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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Amazing Stories, August 1942, with "The Sheriff Of Thorium Gulch"
Joe Jepson felt the wave of the heat blast as the gun flamed at him.
There was hell to pay on the Moon when Jepson's old
man died and left "unsettled affairs" in Thorium Gulch.
"WHY have you dodged me all evening?" The way the gazes of the two young people devoured each other left no doubt as to their mutual regard. It was June 4th, 2142, the night of the splendid reception given to the graduates of the Engineering Department of the Harvard University by the A.A.E.
In spite of his magna cum laude, his fine fraternity associations, in spite of his showcase full of athletic trophies, Joseph Jepson went about the entire evening with a face as gloomy as an eclipse. Alice Anne Dawson had moved about among the guests, gaily laughing and jesting, but always at aphelion from him, so to speak. Finally he had cornered her alone, on the railing of the outdoor conservatory.
She hung her head. She had the colored beauty of a rare Chinese vase, and a lithe and supple body like a panther, on which an entire night's dancing had not left the least impression of fatigue.
"I—I just didn't think you'd want to talk to me," Alice breathed very tenderly.
"Hell! Aren't we engaged? You haven't done anything to me." Joseph hid his embarrassment beneath an attempt at roughness.
"Joe!" There was immense relief in her half-whispered voice. "But my—but your—but Joe!"
"Yes!" Joseph's snarl contrasted with the soft love in his eyes. "Just because your father, by a clever quirk on Wall Street, cleaned my father out of the finest thorium mine on the Moon, is no reason for my getting sore at you. You didn't do it. And there's no reason for me to be ashamed; my father is a mining engineer, not a—not a financier!"
She snuggled into his arms, where he held her with affectionate solicitude, yet with an air of not knowing what to do with her.
"Then everything is all right, Joe?" There was a soft, melting light in her eyes that caught Joseph's breath.
Joseph was silent a moment.
"Well. It is, and it isn't."
Alice shrank out of his arms into a corner of the porch seat. "Aren't you going to marry me, then?"
"Yes," Joseph said, now calmly. "But I haven't got a dime. If I didn't love you, I might be willing to drag you into a life of uncertainty and asphyxiation."
"Joe! What are you going to do?"
"I'm staying right here on Earth and getting me an engineering job, either teaching or industrial, and getting on my feet first. You're going back to the Moon and taking your place in the aristocratic social circle where you belong, and—and if you get tired of waiting for me—"
"But, Joe, you'll go crazy here on Earth." She put her hand over his mouth. "Everybody here lives by an equation calculated a hundred years in advance. You love the romantic frontier life on the Moon. You only came to this crowded, stifled Earth to get your technical college work, just as I came here to prepare myself to be a leader in the humanitarian side of life on the Moon. No. You come back to the Moon with me. I've got enough of my own possessions so that we can get a start together."
"I couldn't do that." Joseph shook his head. "I've got to start on my own feet, or I'll hate myself."
"Why, Joe! Your whole life was built up for living on the Moon! Your pillar riding, and how you shoot four guns at a time—" she looked admiringly at his magnificent physique—"why! You could make the Moon eat out of your hand."
Alice was clinging to him again, as though he were her life's only hope.
"Anyway, I'll always and always wait for you," she sobbed. "You know I've never gone with anyone else. You might come—you might be sent up to the Moon on business."
"That's possible," Joseph said through gritted teeth. "The Universe is a small place."
"Do you remember how we got lost in a crater when I was just six, and you killed the yellow armored snake?" Alice laughed through her tears, and it was like Rainbow Falls in the Yosemite. The silvery disc in the sky, the key to their lives and their emotions, smiled placidly down upon them.
SUCH good sports were these two young products of humanity's newest frontier, the Moon, that during the week of social and official activities centered around graduation in a hundred colleges around Boston, neither of them mentioned the subject again. After that, Alice and her mountain of luggage went aboard a Terralunar liner; and Joseph Jepson set about investigating the numerous opportunities for employment open to one with his qualifications.
Into that gray, drab succession of days and nights, to which during his four years on Earth he had never got accustomed, suddenly came the helio message from Copernicus, that the shock of losing his mine had prostrated Joseph's father, who now lay partly paralyzed at Thorium Gulch. There was nothing to do for Joseph, but to take the first liner for the Moon. So, there he was, on the Catapult platform, sitting on his meager baggage, looking up at that bright disc, preparing to start "up" there.
History has always progressed by means of the unexpected; never has it been an extrapolation upon the curve of the past and present. For instance, on that sad night, as Joseph sat on his suitcase and waited for the Glider, the Moon looked entirely different up there in the sky, than his ancestors of two hundred years ago would have ever dreamed. There was a haze around it; its once sharp edge was fuzzy and there wasn't a star within five degrees of it. The shine was much brighter and less yellow in tone; and the once clear, sharp markings of seas and craters were vague smudges. For, the Moon now had an atmosphere.
Joseph was popular; his recent financial catastrophe but little known. He could have had a hilarious crowd at the Platform to see him off. But he slipped away in secret. He was not in the mood for party frolics.
For a vast irony pressed down on him as he sat there, idly looking up and tracing out the Serenity and Tranquility Seas. It was Joseph's own grandfather who had made that Lunar atmosphere possible, whereas here he himself sat, a penniless waif, with no man's hand lifted to his assistance. Every historical movement has the character of an individual great man behind it. When the first geodesic gliders were made, and men in space-suits brought back specimens of minerals, the rarity of which on Earth was holding back human progress and which were to be had on the Moon for the picking up, Grandfather Jepson had had the vision of this vast Moon Empire.
AT first people had thought him cracked, and had opposed and persecuted him. His lifetime had gone into it. Before finally the metallic and silicic oxides had been broken up by the energy derived from the sun's rays, releasing free oxygen, hydrogen, and helium, and creating an atmosphere breathable for man, at least during the 336-hour daylight period, world politics and finance had been involved, two world-wars had been fought, the name of the Moon Development Company was a byword in every home on the Earth's globe, and two hundred billion dollars a year for fifty years had been spent. Old Jepson had died, leaving Joseph's father nothing but a pauperized, undeveloped
thorium mine near Copernicus. After spending a lifetime wrestling a living from it and bringing up Joseph to operate it scientifically, Joseph's father had, due to a twist of the financial wheel, been left with nothing.
