Topic: The Alien Sheriff

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 15:53 EST

What looked like a star to me kept falling. Soon, even a dummy like Renner could have told it was no star.

"Take cover!" I shouted to Caleb. "It's coming on us."

He nodded, silenced by fear.

I spotted a large boulder and crouched by that, doubting it would do any good. A thing like that falls on you, you're a dead man. Caleb squatted next to me.

"Put your head between your knees," I instructed and did so myself.

He complied immediately.

When it finally hit, the BOOM! CRASH! BOOM! was the loudest noise I'd ever heard. Having worked with cannons and explosives in the Army, I've heard some loud noises before.

The falling star struck about a quarter-mile from where Caleb and I crouched. I couldn't stop coughing as I tried to breathe. The dust kept coming down, coating my lungs as well as my clothes.

"You all right?" I managed to say.

My son coughed in reply.

I slowly rose to my full height, came out from behind the boulder that saved our lives and surveyed the devastation in the area.

At first, I couldn't see much. My eyes stung and watered from the smoke caused by the small fires the object had ignited. There was plenty of kindling with the drought.

An elongated crater had been blasted into the side of the hill. Within a rough perimeter, the dirt, trees, grass and rocks on the landscape were scorched, partially buried or kicked up and thrown - sometimes all three. A human or animal wouldn't have survived that impact. Indeed, I saw many of the dead or dying, including a nice buck. The boulder Caleb and I took cover behind, thank the Lord, was outside of the circle of death.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 15:54 EST

The power of the explosion and the fact that I was still alive shocked me. That was one of those brushes with death a person has that he feels lucky to avoid. I took the Lord's name in vain. It was all I could say, surveying the devastation

That oath was also served as a prayer for rain. If the wind blew southeast for long enough, the fires could take hold and spread to the K-10, even from this distance, about ten miles away. If wildfires ravaged the range, Caleb and I would do what we could, but most likely we'd join Renner in starving in spite of prudent planning. It would all go for naught!

It usually doesn't do a body any good worrying about what could happen. You're just plain better off concentrating on what did happen. I was curious to see what had crashed.

In addition to the buck, I saw a brown bear with a bent spine and other injuries. It writhed and moaned in pain, struggling for life and not getting any air after having been punctured by a number of bulleting rocks. I drew my .45 revolver and put a bullet between its eyes. I'm partial to those majestic creatures. I believe if I'd been born an Indian, the bear would be my spirit animal. They treat me good, and that's why I treated this one good. I've never lost one of my head to a bear attack. And yes, I can tell the difference between a bear mark and that of a wolf.

It had a fine winter coat that would keep someone warm next year. Edith could mend the punctures made by the rocks, I figured.

I considered it a gift from God. I would have never taken one under any other conditions, preferring beaver and rabbit. I wanted Caleb to skin it for me while I inspected the crater

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 15:55 EST

"Caleb' Boy' You all right?"

"Yeah," he said, slowly rising, grateful to be alive.

I set him to work. "Unhitch your knife and fetch me that bear skin. That's going to make one of us a fine coat."

"What was that, Pa, that fell out of the sky?"

"Don't know. While you're skinning, I'll be looking."

He kicked the ground. "I want to see too! Let me come with you Pa!"

Scowling, I said, "You just shut up and do as you're told. We can't waste time lollygagging around. I'm not going to spend much time looking around. We've got to get to Contention. I'll tell you what?s up there when I get back. Skinning that bear is going to take a good piece of time. Get to work."

As I ascended the sides of the crater, I was reminded of the passage from Ezekiel 1 in the Old Testament and some ministers I heard whose sermons predicted the end of the world. I realized that if whatever fell out of the sky, had been bigger and faster, it might have flattened a much wider area - with me and my boy in it. Call it the saving hand of God or blind luck, whatever, having come so close to losing it, I truly appreciated my life at that moment.

There, at the bottom of the crater, lay the astounding cause of the destruction: a saucer-shaped craft. On one side was a panel that I reasoned was a door after trying to figure out what else it could be. Even a mongoloid like Renner could have seen it was a conveyance of some kind and the person that is going to be driving the conveyance has to have some way of getting in it. The impact caused the metal around the door of the saucer to bend, practically begging me to come over and pry it open and see what was inside.

Forget the bearskin. I knew I'd regret spurning heaven's gift, however. When the buzzards, ants and other scavengers got to it, and they would, they'd ruin the whole thing.

Curiosity had just got better of me as it sometimes does. "Caleb! Get up here!" I ordered.

I didn't need to tell him to stop skinning twice. He had no appreciation for a fine animal or the value of things. He ran up breathlessly, showing he could hurry when he wanted to, appearing almost instantly at my side. "What' . . . What in tarnation is that?"

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 15:57 EST

"We're going to see. Fetch me a heavy stick and run back up."

Caleb found one from among the trees that the explosion had discarded. He scrambled back up the side of the hill. You could tell from the look in his eyes that this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. Was I just too plain old to know that kind of excitement' I wasn't excited, not like that. I felt like I was entering some kind of troubling territory. I wanted to be back on the trail to Contention City. I had business to do that it wouldn't do to forget. Still, I couldn't ignore this.

Grabbing my hatchet that I stored in '49er's saddlebag, I chopped off the roots and branches. I fashioned a dull edge on the top of the improvised lever as quickly as I could. The trunk was too thick to work into the crack otherwise. I took as little of the green wood off as I could, so as not to weaken the lever. I didn't know what I could use to pry open the door if my hastily made lever didn't work. This one was perfect.

"I'll be fit to be tied if I don't find out what?s in this . . . whatever it is."

"Do you have any idea what it is?"

"No."

"It came out of the sky."

"I saw that."

"I wonder what it can be?"

I didn't say anything.

Caleb nodded as if I said something of significance. "I wonder where this comes from?" he said.

I didn't speculate out loud. I just concentrated on working. I can't talk and work quickly at the same time.

I jimmied the edge of my improvised crowbar in the fold and my boy and I put all of our weight and strength on that lever until I thought that the wood would surely splinter and rend. I was pleasantly surprised when it didn't. They don't call them plants ironwood for nothing.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 15:57 EST

Amazingly and gradually we defeated the metal. The door slowly bent back. The craft's structure had been already partially weakened by the crash, otherwise I'm sure we couldn't have affected it, solid as the metal was, and knowing what I later learned about the craft's origins later. The further we bent the door back, the better able I was to hear the groans issuing from inside. It didn't take a genius to realize something living was trapped in there. The question: How long could it go on living after such a horrific crash?

We figured whatever was groaning was probably dying. That reinforced our determination to get inside. We jammed the stick further into the opening. From there, we stood with our boots sticking inside and lifted using all of the strength we had in our legs and backs. After reaching a certain point, the strain let up. Giving way, popping, bending and groaning, the door slowly opened.

When we had the door fully open, I almost dropped it before I caught my breath. The hazy sunlight streamed in, revealing the mysteries inside the craft, a phantasmagoria of technology unimagined. If I hadn't had a drink in a week, I would have doubts about whether I was sober.

The creatures inside looked roughly human. I say roughly because their proportions weren't correct. Especially their heads. They were too big. They were unlike any other animal that I had ever seen either. I didn't seriously consider that they could be animals. There would be no way mere animals could build and drive a contraption like this.

Their suits looked like a woodcut out of a King Arthur storybook, except that instead of metal armor, they were sewn out of a silver metallic fabric that, to the touch, felt something like muslin. I'm sure King Arthur would have given anything for fabric like that if it protected from sword blows the way that steel and chain armor did. It was light.

The dark visor over their heads was constructed out of a glass that couldn't be seen through.

As amazing as all of this was to my widened eyes and queasy stomach, perhaps the most amazing thing was that one of the creatures was stirring and the other wasn't. How anything could have survived such a crash and explosion to have even been able to stir afterwards, I will never be able to fathom.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 15:59 EST

"Where do you think they come from Pa?"

"How am I supposed to know?" I snapped. Discovering things I knew nothing about frightened me and frazzled my nerves. "Maybe they're from Asia or someplace like that. Grab the one that's moving. Let's get him out."

I knew there was no way the Chinese had crafts like this that could fly through the air, not when they were having to send all of their people over here to work on the railroad. If they could build something like this, they surely could build their own railroad.

One has to reason that if they could build something like this, what need would they have with a railroad? This kind of craft, even though it crashed, was not the work of people who bothered with such things as railroads.

It gradually began to dawn on me that what I was looking at didn't come from Earth. But how could I say that out loud to Caleb and not sound crazy' At the time, we believed God created us to be the only intelligent creatures in the universe, with the black, red and yellow man and the Arab being below the white man in intelligence. The white man was supposed to rank as master of the Earth. Still, even a white man couldn't build something like this flying ship. I found it all very troubling.

Furthermore, both of these creatures were smaller than your typical Chinese railroad worker, and, like I said before, with different body proportions.

I guessed they were from China, with plenty of doubts about my guess. I'd been to the hills around San Francisco years before and had seen a few different types of orientals - but I'd never been to the Orient and there was no way that I'd seen every type of Oriental. A Swede would look different from a Frenchman even though both came from Europe. These could be of a type that didn't have to come to the United States to work on the railroad, I figured.

I tried to wedge myself in the door so that I could get a better grip on the shoulders of the driver. "The only way for sure that we're going to find out more about this contraption and about this creature is if we can get him out of here."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 15:59 EST

The creature groaned in pain when I started to lift him out of the ship, but as there was no other way to get him out. I ignored the groans and went on.

"Sorry if this hurts you," I said, aware he probably couldn't understand English. "I've got to get you out of here."

I was aware that when you jar people with a back injury that, even after they heal, they sometimes can't move their legs and arms. My wife was an intelligent woman who studied medicine. We had many interesting conversations about the topic. I hoped whatever race this man was part of, that the same fate wouldn't befall him, that God had seen fit to build him different from us.

"You all right, sir?" I asked the creature when I laid him out on the ground. I slipped the visor off of him, and found out that I'd been thinking correctly. He was a creature. No man looked like he did, with his bald head, enlarged, coal-colored eyes and greenish cast to his skin.

This was shaping up to be the weirdest day of my life. "So you from China?"

He didn't answer.

After I laid him on the scorched earth, the creature rocked himself and brushed at something that wasn't there. It looked to me like he was possessed, but I knew that he probably injured his head.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:00 EST

Edith told me people acted funny sometimes after they had a head injury. I wished I'd been paying better attention to what she was saying when she said it. I also wished Edith was there, because she's studied lots of medicine. She'd do better at it than I would.

The next best thing to having her here would be to take him to her. There was no other place to take him to anyway. "Get me '49er, Caleb. We need to take him home to Mom."

I didn't bother removing the creature's clothes because I heard that could make a man bleed even more, if he was bleeding.

Caleb didn't move, riveted to the ground by the shock of the creature's appearance.

"Look, son, he might be uglier than Medusa's little sister, but he's still one of God's creatures and we've got to try to save his life. Now go fetch '49er and be quick about it!" I thundered.

That got him to move. It's terrible how I sometimes have to yell at him to get him to do anything. Together we loaded him onto my horse.

"Now ride back with him," I said, figuring my horse could easily hold both my boy and the alien. They couldn't have weighted more than 230 pounds (104.3 kilograms) put together. "I'm going to go through the saucer and see what?s in there, see if that other one is alive, though I doubt it. I'll be back at the ranch with Bear in a bit," I said.

"What about the bear, Pa?" he asked.

"Never mind about the bear. Git!" I said. "You don't see something like this everyday - if you ever see it at all."

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:01 EST

After we moved the first creature, I realized I could move the second one alone. They only weighed half as much as a man.

I checked to see if he really was dead. I didn't see him breathing or moving. When I removed the inside of his faceplate, I found it covered with blood. Then, I was sure that the creature was dead. I was surprised to see that the blood was red, looking like it could have come from the inside of a person. I started to think again that maybe this was a new type of oriental I'd never seen before.

Opening the boxes and bags I took out of the craft, I tried to figure out what the items were for. I couldn't, and wouldn't, guess. One of the objects that I found in great quantity looked like a nail with thin curling ends. They weren't metal. They were more like the hard skin that a fingernail is made out of.

There was no way I'd try to build a house with one of those. Something like that wouldn't hold wood very well and would break when you hammered.

I guessed they weren't intended to be used as nails, though that's what they looked like. If creatures were building things to fly around in like this craft that they'd be using a different type of nail.

The fake nails intrigued me. I took all of them because the creature might need them when his condition improved. He also might be able to tell me what they were used for. I'd accept something of the sort as a payment.

Considering that the creature might not get better, my next hope was that I could find somebody who could do something with all that I was recovering. At the very least these things would give my son and I proof that all this had happened when I told this story to others. Not that I really cared: I knew what had happened. If somebody didn't want to believe us, they wouldn't. They'd probably explain the whole story away by telling us that we grew out our fingernails, cut them, and shaped them into different weird objects and call us liars. Who knows what kind of explanation they'd come up with.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:02 EST

I had to have the ship. Let them try to explain that one away. I had to think of a way to get it back to the ranch. That would be tough for anybody else to explain away. And, maybe if the creature got better, he could fix it and take me for a ride in it. Ever since I was a boy I'd wanted to fly.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

When I returned to the K-10, my wife was already hard at work trying to save the creature's life.

"How's he doing?" I asked her, removing my hat as I stepped inside. She had me trained as she was always fussy when it came to manners.

"He seems to be resting comfortably when I leave him alone. He doesn't resist when I try to examine him. Hope he lives."

"Me too." I said. "Later, go and see the things I was pulling off that skyship. Someday I'd like to find out what they do. Ain't nobody going to call us liars when they see this weird stuff."

"Buck, I don't think he's human," she said, tucking the creature into the quilts.

"You don't think maybe he's some kind of Oriental?"

"No. I've heard stories about creatures like this, creatures from another world," Edith said.

"I always thought they were made up."

"I guess not," she replied. "What exactly happened? From here it sounded like some kind of a cannon went off."

I shrugged. "Don't really know for sure. Probably the skyship got hit by some lightning from that storm that was blowing up in the sky.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:02 EST

"I'm taking Guzm"n and Nu"ez back to see if there's anything else we can get from the ship. Don't think I can bring the whole ship back, so tomorrow why don't you go and see it' Becky can watch this critter."

Though I was hungry, I didn't wait for the victuals Mrs. Nu"ez was fixing up that afternoon in the kitchen. Getting back to that wreck was more interesting than eating, a rare opinion for me.

Caleb unloaded the bags and boxes I'd fastened onto '49er as I rounded up Nu"ez and Guzm"n.

"Grab a lantern and hitch up the wagon, hombres. It's going to be dark before we get back," I said.

They eagerly performed both tasks. "What are we going to see when we get there?" they asked.

"If I told you, you probably wouldn't believe me. You just better wait for yourself."

————————————————————————— ———————————————

The craft was gone when I returned with my men. I stood in the middle of the crater, describing what Caleb and I had seen. I was grateful my men believed everything. They'd seen the proof, the strange creature we'd rescued as well as the material I'd taken out of the skyship. Who couldn't help but believe?

"Damn," I said, cursing the disappointment of the missing skyship and the scavenged bear carcass, images that were becoming more fully fixed in the forefront my mind.

I won't ever forget them.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:03 EST

The creature recovered from his injuries faster than anybody Edith had ever seen, though it didn't seem fast to me. I found the wait irritatingly slow. With hundreds of questions for the creature, I was impatient for him to heal so he could do things for himself. Mainly, however, I wanted him to learn English so I could talk to him and unveil the mystery of his existence.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

When it came to medical questions, Edith knew what she was talking about as much as a regular doctor in the city did. She studied medicine as avidly as some women studied a newspaper's society page. She was game to try anything and followed the procedures step-by-step like an instruction book always trying to figure out the sense behind them. Being miles away from Tucson or Contention City, the patient often had no other alternative. Additionally, it also helped that she worked for less than a full-fledged doctor.

She'd been inspired by tragedy to take up doctoring. Two years after she gave birth to Caleb, she delivered a baby we named Anthony. He died in his sleep when he was but one week old.

After our second son's death, I drank more than I had in years. Edith didn't sleep at night. When she did, she'd sob and wail from nightmares and wake me up. I'd go sleepless right beside her. Those nightmares continued long after the usual time when a baby starts sleeping through the night.

Common sense led us to expect it. He'd been born when she was only six and a half months along in her pregnancy. He started out tiny, stayed that way, and kept getting sicker. There wasn't anything either she, I or the doctor could do to halt the decline in his health.

From the start, Anthony had a hard time breathing. Because of that, he had difficulty nursing. Edith fixated on the belief that if she could have gotten him to breathe easier, he wouldn't have died.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:04 EST

Some people would have chalked his death up to being God's will. Not Edith. She saw it as a calling to use her mind to fight death, determined none of her other children were going to die. The vicious way she challenged death reminded me of a mother bear protecting her cubs. When she exhausted all of the books she could find about baby illnesses, she started reading up on adult afflictions, an extension of her newfound interests.

