"I don't reckon you're about to believe any of this tale," he finished.
Doc grinned so broadly that his whole strong old face looked chubby. He took a sip and grinned again.
"No," he said genially, "I don't reckon I am."
Gander Eye's brows drew down and his jaws clamped.
"Ain't a many men I'd take that off of," he said.
"Not many, but you and I are old, old friends." Again Doc tasted his drink with bland approval. "Old enough friends for me to remind you that I've noticed and enjoyed the pranks you're always playing, the tall stories you come up with, to make life in Sky Notch a little more interesting."
"Just what in hell are you getting at, Doc?"
"Why," said Doc, "just look at the last two days with you. First you go about helping Duffy Parr commit suicide, and drive him pointblank into marriage and total abstinence. Not content with that, you devil poor old Uncle Cliff Pelton and frighten him to the very roots of his soul with your climbing irons—don't stare at me, that adventure's being told all over this end of the county. Gander Eye, you're more or less a natural genius of mischief for mischief's sake. I'm going to write you into my history as the Till Eulenspiegel of Sky Notch."
"Never heard of that fellow," said Gander Eye.
"I'm forcibly reminded of your adventure a few years back, the day that Derwood Ballinger, lord mayor of no fewer than two hundred and fifty souls here in Sky Notch, was fishing in Brummitt's Pond. You swam I don't know how far under water that day, just to hang a dead groundhog on his hook. And it was just the mercy of hell that you didn't put the barb of that hook through your thumb."
"I'd never have done that," said Gander Eye. "Hook myself, I mean."
"And now you want to come and tell me a tale taller than Mount Mitchell," accused Doc gently.
Gander Eye sat up straight. "What if I was to take you up yonder and show you that there big stack of rocks?" he suggested.
"No," said Doc. "I'm pretty well stricken in years to go scrambling over these scenic heights with you. And neither one of us wants to drive a car along that travesty of a road." Again he grinned, more broadly than before. "Tell me one thing, Gander Eye. Were you at all frightened when you saw that big heap of rocks set ready to roll down, the way you say they are?"
For one of the few times in his adult life, Gander Eye looked abashed and plaintive. "Well, yes, sir," he admitted. "I sure enough was scared."
"And that makes it sound more and more fantastic. I've been figuring on you for a number of years, and I never yet heard of you being frightened of anything."
Gander Eye clamped his glass hard between both hands. "Hark at me just one time, Doc. I'm not calling myself easy to scare, either. But just what is it could go 'round here making burnt places on the trees and grass and all like that? What would you call it?"
"If I was a fundamentalist, I'd have to say it was the devil," replied Doc. "The Old Boy himself, Muckle-horned Clootie, out for a stroll, swishing his tail around. But neither you nor I believe in the devil, do we?"
"What about that big chunk of gold it give me?" asked Gander Eye. "I told you I done took a scrap of it to Bo Fletcher and he tested it out for gold."
"A scrap of it," repeated Doc. "A little scrap. Where's the big piece now? You tell me you threw it into Bull Creek. That's a highly eccentric way to treat gold. No, no, Gander Eye, have a little mercy. Have it the more since I'm sitting here and sharing this excellent blockade Duffy Parr lavished on me. I'm your medical adviser. I advise you to go try your yarn on somebody else."
"I've got to think about that," said Gander Eye emphatically. "I'll study how to tell it to somebody else. I'm through a-talking and being fun-made-of the way you're doing me."
"Very well, and also stop being mad at me. Let's change the subject. Slowly left a pot of Brunswick stew on the burner for Jim Crispin and me. Why don't you stay and have her set out another plate for you?"
"All right, then," said Gander Eye. "I'd relish some of that. But don't you say one mumbling word about this to Jim or Slowly just yet. Swear me that, Doc. "
"Naturally I won't tell them. You and I will just call this a professional interview, and you know that doctors don't pass on the things their patients say in confidence. And I tell you again, stop glittering your eye at me. I haven't called you a liar and I haven't called you crazy. I've only hinted at those things, very subtly. So don't be mad any more."