Suddenly, there lay the ship in front of Joseph, in the cradle of its catapult. Joe picked up his luggage, refusing the services of a porter because of the scantiness of the change in his pocket, and walked up the ramp into the huge cigar-shaped craft. There were seats in rows, just as in a bus, just barely comfortable, for the trip was short. The warning gong rang; ports were sealed. The gigantic machinery beneath the Catapult Platform rumbled hollowly. The passengers were shut away from the world. There were no windows, for there was nothing to see, since the journey was made outside of Space. On the outside of the ship, there was the usual commotion in the usual Platform crowd; when, with a huge roar of the Catapult, the ship suddenly vanished.
Which is another reminder that history is full of the unexpected. Joseph himself was no small reader of the prophetic fiction of the past, and some of the 200-year-old stories of rocket-propelled vessels seemed to him on the same plane with Cyrano de Bergerac's Moon Balloon propelled by swans. For it was Einstein and his group who discovered how to reach other bodies in Space. Since each mass of matter is a pucker in the three-dimensional surface of the four-dimensional sphere which is all of the known and imaginable Universe, the discovery of a catapult to push matter out of space, made it possible to follow the lines between these puckers, the lines whose tensor equations were zero, or geodesies. Reaching the destination was a matter of coasting and skilful landing, just as in case of an atmospheric glider. There was no power installation on the vessel itself. So, after a few hours of reading and solitaire, Joseph found himself getting off the vessel at the huge Platform at Copernicus, one of the Moon's two largest cities.
FOR a moment, he was overcome by emotion at being back again after an absence of four years. The thin, biting air was like an elixir; the inky-black shadows, the light feeling of his body, the magic of the earth-shine in the sky, surged all his happy childhood back for a sudden moment. In the bustle and confusion such as is incident upon the landing of a large vessel, a messenger-boy wound his way in and out, shouting:
"Calling Mr. Jepson. Calling Mr. Joseph Jepson!"
When Joseph announced himself, the blue-coated boy with cap tilted sidewise, handed him the yellow envelope that has been familiar for centuries. Since there is no way of communicating with a vessel that is out of Space, this was the first possible news that could reach him since his embarkation. He reached for it languidly. He could not imagine anything happening to him worse than had already happened. Little did he know how wrong he was—on two counts. The heliogram read:
YOUR FATHER, WALLACE JEPSON, DIED HOUR 188. COME AT ONCE TO THORIUM GULCH TO SETTLE AFFAIRS:
J.HERMSEN, COUNTY JUDGE, THORITE COUNTY.
It seemed to Joseph that he suddenly went limp. He remained that way for many days, as days are counted on Earth. Like a wound-up clock, he went through the necessary motions, eyes staring straight ahead, speaking only in essential monosyllables, until, as he thought, he shook the dust of Thorium Gulch from his shoes for good and all. He found himself back in the busy streets of Copernicus, at loose ends.
He hadn't enough money to pay his fare back to Earth. He did not know exactly to what to turn for a living. In fact, he cared little about living anyway. What in particular did he have to live for?
He decided to take a few hours' rest in a low-priced hotel. In fact, a few hours of oblivion on a few bottles of red-neck, would not be so bad. Then he could decide what to do next.
As he brought his luggage into the lobby, it fell from his hand as the result of shouts out in the street. He rushed out, and then flattened against the wall, following the example of the other bystanders. Two men in the street were catfooting around with cathode-guns in their hands. One was leather-faced and sullen-eyed. The other was fresh-faced, young, alert.
"That pore young snip's a durned fool," said the man squeezing into a doorway with Joseph. "Dead-Eye Ike's got the quickest timin' in the South of the Moon. I bet he's killed a hunnerd men."
"What's it about?" asked Joseph.
"Don't matter what it's about, does it?" the stranger said. "If Dead-Eye Ike wants a guy dead, it'll be about sumpin'."
The men were maneuvering about on their feet like fencers. They struggled chiefly with their eyes. Not a word was said. The younger man was very pale. Occasionally one would twitch a hand with levelled cathode-gun. A blue halo would surround the other for an instant, but nothing more happened.
THEN it was all over in an instant.
The young man twitched ever so little with his trigger finger; the blue halo appeared around Dead-Eye Ike. But this time, just a split-second later, the young fellow's finger really squeezed, and Dead-Eye Ike toppled heavily to the pavement with blood welling from a hole that the stream of electrons from the cathode gun had bored clear through his chest.
The man next to Joseph let out an involuntary exclamation of exultation.
"Got his at last!"
Confidentially he whispered to Joseph: "I happen to know that Dead-Eye Ike just had a couple o' thumbs o' red-neck."
Joseph knew the rest. Very fine coordination between hand and eye were necessary to throw up the shield of positive charge just as one's opponent let go his instantaneous cathode stream. But neither cathode-stream nor shield could last over 1/100th of a second. The young man had pretended to shoot, but had let his real shot go just after Dead-Eye Ike had thrown out his shield, catching him on the subsidence of the shield.
"No red-neck for me. Ever!" Joseph said to himself.
He tossed through a restless night, but leaped out of bed in the morning, his mind made up calmly and definitely to something that had been hiding in the back of it for "days." Alice Dawson lived on a plantation only about fifty miles up the Appenine highway. For, after moisture had been added to the Moon's surface, many animals and plants began to grow there; because of the unusual intensity of the ultraviolet portion, the plants supplied the Earth with most of its dietary vitamin. Alice's father had many residences, but the family's real home was this plantation near Thorium Gulch. Joseph decided that he would visit her once more, and then decide what to do. He felt peace within himself when he determined upon this.
He rented a caterpillar-cycle, the native vehicle of the Moon, upon which he was an expert rider. These machines have ten 24-inch wheels, each with independent drive and knee-support, and can climb up steep hills, over rocks, up and down rills, balance on rays and ridges, progress axle-deep in dust and mud. Their multiplicity of controls requires a high degree of skill to manipulate. In something less than an hour, Joseph was twisting his whizzing, worm-like mount up the familiar old canyon toward the Dawson plantation.
THE first thing that roused his suspicion was a cloud of black smoke hanging over the top of the last precipitous ridge. Then, as he rounded the last bend, he saw the plantation buildings in flames.
He roared into the gateway like an arrow and leaped off his cycle. In his haste he noted the odd circumstance that an automobile, unfamiliar to him, was standing just inside the gate, headed outwards. As he approached, a tremendous explosion threw the main building into the air, black fragments flew, and a belch of black smoke went straight up. Joseph shook his head. There was never enough explosive material in an ordinary plantation to produce such an upheaval. Something was wrong. He ran toward the crackling pile, full of apprehensions about the inhabitants. Then it was, he saw old Dawson's body, and the chest was mangled by cathode shots.