It was a sacrifice for us to buy the books. The Sears catalog didn't carry them. She had us travel to Tucson to speak to a doctor who gave her the address of a medical publisher.

When they arrived, it was a problem to find time to read them. She found herself reading them aloud to Becky and Caleb as they sat upon her knee.

So that she could understand the Latin words in the books, she had me give her a copy of Grey's Anatomy for our anniversary. I'd never seen a woman so serious about anything.

"Doing this is more useful than crying," she said.

"And it helps me sleep better at night, too," I rejoined. Most times, I didn't care.

Word got out how she studied medicine. The farming and ranching families in the area came to her when they were sick. There were no white doctors, except in Tucson, a day's hard ride. Nobody except the foolish or desperate trusted the Indian remedies.

She wouldn't admit it but she'd would break out in a smile of morbid happiness when someone rode up with sickness or injury. "What are you so happy about woman?" I said in a whisper when Clint Dallas's boy hobbled into our living room with an ankle he twisted running away from a rattlesnake.

"You're mistaken. I'm not happy," she whispered in reply.

"You're smiling. That means you're happy."

"I want the boy to relax."

"Come on. He's as relaxed as it gets.?

"I guess I want to use my skills."

"Fine. If some good comes out of that boy hurting himself, your happiness is it."

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:05 EST

Sometimes a month would go by where none of our neighbors would be sick. I'd get irritated because there she'd be sitting around reading her texts and I'd get a hankering for apple pie. I'd wish she baked all the time like other women did. I wouldn't be entirely mad, just irritated because I'd want pie or sweetbread or something. I'd be working the range and there she would be sitting, reading. Reading wasn't work. I'd wish she hadn't taken Anthony's death so hard. I'd wish for a normal wife.

It was months before it dawned on me how she couldn't help the way she was any more than a rooster can help crowing at a sunrise or that some dogs like stealing chickens.

Then, when I was in the middle of my wishing, Caleb and Becky developed sicknesses and I'd thank God for Edith and her proclivities. If anybody could help them get better, she could.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:06 EST

Then, six of our neighbors would show up at our door at different times of the day to be treated for a variety of afflictions. Our house would turn into the clinic.

After the exhausting day, Edith wanted to scream and pull her hair out because she was needed so badly. I would too. Those people wouldn't offer to pay anything. They'd expected it because neighbors help neighbors. We were doing all the helping. There was no money in it because we couldn't afford to keep bismuth, aloe pills or a lot of other medicines and you need those. Also, there was the belief that a doctor would come to you. Edith wasn't going to do that.

Sometimes one of the women would ride back here with a cake or pie. That would make it all almost worth it. I knew it was the best they could do. Nobody out there was very rich.

That night, after we'd tuckered out from exhaustion and collapsed into bed, the Rogers boy came and begged Edith to hurry out to their place because his daddy fell over and wouldn't wake up.

I refused to let her go see Rogers. I worried about her safety. She was not to go anywhere after dark no matter who was dying. That led up to the worst fight we ever had.

"You don't tell me what to do Buck Turner!" she screamed.

"Mr. Rogers is a good man. The Lord is going to look after him just fine. You ain't going to be doing nobody no good when you're dead cause some bandit killed you, are you? Not everybody is good like you. There ain't anybody who can doctor the doctor, is there?" I said.

That shut her up. There was nothing she could say to that.

Twelve-year-old Justin, Rogers' boy, had been sent to fetch my wife. He spoke up: "I'll see to her."

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:07 EST

I wanted to laugh. What could he do against an Indian or vagabond" He didn't want to lose his daddy. I would have ridden with them, but then who would have seen to Caleb and Becky' I had a ranch to run and needed my sleep. They couldn't afford to pay, like the rest. Still, Edith might be able to help him.

"I know you're a good kid, and we all need to pray for your daddy, but you can never tell what?s out there in the middle of the night: Indians; bandits; other bad men. You all set out at first light. It's only two hours away. You're better able to protect yourself in daylight."

When word of what I had said spread around, nobody ever again came for my wife in the middle of the night. I'm sure everyone talked about me like I was some kind of an ogre. I didn't really care. Sense was sense.

Rogers didn't die from the brain fever anyway. In the morning, Edith gave him something to ease his suffering. He recovered on his own. People would have said all kinds of unkind things about me if he did die. I didn't care about that either. They wouldn't have to be raising Caleb and Becky alone either.

Anyway, I don't think I'm that bad as a person. Some men wouldn't have wanted their wives studying medicine, thinking they wouldn't attend to the house. It wasn't my fault the people around here grew to depend on her.

When she started, the house was frequently a mess and I'd get a meager dinner at the end of a long, hard day. There wasn't much I could say about that because Edith was still mourning Anthony and I felt sorry for her. We had to pay Guzm"n and Nunez's wives to pick up Edith's workload and send over dinner. The women worked out things among the three of them, becoming fast friends. She treated them and their families for free and when they made dinner, they often bought over some.

My old friend Jedidiah Buckmaster would have never allowed his wife to study medicine. "Don't see how any man can do that - even you. They'll get to thinking they're the boss then. Doctoring is a man's job. You get that out of her mind or you are going to be sorry."

Still, Jed's wife and five kids came to see Edith when they were sick. Not Jed though. I suspect he once rode all the way to Contention City to see a doctor for a cough that wouldn't go away rather than be treated by my wife. He wasn't going to trust a woman. (He never said that to me. If he had, he wouldn't have said much more, and that would have been that. I don't believe in suffering the beliefs of fools.)

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:07 EST

Edith was hurt how he'd ridden so far. In spite of playing the role of a doctor, she was still very much a woman. She felt slighted if the people in the area didn't consult her about their medical problems. I could tell because she talked about it for days.

I told her not to worry about Jed. He has his own opinions about women. That was just the way he was and there wasn't anybody who could change him. If he was going to be stupid, let him make the ride, I added. We'd been friends since our cattle driving days. We'd always been friends. None of that was going to change.

Later, I had my fun razzing Jed about what a good doctor my wife was and how he was stupid for riding to Contention City when he could have gotten the treatment he needed from her. I got him thinking.

I'm proud to say I'm more practical than prideful. I don't give a lick about what anybody thinks of me. I know it would be downright useful having a wife who knew something about medicine. Her job made her happy. A man with a happy wife is going to be a happy man, I say.

I ranched. She doctored. It was as good of a fit as any in marriage and it worked for the two of us and there wasn't anything to be ashamed of. There wasn't anything anybody could do or say that mattered.

Ike Renner had said funny words about her "career." It gave me yet another reason to take my shotgun down to his spread and put a few holes in his miserable carcass. Except when the trouble affected his brood, for children are innocents, I forbade her to go over there - or to have them come over here. She didn't seem to mind.

She didn't go too far with her idealism. I loved that about her.

And that there was just another example of the Renner's stupidity. You don't go and anger the only doctor for miles around. You never know when you might need her services.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:08 EST

Too many couples have marriages where they can't talk with each other. Edith had all of the good points of a man and the obvious attributes of a woman with just enough of their peculiarities, like the insistence on manners, to keep me interested in her. She was a great wife. I talked to her about the crops and the cattle and she'd tell me something about her doctoring and what was going on in the area. When people came to her with their problems, they'd bring news as well.

When I rescued the creature from its skyship, all of the other subjects, except what the Renners were doing, were lost. From that point on we talked mainly of speculations and few facts about the creature. Not much else.

He was Edith's favorite patient of all time, though she wouldn't have claimed a favorite. She fretted about him more than she did me, Caleb, Becky or anybody else around here.

The books had most of the answers for all of us. She'd have been remiss if she didn't follow the instructions. But for this creature, "I've got to figure it out for myself," she said to me when we were in bed at night. She made more notes to herself on the creature than she had for any patient before.

"If he dies then this is going to be a record of him," she said of the notes and choppy sketches she'd made. She had planned to send them to the New York publisher we'd bought our books from.

"Good. Then maybe the publishers can pay us for a change instead of us always paying them," I quipped. She was too serious sometimes. I knew she might take that as a slight on her vocation. Then: "I can see that you're really happy. You've got somebody interesting to work on."

"I'm not happy. Just interested. He's hurt. It's wrong to get happy cause somebody's hurt," she insisted unconvincingly. She never admits being happy over somebody's pain.

"You're happy. Come on," I said, chuckling. "I can see that sparkle in your eyes. It's the same in Caleb's eyes as he was running up the hill. It can get pretty boring living out here. Same things, varying with the seasons, day in and day out until we scream. Same gossip. Jed Buckmaster's got a temper. Rogers gone crazy. Molly Dallas tipples. The Renners are a pack of fools."

"Well . . . ," she said.

"Ain't no shame in admitting it."

"Well, I do wonder about where he comes from."

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:15 EST

"I do too. This creature falls out of the sky and you know that there's more to the world than no rain, Renner's cheating and stealing and the seasons."

Within a week Edith and my daughter put away the bedpan. The women helped him get up from the straw tick and walk to the privy or chamber pot. The creature let them know when he needed to urinate or defecate by knocking on the wooden floor and pointing to the chamber pot.

It hurt him to move. You could tell that by the way his eyelids shut tight and wrinkled and the way his mouth would form into an 'O' of pain when he moved.

They dressed him in one of my nightshirts. His privates looked something like a normal man's, but smaller. He was pretty much like a human, except for the skin tone, the eyes, the lack of facial and body hair. He had the five fingers and five toes. They, however, were about a quarter-again longer than ours. All of his limbs were. Also, his skin felt a little more scaly - he didn't have the little hairs covering his body like a man did. Also, he didn't have as much muscle as a man.

Edith noted the differences in the journal she kept and said that to find any more differences, Edith said she'd have to dissect him. She wished the other creature who crashed along with him hadn't disappeared. She said she'd have found a way to get the dissection equipment she needed, even made do with the knives she had in the kitchen. The thought occurred to her that maybe it was all for the best - she didn't know how the creature would feel about his friend's dead body getting cut up.

Some of the items I recovered from his skyship were soft. Others, like the funny nails, were hard. The soft, I reasoned, was food. It turned out that I was right. I knew very well that I might not have been. You can eat all soft things.

There wasn't enough of those soft tubes to feed him with for more than a month. Probably less, I guessed, once his appetite returned. Having an accident of any kind can knock a body back for quite a spell. Why shouldn't some stranger be the same way' He ate barely one, one-inch tube (2.54 centimeters) each day. We just peeled the top off and plopped the insides in his mouth. Somehow he got the ideas across to us. It didn't look like enough food to feed a baby, but it might have been filling. I didn't try one because it didn't look appetizing. It might have been to a green skinned alien like that one, I figured.

He needed all of them if he was going to live.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:16 EST

We had no idea what we were going to do when those few morsels ran out. I just wished that whoever or whatever took the wrecked skyship had let me take more of that food out of it before they took it away. There were boxes I'd left alone because I didn't have enough cord and room to strap it onto '49er. I wished I had a wagon.

He had to get started eating human foods. We fed him a variety of foods, trying everything, even things we wouldn't find appetizing ourselves.

"You can't tell what someone like him will eat," Edith reasoned.

The creature preferred grains and vegetables to meat, becoming sick and throwing up the first time he ate a steak.

"If everybody was like that then the K-10 would be out of business," I noted. Good thing everybody wasn't.

Later, he was somehow able to tolerate it, trying meat again on his own. I figured it was the flank cut I gave him before - but why would one cut of meat be so different to someone's constitution than another? I figured he just adapted to the food.

When it seemed he was getting enough to eat and was getting stronger, the next challenge was learning to communicate with him, a task Becky and Edith worked on by way of asking him about his body and where it hurt and those other things doctors ask their patients. The creature answered with clicks, clacks and grunts, a weird language his own.

"Can't make out that," Edith said.

"*Click**Cla-ck**Grrunt***," I replied in mock imitation.

Two days after the crash, I rode into Contention City to talk with Sheriff Brucker about the situation between Renner and me. Caleb, who wanted to look at the girls, went with me.

Unlike Caleb, I wanted to get home. I was impatient to find out about the things I salvaged from his wreckage. I had a million questions about the creature's past that begged to be asked.

It was the first time in years I didn't feel tempted to dawdle in the city.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:17 EST

Jedidiah Buckmaster and I didn't agree about most subjects, but we did agree on the things that mattered most: religion; politics and business. That's why he was as close to me as a brother, closer than my natural brother up in Montana. I never saw Joseph anymore, and he wasn't much of a writer. He'd sent one letter in ten years.

But there was Jed, a dozen miles away as a crow flies, ready to fill Joseph's shoes. We were both sixteen when we met punching cattle in Texas. He'd come west from Virginia to find work and adventure, not knowing a thing about being a cowboy. Since I'd been born in Texas and raised around crops and cattle, I helped Jed out I could. Not only was it the right thing to do, but also it was funny, trying to watch him learn how to handle a rope, fire a rifle accurately mounted and calm an enraged bull.

We worked closely together for a couple years. Afterward, we said our goodbyes and went separate ways, tired of the itinerant lifestyle and aware that the only cattle drives in the future were going to be the ones in our memories. Times were changing. The west was fencing off.

Unknown to each other, we both met women and settled in southeastern Arizona. I was almost shocked to death a few years later the day I met him, Elizabeth and their children heading west driving a wagon filled with all their worldly possessions. I couldn't believe what my eyes were telling me when they were seeing him. The world isn't as big as you sometimes think it is.

We visited occasionally. He lived down the trail on the way to Contention City. We played a game of highly competitive horseshoes, sat, had a few glasses of whatever liquor he made, talked about our work, our families and old times.

Some people would have a problem with our ritual, but I don't drink unless it's with another man on a social occasion. I don't subscribe to Temperance Union notions. God Himself put alcohol on this Earth. Its existence means he doesn't favor temperance. It's there if we choose to employ it. Like any gift, it can be abused.

If there was a way Jed Buckmaster and Ike Renner could trade ranches, I'd be all for it. I'd love to have my old Virginia buckskin buddy as a neighbor. I'm sure Renner would like to trade ranches, his being in the run down condition it is.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:18 EST

That was a foolish notion because there was no way Jed would agree and he'd be a fool to. The J/B Ranch was weathering the drought in fine fashion, even better than mine. I won't take anything away from him. Jed has always been hard working. Nowadays he's hard-working and knowledgeable.

Jed's thoughts on Renner were the same as mine: "You've got to get rid of that man somehow. He's going to drag your operation right down along with his."

"Don't I know it." I was visiting, getting back from Contention City the second time I went to see Brucker about the same issue, sipping his Monongahela.

"Can't say you wouldn't be justified going over there and shooting him right now."

"Couldn't do that," I said. "Wouldn't be right."

"Men have killed for less."

I shrugged. "I know. Just never fancied myself a murderer."

He smiled. "That wife of yours got to you with all that doctoring."

"No."

"You're the good sort even if you've been whipped. Salt of the Earth. You know what you have to do. You tried talking to him again?"

"I did. He won't listen. Never would. The man was just plain stupid before," I said, my voice quivering with anger. Thinking about it still makes me angry. "Now he's stupid and desperate." I shook my head.

It takes as much brains as brawn to succeed in agriculture. Renner had all the brawn he needed, but was painfully short of brains. Having a good brain is like having a good, strong medicine against self-created troubles.

Jed and I would have both liked to spend all our money buying the latest and greatest of everything from back East. Who wouldn't' We don't. Before buying anything, we ask ourselves if we're going to regret these purchases tomorrow. When you make your living from the land, it's boom and bust. You've always got to save for the future. Still, you don't want to be a skinflint either. A skinflint will worry too much about taking out loans. You've got to spend money to make money. It's all about being smart.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:19 EST

"From the first, it was all coming to this," I said of the situation between Ike Renner and me. "I tried talking to him, acting like it was all some kind of mistake. He allowed it was. Then I kept seeing his cattle on my land and watched him snip the barbwire to let them across. I told him if I saw him do it again, I'd shoot his cattle the next time. He says, 'You do that and I'll shoot you.' I could see all that talk wasn't leading anywhere and told him: 'You don't need to go shooting anybody, and I don't need to go shooting cattle.'

"He minds his manners for a while but then I noticed his cattle coming over again, like he's daring me to go through with my threat. Like he doesn't care," I said.

"He doesn't care," Jed agreed.

"This is bad for business."

Jed nodded and chuckled. "A fool like Renner doesn't care about business or what?s fair. That's why he's in the means he's in right now.

"What did the sheriff say when you rode in to talk to him?"

"He says we need to handle it ourselves. He can't come and he's awfully sorry. He wouldn't have chosen to make the jurisdiction so large. He knows we're suffering out here from the drought and that tempers are growing short. He says I should encourage Renner to get out of the cattle business and go work in a mine."