"Oh, I ain't mad at you none," Gander Eye assured him, relaxing a trifle. "I'm just a-learning about when to keep my big mouth shut."
VIII
Gander Eye ate with appetite at Doc's table, but said little. The next morning he thought better of his determination to keep from mentioning what he had seen and surmised. He sought Duffy's station, where the proprietor was ready to talk, though not to drink. Bo Fletcher sauntered over, and Gander Eye talked guardedly about strange shapes in the night and a mighty stack of rock fragments poised on the slope of Dogged Mountain. Duffy and Bo were as skeptical as Doc, and by no means as restrained in their hilarity.
"I doggies, you should ought to be the one writing about this here town instead of Doc Hannum," declared Bo. "You might could write in some sure enough amusing things."
"I might could be able to do just that," said Gander Eye darkly. "Listen, Bo, why don't you come up yonder on that nothing road with me and have a look at them rocks?"
"I ain't lost no rocks, and I ain't suffering to find none," Bo said, smiling. "If there was gold in them, now, you'd possibly interest me in the notion."
"If the fool-killer was to pass by here just now, what would happen to you?" Duffy asked Gander Eye.
"I know just what would happen!" Gander Eye almost blazed. "I'd be left here all alone with nobody to talk to."
Unoffended, Duffy and Bo laughed loudly.
"Well, come back again and fetch us another sweet joke. But me, I ain't about to go visiting no rocks, no more than Bo. Peggy's going to fry me a mess of trout fish for my dinner, and I wouldn't miss that. Not for the whole mountain of rocks."
"Oh, let's change the subject," moaned Gander Eye. "I'm like what Doc said about it one time, I ain't no friend to unprofitable discussions. If that's the right word. Well, if you two won't come, maybe I'll go up yonder myself for another look."
"Have a good day for it," urged Bo solicitously.
Gander Eye took a few steps across the station yard, then turned and fixed them with blazing eyes.
"Bo," he said, "not you nor Duffy either one would know the God's truth if it was to jump up and bite a chunk out of you."
He walked grimly away from the station, and Duffy and Bo watched him depart in a paroxism of delight.
In Crispin's cabin, Struve sat and ate sugar cookies and drank coffee. His broad body was dressed in a beautifully cut leisure suit of blue denim with red piping at lapels and pockets. "It's getting to be time," he said again. "Maybe you've done something here, but there's plenty left for you to do."
"The Kimbers think I'm one of them," said Crispin.
"And I think the same of you," said Struve easily. "One of the Kimbers. I know what your real name is, don't forget. What you must also be is one of these Sky Notch yokels, get them ready to help us out here at the base point."
"I know," said Crispin. "I've heard it often enough."
"If I'm getting boringly repetitious, it's to be sure you do know. We need Sky Notch, my friend. That huddle of Kimber shacks is too primitive, too far from anything. We have electricity here, we'll need that for the sort of refuge and activity the Beyonders must have, with all that necessary heat and vibration. We have road and telephone communications. We have a political setup—that mayor, Derwood Ballinger, appears to be the man to listen to a good offer."
"Are you sure about him?" asked Crispin.
"Well, he's learned to take orders in his day, from his party bosses in the county and likewise from several people in Asheville. When he sees how luxuriously he can feather his own nest—" Struve smiled in the utmost confidence. "And your doctor friend, Hannum, should understand; he's a reasonable man from what you tell me. Now, then, how about that Gander Eye Gentry fellow? I think he's been trying to find out for himself, and he may need to be convinced what the score is in the game."
Struve put the tips of his thick, hairy fingers together and gazed at them, like Sherlock Holmes solving a problem.
"Convinced," he said again, as though he liked the word. "We can use him, so we don't want to hurt him, not badly. Just badly enough to convince him."
"Who told you all this about Gander Eye?" asked Crispin.
"You know who told me," replied Struve. "They've observed him. I can understand them when they want to communicate, the way you never had the chance to learn to understand. That's one of a number of excellent reasons why I'm giving the orders and you're taking them."
"I take orders," said Crispin.
"You'd better not only take orders, you'd better carry them out. It's fairly late on the timetable for you to refuse."