As he approached it, from around the other side of the house came a group of struggling, running people. There was a woman's scream, short, quickly stifled. He turned and stumbled toward them through the black, acrid smoke, but before he got very far, they were all in the car.
There were two men, and there was Alice. One of the men sat at the wheel and had the motor running. Alice sat in the front seat, the other man in the rear. With the speed for which he was famous, Joseph had two cathode guns in his hands and the two disintegrator-ray tubes in his armpits, aimed, his elbows on the buttons. But, he was frustrated. The two brigands put their heads so close to Alice's that he did not dare to fire for the moment. They had him covered with a multiplicity of weapons, including a rocket-rifle, against whose lead bullet a positive shield is no protection. So, he put a hole in a tire with a cathode beam.
In a moment, Alice had her arms around the neck of the man at the wheel, held him a moment, and kissed him. Then she turned to Joseph with a merry smile, and waved to him with a tripping motion of her hand at the wrist.
Joseph turned weak throughout. The crashing universe spun in dizzy circles around him. For just a short moment he was completely unnerved and totally off-guard. He did not see the villain in the back seat carefully prop up his cathode gun to steady its aim, in time to put on his proton shield. There was a blue streak from the car. A flaming world crashed around Joseph's head, and then went out. He dropped flat on the ground, with the blood running profusely from the left side of his head. The Moon night, during which the air froze into snow and covered the rocks with a blanket of white, was only four hours away.
"THANKEE, Jedge. I'll take just half a thumb with ye."
Judge Hermsen poured out two centimeters of the thin, pungent liquor into the County Clerk's glass. Their silver hairs, and their many years' record of official position, entitled them to go about unarmed and safe in that outlaw community.
"Ye know, Jedge," the aged Clerk said: "'Cordin' to law a person't ain't ben seen by nobody for seven years, is presumed to be dead!"
They sat at a tiny round table in a far corner of the bar-room of the Slapping Holster Saloon in Thorium Gulch.
"So what?" asked the Judge, dodging his ear away from the whirling skirt-brim of one of the scantily clad girl entertainers who danced among the tables.
"In three weeks," continued the croaky voice of the County Clerk, "it is August 1st, 2149. 'Member old Dawson who was burned to death when his plantation went up in smoke? Well, his darter Alice is the only heir, and hasn't showed up for seven years. Then, there was the Jepson mine that came to the Dawson heir 'count o' some Wall-Street flamdoodlin'. The County's ben administerin' the estate ever sence—"
"But now it becomes the property of the County!" Judge Hermsen slapped the jittery table, spilling the red-neck, which he didn't want anyway. "Craters! That's a heap o' money. An' the County needs a good jail awful bad."
"W'y!" the aged County Clerk was inspired. "Them two estates will build the best jail on the Moon except Copernicus and Archimedes!"
Their conversation suddenly hushed. The whole busy room, with a dozen men at the bar and two dozen more at tables, suddenly went quiet. Only the radio went blaring on with the latest Broadway hit. Judge Hermsen could remember faintly in the back of his mind that someone had said sarcastically:
"Burned to death, nothin'! Murdered!" Then everything had gone quiet except for the jangling of the radio.
After what seemed a century, two men at a table near the bar leaped up with levelled cathode-guns. A third, younger companion remained seated.
"Wishbone Gus, ye crater varmint!" one of the men snarled. "Take that back!"
"Take what back?" the bewildered moon-turtle puncher said, staring at the two. "I ain't said nothin' against nobody."
"Ye're thinkin' too much, then. Stand up!"
Wishbone Gus lumbered to a standing position, and his hand unconsciously twitched in the direction of his cathode-gun. But he was too slow.
THERE was a crack, a faint blue streak from the gun of one of the desperadoes, and Wishbone Gus pitched backwards, clawing the air, with blood welling from the front and back openings of a hole straight through his chest. The odor of ozone and burnt flesh reeked through the room. The radio prattled and whanged unconcernedly on.
"Anybody else want to talk over the murder question?" said the bad man sarcastically, sheathing his gun.
Only silence prevailed. Everyone remained motionless, a glass upraised, a card held out. The three desperadoes lifted their glasses of red-neck to their lips and drained them at one gulp.
It took minutes before people began to unlimber. People at the bar slowly and timidly finished their drinks. Card games gradually swung back into action. One of the scantily clad, characterless dancing women broke into a harsh laugh.
"Damn right nobody won't!" she cried hoarsely. "Them three twimps are runnin' this dump. Got 'em all scared. Shoot too fast and ain't 'fraid o' nothin'!"
The rustle and bustle of resumed activity was spreading over the room again. A little argument arose at one table.
"Well, what about it, Lefty?" a sneering voice asked.
Lefty Wagner rose and walked up to the bar. At his first movement the three ruffians had their cathode guns in their hands and had him covered. But he kept his hands ostentatiously away from his weapons. He unpinned a star from the breast of his asbestos jumper and laid it on the bar.
"Last week when the bank was robbed," he said, more to the ruffians than to the gathered company, "you-all calculated to talk me into bein' sheriff. But I've figgered out that I'm the wrong guy fer sheriff. As far as I can figger, Wishbone Gus was killed in fair fight an' it was his own fault. This ain't no job for a sheriff, and I don't want to be sheriff nohow."
"Wishbone Gus was killed in fair fight!" sneered the woman with the painted face; "an' so was Meteor Bill and Skyline Jeff an' a lot o' others durin' the past few weeks. It's allus the fella's own fault, but they're all dead anyhow, because somebody didn't like 'em. And this whole bunch of sissies is scared stiff."
She swallowed another glass of red-neck and laughed another raucous laugh.
Her laugh broke down in the middle. Once more the room was paralyzed into deathly silence. A tall, lean stranger had suddenly appeared in the doorway, and stood looking in, eyeing the scene with superb disdain.
HE looked to be about thirty years old, and his bronzed face was keen and fearless. His sharp glances swept the room, and every man in it felt their stabbing power. Two cathode guns hung in holsters at his hips; in each armpit was a D-ray tube; over his shoulder was a rocket-rifle; and in his belt were two saw-toothed Poswick knives.
"So, that's the line, is it?" he said in a voice like a handsaw, cutting right through the blaring of the radio. "Three tough bozos leadin' the burgh by the nose, an' no sheriff!"
He laughed and continued searching the room with his glances, leaning idly against the door-jamb. When his eye lighted on the three bad men at the table, it paused suddenly, and there came a hard glint into it. For the merest instant he studied them, and there was the barest lighting up of his tan features. His careless air suddenly disappeared, and he walked briskly up to the bar. There he picked up the sheriff's star.