"Well?" Jed said, seeing my exasperation. "Doesn't sound like a halfway bad idea."

"Do you think Renner would listen to me? He's got it in his mind how my property is his property and that I'm his enemy and that's all there is to it."

"I'd talk to him," Jed offered.

"That wouldn't do any good either," I said. "Renner knows you and I are buddies. He'd see you as me."

"Then I don't see there's anything you can do. It's war. You see one of his cattle on your side of the fence, you shoot it. You see ten, you shoot ten. That way nobody can accuse you of rustling. You see him cutting your fence, or knocking it down, you shoot him. It's that simple. You can't be playing soft with him anymore. It's come down to that.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:20 EST

"And don't let that bleeding heart of yours get in the way of doing what you need to do. You see his children starving or his woman looking beaten" Look the other way. That's his problem. It's his soul."

"I can't be like that," I said.

"You do what you need to do. You got to stand up for your rights."

I sat in silence. What could I say' Jed made sense. I didn't believe it was right to kill anyone, even someone who was suicidal and who had nothing to lose.

It was going to be either us or them. No question about who it should be.

"I'll just give it awhile longer. If he doesn't move or give it up, I'll kill him."

That would be more trouble. I'd have to see to it that his widow and kids were supported. Then I'd have to lease out his land to run cattle on and manage everything. You couldn't expect a woman to know much about ranching and I couldn't let them perish.

I'd do the right thing by them if they'd let me. I'm that sort of man.

"That's right," Jed said, nodding. "Self justice. That's the way we have to be. Someday you'll be able to go to a sheriff and ask them to help you out and they are going to be able to. They can do that back east but not here, not now. Some people are just weak in morals and we've got to take care of them ourselves. That's the way it is."

There was nothing more to say. We just sat gazing at the setting sun until I said it was time that I get going home. Forty-niner knew the way home. I just had to stay put on the horse while he walked.

There's only so much one man and two deputies can do. They had their hands full with the houseful of troubles that Contention City was. I didn't blame Sheriff Brucker for my problems with Renner, even though he should have come out there. The K-10 and Lazy-R were in his jurisdiction. I'll allow that the boundaries were set up before Contention City boomed by an over-ambitious Council, but we couldn't wait while bureaucrats fixed it up. We paid them taxes. We deserved service.

I'd never be one to criticize Brucker. I met him and I could see he was the idealistic type, as honest as a summer day is long. A town is lucky when they get themselves a sheriff like Brucker.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:21 EST

Contention City was tough on a sheriff. I wouldn't want the job. I told Jed: "You couldn't pay me enough to do what he does." There were too many violent people attracted to that town. Life is too short to make it any shorter by catching a bullet from somebody's handgun. I wanted to live long enough to see grandchildren.

Out in the country, I could raise a few crops and fatten my cattle undisturbed. We didn't have to worry about getting shot by some drunken silver speculators. True, Caleb might have been bored. Becky might have been getting to the age where she'd get bored too, but, as a father, I didn't have to worry about them encountering the sinfulness that would lead them into a misspent youth. They only had the good example set by Edith, myself and the God-fearing neighbors we let them by.

Furthermore, it's better to be bored and virtuous when you are alive than to be in Hell when you are dead.

Caleb and Becky were fine children. Caleb was an obedient son. Becky, less so. But how many other little girls would turn away from their wood dolls or the pretty china ones to care for an ugly stranger? So many other little girls would look at the creature and cry, "Eww!"

Becky treated the creature like a living doll. She fed him, brought him water to drink, helped him clean up, and dressed him afterward.

She'd talk to him. The creature tried to talk back, but had difficulty making understandable sounds. His voice box was somehow different from ours. My wife said we'd have to cut him open to find out exactly how. When he spoke, it sounded like someone gargling at a high pitch. I wondered how one could understand another.

Edith speculated he would have even made sense to somebody who spoke his language. He seemed to have some kind of brain injury that was healing, she said. "A race that was like that wouldn't be able to build the kind of a skyship that you were describing. But his body is repairing itself, faster than a human's would. Someday he'll be able to speak his own language at least."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:21 EST

Delete

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:21 EST

Delete

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:24 EST

I smiled at the creature, "How are you doing?"

The creature nodded, keeping his large, bulging eyes fixed on mine.

"You don't realize how lucky you are to be in the good hands of my two women," I said.

The creature nodded again. I suspected that was the only way he knew to let me know that he heard me.

"You're going to be better - and then you're going to answer some questions," I said. "I've got lots and lots of them for you."

I couldn't wait. If only I had some guarantee, I'd be able to understand that gargle someday.

The creature had become the center of everyone's life except Caleb. The boy had all of the usual things young men have on their minds.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:25 EST

After the first two weeks of convalescence, the creature looked healed though he didn't act it. He laid around like a pair of dirty dungarees unless he was using the toilet, eating or taking medicine, getting his dressings changed, or getting cleaned. Then, when he was up, he moved slower than frozen water.

I didn't know whether to put the blame on the way he was raised, his race, or a personality defect, but this laziness angered me. I wanted him to get better, get up and start repaying us for our hospitality.

Edith already didn't do the amount of cooking, cleaning, sewing and mending a typical woman on the frontier did. With the creature as her preoccupation, she only did less. There was Becky who could already do a little work too, but there's a limit to what a ten-year-old girl can do. Too many chores were going undone.

"He certainly looks better than he's acting," I recall saying many times when I was settling in after the day's work was finished, taking my boots off, shaking the pebbles and dirt out. I was tired of the alien putting on the air that he was sick all of the time when he didn't look it.

"As banged up as he was, if he were human, he'd be dead," she'd say.

"For as much as he does around here, he might as well be," I'd say, snorting in derision.

There was this persistent, strange odor of wet, burnt underbrush that he emitted no matter what the women did. It was to be expected as members of different races have distinct odors. The same would apply to members of different species, I supposed. I grew weary of the oppressive scent as much as seeing him lay around.

Edith deduced the creature preferred heat over cold. She had Becky heat up water in the kettle to a degree a man would have found intolerable. They'd pour the steaming water into a pan, and the creature would stick one of his slenderly clawlike hands in it, and the creature would nod his oversized, hairless head and sigh, "Kkkkh!" Becky kept washing until he began trembling.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:26 EST

"Could be he's cold and that's why he doesn't do much," Edith said. "Kind of like a snake or lizard."

"He doesn't look like a snake or lizard to me," I said.

"But what I was saying is every creature has a different reaction. Snakes and lizards slow down in cold. We shiver.

"Then, too, it could be just that he's sick."

"That's crazy," I said, observing the ritual one day. "That water is still boiling hot. Ain't nobody can be shivering, washed off with water like that. You could boil us some supper in that water."

"What's hot to you wouldn't necessarily be hot to him," she replied.

"He's a blasted salamander," I said. "Undoubtedly, the place he comes from is Hell."

She also suspected the creature was sad or had some other emotion as alien as the way he looked.

I said: "Then he should just tough it out. If he didn't want to take the chance he'd crash, he shouldn't have gotten in the blasted skyship."

"We've got to do something," Edith said. "He should be doing more than he is. Even if he is different from us, this can't be normal for him."

"So now you admit it too! Like I said all along, he's lazy," I said. "We're doing everything for him. He's got it too good. If he's not better now, he's not going to get any better."

Even though she'd acquiesced, I regretted finding him, thinking of him as a genie in a story. The genie gives you what you asked for but it always turns out bad. The members of my family, especially Caleb, asked for excitement. This was the wrong type. It was one more way Ike Renner messed up life. If I had left the creature alone, whoever took his skyship would have taken him too.

I couldn't have done that. I'd been too curious. I knew what it had done to the cat.

Out of all the tack we pulled from the creature's skyship there probably wasn't one thing we could use.

With my wife dispensing medical care and advice from our home, we had the closest thing to a clinic out here. With the creature recuperating, our home became the closest thing to a hospital. I should have known to expect it with her avocation some time ago, and built the hacienda accordingly. I didn't. I was in a hurry to get us a place to live so we could start operations. The creature's cot and tick always in the way. It would have been that way eventually with some patient or other.

You live, you learn.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:27 EST

With the extra work we had to do, which we couldn't humanly accomplish, the K-10 was getting to bear a semblance to Renner's run-down spread. I would have hated to see it had we been as lazy as he was. Tasks were postponed for days. We got so far behind that there wasn't time to keep the books or maintain the house or land. With everything so dry, we desperately needed to cut a firebreak. If a wildfire started too close to the houses we would have all been dead. The men and I went to town frequently, hauling back feed for the cattle. There would have been money in that, selling or trading for the feed to other ranchers, but I was certain the others couldn't afford to pay enough to make it a profitable business.

Too, we had to patrol our boundaries. We had to build a new corral. I didn't want Renner getting any ideas about coming over here and rustling.

All that was the job of the men. I could have used five more of them. Caleb and I did what we could to stay abreast of the other chores. There were just some things we couldn't do. Neither of us could sew enough to darn a sock, forget mending blue jeans or making a new shirt. We certainly couldn't afford new clothes what with all that we were having to spend on feed and food for the house. Furthermore, I didn't believe sewing was a task befitting of a married man.

By far the biggest and most vital job we faced was sinking our well deeper. Because of the drought, the water level had sunk rapidly. It was getting harder to draw up a bucket of water: impossible to draw a full one. Soon, I expected, the bucket would only come up with mud.

All of my plans were going amiss. When we chose this land, I never fancied myself having to need a well. Up until six months before the creature crashed, a trickle of a creek ran between my house and the neighbors. It had been getting less and less through the years. Now, it only ran right after it rained.

When I complained about having to dig the well, or something else left undone, Edith glowered at me, like I was selfish. That wasn't the case. I was only the practical one in our marriage. She was obsessed with trying to heal the creature, like it was the most important thing in the world. A fence goes up between two people when they have different priorities. That fence was the creature. On my side was practicality. Living. Making it through hard time. On hers, craziness.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:28 EST

There was a good chance all their care would go for naught. Even if he healed completely, there was no guarantee the creature would stay and work for us. I didn't even see a reason to believe he could help us out even if he wanted to. I'd have bet a creature like him had never even ridden a horse and been sure of winning.

Further, he'd given no evidence he spoke English or Spanish. How can you work with someone you can't talk with' In the time it takes to make yourself understood, you might as well go and do whatever needs to be done yourself.

If I had to, I knew I could count on aid from Jed and his family. Elizabeth offered, but I wasn't the kind of a man who had a yen to receive charity. They were having it tough too. He was a friend from the old days. I would have sooner shot my hand off. Still, I'm more practical than prideful.

I'd have cheerfully ridden the creature over to the convent in Tucson where they took in poor sick people. He wasn't a person, but I'm sure they'd overlook that. Those nuns are good, curious people just like Edith. I'd give them whatever money I could to help with his care.

That was not to be, though I suggested it. Edith was as stubborn as I was. After all her work, I would have had to hit her, grab the creature and spirit him away before I could take him to the convent. Then I would have had to pay when I returned. It would have been months before she availed me of her wifely charms, if ever. She was stubborn, too.

I figured the people who took away the skyship didn't want him. They left him with us. If they wanted to find him, they could have. If a people can build something that flies around, even if it crashes sometimes, you can find somebody who was ridden but a few miles away.

After a few weeks, I figured if they didn't get him, they never would. I was right. They probably had something against him too.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:29 EST

I'll admit some of the problems with caring for him were of my own creation, but who expects their wife to turn their home into a hospital"

I didn't make the kitchen large enough. Edith wasn't the only woman who complained: Mmes. Guzm"n and Nu"ez did as well. Even before we had the cot in there, everyone could have used a little more room to spread out into when they were finished with their meal. I was reminded of my lack of planning two or three times a day, minimum, after and during each meal. Next house I built, I'd do better.

The area seemed large enough when we were building the house. Only after we put in the table, chairs and stove did it get too small. We got used to it before the creature came. Adjusting to still less space between the cot, stove, table and chairs became impossible. Edith said the creature needed to be next to the warmth of the stove. She'd relent and then insist, relent and then insist, unable to make up her mind because she wasn't sure herself. But, despite the inconvenience, he finally stayed.

Preparing dinner took twice as long as it had before. With the cot in there, there wasn't enough room for the women to work. Caleb or Pablo Guzm"n, Guzm?n's son, would help the creature get up and into my favorite chair in the parlor. He then would put the cot by the stove in the front room if there was a fire burning, or by the wall closest to the kitchen if there wasn't. Sometimes the creature grew wary of sitting up and had to be laid down. If he was laid down, he had to be placed in a warm area. If Caleb or the other boy wasn't around to do this, there was a delay in starting dinner. The cot was framed of wrought iron, too heavy for Edith and Becky to move by themselves.

Edith knew better than to ask me to move it after the first time she asked. I yelled at her, told her the alien needs to be taken out behind the barn and put down like a sick horse.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:30 EST

"There's nothing we can do for him," I said. "This is going to go on forever. You yourself said he isn't doing anything!"

"It's not going to be like this much longer," Edith said, in his defense. "Spring is coming and it'll be warming up. It's just now he can't take coldness as well as we can."

Then it was back into the kitchen with the cot once dinner started so the creature wouldn't get a chill.

She liked to have him in there when we were eating. As the creature was unfamiliar with a lot of our foods, she thought having us eat with him laying in there would encourage him to eat more.

But eating in there was rough, an amalgamation of elbows, knees, knives, forks, chairs, food and tempers centered around one poor table. I was pinned against the wall, unable to take a full breath. It might have been good for the creature's health but it was terrible for mine.

"We need to start eating in shifts," I suggested.

"Dearest, you're complaining too much," she said sweetly.

She told me she hoped I'd enlarge the kitchen when the weather warmed up.

I laughed. I wasn't going to do it for the sake of the creature. "It was fine before, it should be fine now," I said.

"Everyone said it was too small before," she retorted.

"I just didn't build it to the size somebody could be laying in a cot while we were eating. That's all," I said, reminding her she said the kitchen's size was okay when I was building.

"I was busy with something else when you showed me - and anyway, you didn't show me how big it was going to be exactly," she said.

"Well, what?s done is done," I said. "I don't have time to worry about how large the kitchen in this blasted house is," I said.

I thought about keeping both of the stoves lit so the cot could be moved out of the kitchen. Some days we did, but most days there wasn't time to get enough firewood stacked up to keep both of the stoves burning. We had to mind the amount of firewood we burned.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:31 EST

"Just try to see the long term. If he keeps getting better at the rate he is improving, he should be out of the cot by April, I think. We just need to keep him comfortable and keep things peaceful. If he has comfort and peace he is going to heal faster too," she said.

"That's really easy for you to say," I said.

"But look at him - he's different from anyone else. He comes from a long way away. He's hurt. We should help him get better. It's the only Christian thing to do," she said, staring at me as a dog watches an intruder.

I had a lot on my mind. I was looking for verbal fisticuffs, but yelling at someone like her, you felt worse than when you started.

"Wherever he comes from is a lot warmer than it is here. He suffers when he gets cold. We can't have him away from the fire for too long. It's part of keeping him comfortable. He's used to the heat. If he's comfortable, he'll heal sooner," she said, logically.

After a few days, Edith went back to her previous pattern of spending her time studying the creature's peculiarities. After a few days, I too went back to my pattern of resenting the creature. I couldn't help it. I needed to strike out at someone. The helpless creature was a convenient target.

I knew I should have been directing my anger at the one person who made it: Ike Renner. I knew that would only get me trouble with the law and leave me guiltily supporting his widow and brood.

When it all became too difficult for me, I'd go out and chop wood. The chore served the two needs of clearing my head and keeping the stoves warmed.

Eventually we were able to keep both stoves running and move the alien out of the kitchen during dinner. He ate after everyone else. "He'll get the idea he needs to eat Edith. If he can't do that much for himself then he's lost and there's nothing you can do for that."

In the meantime, my troubles gave Guzm"n a laugh, "You got room for me too' I think I want to sleep in your parlor and be moved in and out of your cocina. You mind?"

"Ha. That's really funny," I said flatly. "You might as well bring the kids and Nu?ez too."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:49 EST

Becky finally got the alien to start talking English by holding up one of Lupe Guzm"n's tortillas. She told him the word and then spelled it out, writing it neatly on her little chalkboard that she balanced carefully on her lap.

Becky had been sure the creature was going to start talking. We men only guffawed about her resolution.

She had him give a little show. I was pleasantly surprised. He really was getting better. It meant I might get a little work out of him before he went on his way.

"Tor-tee-YA," the creature croaked carefully, demonstrating for us, egged on by Becky and Edith. The nasal warble he spoke with sounded like someone with a cold.

"Very good!" Becky said in praise. She tore off half of the tortilla in her hand and gave it to the creature.

