The Invaders | Page 4

nod. Faces got red and lists were clenched. Jerry got to his feet again.
"Point three, I don't need to spell out. Much more of this and carloads
of men with guns will be heading for the ridge. There'll be the kind of
trouble we don't want on Wide Bend's conscience."
"Should we let 'em rob us blind?" shouted Tipton.
"No wonder they do so good!" Caruso cried.
"How about the water?" Hammond asked sarcastically. "You think they
stole that, too?"
Someone shouted back, and a heated discussion raged. Jerry finally
banged on the table with a sugar bowl. "Let's hear from the sheriff."
Watson hoisted his big frame, and sighed. "Jerry's right, boys. We got a
nasty situation building up. Right now, my old woman's so mad at the
Dark Valley people she could spit. And why? Only because she can't
figger 'em out."

He brushed his mustache and looked at Tipton. "Them people are
human bein's, ain't they?"
Tipton scowled, but nodded.
"Anything they done that couldn't be explained by natural causes, no
matter how silly or complicated?"
Tipton thought about it, and had to shake his head.
"Believe me, boys, the only thing to get excited about is the stuff that's
missin'. If they're pinchin' it, we can catch 'em, and punish 'em. They
may be foreigners but they sure as hell have to obey the law of the
land!"
"Now," Hammond said, "we're talking sense."
"Give me a list of what's missin'," Watson added, "an' I'll go to Dark
Valley this afternoon and take a look around the place."
"Everybody satisfied?" Jerry asked.
Everybody was.
* * * * *
Sheriff Watson frowned at the list as Jerry drove into the first barnyard.
They scattered chickens, ducks, and children--seen blurrily as they
scrambled to hide. They remained a few minutes, ostensibly visiting,
then went on to the next farm, and the next....
Beyond the last one, on the rise that led to the Carver cabin, Jerry
stopped the car. They looked at one another. Watson rubbed his face
irritably. "I'm beat, Jerry. There's somethin' here I can't get my hands
nor my head onto."
"I know."
The sheriff banged one big hand against the crumpled list. "That butter

churn of Mulford's. By God, I saw it! Same brand, same color. Even
had scratches around the base where that old cat of his sharpened her
claws."
"I know," Jerry said again. "But it had a letter 'Z' cut into it. Worn and
weathered, so you'd swear it had been there for years and years."
"That spring-toothed harrow of Zimmerman's."
"Except the one we saw had twelve teeth instead of fifteen. And even
the man who made it couldn't find where it had been altered or
tampered with."
It had been the same with a score of other things. Each one slightly
changed, just different enough to make identification impossible to
prove.
Slowly, Jerry said, "Wood gets weathered, metal oxidizes, honest wear
is unmistakable. And these all take time, which can't be faked."
His implication hung in the air. If the things had been stolen, then
altered to avoid identification, whoever did it had more than human
ability.
"Magic," Watson muttered.
"There's ... no ... such ... thing!"
"No, there absolutely ain't."
They sat looking with troubled eyes out over Dark Valley, till Jerry
said abruptly, "I'm going on up to see the Carvers."
Watson reached for the door handle. "They don't have no use for me.
I'll wait here. I got plenty to think about."
Jerry nodded. The sheriff would be remembering the seeds already
sprouting in the kitchen gardens. The leaves that had jumped out on the
old fruit trees. The lambs and calves capering in pastures washed with

the green of new grass.
The road was smooth, its ditches cleared and deepened. Bright clothing
napped on shiny new clotheslines (those were on the list, but how can
you identify a roll of wire?). Cordwood was stacked in every yard. New
shingles spotted the roofs, the windows held glass again, fresh paint
glistened on porches. In the fields, corn and oats and hay were shooting
upward....
Jerry found the Carvers waiting for him, their wrinkled old faces tense.
They didn't answer his greeting, just jerked their heads. They led him
past the cabin, through open brush, and halted at a bare place. Slowly,
Jerry sank to his knees.
Except for its size, it could have been a splayed-out cougar print. But it
was two feet across, and pressed more than an inch into the hard, dry
soil.
Finally Ed Carver nudged Jerry. The gnarled finger pointed to a twig of
wild lilac eight feet off the ground. Caught on the twig were several
coarse black hairs, six inches long. Jerry looked from them back to the
Carvers, then down