"Guess I'll run fer sheriff here," he announced, holding up the badge. "Cleanin' up nasty jints is my sideline. If anybody objects to my bein' sheriff of Thorium Gulch, lemme hear from 'im right now in any way 'e picks out!"
He waited for a few moments, during which there was not the slightest movement in the room, and no sound but that of the radio. Then he pinned on the star.
"Unanimously elected!" he exclaimed, and grinned a good-natured grin that won the hearts of all of them but the crooks.
Everyone in the room held his breath and stole furtive glances at the three bad men. The trio were winking at each other and laughing merrily. The stranger, now established as sheriff, was leaning backwards idly against the bar, with both elbows on it, watching the three men with what appeared to be a careless glance.
The youngest of the three ruffians nudged the other two, and swaggered up to the bar.
"Drinks on me fer the crowd!" he roared. "Drink the health of the new sheriff! His health, I say!"
He put a little tube of thorium down on the bar in payment, and then leaned back and roared with laughter, while his two companions supported him with loud guffaws.
The bartender set out two score of little glasses of red-neck, and the crowd solemnly filed up and tossed down the thin, acrid liquor, and again filed back to their seats. The ceremony took up some time, but at the end of it, the stranger had not as yet touched his glass.
"All right, sheriff! Here's yores!" the bad man said insolently, holding the glass toward the stranger.
"Thanks for your hospitality," the stranger said courteously, suddenly lapsing into perfect English. "I'm sorry, but I never drink. It spoils my aim."
FOR a moment the ruffian stood astonished. The fact that anyone had dared to refuse his drink was sufficient to make him stare in blank amazement. Then his face turned purple with anger.
"Yuh high-toned son of a gun!" he roared. "You'll sure as hell drink this, or I'll know why!"
"You may possibly ascertain why," the stranger replied casually. "I rather regret that I must refuse your kind hospitality, but I have already told you that in order to keep my hand quick and steady, I never drink."
The ruffian's reply was a hoarse, wordless gurgle. Then he swung the glass of liquor and dashed it straight at the stranger's face.
An unconscious, suppressed "hah!" of indrawn breaths came from the crowd. Some of them glanced at the dead man lying there on the floor, for the time forgotten.
The stranger's expression hardly changed. A sidewise twitch of his head, so slight and so quick that it was all but invisible, avoided the glass, which sailed across the room and landed in a corner. In a neat, businesslike way, his left arm shot out and caught the ruffian on the point of the chin. The latter staggered backward for several steps, toppled dizzily for a moment, and finally tumbled heavily in a heap on the ground. The next thing anyone knew, the stranger had two cathode guns levelled at the man's companions. No one saw him reach for them; they seemed to appear in his hands out of the thin air. The other two were just caught in the act of reaching for their holsters, and looked rather sheepish before the rest of the crowd, as they held the pose.
"An' hands off yore shields!" the stranger said quietly. "Just twitch yer thumb an' watch me blow yer arm off."
The man who had been knocked down, moaned and stirred, at which the faces of his two villainous companions grew black with rage. Their expression gradually changed into a sneer. One of them spoke:
"The name o' this place'll be changed to Suicide Gulch in memory o' you. There's three of us against yuh, and yuh kin ast anybody what we kin do."
"Inasmuch as I possess no references," the stranger said in correct but sarcastic English, "I am compelled to demonstrate."
There was a quick, twisting movement of each of his guns. Four sharp cracks rent the air, and there were two blue spurts from each gun. A glass clinked on a distant table. There was a crash at the ceiling above it. From each of the ruffians came a yowl of pain, and a sizzling mass dropped on the floor at the feet of each.
IT required some minutes for the crowd to figure out exactly what had happened, during which the stranger leaned casually against the bar, with his cathode guns patiently at the level, smiling at the swearing bad men, glancing occasionally at the groaning one near his feet, and the dead one in the other corner. When they reconstructed it, here is what he had done. With one hand he had shot and hit a table just beneath a liquor-glass; the concussion had shot the glass upwards and with the second shot had caught it in the air and smashed it to molten bits. This had happened almost instantaneously, but the bad men had considered it their opportunity to get the drop on the stranger. However, that was just what he was expecting, and as their guns came out of their holsters, he had shot the instruments out of their hands. It was a miracle of speed and accuracy.
It left the ruffians quite as amazed as the rest of the crowd, and everyone stared at the stranger. Never in Thorium Gulch, never anywhere on the Moon had such marvelous marksmanship or such lightning speed been seen.
"Thorium Gulch has really got a sheriff!" was a thought that went through many a man's head.
In the meanwhile, the youngest of the three ruffians, who had been knocked down, was beginning to sit up and look dazedly about the room. He staggered to his feet and fumbled awkwardly for his gun. Some secret, invisible warning from his companions stopped him.
"Now!" said the stranger. "All three of you beat it! Get the hell out of here!"
The two of them went sullenly, and the third one blinking dazedly, to the door. There the stranger stopped them, still holding four guns leveled at them.
"Wait!" he commanded. "Someone please take my hat off."
Lefty Wagner, the ex-sheriff, obligingly tugged the stranger's asbestos topee off his head.
Everyone gasped. Even the three ruffians at the door started in alarm.
"Cathode Joe!" several people about the room whispered.
There was a streak of scarred, bald scalp across the stranger's head, backwards from the left side of the forehead. That was a mark known all over the Moon, and its bearer was known, if not personally, at least by repute, to all of its inhabitants. Cathode Joe was a free-lance prospector, a restless wanderer, and a quick shooter. Though no one had ever yet beat him to a draw, yet he was quiet, and let people alone. Nevertheless, there was a queer streak in him, as a result of which he had a good many killings to his credit. He was out after bullies and outlaws, and often went out of his way to pick a fight with them. So, it was no wonder that our three beauties in the Slapping Holster were a little disconcerted for the moment. They had heard plenty of his aim, his speed, his coordination, and his love for their kind. They consulted together for a moment, and then went out. Cathode Joe shouted after them:
"See ye again! Been lookin' for ye for a long time!"
IN a moment the hum of their departing cycles was heard from the street. Two men started dragging the dead man out.
"Are those twimps a brace of brothers named Halsey?" Cathode Joe asked of Lefty Wagner.
"They're brothers, but their name is Hall."
"Wurry, wurry ingenious alias," sneered Cathode Joe. "But who's the third man, the young one, the reckless cub?"
"They're all three brothers."
"Oh, yes," recollected Cathode Joe. "Charley was just a kid when I saw them last; but he looks low-down enough to prove the relationship."