He took a bite out of it, "Tor-tee-YA!" he repeated, pleased with himself.

"Do you like the tortilla?"

"Tor-tee-YA!" he affirmed, nodding hesitantly. Then he attempted another word: "Goo-UD."

"He says they're good. Pa! Did you hear that?" Caleb said.

"Yes, I did, boy," I said. "I'll be darned."

We figured it wasn't a lack of understanding that was keeping him from communicating. Because now that he was healed further, he was. Soon the day would come when he'd answer my questions - where he came from; different information about his spaceship and where he was heading before he lit into the ground.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 16:50 EST

Becky finally got the alien to start talking English by holding up one of Lupe Guzm"n's tortillas. She told him the word and then spelled it out, writing it neatly on her little chalkboard that she balanced carefully on her lap.

Becky had been sure the creature was going to start talking. We men only guffawed about her resolution.

She had him give a little show. I was pleasantly surprised. He really was getting better. It meant I might get a little work out of him before he went on his way.

"Tor-tee-YA," the creature croaked carefully, demonstrating for us, egged on by Becky and Edith. The nasal warble he spoke with sounded like someone with a cold.

"Very good!" Becky said in praise. She tore off half of the tortilla in her hand and gave it to the creature.

He took a bite out of it, "Tor-tee-YA!" he repeated, pleased with himself.

"Do you like the tortilla?"

"Tor-tee-YA!" he affirmed, nodding hesitantly. Then he attempted another word: "Goo-UD."

"He says they're good. Pa! Did you hear that?" Caleb said.

"Yes, I did, boy," I said. "I'll be darned."

We figured it wasn't a lack of understanding that was keeping him from communicating. Because now that he was healed further, he was. Soon the day would come when he'd answer my questions - where he came from; different information about his spaceship and where he was heading before he lit into the ground.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:04 EST

I remember a discussion I had with Edith soon after the creature started talking. Hearing those two simple words come out of his mouth was a turning point. It got me believing in Edith's ability to affect a cure on the creature and the value of what she was trying to do. And I still hadn't forgot my mental list of questions.

"It's a good thing you spoke up for him," I said by way of trying to apologize. "I don't know what I would've ended up doing with him. He probably wouldn't have done so well in the convent with all those people they have to take care of. And there was just so much I was having to do."

She smiled, gloating. "I kept seeing small improvements. As long as there's some improvement, there's no way I was going to give up."

"I reckon. I suppose all the work just got to my head. Things weren't easy before he crashed and they sure haven't gotten any easier," I said. "And he even healed faster than a human would. I just want to let you know you did good, fixing him up like that."

She shrugged and turned away from me. "Thanks. But I'm not sure that I deserve the credit. I don't know how much I was able to do for him. It probably was more his own constitution than anything I was able to do."

I turned her back toward me. "You are far too modest. You shouldn't be. People underestimate you. Even your own husband."

"He is a remarkable creature," she insisted.

"Yes dear," I said, not being able to think of anything else to say. I gazed at Edith as her face showed radiant in the light of the setting sun. Then I looked into the sky. I had to suggest something I knew she was going to resist: "You know we could make a lot of money from our association with this creature" Instead of ranching and all the problems we get into, we could go into exhibition and take him around the USA. I just wonder how we could find a circus?"

I knew she'd protest, but once she saw the numbers I wrote, she'd understand the straits the K-10 was in and relent. Those numbers weren't half the trouble. I didn't have time to keep good records, just estimates in my ledger. I expected they were really optimistic estimates.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:05 EST

Slavery had been abolished, this was true. That was just for the black man. The creature, however, wasn't human. To the law it might as well have been a dog or cow that we'd be taking from city to town to village to hamlet. We could lay claim to all of the proceeds he'd generate at his exhibition. People would only pay more to see something like him if he could talk and answer questions.

My head created dozens of fantasies of what it would be like to travel all over the United States. I'd never been east of the Appalachian Mountains; I'd like to see all that and I was sure Edith would too. We could even go up into French-speaking Canada. He already knew a word of Spanish. The creature could learn a few words of French too.

She didn't reply right away, just gazed back at me, as if she were looking for something in my eyes.

"What?" I asked, unsettled. "What's wrong?" I asked suddenly defensive. "We could travel. That would be nice."

Of course she didn't want to do that to him. Edith didn't live in the real world. She never did. She'd made herself the equal of any medical doctor while running a ranch in the middle of the range. The idea of her getting a skill many people wouldn't allow her to practice because she was a woman. She couldn't even vote! Those weren't the actions of anybody who thought realistically.

Still, the world we lived in was real, only partly the land of our dreams. One of us had to be practical. We would all live better with more money.

I went into agriculture for lack of better options. I wanted to scream at her: Think of all of the money people would pay to see a man with insect eyes and green skin! If I screamed that, she'd have shut up into herself like a turtle and not listened to anything I said and then (worse) gone on and done what she'd intended to do anyway.

I worked on trying to convince her to see reason. "Even with there being a drought and all and the price of cattle being run up like nobody's business, we could still make a lot more with the traveling exhibit than being in the cattle business. With all of that money we'd make, we could do things and go places and see things. In a few years, we could work, or not work, if we ch

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:06 EST

"In your Scribner's are articles about that P.T. Barnum and he was an exhibitor. Look at all of the money he made. After we teach the creature more English, he could talk about all of the worlds he's see traveling in the sky . . ."

It was my decision to make. She wasn't the boss, never mind what Jed sometimes said. I didn't believe in acting like a king. This is America. I tried to run my home like the President. Countries, and homes, get into too much trouble when one man tells everyone what to do. You only have to talk to immigrants to find that out. From my days in the Army, I learned it was better to get everybody to put their full effort into the enterprise so they'd use their brain.

"Why would he want to do that?" she said, interrupting.

"Why?"

"You come from thousands and thousands of miles away to another planet and that's what you want to do' Go on tour like you're livestock in a show" He's an intelligent creature - like you - not some animal!"

"I'm not thinking livestock show! I'm thinking Chautauqua! Wouldn't you like to go to a chautauqua with a strange-looking creature like him as the speaker?"

"Not if it wasn't his choice to be there. If you can't see his point of view, then how about your own" Could you suffer all of the fools who would say that he wasn't really from outer space" If Jesus himself came back and started performing miracles, there are people who would say that he wasn't really Jesus," she said.

"Come on! Anybody can see he doesn't come from Earth! All you have to do is look. His head doesn't look like ours. His eyes don't look like ours. And if they didn't think they had seen a real spaceman, the problem would be all theirs. That creature is as real as it gets," I said, insisting. Edith was a wonder at times, a creature who was unaffected by toil and odds. Other times, she was downright frustrating. This was one of those times.

"But they'd be there, day after day, telling others he didn't look like a spaceman, causing others to decide to not see the show, probably making it a marginal moneymaker at best.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:07 EST

"Then there would be those who would go and try to find out what kind of theater trick you were using to get the alien to look the way that he did. Some people out there wouldn't know a miracle if it bit them on the nose. You know there'd be people out there like that - a lot of them. Is that what you want all of this to be leading to' You'd be wishing you were home in no time."

She waited for me to say something in response, staring into my eyes with an intensity I found discomforting.

"All this time you were saying that we could use some help around the ranch," she said.

"Yes, but . . ." I began.

"I think you should teach him to be a cowboy," she said seriously.

I threw my head back in laughter. "He'd make one damn funny-

looking cowboy," I said.

"But he's got a good-enough size. He could do the job with some teaching," she insisted.

"With his green skin and big eyes?"

"The way he looks would have nothing to do with the way he could do his job," she said.

I stopped laughing. He really might able to do it. I'd heard Negroes weren't smart enough to read when I was young and then met a dozen who could. It all was a matter of being taught. Him learning would be a way for him to pay me back for the months that we had to carry him. There would be deeper wells to dig and fences to mend at the very least. "We can try it."

"Once he's healed, he'll do fine," she said, smiling and kissing me on the cheek, the first kiss she'd given me in weeks though I didn't realize it until it happened. "I'm glad you decided to give him a chance.

"Anyway, what do you know about show business" You've only been to one play in your entire life!"

"I could learn," I said, muffled by oncoming lips.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:08 EST

Before I could teach the creature about wrangling, he was going to have to speak and understand English. Somebody had to teach him.

It couldn't be Edith. She was busy with the household and her patients stopping by.

It couldn't be me or Caleb. We had to work the range.

The vaquer's and their families could barely speak English. They could have used lesson themselves!

The job naturally fell to Becky - the best we could manage. That was okay by her. She was a teacher type at heart.

Despite the number of Spanish speakers on the K-10, most people in this country spoke English. That's what he should concentrate on learning, I reasoned. I gave her a new nickname to go along with Buttercup, Daisy and Sunshine: Creature Teacher.

"You might as well be called that. You been doing it all along," I said, never having made her so happy when I carved her a doll when she was little. She admired her mom and Miss. Wilkinson, her pretty, young schoolteacher. It was only natural she wanted to imitate those two fine women.

Becky formally started by teaching the creature the Alphabet Song. The sound of him singing in his gargley voice provided me and Edith fits of laughter hours after the lessons were done. With practice, the squeaky trill lessened and the impossible-to-place accent gradually went away.

Sometimes as Edith made dinner, I'd watch Becky teach. I wanted to see how her lessons worked out. It was an important job for a youngster. We had a lot of time, interest and goodwill invested in the creature. I couldn't bring myself to trust her ability completely.

I expected having to ask Miss. Wilkinson to add the creature to her class roster. I knew it wouldn't be the ideal solution for his indoctrination. He was still weak, not fit to make a ten-league round trip ride (24 miles, 39 kilometers) to the schoolhouse three days a week. Anyway, there was at least ten years worth of knowledge squirreled away in Becky's head. That had to be worth something. Furthermore, Miss. Wilkinson said Becky was her brightest pupil.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:09 EST

All-in-all she went about it in a fairly organized manner - for a kid. Becky began one of her lessons like this: "You are a stranger. Stranger. My name is Becky. What is your name?"

That made me smile as I was sure the creature didn't think of himself as a stranger.

"Stranger," the creature repeated, pointing to himself.

"That's right. You are a stranger. My name is Becky. I am a girl. Girl," she said again, pointing to herself. "What is your name?"

"Graax," he said, adding a click with his tongue at the end of his name.

"Graax," Becky repeated without the click.

"Graax," the creature repeated with the click.

"Is the click in your name?" she asked.

The creature didn't reply. He didn't understand, I gathered.

"Graax?" she said with a click sounding unlike the one the creature voiced. A human's mouth couldn't match the timbre of the creature's.

The creature nodded.

"I will call you Graax," she said, decisively making the click.

"Becky," Graax said with a gargley accent and a click, motioning toward my daughter. "Buck," he said, motioning toward me.

"Incredible," I said as I sat there, amazed.

The creature looked at me with what I though was wide-eyed wonder. "No. Graax," he corrected, motioning toward himself.

"I know," I said and chuckled. "You're incredible Mr. Graax."

With her worn-down, bitten pencil, my daughter drew some rough sketches on the tablet I'd bought home from Contention City. She printed what the picture was supposed to represent underneath the sketch.

I thought about telling her to use her McGuffy's, but I was too tired to do anything but sit there after working all day on the range. It had pictures in it already.

She spelled out several names for the same pictures. A stick-figure, she labeled "BOY." Then she wrote "CALEB" under that. A stick drawing of a girl, who looked just like the boy (except for hair curled at the sides and a dress), she labeled "GIRL." Then she printed "BECKY" under it and pointed to herself. "Me," she said.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:10 EST

She was a natural at teaching. The way Becky conducted class didn't baffle the creature one iota. Some people, it would have. For even though she was bright, she was just a child and wasn't organized.

Graax was showing hints of his genius. He learned our language faster than he healed, his big eyes taking in everything. His brain seemed to mull around everything fast as lightning. It appeared to me that Becky probably could have shown him plain old lists of words with no pictures and he'd have learned just as fast.

That shouldn't have been a surprise, though it was. When you're dealing with a four-foot-six creature with big eyes and green skin, everything is surprising. Just looking at him is surprising. You never get used to the big eyes, small mouth and high cheekbones.

To steer a spaceship from one planet to another, you've got to be smart. I'd never seen anyone that smart. But I'd never met anybody like Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson. Those men might have been equal of Graax, a historical figure for both of our worlds, like Christopher Columbus.

With the way he'd been injured and how troubling it must have been for him to get used to our cabin, I didn't know if I should feel sorry for him.

Then, with the way he was seeing a place different from the one where he came from, I didn't know if I should envy him. He was exploring a new land like my father and grandfather had done. While that was exciting, there were simple comforts and certainties he had to give up. Often the only profit you get from a venture was the adventure.

Considering a society like the one he must have come from, what could we humans have that he would want' It wasn't practical for them to come here, the best I could see. Just adventure and knowledge for the sake of itself. Maybe there was a little fame for him like Columbus enjoyed at the court of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I. If his planet was anything like Earth, people there would come out to hear him speak about what he'd seen here.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:11 EST

It was a steep price to pay for notoriety. The creature almost didn't live to tell any of his people about it. He likely wouldn't be able to get back home. They didn't make any conveyance like the one he crashed into Earth. He was far from home, and others like him. Here, he'd live out the remainder of his days, always a stranger among us.

Or was he really alone? I couldn't have imagined any group of humans moving his crashed skyship. There must be more of them out there somewhere.

If Ike Renner or somebody like him had found him, or if nobody found him, the creature would have certainly died. Either God or fate was smiling on him by having me be the one to find him. I even brought him to a doctor.

Looking back, finding Graax touched off the second half of my life. People had called me smart before, but I was smart only in the way a man who is a good steward of his business and other personal affairs is smart. The better word is "clever." I was also blind. I had wondered what the purpose of life was and asked other big questions before, but hadn't done much more than ask them, ground down by diurnal routine. People might say I'd had a good practical education. They might have debated the worth of the knowledge I was pursuing now. But if you don't ask ever the kinds of questions I was starting to ask then life bucks you like a bronco and to get bucked like that ain't practical!

I started by reading John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, which we had and I never read, and then Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which Edith suggested and ordered from the company that provided her medical books. I knew I'd spend the rest of my life trying to sort the two groups of ideas out. They both had their points.

With all the risks Graax faced, I couldn't help envying him. He was on a planet new to him, seeing things for the first time, things men like him never seen before. While adventuring might not get him a fat bank balance - most often those adventurers I've read about, having lived rich lives, die poor - he lived his strange life well.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:12 EST

Like Graax, I'd be willing to give up some comforts to make a difference. There's a part of me forever at my grandpa's knee, next to a blazing stove, listening to his tales of the frontier days, when snow drifts reached up taller than a man, there wasn't anything like a railroad out here and the Indians were bloodthirsty. In my wide-eyed wonder, I'd tell myself about the big adventure I'd have when I grew up and how I'd tell my grandkids all about it.

Money always seemed scarce and responsibility a burden when I got older. I responded to both of those yokes and forgot about all other attachments.

I'd imagined if I were learning a language from another planet, I'd find it more frustrating and intimidating than Graax did. The two languages would be very different. You wouldn't be able to cheat by matching what one word sounded like in one language to what it was in another like you could do learning Spanish. You would have to learn everything from the simple 'he', 'she', 'we', and 'be' to the words with many more letters from the beginning and then put those words together in ways different from what they were in your language. Even something completely different from English or Spanish, like Chinese or Greek, was still a human language, designed and made to be spoken by humans. You never could say that about the garble the creature spoke. I imagined our mouths couldn't be made to use the gargley language Graax spoke, so it would sound like anything Graax's people could understand. I promised myself I'd have a good talk with him when he spoke better English. It wouldn't be long considering how quickly he was learning.

A week later, I judged again Becky was still doing fine with Graax's lessons. I hoped she'd gotten some of her talent from me, so I could count on some of it when it came time to teach Graax roping and riding.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:12 EST

I started to see some of the get-up-and-go that seemed absent from the creature's character at first. He was an eager student of anything and everything humanlike - except my daughter's games.

Graax wanted to do more than play. When my daughter grew tired of playing school, she'd try to direct their play (which is what she saw schooling the alien as) toward her dolls or the toy tea set. Graax would humor her briefly before motioning her back to the chalkboard, pencil and tablet. "I do not like this game, Becky. Let us play schoolhouse, Becky," he'd say.

"I'm tired of teaching Mr. Graax," she'd reply.

"Just a little longer please today, Becky?" he'd insist in a quivering whine that he could have learned only from imitating her. It was only justice that she should have that tortuous whine used against her.

Seeing his work ethic, I was doubly glad I hadn't taken him to the convent in Tucson. I thought how maybe his outsides healed before his insides. He'd be a good man to have around the ranch.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:13 EST

During their schoolhouse games, the learning flowed two ways. Becky learned words of his alien language.

