Free The Beyonders by Manly Wade Wellman, Lou Feck Page B

everything.

VII

    Gander Eye had hunted relatively seldom in this direction, the direction of the Kimber settlement. The Kimbers liked to hunt there themselves, with all sorts of guns they used extremely well. When they met someone on what they felt was their own hunting grounds, they were icily polite about telling him other places where, perhaps, the hunting was better. On top of that, Gander Eye wasn't sure what he was out looking for. And when a man wasn't dead sure of that, he'd do well to go along carefully, as if maybe something was out looking for him.
    Therefore Gander Eye held close to one edge of the rocky ruts, ready at any moment to fade silently in among the tree trunks. Where sunlight patched the ground, there grew tufts of blue dustflower, of freckle-bloomed jewel weed, off to the left of the trail tumbled Bull Creek, tumbling lower and lower as the slope ascended. He kept his ears sharp, as sharp as his eyes. He could hear a cardinal, calling grumpily to its mate far away. When a little blue lizard scuttled across in front of him, he could hear its supple body whisper in the grass as plainly as he saw it.
    What the Kimbers called a road was bad even to walk on. Gander Eye wondered who had made this road to start with, and how. It wasn't a road kept up by the highway department, that was for sure. The Kimbers had done it long ago, probably by hand, probably blasting rocks out of the hard face of Dogged Mountain and filling in here and there with what they blasted loose. He looked leftward to where Bull Creek raced along, and across to the far wall of the height that rose on the other side. The trees grew interestingly there, fresh-leafed oaks and locusts and gums mixed in with darker evergreens. He wondered if Jim Crispin wouldn't enjoy painting this kind of scenery.
    But the Kimbers had told Crispin nothing doing about painting the baptism scene at their place. They might even say nothing doing about coming this far up their road to paint. Gander Eye had accomplished a couple of miles of his expedition; he was in the range of country the Kimbers more or less claimed. If some of them were to show up now—
    His ears, wide open, tuned in all the time, caught a faint hint of sound, up the road ahead of him.
    At once he slunk into the thickly tangled growth at the inner side. A sort of trail was half-hidden there, it seemed to lead higher along the slope among the stems of pines. He followed it thankfully. It was steep, but quite hard and smooth under his cleated soles, almost like a pavement of clay. Water must have washed it into that smoothness. As he scrambled along into deeper cover, he wondered how that trail came to be there. He had never noticed it before. Under a serviceberry's cloud of slim petals, with just a touch of pink in the whiteness, he knelt to see what had made that noise.
    Voices. Gander Eye felt better about that, for voices meant men, and he had never been afraid of men, only cautious now and then. He drew aside a branch of spruce pine to see better.
    A minute passed, seconds more than a minute. Then they came into view on the road he had quitted, three of them. They were Kimber men, two young and one older, tall and fine-looking, dressed in those clothes their women sewed for them. They had wide, shapeless pants held up with home-tanned leather suspenders, collarless shirts, and picturesquely tattered hats. Gander Eye's own hat was old, but not that old. They carried empty burlap bags and big oil cans. That told him that they must be headed for the store at Sky Notch, to come back loaded down with supplies of necessary staples for their homes. He should be through with his own scouting adventure and headed home before they got back this far.
    He watched them walk loosely down the road and out of sight, then he waited. They would need a minute or two along their way before he could emerge into the open without danger of being seen. He glanced down at the path up which he had come, wondering