Suddenly Joe's hand was at his shield. In a moment there was a crack outside the window and a blue glow about Joe, showing that his protective field had been struck by a stream of negative electrons. Instantly afterwards, Joe's gun cracked toward the window. A rock outdoors flew to pieces, but no one was seen. Several men rushed to the door, but no one was seen.
"Never mind," said Cathode Joe. "They're far away by now."
"Stranger, ye seem to be interested in these yere prominent citizens of ourn. Dyuh mind if we ast yer why and how come?" Lefty Wagner felt fairly well acquainted with the stranger by this time.
"Guess there's no secret about it," Cathode Joe said. "I'm a rollin' stone. I've looked into every bar from here to Archimedes an' I've shot lots of men an' am still ridin'. But I ain't done nothin' against the law, an' mostly I've tended to my own business, which is lookin' for a couple of yaller lizards, the same as which ruined my life seven years ago. Bein' as this is my ol' home, I look into Thorium Gulch off an' on.
"I've found mines and punched turtles, an' kept sober, an' learned to shoot, always lookin' forrard to the time when I would find my birds. Fer that reason, today is the happiest day of my life. You can't go wrong on Buck's crooked jaw and Bill's nigger lip."
One of the bare-armed, short-skirted women patted Joe flatteringly on the arm.
"Only real man in the burgh," she said to him.
HE shook his head, slightly but unmistakably. She understood him as well as he understood her; and she retired to her corner with her own kind of dignity. There were no hard feelings on either side.
"I'm off o' wimmin, too," Joe said confidentially to Lefty. "Kyaint trust 'em." Lefty affected not to notice.
"Cain't see why ye didn't burn 'em down in their tracks," Lefty shook his head. "Yuh c'd 'a had the whole job over with by this time."
"Funny thing," mused Cathode Joe. "Been wonderin' about it myself. I just guess I wanted to see 'em squirm. Ya notice I got 'em sniffin', don't ya?"
"How d'ya know they're not a hundred miles away by this time? How d'ya know you'll ever see 'em again?"
"Because I know 'em too well. They still think they can git me, see? An', suppose they do run off? I've hunted 'em so long, I'm used to it. Your town 'ud be rid of a couple of pestiferous snakes, anyhow."
"Well," Lefty said, extending his hand. "We're glad to have you as sheriff, anyhow. But, be careful. They're crookeder an' yellower than a crater-snake!"
Cathode Joe laughed.
"I've spent seven years studyin' how to handle 'em." That seemed to settle the matter for him.
"But I'm goin' now. I'm tired and have got to sleep. Everybody in line with the door there, step aside," he sang out, indicating the area with his arm. They were surprised at the pleasure it gave them to obey him.
Then Cathode Joe loosened the lock, and stepping behind the shelter of the lava-block jamb, kicked the door open. A rocket-bullet sang through the air and flattened itself against the opposite wall, sending a little cloud of white dust upwards, and a rain of chips to the floor. The men in the room stared at Joe with wide eyes, while Joe grinned.
"You see," he said, laconically.
The bartender was searching the crags and crevasses with a field-glass at a peep-hole.
"Save yourself the bother," Cathode Joe said. "They can shoot that good at three or four miles with one of those cannons, an' that country is a stage perfectly set fer cockroaches to hide in." In fact, the number of possible ambushes in that wilderness of white rocks and inky shadows, was infinite.
"What'ya gonna do now?" asked Lefty Wagner, blankly.
"Where's the sheriff's office?" Joe inquired. They pointed it out to him through the window, hesitating to appear too near to the opening.
JOE took two sealed glass ampoules from his pocket and threw them out of the door. A cloud of dense, brown smoke rose up from where they struck the ground. He stepped into this smoke, and disappeared from sight. In a moment, the hum of his cycle was heard receding swiftly up the street. Several rocket bullets zipped and plopped about, but no harm was done.
Cathode Joe was inside the door of the sheriff's shack, dragging his machine inside with him, then when several rocket-bullets hit it on the outside, he was already behind shelter. It must be remembered that the low gravity on the Moon enabled him to move with a speed that would have been impossible on Earth. There was a table and a chair and several blankets made of the wool of the Moon fungus. Joe was tired. But he did not roll into the bunk. After taking a drink of water from his flask, he made a long roll out of the blankets on the bunk. Then he took his hat and mowl (the curtain that protects the back of the neck from the searing sun's rays), and arranged the whole thing to look like a man asleep. Then he curled up on the floor to sleep, just next to the door.
The Moon colonists have a new set of sleeping habits, in order to economize as much as possible on working time during the two weeks' diurnal period. They have a 22-hour working period followed by a four-hour sleeping period; this is the "siesta." In the middle of the long work period there is a short knocking-off interval, called the recess. During the two weeks' long lunar night, they make up for the energy (if they aren't too high up in the social scale) lost during the long period of daylight and activity. It is amazing what extremes the human body is capable of including in its adaptivity.
Cathode Joe slept a little while; not more than a few minutes, he judged. Then a faint noise awakened him. He became alert and listened. Again the noise came. It was a "plop" from the direction of the rolled-up blanket; and near one end of it were two bullet-holes; and there was a faint, nauseating odor from the discharge of the rocket bullets. Through the window he could hear the crack of cathode guns and the sizzling of D-ray sparks; and the smell of ozone wafted in. The steps of a crowd milled outside the door.
"Too bad!" said the voice of Lefty Wagner. "They got 'im."
Lefty Wagner's face looked in at the window and behind him were a score of armed men. Cathode Joe Stood up, grinned, and unlocked the door. The men gasped in relief, looking from him to the punctured blanket, and back again. With new courage in their own hearts, they congratulated him.
"They're gonna wear yuh out," Lefty Wagner said. "There's three o' them to take turns sleepin'."
"Youh oughtn't 'a' took that star," suggested another. "Then yuh could 'a' blew 'em down on sight, like a crater snake."
Cathode Joe smiled.
"Guess I was brought up to play too square," he said. "I've had dozens o' chances to do that in the past seven years. Here, I see it ain't goin' to be no trouble to get 'em legally. Never mind my rest. It's as important as not drinkin' liquor, but I'll see to it."
JOE trundled his pillar-cycle (so called because of its caterpillar-like progress) outdoors, asking the men to crowd around him while he mounted. Then with a sizzle and a hum, his machine dashed up the village street, and in a few moments he had disappeared, a tiny dot up the road.