"I haven't said I refuse," protested Crispin unhappily. "But it's these people here. I need time to convince them."
"Time's running short, I said already," reminded Struve, and he reached for another cookie. "It's running short for you and me and everybody. Once we're here in Sky Notch, once we have the town in good running order for us and for them, we can send out the right reports to the papers and news broadcasters. We can invite the right scientists to visit—your friend Dr. Hannum can be a real help there. We can persuade the world that this visit from somewhere outside is not only the most wonderful thing that ever happened, it's the best possible thing that could happen."
"And the people of the world will be slaves," said Crispin, as though to himself.
"When it comes to that, the people of the world have always more or less been slaves. They don't notice their chains. They think of them as a glittering decoration. Sometimes the chains are highly becoming to the right wearer." Struve grinned at Crispin. "You, for instance."
Crispin turned away and stared at a picture on the wall.
"Oh, cheer up," Struve bade him loftily. "These Sky Notch people had better listen to you and be persuaded, if they want to come out of it alive, if they want to come out able to listen to anything."
"I know," said Crispin. "Gander Eye is going to pose for me. I'll persuade him."
"I'll check on you again later. Just now, I want to check on someone else." Struve got up and gazed out of the window. "Your Gander Eye man thinks he's up to something. I see him heading away from his home, in a direction I don't particularly like."
Struve walked out back of the cabin and lost himself under cover of the trees that grew close there. Crispin did not watch to see where he went.
Gander Eye had left his own home without his rifle this time. He had begun to wonder if a rifle would be any great help in what he was doing. He headed down Main Street to Bull Creek, then along the bank and up again to the road the Kimbers used, for the third time in three days.
He moved furtively, as he had moved the other two times, looking and listening in all directions. The air was warm and bright where the shade did not fall, and Gander Eye felt thirsty as he approached the place where he had climbed up the mountain and seen that collection of great stones, poised ready to be hurled down into the road. He did not feel like going back to look just now. Anyway, it was stupid to go the same trail every time, you wore a path. He went to the other side of the road and climbed down the steepness beyond it, all the way to Bull Creek.
There he stood for several long minutes, his hand resting on the smooth stem of a cucumber tree that jutted out above the stream. He listened and looked across to the other side, along the bank upstream and down, and then over his shoulder the way he had come. At last he squatted down on his heels and scooped water in his palm to drink it, lifted more, lifted another palmful and another. His thirst felt gratefully quenched. He remembered the time Bo Fletcher had been lured far away to a town in the eastern part of the state, with promise of a good job in a fancy furniture factory. Bo had gone, telling his wife he'd send for her as soon as he found a house for them to stay in. But he was back in Sky Notch in three days. The water in the lowlands, Bo had told everyone, wasn't fit to give to a dog. No, nor the bread, either.
Rising and looking all around again, Gander Eye walked along the creek. It sang to him soothingly, but he did not want to be soothed. He walked upwards of a quarter of a mile by the waterside, squeezing between trees, tiptoeing on rocks, and when he climbed back to the road it was a longer, steeper way up than the one he had taken downward. Back on the road above, he saw with some satisfaction that he had come past the place where those rocks might jump down on an unsuspecting wayfarer.
He kept heading along, for what he hadn't waited to look at the day before. This time, none of the Kimbers were afoot on the road. Gander Eye couldn't decide to be glad. He wondered if it wouldn't be more or less a good idea to talk to some Kimbers, to see if he could find out something. But then, maybe the Kimbers were in the dark about it, too.
Dark. It had been dark when he had looked down from afar at the lights in the hollow where the baptizing had taken place. Now it was daytime, and maybe he could make out something more.
He reached the place where the rock rose steeply beside the road and curved deeply beyond. Down there among the trees, he knew it without looking again, were those marks of scorched bark and leaves. No point in scrambling down for another study. He couldn't tell how they had been made, nor by what. And nobody seemed about to believe anything he said about his findings.
He came to where the side trail went down from the road. If he stayed on the road itself, he'd soon be among the cabins the Kimbers had built for their settlement, but nobody would be afoot down the trail. They only went there to baptize, on a night when the moon was full and staring. He slipped in among the brush, and half a dozen steps along the slanting trail took him clear out of sight from the road. A little way below, and the trees opened up somewhat. He could see down there.