Once he drew a rough picture of the skyship on the tablet. "Brrouf'," he said, making a click at the end of the word.

"Brrouf?" she repeated.

He nodded with gusto, satisfied. "Brrouf," he repeated in turn.

Maybe it wouldn't be such a chore to learn another language, I considered. I'd sit with Graax each day after my work was done. We'd talk by the light of the kerosene lamp where we could read what we'd written. I wanted to find out all I could about him and he was willing, even after having talked with a girl for so long. With him learning a little English and me learning a little Alien, we'd get along fine.

I wanted to learn it, but not use it. That would be futile. I wasn't going to call his skyship a "brrouf." Nothing against his language, but a sound like "brrouf" couldn't be a proper word for anything. I'm sure it worked fine for creatures like him. Not us. It never would. Even without the clicks and whistles, it wasn't easy, natural or clear to say.

As the creature told us about his planet, I made words to fit my mouth though I never changed his name. Granted, it was as dumb-sounding of a name for a man as I had have ever heard, with the possible exception of some Indian and Chinese names. Still, it was his name. That particular foreign word wasn't so hard to say, unlike some foreign names. When I addressed him, I often added "Mr." not knowing whether Graax was his first, last or only name. Didn't really see that it mattered, as he was alien after all. We just had to make things up about what was and wasn't proper as we went along. If I offended him, he'd let me know.

Learning from him, I had to make up words. Putting two of our words together, I called the thing he crashed in a "starship" or "spaceship." It wasn't just a "skyship". The craft could do much more than fly through the sky. He explained he rode it all the way from another planet in the belly of a much larger spaceship.

That was the darnedest thing I ever heard - up to that point. That was before I knew he'd have many more things to say that would make a man get a headache from hearing it all.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:20 EST

I supposed I was a historical figure by virtue of my relationship with Mr. Graax, just like the first Indian who met Columbus. As historical as can be though nobody remembers his0 name. Nobody will remember mine either. I wanted to do more than hear about other planets from someone else. Oh, to go there myself and see new things! The K-10 seemed awfully confining at that time. The money wasn't going to help when I was dead. I wasn't being true to the kid on my grandpa's knee.

Finding Graax's crashed spaceship was one of the highlights of my life. I got to meet somebody from another planet. But our relationship went beyond that. I got to see what an amazing woman my wife was, bringing him back from near death like she did over my protests that she stop. I got to see my children try to help a stranger and to appreciate them for the good people they were. And then, talking to him, it reminded me of the dreams I used to have.

All that thinking got me so I couldn't stand to ride the perimeter at the day's end. I'd come back early and watch the sunset from the porch. Caleb and the men noticed the difference in me but didn't say anything, thinking I was coming in to work on the ledger, knowing they were a mess.

I couldn't bring myself to sit down at my desk and open the ledger. Instead, I'd sit on a stump and watch the setting sun, looking at the stars, Mercury and Venus as they came out for the night, praying, Why does that green-skinned bastard get to travel around like he does and I can't even go up like a bird and look down at my own world? That ain't fair! I'd wish and pray as hard as I could, but if He was listening, I never heard tell.

Edith came up behind me and asked me what was on my mind. "You aren't out there as late as you once were."

"I can't do this anymore. This ranch gives me catarrh and Renner gives me the fits. With as hard as I work, we should have more than we do."

"I know."

"I want to soar like the birds, too. I'd like to see Graax's home world, but I'd also like to go to the moon, Venus and Mercury to see if there's people on them or little animals. Sure, I suppose Graax might know, which isn't right, but I'd like to see for myself. Then I'd like to see Mars and Jupiter and all of the rest of the planets."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:21 EST

"You?"

"Yes, me."

"Has talking to Mr. Graax gone to your head?"

"I reckon it has."

"Good. You never dreamed much before except when it came to having more money. It's time you started."

That flummoxed me. "You said it was good I was so practical. You said a couple needs to have one practical person and one dreamer for there to be a balance." I recalled a conversation from a year or so ago.

"I did."

"What made you change your mind?"

"Nothing. I didn't. I was only trying to convince myself there was a reason we were together. At the time, you weren't letting me go out with the Rogers boy to fix his pa. You were plain mean."

"Not mean. I had good sense," I insisted. "Half these settlers and others wouldn't get killed if they'd use good sense. That's what you need to do too. Indians and vagabonds don't give a hoot if you think you can cure Rogers. They don't care about Rogers. They'll rape you, kill you and take your money. My children needed a mother more than Rogers needed curing." I didn't want to talk to her anymore. "Let me know when dinner's ready."

She didn't bother me when I looked at the sunset again. That was just as well.

It wasn't enough to be merely a relatively successful rancher who weathered a drought in as fine a fashion as he could manage, suffering a sneaky and stupid neighbor. I needed adventure as well. I figured that I'd need to be able to look back on more than years of harvests and marketing cattle at the end of my life.

Still, I had to be practical with a wife and two children to support and guide. Dozens around here might have owed their life to Edith, but she owed her life to me with her foolishly impulsive ideas. Even Graax needed me. He was dependent on us for food and even to help him pick up something from the floor. My adventuring days when I was single were mostly past, spent on cattle drives, though teaching Graax ranching would be something of an adventure too.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:22 EST

I supposed, in a way, I'd been blessed.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

My daughter's school day was longer than anybody else's, considering all we learned about Graax's planet and ours. A dullard might have protested. She didn't. She wanted to learn about his people as much as he wanted to learn about ours.

His planet, Squaattoos, had three continents, water in the oceans, and ice at both the top and the bottom of the planet. It also had birds, plants and war.

"Sounds a lot like Earth," I said. "You should feel right at home here."

Mr. Graax nodded and smiled, a mannerism I believed he picked up from us. He never did that when he first came to live with us. But then he was injured and hurting from his accident, without reason to smile.

"Edith is a doctor. She said you healed fast. How did you do it?"

He thought about his answer. "I had helpers," he finally said.

"The Lord" Amen! He helps us all," I replied, thinking he was referring to his alien angels. Later, I learned he was talking about parts of his blood heightened by the scientists on his planet to heal his body faster. Past that, the explanation he gave didn't make much sense owing to the limitations to his English and the complexity of the subject he was talking of.

I had thought the electric light and phonograph were amazing when I saw them in Tucson. They were nothing compared to the wonders of the civilization on Squaattoos: wagons that fly from city to city; machines that think for the people; alien people like Graax who were part machine and part creature. Even he had parts of him that were mechanical, like the healers. It boggled me. Humanity was far more backward compared to the Squaattoosians than the Indians were compared to the Europeans when they arrived.

Whether his people were older than ours and had been pursuing science and technology for a longer time or whether they were just smarter, Graax didn't know. We weren't even close to the level where we could begin to do the things his people were doing.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:25 EST

"But we were like you before one day," Mr. Graax said.

"Do you have cows on Squaattoos?" I asked.

"Like cows," Graax replied.

"Do you have ranches?"

"What is ranch?" he asked.

"This is a ranch," I said, pointing at the kitchen table.

"Table?"

"No. Ranch," I reiterated, pointing again at the table.

"Becky said that was table. Yes, we have ranches on Squaattoos," he said, nodding.

I studied him. Perplexed.

"Now he thinks you mean the table is called a ranch," Becky said, giggling. "Funny Pa!"

"Hush up now Becky," I said, upset she could make herself understood more clearly than I could.

Addressing the alien again, I reiterated what I had said before: "This right here is a table," I said, forcefully. "But this is a ranch," I restated, making an expansive gesture.

"Air" Earth' Becky didn't tell me that. Mrs. Turner did tell me that."

"Ranch," I said. I hated it when we had communication difficulties. I'd get flustered and I hated being flustered. "It is where we are. I am a rancher. The K-10. It's how I earn my living. Cattle; horses; table; Dad; Mom; Nu"ez; Guzm"n; Caleb; Becky; Saddles: we're all raising beef to sell so people don't go hungry. The K-10. The J/B. The Lazy-R. The XIX. Rocking-H. Those are all ranches, though on the Lazy-R they don't know what they're doing."

He nodded sagely.

"Do you know what a ranch is" Do you have them on your planet?"

His face dawned with comprehension. "Yes," he said, nodding. "We do have ranches. We don't have such names. We have Ranch One, Two, Three."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:25 EST

He understood, but I was frustrated from having to explain. Whatever patience Becky inherited for teaching others she didn't get from me. "Good," I said curtly.

"Unlike Earth ranches. Different. Bigger."

I smiled. Now we were getting to the nugget of what I wanted to learn from him. Knowledge of agriculture on other planets could give me an edge on others in the livestock business. "You say they're bigger" How do they go about running more head?"

"More head" I'm sorry but I don't understand," the creature said, shrugging. "I thought this is head," he said, pointing to his head.

I stood up abruptly. Imperturbability wasn't my strong suit. I bit my tongue. I wanted to kick him and call him stupid but that wasn't called for. Anybody who could fly a spaceship from one planet to another wasn't stupid. He just couldn't speak English well and I couldn't fault him for that. If I was in a foreign country, or among a bunch of Indians, I wouldn't have easy goings making myself understood either.

I gave up. It wasn't worth it. Trying to hold back my frustration in vain, I mumbled: "It's good you're learning English, Mr. Graax. I look forward to talking to you about things again. For right now, I've got to turn in for the night."

Maybe he sensed my disappointment. "I never worked on a ranch before Buck Turner," Graax said. "Not even on Squaattoos."

I gathered it was his way of saying: Forgive me for my stupidity. I took it as an apology. "So what?s your trade?" I asked.

"It's learner now. I cannot do my Squaattoos trade here," the alien said.

"Probably flew a spaceship," I said.

"And I did other things. I studied too. I will do that here too."

"Oh."

"But they don't pay me for it," he countered. "It's not a trade if they don't pay you."

"No, I guess they don't do that for anybody," I admitted.

"This is a ranch?"

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:26 EST

"That's right. We call it the K-10."

"Do you do work here?"

"I've been known to."

"Could you teach me to be a rancher" I want to repay your kindness."

I couldn't help smiling widely. "I was hoping you'd say that. I could do that Mr. Graax. We can always use the help. You fixing to say on Earth?" I asked, shocked at his honorable manner. He knew how much taking care of him put us out and how much we could use the help. I guessed you can find good people from every planet.

"If you don't have ranches like this on Squaattoos, then nothing I teach you is going to have any value back where you come from. Every operation is different. Shoot, you go to another planet, I'd imagine it'd be really different. Your animals would be different to begin with. We sure could use the help, though. We can use all the help we can get."

"I'm here on Earth as a student. I'm here to learn everything and anything I can," explaining he'd be practicing his profession if he learned about ranching from me.

"Well, shoot. I'd be glad to show you the ropes in the morning." I yawned. "I'm tired. It's about time to turn in and saw some wood."

That night, in keeping with his people's custom of rewarding their teachers at the end of their lessons, Graax gave Becky a gift. Here, we pay teachers money. On his planet they pay them money or presents within a ceremony.

"I give this to you, Becky," he said, stiffly bowing, presenting her with a cube scribed with a variety of etchings on each side. "You like to play games. This is a game we play on Squaattoos. Doohis." He told her the game's name without a click, slowly pronouncing the gargley alien word.

"Doohis?" she affirmed.

"Yes. Good," he said, palming the cube.

"This is how you play," he said, explaining how the object's sides moved in different directions. When you lined them up, you finished the game. Graax mixed up the six sides so that each side had a variety of symbols. "To win, you have to get all of the sides with just one letter. Go and play."

"This is dandy!" she cried. "Do you play?"

"Yes," Graax replied.

"Like Solitaire, with the cards?" she asked.

He nodded. "This is the only doohis that I have. On Squaattoos you can get more. If you like this, if I can go back home, I will try to get you other games like this."

"Thank you Mr. Graax," she said, hugging him.

He hugged her back.

The next morning, there were tears in her eyes as Graax mounted up. The student creature had finally graduated the Creature Teacher.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:27 EST

As the sun started its daily climb into the sky, I ambled out to the corral with Graax. I set him on Prettygirl, Becky's pony. Going by how melancholy she'd been acting the night before, I expected her to burst forth with a scene of tears and crying.

There was none of that, amazingly. Sitting on the porch, she watched, expressionless, as Caleb and I hoisted the alien up on her pony. She seemed not to care at all.

"Without me and Caleb around to help, this is how you get up there," I said, then putting my boot in the stirrup and hoisting up, explaining how to mount a horse. By telling him such a basic fact, I worried about insulting him. He'd been convalescing when we were cutting with the horses. And since he wasn't a ranching man on his own planet, I figured he didn't know anything.

Fair enough, he seemed to say with his expressionless eyes. He didn't look insulted.

"Good. It'll get easier once we get you some of your own gear - though we might have a problem getting a hat in your size with your big head and all. Those silver duds you're wearing ain't going to last forever. That's a shame too, cause you look like quite the dandy," I said, smiling.

"It get warmer?" he said.

To him, it was cold. I thought the weather was fine. "Yeah, we got summer coming. I imagine you'll like that better. And next winter we can get you a coat and underwear that will keep you warmer than anything. I never had a hand that froze on me. Course I never had an alien work for me either."

I didn't want him to chicken out about working the range. "You might not like the cold, but you got some advantages over me."

"How's that?"

"That scaly skin on your hands or claws or whatever: it looks a mite tougher than mine."

"Thank you very kindly, Mr. Buck Turner."

"It's just Buck and it's just the truth."

"Buck."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:28 EST

"You're very welcome," I said. "Now go ahead and get off Prettygirl. Let's see how you get up there on your own."

It was comical to see how stiffly he mounted. Almost falling on his face, it was nothing short of a miracle that he didn't bang his head and earn another two months of doctoring from Edith.

My son and I almost busted our bellies laughing too hard. We shouldn't have because he so recently healed. But we couldn't help ourselves. "Come on! Bend those legs!" I yelled.

When the alien sat astride the chestnut filly, wary and big-eyed, he looked like a polecat chased up a tree.

I had '49er canter over and patted the alien's knee. "Don't worry, Graax. This little girl ain't going to loose your hinges."

He nodded nervously, saying by the looks of him: I hope we don't go too fast on these horses.

"Just settle on into it. You might still be good at this yet! You could be a natural."

"My side doesn't hurt anymore," he said quietly, clutching the reins with white knuckles. "These animals are alive and you ride them. This is strange for me. I see how it's possible since they are large enough for you to ride."

"Ain't a thing unnatural about it," I said, never having thought life possible without horses.

"We don't have such an animal," he said, looking his mount over from mane to back.

"Don't' Huh," I said, pondering that for a moment. "That's strange. Anyway, it don't matter none. You'll get used to it. It'll be as natural as walking soon enough." It better be. There's no way anyone can do cowboy work on foot. If he couldn't ride, we'd have to find something else for him to do.

My insides got as jumpy as a bit-up bull in fly season. He was much worse than I'd imagined when I agreed to Edith's proposition. He had a lot to learn - too much. I doubted he could do it, smart as he was. Still, I'd have to give him a couple days.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:29 EST

No use telling him that. I'd been wrong before.

"You'll get used to it! There ain't nothing to it," Caleb chimed in. "Prettygirl ain't the type to throw anyone. She's as gentle as a lamb. That's why Daddy gave her to Becky."

"I wouldn't put my little girl on a dangerous animal," I affirmed. "I wouldn't do it to you either. Edith's already done enough work on your poor carcass."

"You can do it!" Becky chimed in from the porch. She was watching the whole thing. From the wide grin on her face, it looked like she was happy helping to teach him again.

"You crash and survive in one of those spaceship crashes, it means you've got a guarantee of life that ain't going be revoked on the back of a pony," I said, smiling. "Gospel truth."

I gradually settled down. With how funny he looked, it was easy for me to be patient. With a man, who should have known better, I would have been aggravated. With a bug-eyed alien in silver overalls, I was entertained. I temporarily forgot about my constant list of things to do.

"Caleb," Edith called out, stepping onto the porch. "Come up here and get this sombrero for Mr. Graax. We don't want to add sunburn to his litany of ills."

Caleb hauled off and fetched it for Graax. The alien donned it.

"You look like a real vaquer? Mr. Graax," Caleb said.

"Yes, he does," Edith said, beaming at the life she'd saved.

"Gracias," Graax said.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:34 EST

We stopped off at Nu"ez's and Guzm"n's shacks first. They were small, mean little buildings built largely of leftover wood and tin from my hacienda. When they weren't working for me, they kept their quarters in good repair. Their wives and combined seven children planted and tended a large vegetable garden and small flower and herb gardens. They also raised chickens and pigs.

Despite more than a little machismo, they were good men: hard working and hard playing.

I had to tell them they needed to count the head and pick one or two for slaughter, I think. We weren't shipping but few of them, waiting for prices to increase. The meat was for us. They'd butcher the steers and make carne seca, dried meat.