No one but an extraordinarily skilled rider like himself could have made the trip that followed. Like a bullet from a gun, he dashed a dozen miles straight down the road, and then turned to the right into rough country. Over rocks and along gullies, bridging dizzy chasms hundreds of feet deep, skimming the edges of precipitous craters, spinning for miles along the top of a ray not over a foot wide, he picked his way with swooping speed and unerring familiarity into the heart of that terrific desolation. How any human being could stand the shaking and jouncing and twisting, in the blistering glare of the sun on the white rocks and sifted pumice, and still live to tell it, was a revelation. But Joe had been deliberately trained to that since early babyhood.
Finally he slowed down, looking carefully about him for landmarks. At the foot of a tiny crater, too small to be seen in terrestrial telescopes, he stopped. Pushing aside two jagged lumps of lava, he revealed the opening into a cave, into which he pushed his machine. Putting the rocks back in place, he climbed up the side of the cliff into a smaller opening, which communicated with the one below. From within, he strung the cords from his shield-coil, and arranged them so that they would discharge his big disintegrator-ray tubes at anyone who tried to get in. These D-ray guns cover a wide angle at a short range, like a shotgun, and will make free electrons out of anything in their range. Then he lay down and went to sleep. For four hours he slept undisturbed and much refreshed; and in another hour's wild riding, he was back in the Slapping Holster saloon.
The bar-room was unusually crowded for that period of the "day." Most people ought to have been at their work at this time. But, since the end of the siesta, they had waited for something to happen, and were getting impatient. Neither Cathode Joe nor the Hall Brothers were showing up for an hour and a half after the work-day had begun. What was the matter? Were both sides scared out?
SUDDENLY there was a loud hum outdoors, a shining streak down the street of Thorium Gulch, and a dense, rolling cloud of black smoke in front of the door of the Slapping Holster. A tall man stood in the door with four guns levelled at the crowd, two in his hands and two in his armpits. It was Cathode Joe. A careful search of the room showed him that the Hall Brothers were not present. He dropped his guns, grinned, and walked in. Dozens of them came up to him to shake hands in their delight in seeing him, and many drinks were offered him.
"Sorry," he always said in reply to these offers. "I'm a tough guy, but I can't afford to drink. I got to shoot straight."
"We'll feed yuh, anyhow," the bartender said.
A meal was set out on a table for him, with turtle steak smelling so appetizingly that all mouths watered, and big, luscious, yellow moon-beans, with coffee and wheat bread brought from the Earth. Lefty Wagner and a half dozen other well-wishers watched through the door and windows while he ate.
"It's time for the bus from Copernicus," said one of the loungers.
"Past time," the bartender commented. "She's half an hour late right now."
"Wonder what's holdin' her up?" said another voice. "Them babies travel on time."
Suddenly the watchers at the windows sighted the bus, and remarked upon its slow progress. It finally rolled up to the door in a wavering way, its warning signal blared, but no one got out. The crowd poured out of the Slapping Holster and found the driver wounded; as he brought the bus to a stop, he slumped down over his wheel. Inside, one of the passengers was dead from a cathode shot, three were looking blank and dazed. Only one of the people, a woman, seemed to be awake to the situation. She looked to be in her late twenties, comely and attractive in a modest way.
"Hold-up," she replied to inquiries. "Three men, about ten miles back."
Everybody looked to Cathode Joe, to see what the new sheriff would do in the situation. He seemed calm in contrast with the excitement of the rest.
"Outrage!" exclaimed one of the dancing women.
"Now I've got something to go on," Joe said calmly; "interfering with official traffic."
The dancing-woman turned on Joe.
"The hell with you, stupid! Official traffic!" she sneered.
"Look!" she pulled at Joe's asbestos coat-sleeve. "Clothes all tore off o' her. Black an' blue bruises on 'er. 'N she's purty!"
Joe's face reddened. He turned in the other direction and edged away.
"Who's she?" he asked in an official tone.
"That's Appenine Ann. Got all 'er money too, though that ain't sayin' she ain't got plenty more where 'at come from. C'd have any man on the Moon, she could. An' they ain't all ugly turtle-punchers. But she ain't havin' any. Come, honey, let's leave this stupid robot an' get ye some duds. An' the girls '11 raise ye some dough."
"Who's Appenine Ann? Joe asked of Lefty.
"Mighty fine woman, that," Lefty said. "Ain't never nobody broke ner hungry got turned down on a job or a handout at her plantation. "Ya know, Joe," Lefty put his hand on Joe's shoulder. "We're all tough ridge riders 'round yere, but Appenine Ann can go around without gun nor tube, and nobody's touch 'er anyw'ere. Till these slimes comes in. We're sore. I tell yer! Ain't a man wouldn't give up 'is life ter help 'er!"
"Well, givin' up 'is life won't help 'er," Joe said sarcastically.
A KNOT of men, each armed like a battleship, approached, wheeling their sinuous cycles.
"Here's yer posse," Lefty said.
"Hy!" Joe shouted at them. "What good d'y'all think it's goin' to do anybody fer you to commit suicide. If ye want to help me," he roared, "get back under cover and stick around."
"Beggin' yer parding," one of the men said, "we all got our dredgin' notion who did this!"
"Who ain't?" said Joe calmly. "Now duck yer hide."
The first thing that Joe did was to look at the automatic photographic road-record of the bus. When developed, it showed three masked men in chaps and topees, but on none of the pictures was it possible to tell who the men were. Joe called up the bus company's central station at Copernicus and asked for the automatic television record of the trip of the bus. It showed the picture of the commission of the robbery, by three masked men, whose first act was to disable the driver so that he could not turn in the radio alarm. Therefore, the television recorder automatically followed the bus, which went on while the highwaymen stayed back on the road at the scene of the robbery, and gradually disappeared from sight on the pictures.
"Their challenge to the new sheriff," thought Joe.
A triple sputter was heard faintly far up the highway, cadencing rapidly into a loud, low-pitched roar. Rut. it was from the North, the direction opposite the one from which the bus had come. The men lounged in the bar-room, and loafed in the various lava shacks of the village, puzzled. Gaily and nonchalantly, the three Halls rode into town, and leaned their cycles up against the Sleeping Holster, where Cathode Joe dawdled languidly.
But in a flash he had them covered by all four of his weapons. How they had appeared so instantaneously, was a mystery.
"Once more I suggest that you do not bother with your shields," he said coolly and in perfect English. "Just merely as a matter of information I am reminding you that I can blow your arm off to the elbow before you crook a finger—so don't crook it."
By the time he got through talking, numerous rocket-rifles from the crowd had them covered, and a positive electrical field is no protection against a lead bullet.
