Free The Beyonders by Manly Wade Wellman, Lou Feck

Crispin. "Silver . . . gold?"'
    Gander Eye laughed merrily. "Once I remember seeing in the Bible, gold is where you find it. And I expect you can find it one place another hereabouts, if you want to stand up to your butt in cold water, all day and all year, washing it out in a little tin pan. You might could even make day wages thataway, but it's hard work and it's sure enough not for me, I do thank you."
    "You don't make it sound at all profitable," said Crispin. "Well, I'd better be getting on. I want to work on some preliminary details of my baptism picture."
    "Don't go rushing off, Jim."
    But Crispin went trudging away to his own cabin. He was glad that Struve was not there. He sat down with a drawing block and a soft pencil and began sketching experimentally. He seemed to work idly, but what he did made a composition. He blocked out a sinewy, bearded figure, its right hand raised high. Opposite that, he drew a naked woman with hair flowing to her shoulders, and in the background a whole cross-hatched press of onlookers. But he did not like it, tore off the sheet, and crumpled it and threw it into the soapbox that served him for a wastebasket. Out he walked again, and saw Slowly on Main Street, wearing a green-and-blue print dress and canvas shoes. She carried several letters in her hand, bringing them to Doc's door.
    Crispin quickened his steps to meet her at the edge of the yard. "Slowly," he said, "I still think that the baptism was one of the most beautiful things I ever saw. I told you, I want to paint a scene like that."
    "Yes, sir," she said. "I heard you say that, Mr. Jim."
    "I wish you'd call me just Jim." Crispin gazed at a light in her hair, opened his lips, closed them, and opened them again. "About my picture, the one I want to paint. I was talking to Gander Eye. He said he'd pose for the figure of the Captain at the baptizing."
    "Yes?" said Slowly.
    "And I wish you'd pose, too. For the girl being baptized."
    "Without any clothes on?"
    "Just the upper part of you, as if you were waist deep in the water," he made haste to say. "And Gander Eye won't be there. You and he will pose at different times." He spoke persuasively. "I'm an artist, Slowly. Beauty is my business, and you're beautiful."
    "You keep saying that," she reminded him.
    "I say it because it's the truth. And you belong in my picture, Slowly."
    "I don't know, Mr. Jim."
    "Just Jim, please," Crispin pleaded again. "You say you don't know. When will you know? I don't want to plague you, high-pressure you about it, but—"
    "Let me study it over a spell. Let me figure on it," she said.
    "You aren't afraid of me, Slowly, are you? Afraid of anything I might do?"
    "No." She shook her head, and the hair stirred. "I'm not afraid of you, not a hooter."
    "Then I'll wait for your decision, and abide by it."
    He turned on his heel and went back to his cabin. Slowly walked to Doc's door. Doc was inside, and thanked her for bringing the mail.
    "I thought some of doing spareribs for noon dinner," said Slowly. "They got some good ones in at Longcohrs. How would those suit you and Mr. Jim?"
    "Splendidly, you can bet," said Doc. "Fetch them in when you come. And there's a can of kraut here to go with them."
    Slowly went out again, turned downhill on Main Street, and headed for her own living quarters. That little shedlike addition to the school building had been called the teacherage, back when Sky Notch had had Miss Barnett to teach the school. It was red-painted to harmonize with the old brick of the wall against which it lay. Inside, there were two rooms, as neatly kept as an officer's quarters aboard a ship. The front room held a small sofa, two chairs, a bookshelf. Some of the books were Little Women, a translation of Candide, a paperback Tender Is the Night, a poetry anthology called New Voices. There were also two or three detective novels, a dictionary, and a school mathematics textbook. All of these had belonged to Miss Barnett.
    Slowly walked through and