"He's on a horse today?" Guzm"n asked incredulously, seeing Graax.

"It's a regular red-letter day," I said.

?"Que" First ride out of the house?"

"And first ride on a horse yet."

"You like it?" Guzm"n asked Graax

"Don't know what I'm doing yet," Graax replied.

Both of my vaquer's snorted. "El hefe don't know what he's doing either. You come to Juan or me to learn anything the right way," Guzm"n said, snorting.

"Well, Guzm"n, har-de-har. Too bad I pay you for your work instead of your jokes," I said.

"If you did. I'd be richer than you, and you'd owe me money," Guzm"n replied, echoed by another series of laughs from Nu?ez.

We trotted off with Graax nervously glancing up, down and sideways, tense from the natural swaying motion of a horse.

"You'll get used to it," I assured him. "For now, we need to tighten up those stirrups." I halted '49er and dismounted, and went over to fix him up.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:36 EST

Even though the alien was only three-quarters the size of your typical man, he cut a weirdly imposing figure with the sombrero and silver suit. "You look like you've been doing this all your life. You're taking to this like a bird takes to the sky. You look great," I said in turn.

"You're a good teacher, and Prettygirl is fun," he said.

I winked and laughed. "A pretty girl can be a lot of fun - especially if she's got a few drinks in her."

To my surprise, Graax understood my joke and trilled a laugh that sounded as weird as he looked.

I taught him simple commands like Ya! And Whoa! Prettygirl already knew them. I showed him which way to pull the reins to get the horse to change her direction.

"When we started riding this morning, you were afraid. You just got on and started riding. That's a good thing. If you want to learn anything, you just got to go and do it," I said, telling a professional learner how to go about his business.

He looked at me deeply. "You are, you're right, Buck."

I mused about the differences between our planets, remembering one conversation where he talked about the great machines on Squaattoos that carried people between and within the cities. That got me to wondering how people on Squaattoos got around before those machines were built.

"How'd they do that' Didn't they have some kind of an animal like a horse?" We were behind his planet in technology. The Squaattoosians had to have built their civilization up like we did with the locomotive, I figured.

"Nothing that will carry a pack like your horse will," Graax said. "The animals were of the right size for such a use, but the wrong manner. The people before would have liked to have something like your horse." He said he wondered how their history would have differed if they had the horse.

He had me wondering too. "I don't know," I said, not believing we could have something up on a people who traveled from world to world. "It'd be like saddling up a deer or bear, I bet. Only heard of that in stories I don't believe."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:37 EST

"Right! You wouldn't want an animal like that to pack, either," Graax said. "Whatever a deer or bear is. Becky has drawn them for me, but I haven't seen one."

"I'll show you sometime. We'll go on a hunt.

"So how'd all your people get around?" I said, asking the natural question.

"Walked," he said.

Nodding my head, "I guess you could, though it wouldn't be too fast," I said.

"It made Leepox Deesheepon want to find a faster way," the creature said.

"It would make me want to find a faster way too." I paused. "Leepox Dee-who?"

"The man who made the first machine to carry people and things around. He was a good man," Graax said.

"Anybody who can find an easier, better way to do something is good enough."

The day went on. We talked back and forth real easy like the blowing breeze.

"These horses are one of the good things on your planet. It is good to be working on a ranch," he said.

I smiled, pleased. "Glad you think so," I said, thinking that it's starting to sound like I'll get some work out of him yet! "Sometime when it gets rough and you're tired, and it's hot enough to peel the hide off of a gila monster, maybe even you too, I want you to remember what you just said.

"This is hard work, not easy, like today is leading you to believe. This weather is just kissing Spring. Unfortunately, there's work to be done in December and July too.

"I suppose it's a good time to be learning."

"It's always a good time to be learning."

"That's your trade, right?"

"Right," the alien affirmed, nodding.

"There's easier ways to make a living, but if you're the type of a man who hates the thought of being caged up indoors, this is the only way," I said, remembering how tired I was of ranching. Still, I was seeing my trade through new eyes and it didn't look too bad.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:38 EST

Then I wondered about how anybody can get paid on a regular basis for learning. A professional apprentice" If so, where's the master"

The alien looked like he missed something. "Here, there is a choice. That is the good thing about your Earth. On my planet, there's little choice about whether you will work outside or indoors."

I wondered why he'd cry about that. Perhaps I was lucky to be born on Earth. Still, I'd have liked to fly in the sky. "Sorry about that Graax. Doesn't have to be that way for you now though. You've always got a place with me and the family," I said.

I suspected him of trying to flatter me about what I did for a living. To hear him talk, he came all of these millions of miles across outer space just to ride through the mesquite on my property and punch cattle.

A part of me thought: Sure! And I'm President Cleveland!

"How are the ranches where you come from' Y'all eat meat. You've got to have ranches," I said. I talked about some of the same things over and over again with Graax because, as he learned more English, he was better able to describe Squaattoos.

"There are people who are not like people working there," he said, attempting to explain.

I looked at him, not understanding what he was saying: "What?"

"I do not know how else to tell this to you. These people, who are built, do the work of the vaquer"," he said.

Someone built' Weird. Or, I figured, he just didn't know enough English words speak clearly. "I guess that'll have to be another story for another day," I said.

"Let me try." He insisted to my surprise.

"Shoot."

"The people who are not like people are like a large doll, larger than some of Becky's, but they move. They follow instructions. They work with spleetebechh and lebbetebechh."

I imagined china-faced dolls walking around without horses, working on the ranch. "Are those sple-something and lebb-somethings like cattle?"

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:41 EST

"Yup," he said, nodding. "But they are cows for good food. Most food animals we grow in big pots. Can eat right out of pots," he said. "They do it that way because there's too much time spent waiting for the spleetebechh and lebbetebechh to grow bones and such nobody eats."

I didn't understand everything he told me, though I pretended to. "That would be great to be able to do something like that," I said. "Think of all of the profit. Wouldn't have to ride around like this either."

"Yes, they make money. But growing animals this way makes them taste better my people say," Graax countered. "That is why animal grown this way on Squaattoos costs so much more money and why it is a goody. The government says some meat is certain meat in that way."

"The things you go and tell me," I said, marveling at the alien. "I can't begin to understand the wonders you describe! Must truly be something to see."

We drove each other mad with our questions. He asked me how cows give milk, how they produced calves and how I predicted the weather.

I gave him answers as good as my patience and knowledge permitted. He wasn't condescending at all though I'm sure some of the things I told him were patently wrong.

"You really don't have a good idea of what the weather is going to be like," he said seriously.

"Sometimes you can tell, sometimes you can't."

"We can't predict it well on Squaattoos either," Graax said.

I asked him about his family. What do the women of his race look like? What does he miss the most about his planet' I'd have liked to think I was an expert on Squaattoos after hearing his answers, but I could have only been called an expert on his planet if Graax could have been called an expert on ours. "Expert" is a relative title, I reckon.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:42 EST

He answered those questions and told me more than I wanted to know. He stunned me. He intrigued me. He made me laugh when he told me spleetebechh and lebbetebechh come from eggs.

"Chicken-cattle?"

"Bigger than chicken and different than cattle. Spleetebechh is just spleetebechh. Lebbetebechh is just lebbetebechh. That is all there is," he said.

"What else can you say?" I agreed, shrugging.

Graax was candid. It was my fault I didn't understand his answers. I might be dumb in that one area, but they sounded crazy sometimes. Most of the things I talked about to him might have sounded mad too if there weren't examples of everything I was talking about right in front of me. He had the advantage.

My questions kept coming. There was a universe full of oddness opening in front of me whenever I talked to him. It reflected in his eyes and green skin. He could have told me anything, and I would've believed it if I had understood it. The only collateral proof I needed was his appearance.

It was like being a kid again, talking to him. Everything seemed new. I began to understand how Edith was able to keep her mind on her medical studies even when there were other distractions. I never could do it before. The reason is, when you learn something new, you feel new. That's better than old.

The way of the frontier was the only way I knew before the alien's crash. Thinking my way of life might be considered odd to some other beings in the universe. That there were planets around the stars and stars themselves orbiting the center of the galaxy, was far more than I'd ever thought of before. All that gave me a headache, which is one of the bad effects of learning something new.

Edith used to talk to me with wonder in her voice about the little animals that we couldn't see that lived on and around us that she read of in her medical books. Though her words were tinged with passion, they passed right through my ears.

When I heard her go on about that, I didn't listen. I had decided none of that should be any concern. I halfway didn't believe what she was saying. If you can't see it, you can't really acknowledge it. If all those little animals were going to make me sick, there wasn't much I could do about it, I concluded. You can only fight what you can see.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:43 EST

Now that I was learning about the universe, I started feeling insignificant. My little worries and enterprise started becoming pointless in the larger scheme of things.

It hurt to think. I stopped and tried to concentrate on what was useful, what I needed to know to make it from day to day.

"What could you possibly want with all I'm telling you about farming and ranching?" I asked Graax one day. "Why do you even bother to ask?"

"Do I ask odd questions?"

I reflected on that. "I suppose not. There's just a lot of them. Course I ask you a lot too. I suppose it's natural."

"I know different things. I need to know much of it in order to work for you. Then, too, someday when I get together with my people again, I will have a whole book on farming and ranching on your planet in my head. That information will be compared to what we have on farming and ranching on other planets by our experts. Then they will know more about farming and ranching than before," he said.

"But what use is that' You're only going to have to feed yourself on one planet," I said, looking at Caleb and Bear silently take in everything we were saying. The alien was having a good effect on him, forcing him to talk less if he was going to learn about another world.

"To know is better than not to know. We call it pelattishh," he said. "It is how we live our lives."

"Doesn't sound practical," I said.

"You don't know what was most important until the end of life," Graax said.

"You can get a fair hunch with just a little thinking about it," I retorted.

"You don't have all the answers in the beginning. That is hopeless. The learning is a game shaping you. It is like trying to run a distance in a certain amount of time. You try to lessen and lessen the amount of time. To the man who runs who tries to make his body understand how to run the distance in a certain time, he is making himself the best he can. That is pelattishh. We do it with knowledge. Do you understand" This is how we honor the creature who created us," Graax said.

"We do that too," I said. "Our creator is interested in us being good. We honor him by being good, like when I helped you when you were smashed up in your spaceship."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:44 EST

"But that is a knowledge too, the two beliefs, Pelattishh, and in your God, are like," he said.

"I don't understand."

"Being good is a knowledge."

I let that go. "I ain't no scientist," I said. "I'm not the man you should be talking to if you are writing a book on agriculture. You need to talk to somebody who knows more about raising things."

"I'd like to meet some of those people, but we are also interested in the knowledge of the people who do, too," he said. "I also owe you gratitude."

"You need to go to the universities and talk with the smartest people," I said.

I thought about what I had said, though, and about the hostilities existing between the Lazy-R and the K-10, "But that's going to have to wait until we get this all settled with the Renners." I didn't believe what I said next. It was an impulse from an extremely generous portion of my soul. "You don't really owe us anything. You were our guest. You have an important mission. Enroll in class at the university in Tucson." When I say such things, I gratefully doubt myself to be the skinflint I know myself to be.

"Like with Becky?"

I laughed. "Probably a little different. It's run by adults, and you'll need money, and I can't spare you a grant, but if you save up your wages, you can manage.

We'd have to have a serious talk about money. Now was as good of a time as any, I figured. "The usual wage for a hand is twenty-five dollars a month, with, say six dollars of that as partial payment for your food and shelter. You won't want to have your own place, will you? Not if you're going to move on to Tucson. You save your money and you get in when you've come up with enough for tuition," I said.

"I owe you for doctoring me back to health," he said. "I'd never be able to repay that.?

"Edith enjoyed practicing her skills," I said.

"Thank you, Buck," he said. "You seem fair, though I don't know enough to see you next to others, I reckon."

"Thank you, Graax," I replied. "I think."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:45 EST

Some religious types might say the things Graax told me regarding the universe aren't true. They might be right. He might have been lying to me. Who can really tell when anyone is telling the truth"

They say to look into a man's eyes. If the look is clear and unwavering, then he's telling the truth. That's just a myth. It doesn't work. I've known plenty of people who could look you in the face and lie all day.

Still, Graax didn't have a reason to lie. All the time I knew him, I never caught him in one.

I figure he'd know better about things such as stars, planets and comets and their creation than some minister or Earth-bound astronomer. He'd been out there among the heavens himself. I'd seen what he crashed in. Looked to me like a space vehicle. If it wasn't, it was all a ruse to convince me that he came from another planet, right along with his look, the pleebk and the brrkup. Right. And who am I to go to all the trouble of impressing"

It was a hard choice to make: Believe in his description of the universe and feel the slow-tarring of sacrilege on my psyche. Disbelieve, and feel like an inflexibly ignorant savage. I was someone akin to Prometheus who coveted the fire of the gods and well aware of his and Icarus' fate.

It took a lot of reading and mental wrestling for me to pin my thoughts and feelings down in my mind.

It would have been rude to tell him to shut up when we sat at the table or out back when the workday was done. As emissary of humanity, host and employer, my character had many flaws.

Inhospitality couldn't be counted among them. Rudeness to a person from another planet felt awkward to me, like seeing muttonchops on a woman or tits on a man.

In some ways I wish I hadn't started listening. In some ways I wish I'd been paying better attention. I won't write the things he said here. Half of them, I can't remember. Man will learn them in his own time, if they're correct. A lot of people wouldn't believe him anyway. They only have my poor words printed out on a page. Who am I to believe? They can't see his oversized, earnest, oval eyes framed by sockets of lightly verdant skin and the dungarees he wore. He was there, alive as you and me. Maybe if they'd see all that then they'd believe too.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:50 EST

The alien sat in my parlor night after night playing checkers, talking, telling me of life on Squaattoos, providing detail after insignificant detail. He related a fantasy more enticing to a man than a come-hither glance from an attractive woman: Mankind can walk among the stars someday. We can know the shimmering jewels of the night sky. To know them is as good as owning them. His people had done it. There's no reason why we couldn't either.

It's okay if people don't believe the things he said. It's a heavy burden. Still, it's heartening. The Creator is greater than we supposed. Seeing Graax and how he obviously doesn't come from Earth, it only follows there are many other planets with civilizations.

Still, none of it really mattered. My world and universe consisted of the K-10 and the land around it. Other people's universes are their work and home too. There are types who'd insist otherwise, but I'd still differ. The fact there are creatures, big and little, smart and dumb, living on worlds millions of miles from us throughout the night sky isn't going to change a thing about death and taxes. The only thing it will change is the way you feel about the night sky when you look up at it.

There was plenty of work for everyone on the K-10. Too much, really. Having the Renners as neighbors in itself guaranteed a certain measure. The drought only increased the fiscal and material strain on my operation. I would have liked to hire more men, but I couldn't afford to pay them. I was glad for Nu"ez, Guzm"n and my son. Things were rough, before, even then. Having Graax about and helping gave everyone a break.

We had to check the fence we shared with the Lazy-R every day. I was so sure hostilities would erupt, I never sent anyone out to check the fence alone. We'd want two guns to counter Renner's one.

Renner's spread laid in a low box canyon. I was his only neighbor and the ranchers in the rest of the valley were glad for it. Things would have been different if there was someone else for him to steam up besides me.

"Why don't you go in there with guns blazing? Kill the varmint," Jed said. Brucker isn't going to do anything about it. He knows what kind of a man Renner is. "Soon you'll have no other choice."

I shrugged. His suggestion made sense. There were times to fight. This was one of them. Likely, my side would win.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:51 EST

I had ideas I didn't feel right in telling anybody. I might have looked like something of a coward, too. I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. Likely, Jed didn't think of me as one. He knew me better than that.

"You have a good point. And I don't know why I don't," I said to Jed. "I've just been hoping something else comes along to solve this whole mess."

"You didn't turn Quaker did you?" he said archly.

"Ha!" I said, laughing.

"I didn't think so, but that's Quaker talk, God's will and all of that. You can spend all your life hoping for something, Buck," Jed said. "Don't mean you're going to get it. There must be something you're not telling anyone."

"Maybe I've got those too."

Most times Caleb bucked up about having to go and fix the fence every day. "Can't we do something else?"

"You do it because I say so," I'd say. My reasons were my own. They served his benefit, though he didn't know it and didn't need to know. I didn't tell him my plans for the Lazy-R because I didn't want him getting any possessive ideas about the place. I didn't want any rancor between him and the men if something happened to me. I find it best in life to hold your cards close to your chest and not let anyone see your hand or your plan unless it serves your purposes. Letting him in on my plans didn't serve mine.

"Sure son, I'd like to be only having to check it once a week. We do that with the other ranches bordering ours. Fences come down on their own sometimes even if you take your time with them. Those neighbors don't cut them.