"Lefty, you take two men an' search 'em, while I pet my triggers," Joe said. "Everybody comin' into Thorium Gulch from now on gets searched, till we find out who did this bus job."
"How could we a' held up the bus; we come in from the North," said the youngest Hall.
"You ain't got no right to search us," snarled Buck Hall.
"You jest wait. Search all yuh want," roared Bill; "it won't help you none a week from now."
So sure were some of the crowd of finding the loot on the Halls, that they were already stringing nooses on the eaves of the saloon. Appenine Ann watched it all in silence from a window.
HOWEVER, nothing was found on the Hall brothers. They stalked sullenly away under the cover of a dozen levelled guns, muttering incoherent vengeance. The crowd was distinctly disappointed and felt that it had been cheated out of something.
Appenine Ann started forward to where Joe stood alone in front of the crowd, as though to talk to him. But Joe, with his inimitable manner of total unconsciousness of the presence of women, abruptly turned and walked toward the sheriff's shack. The woman gazed after him. She partly raised both hands for a moment, as though to clasp them; and then seemed to change her mind and let them drop limply at her side. She remained standing still, with her head drooped. In another moment several of the other women were about her, telling her of Cathode Joe's tiff with the ruffians of the day before.
Cathode Joe proceeded a few steps and then halted.
"Hy! yuh three yaller varmints!" he yelled. "Stop a minit! An' han's off them shields!" Never before had Thorium Gulch heard anyone talk to the Hall Brothers in that way.
At his shout, they whirled about. The two older brothers did so without turning a hair, with a control born of long years of frontier experience. The younger brother's arm gave a momentary unconscious twitch toward his holster. In a moment he had recovered his control and put his arm down, but not before a blue streak from Cathode Joe's gun had sent his hat spinning into the air, a crushed and twisted mass. Joe stood there a moment, covering them with his four guns.
"I jest want tuh tell you bozos that I don't like the way yuh look at a lady. An' I shoot first. I don't wait. Now beat it!"
"We're gonna git you fer this, Cathode Joe!" the eldest of the brothers said in a husky voice.
"I'll be at the Slapping Holster at next recess," said Cathode Joe cheerfully. "In the meanwhile don't do anything I wouldn't do."
He stood in the middle of the village and watched them shuffle to their machines. Men nudged each other:
"There'll be ol' Billie Hell poppin' in Thorium Gulch tonight!"
"Appenine Ann!" Cathode Joe started as though someone might have heard his half-aloud meditation. He finished the thought in silence. "Looks a powerful lot like I might 'a' seen 'er someplace sometimes."
DURING the long working shift she was so much on his thoughts that it irritated him; for he had nothing to do. There was a sprinkle of people in the Slapping Holster during the entire period, for working conditions are less strenuous than on Earth, and anyone can lay off a while if he feels like it. Long before the recess hour, the bar was crowded with people, and a rustling confusion reigned. Gambling was only desultory, though drinking was brisk and red-neck flowed freely. The radio clattered and banged continuously. The atmosphere was electrified with suspense.
Therefore, when a dense cloud of brown smoke appeared just outside the door, all eyes were glued in that direction. But as the smoke cloud cleared away, no one appeared. When eyes ceased peering out the door and looked about the room again, they discovered Cathode Joe standing at the bar covering them with all four guns. He appeared satisfied, and seemed about to put away his guns.
Suddenly he stopped at the alert, and listened. Then, like a streak of lightning, he turned around and fired into a dark corner of the room. There, another cathode gun cracked, but its blue flash wavered toward the ceiling, and Charley Hall slumped motionless on the ground. To those near him, a clear, round hole showed in his chest, and then it filled up with blood, which spread over the floor.
Cathode Joe jumped behind the bar.
He expected more shots. He found that he could see everyone from his crouching position in a dark corner, in the long mirror behind the bar. Then he hung his hat on the butt of his rifle, and peeked it cautiously around the edge of the bar. Not a shot, not even a stir responded. After a few minutes, Joe was convinced that the other two Halls were not in the room. Even yet he was cautious; he leaned back with his four guns at alert, and studied it over again. No. The only Hall in the room was the dead one in the corner.
His reflections as to what to do in this dangerous situation were interrupted by the bartender.
"We're all rather worried," the latter said. "Appenine Ann runs an account, in the Thorium Gulch bank. She just drew out all her money and started out to Copernicus alone in a little car. Fool trick. I don't know much about why wimmin do the stuff they do. Howsomever, the other two Halls are missin'!"
Cathode Joe suddenly stiffened with an unnamed anxiety. He welcomed a challenge flung in the face of his new authority, had not an innocent woman been involved. For an instant he stood there, pausing only an instant to have a kick at Charley Hall's dead body. He ran up the street in his clumsy chaps to where his caterpillar cycle was parked. The obvious thing to do, would have been for him to start down the road in pursuit of the villains. But Cathode Joe never did the obvious.
THERE was only one course open to him, if he were to help Appenine Ann, without calling in help from the other County; and that was the last thing he wished to do. That was to make a cross-country detour at a higher speed than theirs, and head them off by coming back to the highway in front of them; to be waiting for them when they arrived. The horror and magnitude of that undertaking is appreciable only to those who know those trackless wastes, the seas of treacherous pumice-sand, the ranges of mountains two to five thousand feet high, the cracks and gullies and crevasses, the scattered rocks and boulders, the straight "rays" of rock extending for hundreds of miles. No one who was not thoroughly acquainted with every square inch of the country, and who did not wear a pillar cycle like his own pair of shoes, could do it.
Joe dashed a few miles down the highway, and shot off to the right on a sideroad. After this latter began to carry him too far out of his direction, he struck directly across the ragged, barren country. Occasionally he was able to take advantage of a frontier road or trail. Again, he could make a few score of miles along the top of a ray going in his direction. But much of the time he was jouncing over rocks and leaping over gullies, threading his way between the boulders like some mysteriously guided bullet out of a gun. Now the front half of his cycle would be swung straight up into the air; again the rear half would stream out like a pennant, six feet above the ground. Up and down, and wriggle sidewise, and slither like a snake at the speed of a streamliner between boulders as big as a house; careening to one side almost flat with the ground; bent almost double, it was hard to say where man began and machine ended. If there was anything more amazing than that machinery could stand such speed and pounding, it was the human flesh and bone could do so.
Nevertheless, through all this, Joe watched his course, and laid it so that he had his machine hidden and silenced, just as his three dots appeared in the distance. Depending on the surprise element, and because of the need of rapid movement, he discarded his heavy rocket-rifle and anode shield. He hid behind a boulder at the edge of the road, so that he could let Appenine Ann's car pass, and then step up and have it out face to face with the desperadoes.
