s Al?”
“Don’t ask me. He run down the beach to meet Daisy.”
“He what?”
The whine of the two-cycle drowned out Kelly’s answer, if any. He got behind the welder and set his blade against it. Then in a low gear, slipping his clutch in a little, he slowly nudged the machine towards the place Tom had indicated. It was a little hollow in between two projecting banks. The surf and the high-tide mark dipped inland here to match it; the water was only a few feet away.
Tom raised his arm and Kelly stopped. From the other side of the projecting shelf, out of their sight now, came the flat roar of the Seven’s exhaust. Kelly sprang off the tractor and went to help Tom, who was furiously throwing out coils of cable from the rack back of the welder. “What’s the game?”
“We got to ground that Seven some way,” panted Tom. He threw the last bit of cable out to clear it of kinks and turned to the panel. “How was it — about sixty volts and the amperage on ‘special appreciation’?” He spun the dials, pressed the starter button. The motor responded instantly. Kelly scooped up ground lamp and rod holder and tapped them together. The solenoid governor picked up the load and the motor hummed as a good live spark took the jump.
“Good,” said Tom, switching off the generator. “Come on, Lieutenant General Electric, figure me out a way to ground that maverick.”
Kelly tightened his lips, shook his head. “I dunno — unless somebody actually clamps this thing on her.”
“No, boy, can’t do that. If one of us gets killed—”
Kelly tossed the ground clamp idly, his lithe body taut. “Don’t give me that, Tom. You know I’m elected because you can’t see good enough to handle it. You know you’d do it if you could. You—”
He stopped short, for the steadily increasing roar of the approaching Seven had stopped, was blatting away now in that extraordinary irregular throttling that Daisy Etta affected.
“Now what’s got into her?”
Kelly broke away and scrambled up the bank. “Tom!” he gasped. “Tom — come up here!”
Tom followed, and they lay side by side, peering out over the top of the escarpment at the remarkable tableau.
Daisy Etta was standing on the beach, near the water, not moving. Before her, twenty or thirty feet away, stood Al Knowles, his arms out in front of him, talking a blue streak. Daisy made far too much racket for them to hear what he was saying.
“Do you reckon he’s got guts enough to stall her off for us?” said Tom.
“If he has, it’s the queerest thing that’s happened yet on this old island,” Kelly breathed, “an’ that’s saying something.”
The Seven revved up till she shook, and then throttled back. She ran down so low then that they thought she had shut herself down, but she caught on the last two revolutions and began to idle quietly. And then they could hear.
Al’s voice was high, hysterical. “—I come t’ he’p you, I come t’ he’p you, don’ kill me, I’ll he’p you—” He took a step forward; the dozer snorted and he fell to his knees. “I’ll wash you an’ grease you and change yo’ ile,” he said in a high singsong.
“The guy’s not human,” said Kelly wonderingly.
“He ain’t housebroke either,” Tom chuckled.
“—lemme he’p you. I’ll fix you when you break down. I’ll he’p you kill those other guys—”
“She don’t need any help!” said Tom.
“The louse,” growled Kelly. “The rotten little double-crossing polecat!” He stood up. “Hey, you Al! Come out o’ that. I mean now! If she don’t get you I will, if you don’t move.”
Al was crying now. “Shut up!” he screamed. “I know who’s bawss hereabouts, an’ so do you!” He pointed at the tractor. “She’ll kill us all if’n we don’t do what she wants!” He turned back to the machine. “I’ll k-kill ’em fo’ you. I’ll wash you and shine you up and f-fix yo’ hood. I’ll put yo’ blade back on…”
Tom reached out and caught Kelly’s leg as the tall man started out, blind mad. “Git back here,” he barked. “What you want to do — get killed for the privilege of pinnin’ his ears back?”
Kelly subsided and came back, threw himself down beside Tom, put his face in his hands. He was quivering with rage.
“Don’t take on so,” Tom said. “The man’s plumb loco. You can’t argue with him any more’n you can with Daisy, there. If he’s got to get his, Daisy’ll give it to him.”
“Aw, Tom, it ain’t that. I know he ain’t worth it, but I can’t sit up here and watch him get himself killed. I can’t, Tom.”
Tom thumped him on the shoulder, because there were simply no words to be said. Suddenly he stiffened, snapped his fingers.
“There’s our ground,” he said urgently, pointing seaward. “The water — the wet beach where the surf runs. If we can get our ground clamp out there and her somewhere near it—”