"The Renners are different. If we did that with them, there'd be no fence after a week! Then they'd be grazing their entire herd over here and we'd be as bad off as they are," I said.

"We should try talking to them," Caleb said.

"I've tried it," I said. "You know I've never taken a fancy to going out here in the cold and heat to look at a dang fence. Nobody would."

"Did you really try?"

"Course I tried! Look, son, some people are just going to lie. There's nothing you can really do about that. They lie to themselves as well. You can't say anything to them," I said.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:52 EST

"But . . . ," he began. "I bet if he thought you were going to shoot him, he'd get the idea he can't go cutting the fence."

"Maybe, but I think you're wrong. Renner's stupid and has nothing to lose. He might even want that. There's nothing you can say to someone like that."

With each strand of barbed wire I restrung and twisted, with each post I pounded back down, with each emaciated steer I herded back to the Lazy-R, my heart filled with hatred until Renner became not just a fool trying to make a living on the range but the quintessence of Evil. Guzm"n, Nu"ez and Caleb felt much the same way. They didn't understand me but they did what they were told - that's all that mattered.

Nothing could change my disposition toward him. I couldn't help myself. I fondly hoped it didn't cloud my good sense as venom can, though I knew it did. I wanted to execute my plan, and him too, at the same time. I wanted him dead and I wanted to kill him myself with my bear hands, feel his life force flow out onto the rocks.

I wanted to buy the Lazy-R when Renner gave up trying to make a living from it. He'd be more likely to sell to me if everything stayed civil. Partly, I wanted the drought to continue. He'd let me buy for little. First, he had to admit he didn't know what he was doing. He wasn't there yet.

"You should let me run some of my cattle over there," Renner suggested to me one day before the conflagration boiled over. Caleb and I had rode up on him fingering pliers, getting ready to start to the wire. We'd suspected he'd been taking the fence down, but wanted to accuse judiciously. You want to think the best of humanity.

I suppose Renner figured he might as well ask first anyway.

"Well, don't see I can," I began. "With the drought, the forage is dry. If I did, it would harm my operation. So how much would you be willing to pay for rights?" I knew he'd come into some money. That's what got his operation set up. I didn't know how much was left. Supposing there was some, it might do us better to let out our land to the cretin.

He'd apparently spent it all for he said, "I don't have any money. If I did, I buy feed! These aren't good times."

"You need to get rid of some of your cattle, then."

"I'd get less than what I paid."

"They are boney," I acknowledged. "They're worth more alive than dead."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:53 EST

His features clouded over with reined in anger. "So would you let me put some of mine over there."

"I've got my own. Don't have any room for yours."

"That ain't neighborly."

"That's business. You should have seen to yours before you got into it."

"You ain't Christian. You might say you are, but you ain't."

"Christian, yes, but businessman too. This is my private property. If you can't cope with the vicissitudes of the business, you best get out."

"What the Hell did you say?"

"Please don't talk nasty around my son, Mr. Renner. I can't help you out, though I wish you well. I hear there's quite a bit of money to be made in prospecting."

"This is my land. I'm staying. I came all the way . . . what the Hell do you care!" He tucked the wire clippers in his back pocket and hopped up on his horse and galloped off.

"That's well and good, but I better not catch any of those cattle over here," I called after him.

The longer he held the land, the more dilapidated it'd get. The sooner he'd admit his ignorance, and the herd was sold off, the sooner the forage would start growing back.

Maybe the Contention City State Bank owned a mortgage on it. I'd asked, but Phinneas Majors told me it was none of my business. Still, maybe they'd seize it.

I could try to buy it from the bank, but I didn't want to. It's far better to do business with a clod than someone with some smarts. In wetter times, it would be a good piece of real estate, with a spring in wetter times. Renner probably didn't have to dig a deep well even now.

Still, just because someone is stupid, it doesn't mean they're going to sell you their ranch for a trifling. Though them being stupid helps your cause in negotiating.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:56 EST

I knew Renner would give it up, too. It was obvious he wasn't cut out for farming or ranching. Still, he had to realize that for himself.

The way I saw it, the thing I had to do until then was to remain a hail-fellow-well-met despite our conflict. Then, when the time was right, offer to buy his shacks and land for a "reasonable sum" while jovially mentioning how the law would get involved if the fence persisted in coming down. I'd seen him out there with wire snippers already.

Where he and his wife and their litter went after that, I cared not.

The drought had left me short of funds as it had left most of the ranchers in the valley. The Lazy-R, in its condition, wouldn't fetch much in the best of times. I was the only possible buyer. Other people believed the spread to be ruined for a lifetime. I knew it could recover within a few growing seasons if no cattle were grazed on it.

Caleb, Nu"ez and Guzm"n, could have benefited from a healed Lazy-R. They were in their twenties.

The past few years had been full of hardship. Nu"ez and Guzm"n were as loyal and intelligent as hired hands come. They showed both qualities by not going off prospecting and leaving me to face Renner on my own. They easily could have. They've shown loyalty in the face of Renner's threats.

One of the great reasons I'm alive was the threat of retribution from them. They wouldn't hesitate to put a slug between his eyes if shot me. The conflict would ascend to a new stage and be finished.

They deserved better than they had. It was my duty to see they got it.

The sooner Renner realized he wasn't cut out for ranching the better it would be for everyone. Until then, I had to play at being a tightrope walker. I'd never have been able to be the way I needed to be if I was the only person to benefit. I'm high-minded. But because it was for the sake of two men and a boy I cared about, my plan was made easier. I wanted my son to have the same opportunity I'd known and I wanted to help the two Mexicans. I wanted it all.

I replied to everyone's questions about the matter with a vacant look and shrug.

They'd understand everything soon enough.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:58 EST

"You cannot have this Renner sending his cattle over here to eat when there isn't enough grass for your own animals," Graax said soon after he started riding the range with the men and me. "Why don't you shoot him' That is an action by your people, right?"

Inwardly I groaned when he said that. I didn't want him starting in on me too. "I have my reasons Graax," I said tiredly. "The reasons are all business and not cravenness. It won't be long, and he'll be out of business and back on the trail."

"This is against the law, what he does?" Graax asked.

"You better believe it, buckaroo!" I barked, nettled at the question. "Course it is!"

Unaffected, Graax continued questioning: "Why is he not stopped" There's nobody to keep the law" Do you have to do it yourself?" Graax said.

"There's Brucker, the sheriff down in Contention, but he has his hands full with all of the miners, grifters and drifters in the town."

"So, there's nobody to enforce the law here?" Graax said.

"That's right. We need our own Johnny Law out here, but we don't have enough money to pay him," I replied. "Too few people."

"You might not need either a Johnny Law or a Sheriff Brucker. When I crashed, you took something out of the ship that may help your problem," Graax said.

"Some kind of weapon?" I said. "I don't want the varmint killed. I've got my reasons."

"The thing I have is a weapon, and it isn't a weapon," Graax said, clear as mud.

"What in tarnation do you mean by that?"

"I can change him."

"Nobody can change anyone who doesn't want to change," I said, my mind completely made up on that matter.

"I can."

Graax's impossible existence in itself was reason enough for me to question the impossible. I wanted to believe, but I didn't dare hope.

Because of his limited vocabulary, I couldn't understand what he was talking about. However, I did understand enough to gradually harbor hope Renner's trespassing would stop and everything would come out well.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 17:59 EST

I picked my men up at their shacks after Graax and I parleyed.

"Go get your guns," I said, riding up on them as they were making repairs to their garden fence.

"Que?" Guzm"n said.

"We're going to ride against Renner - just like y'all have been itching to do."

"Finally, it comes to our little amigo," Guzm"n said, making a handgun with his thumb and forefinger and regarding in fondly. "I've been waiting for you to do this!"

"And we are now pistoleros, the different jobs we do," Nu"ez said, smiling.

"Not quite. Graax says he can make a new man out of him, and we don't have to kill him," I said. "I think I believe him."

"Bah! A new man' Change his mind" Nothing will work," Nu"ez said, flitting between Spanish and English. "This is all a time of waste!"

"No esta en sus cabales! Maybe a bullet will change him from live to dead. That will make him a new man," Guzm"n quipped. "We aren't going to kill him?"

"Only if this doesn't work. We've got to give Graax a chance," I said. "Still, we might have to."

"It will be a pleasure," Nu"ez said.

"I don't want to, but we've got to do what we've got to do," I said.

"What are we going to do?" Guzm"n said.

I shrugged. "I don't know yet."

Both of them regarded me strangely. Then they looked at each other. Then at me again. Then they guffawed at me.

"Come on! He barely learned to speak!" I said, chagrined. "I can only understand him half as well as you two!"

Guzm"n and Nu"ez preguntad the alien about what he had planned and couldn't understand what it exactly was either. Still, we talked of our strategy during most of the ride to the Lazy-R as best we could and hoped it wouldn't be a flop. When we were a quarter-mile away, we fell silent so Renner wouldn't hear us coming. We didn't want to give him time to set up in the bush to fire on us.

I thought about setting Guzm"n or Nu?ez in the brush with orders to shoot Renner if it looked like he was going to fire at us. I didn't do it. Despite their bravado, neither man was a sharpshooter. Put one of them out there, they'd likely as not shoot one of us.

As we rode into the ranch, Renner stepped out of his front door with a shotgun aimed squarely at the center of my chest - nobody else's. From his wild, glassy-eyed stare and stagger, I pegged him as drunk. If he was drunk at two p.m., it was no wonder the Lazy-R was failing. I faintly smelled the vapors from a still that caught on the wind. He'd been brewing something. He wouldn't hesitate to kill me and would have enjoyed it.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:03 EST

"Well, well. If it isn't the Christian gentleman from the K-10," Renner said, spitting on the dirt. "What have y'all come to accuse me of today?"

"Nothing Renner. You got a drink for all of us?" I said, jovially.

He ignored me. "Who is this weird looking dude" You come from some funny part of Mexico?" he said to Graax, laughing at his own attempt at a joke. "Somebody should shoot you, you're so damned funny looking." He wasn't going to be the one though. The barrel never pointed away from my chest.

"Quit it Renner!," I said. "We come here all friendly."

If Graax or either of my men made the slightest move for their sidearm, I'd dive right off '49er. At this range, I'd have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving a shotgun blast and a hundred percent chance of taking some buck. Forty-niner's big body would absorb most of the blast. I felt a little better, though, knowing Renner was pickled.

"We came here to talk, not fight. Put the gun down," I said.

"Don't see I have anything to say to you Turner. Why don't you just turn them horses around and get off my damn land?" Renner retorted.

I paid no mind to what he said. "Graax here is one of the new hands on my ranch. We came here to talk about the boundaries of our property and how your cattle frequently cross it."

Renner cocked the shotgun. "I don't know nothing about that. I've told you that before. You calling me a liar?"

It was going no different than I'd expected. "Don't see how that can be Mr. Renner," I said, wanting to yell at him up and down for all the trouble he caused me. I stayed cool, reminding myself that wouldn't be smart when he had a shotgun trained on me.

"Y'all get the Hell out of here. There ain't nothing I have to say to any of you! I ain't no cheater. You ought to be strung up for slander. Get off . . . " he began, never finishing his utterance. His mouth gaped open like a stuck fish. A string of drool descended his chin.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Graax make a covert motion with a metal bar. My attention had been on Renner who now stared straight ahead idiotically, saying nothing for a pleasant change.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:06 EST

"Damn," I said tonelessly, impressed. "You really did it." I looked at Guzm"n and Nu"ez. Their open-mouthed expressions resembled Renner's catatonia, except that they blinked. We were steeled up for a fight. Even though it would have ruined my business plans, I itched to see Renner's body riddled with holes and left bleeding from a variety of new orifices. I never could abide a liar.

"Dios mio!," Guzm"n said softly. "He stops inmediatamente!"

Graax calmly explained what happened as best he could, a thin smile playing on his lips. He held a small metal bar between his fingers. "This pleebk goes through the air and doesn't allow the head to work, if it is in there good."

Graax said there was science behind the action of the pleebk. To me, it might as well have been magic out of a fairy tale.

"Don't see how it can go through the air if it just stays in your hands," I said.

Graax thought for a moment about what I had said. "It doesn't. I reckon I don't have all of the words I need to tell you."

"Still, that's one damn handy contraption," I said. "Hope it solves our problems with him."

Renner's wife came out of the house. "What did you men do to Ike?" she asked hysterically.

"Not a thing ma'm," I said, calmly reassuring her. "We're trying to help y'all. This will help him!"

She spun around, trying to go back inside her house. Renner undoubtably owned more than one gun, I thought. I didn't want her aiming it at us. The day's events might not have had a happy outcome if she did.

Quickly, I slid off of my steed and pinned her arms. "Why don't you stay here with us?"

"Let me go!" she screamed into my ear, trying vainly to bite me.

"Settle down ma'm! Did anybody ever tell you, you have quite a screech' He's going to be a new man after this," I said calmly. "Well, if you're fond of him now, you're going to like him a lot more after we're done," I said in a low voice into her ear. I hoped my tone would lead her to lower her voice as well.

It didn't work. "Let me go!" she hollered, struggling.

As long as she was out there with us, we weren't going to be fired on by any of the Renner children - if they had any sense. Knowing their pa, that was questionable.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:08 EST

Graax fished a bug-sized clip out of the pockets of his dungarees. In broken English, he explained what he was doing. I couldn't understand much of what he said thanks to Mrs. Renner. I wished he'd pleebk her too.

"This is a brkupp," Graax explained. "When I put this in his nostril, it will move with its legs up the trail in his head and go to his brain. When he thinks of cheating, his head will hurt. That will guide him toward rightness.

"The worse the wrong thing is he wants to do, the more his head will hurt. He will not bother your side of the fence anymore Buck."

With her fighting, Mrs. Renner wouldn't and couldn't hear any of it: "Get that out of him! You're hurting him!"

I laughed at the irony. "Well, my dear," I said firmly. "I used to ask your husband to keep his cattle off of my side of the fence. He didn't. Think of this clip as my uninvited intrusion."

I didn't believe in hitting women, though for her, I could see myself making an exception. The whole clan made me rabid.

"With him having to act decently for a change, you might even be thanking me next week," I said, forcing a chuckle.

After that, she bit me and almost got away from me. She spun around and got a lucky shot kneeing me in the privates. I doubled over in intense pain. She made a beeline for the shotgun that lay at her husband's side and was able to bring it up and hold it to Graax's head.

Guzm"n and Nu"ez fixed their weapons at her.

"You better put that down! We didn't hurt him and we ain't going to. Just let us get done here, and we'll clear out!" I said through gritted teeth.

She showed a better head than her fool husband, letting the shotgun down. I didn't want to shoot her. That I'd really have a time justifying to myself.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:09 EST

"Get off my land you smug rich bastard! Take your Mexicans and this . . . monster with you!" she said callously.

"Lady, I'm far from rich. We'll leave soon enough. You make one move toward that gun, and I'll shoot you - and I can hit you from further away than you can hit us."

"We can leave now," Graax said after a tense minute.

We mounted up and rode back home. I turned around to see Mildred Renner put down the shotgun and cradle her husband's head in her lap.

Though Ike Renner wronged me many times, amazingly he'd done right by her. Her tears told me that. I couldn't make out what she was telling his unconscious form.

Even if he had always done right by her, he'd treat her even better with that thing Graax put in his brain, I reasoned. I'd bet any guy who could go and steal so regularly from his neighbor had a lot of other character flaws underneath the surface.

If the Renners were the kind of people you could talk to, I'd have been able to spare her a whole lot of anguish. But if you won't fess up to things you do, how can you have an honest talk about anything"

We rode back to the K-10. "Is there any way she can get that out of his nose?" Guzm"n asked.

"Not without opening his head up," Graax said.

"She might do that. Hope she doesn't," I said. "She loves him. You could see it when she was holding him. It makes me sick."

"Will this work?" Guzm"n asked.

"I hope so," I said.

"It should," Graax replied. "The brrkup can make itself work. If not, you can go on with what you were planning to do."

"Not really, Graax. That's okay. It might not have worked anyway," I said. "You have anybody in jail on your planet?"

"No, I didn't know of prisoners except by stories of the past until Becky told me. We don't have prisoners because of pleebks and brkupps," he said.

"And what you put up Renner's nose was a brkupp?" I said.

"Correct!" Graax replied.

?"Muy bueno! I like the pleebks and brkupps," Guzm?n said, mangling the Squaattoosian words even further with his thick Mexican accent, though being human you couldn't say them anything like Graax with his ever-present gargle. I mangled them as well.

Even though Renner might now live by the Golden Rule, he still could give up the Lazy-R, I figured. Graax didn't say the brkupp didn't do anything to increase his share of brains. Renner fell far short of what was needed to run a ranch. He was lucky he knew enough to chew food.