His entire plan took a nose-dive, when the car drew to a stop a hundred yards away; and the cycles drew up to it and stopped also. The villains dismounted, each with a gun in one hand, and they roughly jerked the woman out of the car. She staggered a moment and then recovered her poise, and Joe boiled in indignation. Women were held more sacred in that frontier country, than they are on Earth. In a moment, the villains were shooting at Joe, and splinters flew off the rock behind which he hid.
"By God!" Joe breathed. "They found me out."
It was too far for the range of a cathode-gun, and the group of three were all too close together. Throwing caution to the winds, Joe leaped over the rock, and ran toward them in big jumps, hurrying to get them within range of his pistol.
At the sight of him, the two men forgot Appenine Ann for a moment. She turned and gave one of them a push, which caused him to stagger and drop his rifle. The other whirled and struck her in the face with his fist. Cathode Joe gritted his teeth as he saw her fall to the ground; yet this was exactly what he needed. He stopped, took careful aim at the upright men and fired. The range was just a little too great to be the best; but one of the men fell, writhing in agony from the burn that the shot had produced, discharging his rocket-gun wildly into the air.
JOE started desperately running again. For the other Hall had picked up the limp, unconscious woman, and held her in front of him as a shield against Joe's fire. He was aiming at Joe from behind her with a rocket-rifle. His shot cracked out, and Joe fell headlong to the ground, blood spurting from a wound in his chest.
The ruffian let the woman drop roughly to the ground, and ran exultantly toward Cathode Joe, while the other, who had been burned, attempted painfully to get to his feet.
"Tackled the wrong bunch," the wounded villain was mumbling.
Suddenly, Joe heaved himself into a sitting position. His face was pale, his jumper soaked with blood, but his hands as steady as ever. There were two sharp cracks from his cathode guns, and both Halls fell to the ground with great chunks of flesh ripped from their chests. Joe sank back into the spreading pool of his own blood.
After a long, pleasant period of unconsciousness, he awoke to a giant throbbing in his chest. His eyes opened and the darkness went away, and there was Appenine Ann bending over him. She was gently opening his tunic, and a soft light shone in her eyes.
"I'm going to take care of you, Joe," she whispered softly, as he stirred.
"You see who I am, Joe?" she whispered, an illumination of joy spreading over her face. "I'm going to take care of you. For seven long years I've wanted to. You'll let me?"
Joe looked. An expression of surprise on his face turned to one of pain. The pain he felt was a worse one than that of the bullet in his chest. Appenine Ann went on:
"Seven years I sort o' hoped for you, Joe. I've followed all the news of you.
I've never looked at another man. I've waited, waited. Hoping."
"You! you! Cathode Joe gasped. He pushed her away from him, with a look of disgust on his face, sinking to the ground with the fatigue of the effort. He spat out a mouthful of blood.
"Alice Anne Dawson! I might 'a' known!"
Alice sank to a sitting position on the ground, put her face in her hands, and wept silently. But only for an instant. Suddenly she looked up bravely through her tears.
"Yes, Joe. I love you. I've always loved you."
Joe shook his head feebly and closed his eyes.
"Joe! You've got to believe me. I love you, Joe, and you know it. Your own life has shown that you know it. You've got to believe me, Joe. I love you."
"Then why did you—"
"Poor Joe. You're too weak to ask it. Why did I laugh in your face, and wave insolently at you, and ride away with the Halseys?
"Joe, I was always loyal to you. I fought these men with my last bit of strength. I did not care if they killed me. They had my feet tied in the car, and they had a long-range bullet-spray aimed at you. They made me do that under the threat of riddling you with a hundred bullets; they forced me to make you think I was enjoying the lark. They had a grudge against you, because when you were just a boy, you caught them chiseling yttrium on the plantation. They weren't particularly interested in me. They wanted the loot from the plantation, and they wanted to disfigure you for life. I escaped and passed the lunar night at a nearby ranch.
"But I couldn't find you, Joe. My father was dead. The plantation was a wreck, the crew were killed. I needed you terribly then, Joe. But I became successful with my own little capital. I wrote and wrote to you, but the letters always came back. I tried to see you, but you would not look at a woman. There was no catching up with you.
"Many times, Joe, during those seven years, I wanted to come back and claim the ranch as my inheritance. But I let it alone. I knew somehow it would bring you back, and bring punishment on those rats.
"Do you believe me now. Joe?"
JOE felt himself growing very weak physically. But in his heart there was a peace and lightness it had never known before. A great bitterness, a great conflict was gone.
"You're beautiful, Alice," Joe said. Streams of blood trickled down her face from a wound in her head; her hair was matted, her clothes were bloody.
"We can't be silly now, Joe," Alice said, suddenly becoming efficient. "I've got to stop this bleeding in your chest." She opened his tunic and cut away his shirt, as skillfully as a professional nurse.
"It's a lung wound, and you'll get well," she pronounced expertly. Obviously it was not her first nursing experience. "I'll get you to the hospital at Copernicus, and in a month you'll be better than ever."
A deep humming sound came from up the road; a scattered string of pillar cycles arrived on the scene. At that, the Thorium Gulch posse had made good time on their vehicles. Several of the men shouted for joy at seeing the two villains stretched out on the ground with their chests ripped open. They promptly searched the dead men. .
As relief hove in sight, Alice dropped to the ground, dizzy from the loss of blood. Joe groaned and closed his eyes.
"No money on them!" exclaimed one of the men who were searching the dead desperadoes.
Timid and awkward hands searched the prostrate woman.
"Hey! What's the idea?" she demanded, opening her eyes.
"They've hid your money," one of the men said apologetically.
"You stupid gwoks!"
She looked quickly at Joe, who continued to lie motionless with his eyes closed. "There wasn't any money," she whispered. "I never took any out of the bank. I knew that Joe had to have a chance at these snakes or they would get him first. So, I just told the girls, and started out."
Old Judge Hermsen drove up in a swift car. He recognized both Joe and Alice with a benignant smile.
"Bless you, my children," he said kindly. "I kin see in yer face, Alice, that he will get well. There goes Thorite County's beautiful new jail!"
"Oh no it doesn't," Alice protested. "I got a place up Appenines way, and I need Joe to help me run it. So, Thorite County gets the Dawson plantation and the Jepson mine—but on my conditions. You can build a jail if you want to, but most of the money goes for a block of family apartments and a school."
Joe grumbled something, and his hand groped in the direction of Alice's.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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