The Invaders, Benjamin Ferris [unputdownable books .txt] 📗

his people—their odd clothing, their independence, their alien language.

"Point one," he said, "most people don't like strangers."

He described the tribe's arrival without cars or wagons, without even a mark on the abandoned road. He spoke of the pumps that came to life, the river that now ran again. The progress the tribe had made seemed almost beyond human capacity.

"Point two," Jerry said, "most people don't like mysteries." He turned. "Okay, Hen."

First Henderson explained that none of the tribe had bought supplies of any kind in Wide Bend. He got corroboration from other businessmen present. Then, as he summarized the missing articles, heads began to nod. Faces got red and lists were clenched. Jerry got to his feet again. "Point three, I don't need to spell out. Much more of this and carloads of men with guns will be heading for the ridge. There'll be the kind of trouble we don't want on Wide Bend's conscience."

"Should we let 'em rob us blind?" shouted Tipton.

"No wonder they do so good!" Caruso cried.

"How about the water?" Hammond asked sarcastically. "You think they stole that, too?"

Someone shouted back, and a heated discussion raged. Jerry finally banged on the table with a sugar bowl. "Let's hear from the sheriff."

Watson hoisted his big frame, and sighed. "Jerry's right, boys. We got a nasty situation building up. Right now, my old woman's so mad at the Dark Valley people she could spit. And why? Only because she can't figger 'em out."

He brushed his mustache and looked at Tipton. "Them people are human bein's, ain't they?"

Tipton scowled, but nodded.

"Anything they done that couldn't be explained by natural causes, no matter how silly or complicated?"

Tipton thought about it, and had to shake his head.

"Believe me, boys, the only thing to get excited about is the stuff that's missin'. If they're pinchin' it, we can catch 'em, and punish 'em. They may be foreigners but they sure as hell have to obey the law of the land!"

"Now," Hammond said, "we're talking sense."

"Give me a list of what's missin'," Watson added, "an' I'll go to Dark Valley this afternoon and take a look around the place."

"Everybody satisfied?" Jerry asked.

Everybody was.

Sheriff Watson frowned at the list as Jerry drove into the first barnyard. They scattered chickens, ducks, and children—seen blurrily as they scrambled to hide. They remained a few minutes, ostensibly visiting, then went on to the next farm, and the next....

Beyond the last one, on the rise that led to the Carver cabin, Jerry stopped the car. They looked at one another. Watson rubbed his face irritably. "I'm beat, Jerry. There's somethin' here I can't get my hands nor my head onto."

"I know."

The sheriff banged one big hand against the crumpled list. "That butter churn of Mulford's. By God, I saw it! Same brand, same color. Even had scratches around the base where that old cat of his sharpened her claws."

"I know," Jerry said again. "But it had a letter 'Z' cut into it. Worn and weathered, so you'd swear it had been there for years and years."

"That spring-toothed harrow of Zimmerman's."

"Except the one we saw had twelve teeth instead of fifteen. And even the man who made it couldn't find where it had been altered or tampered with."

It had been the same with a score of other things. Each one slightly changed, just different enough to make identification impossible to prove.

Slowly, Jerry said, "Wood gets weathered, metal oxidizes, honest wear is unmistakable. And these all take time, which can't be faked."

His implication hung in the air. If the things had been stolen, then altered to avoid identification, whoever did it had more than human ability.

"Magic," Watson muttered.

"There's ... no ... such ... thing!"

"No, there absolutely ain't."

They sat looking with troubled eyes out over Dark Valley, till Jerry said abruptly, "I'm going on up to see the Carvers."

Watson reached for the door handle. "They don't have no use for me. I'll wait here. I got plenty to think about."

Jerry nodded. The sheriff would be remembering the seeds already sprouting in the kitchen gardens. The leaves that had jumped out on the old fruit trees. The lambs and calves capering in pastures washed with the green of new grass.

The road was smooth, its ditches cleared and deepened. Bright clothing napped on shiny new clotheslines (those were on the list, but how can you identify a roll of wire?). Cordwood was stacked in every yard. New shingles spotted the roofs, the windows held glass again, fresh paint glistened on porches. In the fields, corn and oats and hay were shooting upward....

Jerry found the Carvers waiting for him, their wrinkled old faces tense. They didn't answer his greeting, just jerked their heads. They led him past the cabin, through open brush, and halted at a bare place. Slowly, Jerry sank to his knees.

Except for its size, it could have been a splayed-out cougar print. But it was two feet across, and pressed more than an inch into the hard, dry soil.

Finally Ed Carver nudged Jerry. The gnarled finger pointed to a twig of wild lilac eight feet off the ground. Caught on the twig were several coarse black hairs, six inches long. Jerry looked from them back to the Carvers, then down at the ground again. He didn't speak. What was there to say?

As they started back toward the cabin, Ed Carver said harshly, "We found that two nights ago."

Jerry brooded for some distance, then he said, "Ned Ames has the best hunting dogs in the country."

They looked at him disgustedly.

"Dammit, you have to do something! Come back to town with me. We'll get some of the boys together, and hunt it down."

They had passed the cabin and reached the car. The Carver brothers looked out over Dark Valley and shook their heads. "We've lived alone," Ed said. "We'll fight alone."

When Jerry told the sheriff about the giant spoor, Watson gave a derisive snort. "Those old coots got bats in their belfries!"

"But I saw the print."

Watson dismissed such evidence with a wave of his hand. "They made it up, probably. Forget it till you see the animal itself. You'll have time to believe it then. We got enough to worry about already."

Jerry couldn't forget it. But there was a kind of reassurance in such hearty skepticism. With each passing minute, that huge print seemed more unreal.