I decided I might take him on as a cowhand. It might work with the brkupp. The Golden Rule was really the only law someone had to follow. As Jesus said in the Bible, if someone followed that one, the rest of the commandments kept themselves.

All I wanted out of any of my men was an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. If Renner was able to give me that, I'd try to forget how he'd tried to cheat me. It was the Christian thing to do. Besides, Graax fixed his flaw. I had the gut feeling Graax wouldn't let me down, and the profound hope my gut feeling was right.

Renner would have to do something about that shrew he was married to before I took him on. As I rode back to the K-10, my groin still smarted from her kicks. I had a headache from her screech. The woman could have used a brkupp herself, if they worked. I pledged to myself to see she got one.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:10 EST

Jack Brucker, the sheriff of Contention City, writhed, sleeping fitfully. The bed sheets came untucked. His wife, wide awake, knew something was troubling him. Someone and some situation troubled him. She'd heard him murmur several words that sounded like names in his sleep, though the only one she could make out was "Sol." If he wasn't going to tell her who Sol was, she'd have to ask one of the deputies tomorrow.

She hesitated, but then decided to wake him anyway. Something important was likely to happen tomorrow. He'd need his sleep. Waking him would make the bad dreams stop, and then they'd both get some sleep.

"Honey. Honey," she whispered gently, shaking his shoulder. "You're having a bad dream."

"Huh?" the sheriff said, sitting up with a start as if he'd been stung by a scorpion. Slowly, he shook off the tentacles of his dream.

"Who's Sol?"

"When did I say that?"

"You were talking about him in your sleep."

"I was?"

"Yes. Who is he?"

"Nobody you need to worry about," he said with finality, laying back down, rolling away from her.

"You're sure worried about him."

"Well, I think he's Sol Thomas. He says his name is Wainwright."

"Why would you be worried if he was someone called Sol Thomas?"

He turned back around and kissed her on the forehead. He didn't believe in troubling his Mary. That wasn't what a strong man did. He must be strong. "I wouldn't be," he said. Brucker was the protector for both his family and Contention City. There wasn't any burden too heavy for his wide shoulders. Since pinning the tin star on his leather vest ten months ago, he'd captured several infamous outlaws and coolly handled several face-offs that had erupted between greedy men over the rich silver strike.

He believed people should be able to live and go about their business in safety. He loved the town, and they loved him back.

When he was eight, his father had been shot and left quadriplegic when his store was held up in St. Louis. Though he'd never thought about it before, it was the results of that holdup that made him want to be a lawman.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:11 EST

Brucker was proud at how he might have saved a few good lives and made the world a better place by ridding it of a few bad people. Maybe other families wouldn't have to undergo the medical, emotional and financial misfortunes that befell his family when he was growing up.

"You can tell me if something's wrong," she offered, as she had many times before in their thirteen-year marriage. Only rarely did he take up her invitation.

"I know. It's nothing to worry about," he said into the fluffy goose-feather pillow, their bodies spooning. "I'll try to move around less."

Ten minutes later he was back asleep breaking his word. How could he tell her what this Sol Thomas did in Dodge City' Some things a woman shouldn't have to hear.

They bore too many of the sacrifices it took to have a peaceful community, she thought. She wished he was a storekeeper or barber, though he wasn't cut out for any of those jobs. He'd have found those trades intolerably dull. Just like you can't make a bull into a fish, Jack loved being sheriff.

Sol Thomas and his brothers had killed ten and injured eight people in a fierce gun battle in Dodge City, Kansas. They'd shown no compunction about murdering anyone. The brothers shot women and children right along with the lawmen, who had them pinned down on the roof of a store. How could Brucker tell her about train robberies where the gang freely shot at the passengers as well as guards and other railroad employees? He could tell her what he'd done only after all the danger was long past.

That hadn't happened yet by a fortnight. The man he supposed was Sol Thomas sat in the hastily constructed, three-cell jail guarded by Buddy Childs, his deputy whom he hired partly out of pity and partly because he couldn't get anybody better.

The portly, rapidly aging Childs needed a job. He hadn't arrived in town with but a nickel in his pocket, likely having drunk up the rest of his money on the journey over. Whitby MacMillian was unwilling to extend him a dime in credit.

Because the storeowner didn't like his looks, Childs worked as a deputy trying to save up enough money to strike out on his own. As he drank and ate every dime he made, that would never happen.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:12 EST

Still, Brucker had been grateful to have him. Strong men who'd work for a regular wage were rare. Though Childs had a yen for the bottle, he was as strong as an ox. As Contention City would need a bigger jail in the coming months, and as the deputy had worked in construction in the South after the War Between the States, he and his muscles would be handy.

The wanted poster that came by mail two weeks ago warned Brucker and his deputies about Tom, Eli and Sol Thomas, all with distinctive tattoos and a $250 bounty on their heads. The tattoos were concealed under the outlaws' clothes, else they'd have been nabbed long before they got to southeastern Arizona.

Deputy Anaya arrested Sol for disturbing the peace at the End of the Trail Saloon. When the dark, skinny teenage law enforcer bought him to jail, he had him change into the black and white striped garment. This was a procedure Brucker began to check for distinctive tattoos, anatomical features and markings and concealed weapons. The sheriff spied the snake wrapped around a sword in the middle of the hairless chest, just like the wanted poster described.

Brucker had the poster nailed up outside his office. He went outside and consulted the paragraph on the outlaw's description. How many people could have such a tattoo in the middle of their chest' Odds were not more than one.

"Well, how do you do Sol?" the sheriff said once he decided he had the murderer they were looking for.

The man blanched as if he'd seen a ghost. "Who' My name is Jacob Wainwright. I do believe you suspect me of being somebody else."

The sheriff smiled, figuring the outlaw must have rehearsed the response. The words came too automatically, Brucker supposed. "The way you say that, I almost believe you," he said, jesting.

"It's true. I swear on a stack of Bibles."

"Whoever you are, I've got to hold you. I received word last week warning me about a murderer with a tattoo looking like the one on your chest."

"You've got the wrong man!" Sol Thomas insisted.

"If so, we'll get this cleared up and send you on your way. It could all be a coincidence. Still, I wouldn't be doing my job unless I hold you until we know something more." Such words usually soothed prisoners.

But not this time. "You're doing me wrong Sheriff! You've got to let me out of here. There's someplace I have to be!"

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:13 EST

Brucker shrugged. "Then you're just unlucky."

The sheriff had an ominous problem to chew over. Lew Smith, the bartender at the End of the Trail, said "Wainwright" had come in alone. But if this was indeed Sol Thomas, his older brothers couldn't be far away. The advisement from Dodge said they were tight-knit. If that were true, even if they'd had a falling out, they still might come to rescue their brother.

Had the sheriff in Dodge exaggerated their abilities to kill to hide his and his men's incompetence? It was hard to know either way. It could be downright fatal to underestimate someone.

Brucker sent Anaya into Tucson to fetch the marshal to confirm the capture and pay the $250 government bounty. Guerrilla Apache fighters had vandalized the wire between the two towns, tearing them down as they had done several times before in the past few months. The telegraph company was slow about fixing anything because their crews were busy setting up telephone exchanges.

That left Childs behind to guard the jail. Someone had to be there if the other Thomases came to rescue their brother, Brucker figured. Brucker himself planned on relieving him early in the morning.

"This isn't a night when you'll be wanting to sample," Brucker warned. "You might find yourself in a gun battle and find it handy to keep all your wits about you."

"I don't do it every night," Childs replied defensively.

"Just don't do it tonight," Brucker said. "Probably nothing will happen. People like the Thomas brothers don't last too long together. Anybody who'd wantonly kill women and children can't get along with others very well - even their own kin.

"But the Thomas brothers aren't just anybody. You heard wha

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:14 EST

You heard what happened in Dodge. Don't take them lightly. You do, Childs, you're a fool."

"All right Boss! I won't," Childs said. "You sleep well tonight. Bernard Sanderson Childs is on the job."

"So your real name is Bernard?"

"That's right. Never liked it."

"Don't blame you. I'd call myself Buddy too."

Still, a couple of hours after Brucker left, Childs locked the outer door of the jail and ambled over to the End of the Trail. He joked and smoked for a half hour and then returned with a flask to the jail's anteroom. So far, everything was all right. Sol Thomas was still in his cell where he'd left him.

When he returned, Childs must have locked the door behind him. In the morning, they found scratches and a bullet hole next to the lock as if it had been picked - and then shot at close range. The Thomas Clan must have given him a few hours alone with the flask in order to drink himself into a stupor.

Someone found Childs in the morning roped to a chair turned on its side, with his torn shirt tightly holding his sock in his mouth. He was locked in the very same cell Brucker put the captive he was guarding in. Hung over, Childs bellowed, "Let me out of here!" as loud as he could when they cut the gag.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:19 EST

Somebody had to show the Thomas brothers the way to the Brucker house. That someone was Dan Calpert, who'd been locked up for nonpayment of debts to MacMillian's Dry Goods.

Calpert liked the sheriff. Brucker offered the serious and quiet former cowhand a job as deputy, a proposition Calpert seriously mulled. Still, he didn't want to forego the chance of making a big strike. With those proceeds, he figured on paying back the bills he owed to MacMillian's and other merchants in town. Being a deputy was hard, occasionally dangerous work in a town like Contention City. Calpert was interested in keeping his hide bullet free.

Sheriff Brucker and the Contention City businesses needed employees. One way of getting them was to lock up a few people for getting behind on their bills and threaten to lock up many more. The businesses, and the sheriff, encouraged people to apply their efforts toward holding regular jobs. The merchants didn't want to give up on granting credit because there was too much money to be made in that direction. It was a cold fact of economics that a few men would make big strikes and everybody else would be left with withering dreams.

One of the Thomas brothers held a revolver to the small of Calpert's back as they marched there.

They found his body"a bullet in the back and head with a cubic inch chunk blown out of the back of it"on the road to the Brucker home. A twenty-foot trail of blood leading back toward town meant Calpert had tried to crawl back to town before he died.

————————————————————————— ———————————————

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:19 EST

Mary Brucker and a few neighbors heard the shot that killed Calpert. It had shattered the still night and set the dogs Prince, King and Queen to baying. The sheriff calmly got up out of bed and dressed in the dark.

"What are you doing?" Mary asked.

"Just stay in here. Evil as bad as that doesn't come to an easy end. Don't let any of the children go outside until the morning."

"What's going on?"

"Someone's coming to try to kill me, I believe," he said matter-of-factly.

"How do you know that?"

"Mostly by premonition, I reckon."

It was too late to scold him. Yes, she knew she would have been worried, had he told her what was going on, but was this better"

"Be careful," she whispered.

"I always am."

He took his carbine down from the mantle next to their front door and met up with his eleven-year-old son John in the kitchen.

"I want to go with you, Pa," John said.

"You stay inside here," Brucker told him. "If I'm shot and they start coming in here, you'll need to fire on them.

"They might try to smoke you out. If that happens, you've got to get your ma, brother and sisters out of here, but don't be obvious about it. Shoot as many of the Thomases as you can. The family is counting on you."

The Thomas brothers underestimated Sheriff Brucker, or they would have forgotten about revenge and have ridden out of town. Though he had a reputation, they thought they held the better hand: they outnumbered him, and they were coming up on him in the middle of the night. They might be natural killers, but they met their match in Brucker. A man of his caliber is worth twelve regular men considering the skill, agility and cunning he brought to a fight.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:20 EST

Sheriff Brucker was out the side door quick as a striking rattler. Prince, King and Queen bounded out with him. John closed the door behind his father quietly and quickly.

The sheriff position himself behind some bushes by the side of the door. From there, he alternately crawled and sprinted to better spots as his quarter-wolf dogs sought out, distracted and attacked the brothers. He could see the Thomases' outline partially illuminated by the moon. He heard their voices discussing plans of murdering of him and his family immixed with the dogs' growling.

"Where'd they come from?" John heard one of the Thomases say somewhere near the window he peeked out of. Prince growled and snapped ferociously.

A dozen shots later, Prince, King and Queen lie bleeding to death. John heard the yelps and knew what happened. He cried softly.

The Thomas brothers suspected someone had come out of the house, though they didn't know where he was.

Brucker dropped behind a corner of his barn and began picking off the Thomas Brothers, shellacking them with round after round from his firearm, probably wishing he could see how successful he was.

John got down on his knees and prayed he'd soon hear his father outside calling for his help moving the bodies.

A total of twelve times he heard the carbine's familiar report. Then he knew the weapon was spent.

Brucker moved under the concealment of the moonlight with the stealthiness that came from knowing where to place your feet around his own property. The Thomases weren't able to do anything but fire wildly.

John knew his dad didn't have another gun and hoped he had more ammunition. He didn't see him stow any. Curious, he wondered what was going outside. Holding back as long as he could, John opened the door.

As he did, he heard his father yell from somewhere out in the yard, "Get back inside, fool kid!"

That was all one of the Thomas Brothers who lay bleeding to death needed to spot the sheriff who'd outfoxed them.

It had just been a matter of waiting. He'd have sat out there all night, waiting for the sun to illuminate the area better. He was safe where he was.

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:22 EST

John shut the door and hoped his father would be okay.

He wasn't. He'd taken a bullet clean through the front of his face, and was killed instantly.

The family stayed awake in the house throughout the night, keeping eyes and guns trained on the doors in case the Bruckers came to exact more vengeance. Mary Brucker cursed herself for not keeping better watch on the boy.

When the morning finally came, the family crept outside and found the sheriff's body, his carbine fully loaded, ready to give the bodies of the Thomas brothers a few shots for good measure.

Marshall Samuel Lincoln arrived later that afternoon with Anaya. He grimly handed Mary Brucker a $750 check for the capture of the Thomas brothers.

"There'll be more coming, probably, although how much I can't say. These men have killed a lot of people," Lincoln said, holding his ten-gallon hat in his hand.

"That's fine," Mary Brucker replied tonelessly.

"On behalf of the people of the United States, I want to offer your family my deepest condolences in this time of tragedy. We'd not enjoy the freedom we know if we never had folks like your husband," Marshall Samuel Lincoln said.

The new widow shrugged. She'd finished her crying an hour before he arrived, and the marshal reminded her too much of her deceased husband for her to tolerate his presence well. "Okay, marshal. You've said your piece and paid their bounty. Now why don't you get on that horse and ride out of here" You and I know you want to anyway."

The swarthy man who stood a head taller than most other men was taken aback. "I...I ....I don't know what to say. Is there some way I could help" You name it Mrs. Brucker..."

"Yes. You can leave. Go on," she said, motioning with her hands as if she were shooing chickens. "I've had my fill of you heroes."

Lincoln complied, replacing his Stetson and tipping the brim. "Good day m"am."

"Not so far it ain't," she said bitterly. "What am I going to do now" To you, he was a good man, someone you might call "hero." To me he was my husband. You can and will get another hero. I'll never get another husband like that."

"But..."

"Good day, Marshal. I hope you don't make your wife a widow. I hope she never feels the way I feel right now."

Sortas · Date: 2007-01-27 18:23 EST

It was as if the gates of Hell opened up and loosed all of its denizens free in Contention City. After the Brucker murder, it wasn't safe standing on a street corner there, let alone make a life for yourself.

Many more wagons rolled out of town than rolled in. Those who could afford the train waited at the station, eager to be anywhere but Contention City. Houses were vacated. Campsites cleared.

Outlaw gangs infested the outskirts of the town stopping the former citizens and helping themselves to whatever lucre they could find in their wagons and on their bodies. The threat of a bullet in the head guaranteed nearly ubiquitous cooperation. Often several gangs would stop a party, one after the other. Those boomtown refugees who made away with more than the clothes on their back were lucky.

On my way into Contention, I came close to getting my hat shot off when I rode into the middle of two gangs of gun throwers going at it. I reckoned the warring parties had to stop to reload before they resumed plugging away at each other. That brief respite to reload is what saved my hide. I spurred "49er, and he carried me out of there fast as he could.

I thought I was giving the other gangs a wide berth, riding off-trail. Wrong. Within earshot of the battle, I was stopped by another gang.

"Hold on a minute, partner," hailed a man in a dirty white shirt, face concealed by a red bandana. He rode up on a piebald from behind me with his revolver drawn. His eyes were slitted and voice was gruff, trying to do his best to show he meant business.

That look of his set me off. "Why don't you join the party a half-mile back?" I said snidely, annoyed as all get-out, hearing the echoing gunfire. "Sounds like either side could use another gun or two."

A sweaty fat man then stepped out of the brush. "Just shut up and hand over your wallet, dummy," he said.

"Come on now! What did I do to you?" I said. "Why do you have to go calling me things like dummy' Can't you be the least bit friendly?"

"Cut the chitchat and hand over your money," the man with the dirty white shirt repeated.

Topic: The Alien Sheriff

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas

Sortas