The baptizing pool lay at the very lowest point of the hollow. Two nights ago, it had shown like a twinkle of black among the lanterns. Now he saw that it was oval in shape; he reckoned it was maybe half an acre in extent. A man could breed fish in there, Gander Eye told himself, feed them up, and when they were big enough he could fish that water over and over, while more fish made themselves and fed themselves. Giving food to the fish made them just like chickens in a run. It wasn't real fishing sport to drop a baited hook in where fish crowded together and fought for the bait. You just pulled them on in. You might not get the biggest of them, you just got the best fighters.
On the far side of the pool, where another height of the mountain rose up like a tall, tall building thrown up there by giants, opened a darkness. It was some kind of cave.
He descended a score of steps farther, to where he could see better. That big cave had light inside. Not lamps, not fires—those would be yellow or red. This light was blue.
As Gander Eye peered at it, he thought the blueness stirred. You might even say it flickered. What burned blue? A little salt on a candle did that, and if you set fire to blockade in a saucer it flamed with a bluish tint. But this blue was stronger than those. It was like a great blue blossom turned into light. And, as he studied it, it flickered again. It winked, like a shifting radiance on blue glass.
"Baffling, isn't it?" said a cheerful voice at his shoulder.
Swift as a lizard, Gander Eye spun away from the voice, spun for a dozen feet or more through a scatter of prickly bushes beside the trail. He came around facing a heavily built man whose suit of denim was something to be envied. Gander Eye thought this stranger was about the hairiest human being he had ever seen. Even closely shaven, he seemed to have a beard. His deep, narrow eyes watched Gander Eye as though from an ambush.
"You're called Gander Eye Gentry, as I've been told," the man said, smiling without mirth. "Don't be afraid, I'm not going to hurt you."
"I ain't afraid," said Gander Eye, "and I won't tell you if I'm going to hurt you or not."
"You can call me Struve," said the man. "I came all the way up here to talk with you, Mr. Gentry. Talk quietly, without interruption." The mirthless smile broadened. "I may become a lucky new item in your acquaintance."
"You followed me," charged Gander Eye, furious within himself that he had not been aware of it. "I want to know what for."
Struve lounged back against a hump of rock, dark among green weeds. "Maybe to make you rich," he said. "Maybe to make you happy "
"I'm right happy the way it is," replied Gander Eye, "and for being rich, I've got enough to do me. I never needed money very bad."
Struve clicked his tongue. "Dear me," he smiled, "you're going to be a problem."
"I might could be."
Struve held up a fuzzy hand, as though in reassurance. "What if I told you that Sky Notch was going to become the most famous town in the country? In the world?"
"I'd wonder myself what you meant," said Gander Eye at once. "You hark at me, Mr. Struve, if you're a-trying to have fun with me, stop it. Maybe things will quit being funny all of a sudden."
Struve leaned against the rock. He slid his hand into a side pocket, and Gander Eye tightened for a spring. But all Struve brought out was a lean, expensive-looking cigar. Deliberately he removed the brilliant band and flicked a gleaming lighter to kindle the end. He blew out a wisp of slaty smoke.
"If that's a threat," he said, "try something else. I'm not without help. If I only raised my voice in a certain way, the help would be here. All around you."
"Now it's you doing the threat," said Gander Eye. "Hark at me. Maybe I've got a gun on me and maybe I haven't. If you call your help, you'll find out quick. "
"Oh, now, Mr. Gentry." Struve gazed at the end of his cigar and knocked a fleck of ash from it. "I said I might make you rich and happy. I said that Sky Notch was going to become an important town. These may be new thoughts to you, but please give them place in your mind. When Sky Notch has this sudden rise in the world, wouldn't you like to be the mayor, with all that would mean when Sky Notch gets to be the town it's scheduled to be?"
"Derwood Ballinger's the mayor," said Gander Eye. "I ain't studying to run against him. I ain't about to run for no public office. Ain't never thought of it."