Halfway through the valley they stopped to look at the river. The bed was half full—muddy, debris-laden, with a sheen of dust on the surface. But it was water—wet, tangible, undeniable.

Watson took off his hat and rubbed his head and swore.

"Good afternoon."

They turned. Joe Merklos was smiling at them.

"Hello," Jerry said. Watson just glowered.

Merklos moved beside them and looked down. His brilliant teeth flashed. "Good, is it not?" The guttural words came out flat, one at a time, as though shaped carefully.

"Better than money, in this part of the world." Jerry's eyes narrowed. "Did you know about the water when you bought the valley?"

Merklos smiled again. He was bare-headed, dressed in dark trousers and a loose, short-sleeved blouse. His neck and muscular forearms gleamed bronze in the sunlight. "You like what we do here?" he asked in his deep, hesitant manner.

"You've done wonders," Watson said shortly.

Merklos' smoky eyes held Jerry's. "My people are used to work."

Slowly, significantly, Watson said, "The thing we don't understand is how you managed to bring so much equipment. The exact things you needed—right down to the last nail."

Merklos' inscrutable gaze swung around. The smile lingered on his face. "We are a careful people. We plan a long way ahead."

Watson opened his mouth for another question—and shut it. Merklos' attention had left them. The man was listening, his head slightly cocked. After a moment he turned. "I am happy to see you making a visit. I hope you come again." He nodded and walked swiftly away.

Wordlessly, Jerry and the sheriff got back in the car. "Could you hear what he was listening to?" Jerry muttered.

"I didn't hear a thing."

"Notice anything else about Dark Valley?"

Watson shook his head.

"No flowers. Not one dog." Jerry's hand tightened on the steering-wheel. "And who has ever gotten a single, clear look at one of the kids?"

Jerry spent a restless night. On the way to his office the next morning he met Watson, talking to a farmer on the courthouse steps.

"Listen to Carson, here," the sheriff said grimly.

Carson's straw hat bobbed as he talked. "I'm waitin' to see the farm adviser. Somethin's gone wrong out at my place on the South Fork. I'm on good bottom land—highest yield in the county. But in the last two, three weeks my corn, my wheat, even my berries has stopped growin'!"

Jerry's eyes jumped to Watson.

"Yep," Carson went on, "every single ear o' corn is still a nubbin." He threw out his arms. "And, by God, even my wife's radishes has stood still. Ain't anything on earth that'll slow up a radish."

"How about other stuff? How about eggs?"

"Same thing. Cut right down. Hens lay one in ten now, mebbe. An' my alfalfa has turned a funny gray-green. Even the fruit—"

"What about the river?" Watson broke in. "You still got water in the South Fork?"

"Way down for this time o' year. But we got enough."

Several people had stopped to listen. One of them, a big, tow-headed Swede, burst out excitedly. "Mister, you got the same trouble as my cousin. His crops, they're growin' backwards!"

There was more of the same impossible talk. Jerry made an excuse to get away to his office. He sat at his desk and stared out the window.

There wasn't any problem, he tried to tell himself. Anything he could not measure by experience and logic was out. And that had to include giant paw-prints and mysteriously missing objects as well as radishes that wouldn't grow.

Dark Valley was taking on life and freshness. Fact. The South Fork, and portions of the North Fork, seemed to be losing fertility. Fact. But to conclude from this that Dark Valley was gaining at the expense of the others—that was the road no reasonable man could allow himself to take.

From his window, he saw the huge old trees that shaded Wide Bend. They looked suddenly wrong. Weren't they less green, less thick than before? The buildings and streets looked dingier, too. And when did all those broken fences, cracked windows, missing shingles show up...?

Jerry lunged from his chair and strode up and down the room. Then the telephone bell tore through his nerves. He grabbed the instrument.

"Watson. I just wanted to tell you, two boys have been reported missin'."

"No!"

"The Simmons kids. But they've run away before. They'll be back."

Jerry's hand went slowly down. The sheriff's voice echoed hollowly from the lowered receiver. "Well, won't they?"

It was after midnight when the doorbell rang. It didn't wake Jerry—he was sitting in bed, staring into the darkness. There was a pile of books beside him; he knocked them over getting up to answer the door.

Mike Carver stumbled in. He dropped into a chair, panting. Jerry went for a bottle and glass. Carver gulped the drink, then held the tumbler out for another.

"I run all the way down the ridge," he gasped, "till I catched a ride. I figgered you ought to know what happened. It got my brother Ed."

Jerry's lean face hardened.

"Yeah. It was prowlin' around. We went after it, an' shot it."

"But you said ..."

"I said it killed Ed." The old lips tightened. "We gave it one slug through the heart and one through the head. They didn't even slow it down."

"You mean," Jerry asked carefully, "that they didn't have any effect at all?"

Mike nodded. He tipped the glass, wiped his ragged sleeve across his face, and rose.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to the cabin."

"Mike, you can't go there!"

"That's where my brother's body is."

"Look," Jerry said evenly, "you can't help him now. Stay here with me, and we'll go up in the morning."

Carver shook his head. "My brother's there at the cabin. I got to set up with him." There was no arguing against that tone of simple and utter finality.

"All right. Wait till I get some clothes on, and I'll drive you back."

A few minutes later they passed through Wide Bend's deserted streets and started out the road to the valley. Carver rolled down his window and spat tobacco juice. "Feller was up to see us," he said gloomily. "Told us people was losin' things all over the county—includin' two kids. Said crops has shrunk. Said water in the forks is way down."

"He's right."

"Said people were gettin' the idea Dark Valley was livin' off the rest of the land. Feedin' on it, like a parasite. How crazy you think that is?"

Slowly, Jerry said, "I'm not sure it's crazy at all."

Carver