The same sweet smell he had detected earlier manifested itself as a sensation on his taste buds. A sensation—something felt! Like an explosion expanding outward, nerve endings reawakened to the electrical impulses of consciousness. Muscles twitched with spurious signals and a section of his brain still capable of command ordered his jaws to grind juices from the green pulp in his mouth. Awake again—the sweet taste and smell rushed through his palate and sinuses and down his throat. The cliff dweller had given him a stimulant of wondrous power; MacArthur felt alert, psychedelically aware. The colors of the world pulsed with intensity. His mission! He remembered his mission with obsessive fervor.
Buffalo grazed about him—more easy targets than he had bullets. MacArthur slowly turned his head to look at the hunters. The cliff dwellers watched him intensely, concern dominating theirobscene features. MacArthur opened his mouth, holding the green substance between his teeth, and displayed it to Captain. Both creatures—man and hunter—grinned conspiratorially. The cliff dweller made a shooting motion with his hands. MacArthur recovered the rifle and turned his body slightly, aiming the heavy-sighted weapon at the neck of the nearest buffalo—a large bull— barely thirty meters away. The movement caught the animal's attention; it jerked its head upwards, alarmed. MacArthur and his furry comrades froze, the hunters staring with rapt attention at the barrel of the weapon. Both creatures held hands tightly over their ear openings, wincing and flinching with painful anticipation.
MacArthur fired one round. The bull staggered, took several stuttering steps and crashed heavily onto its side, raising a cloud of dust. The cliff dwellers, stunned by the rifle's report, recovered from the explosion and jumped up and down, whistling and chirping. The buffalo herd reeled against the noise and blindly dashed in full flight—a stampede! MacArthur moved awkwardly to his knees, his leg muscles not fully awakened. He worried about getting run down—an imminent possibility since buffalo were galloping in all directions. Two bulls leading a frantic herd bore down on his position. The cliff dwellers pointed—rudely—at the driving animals, nervously hopping from leg to leg and unfurling their wings.
MacArthur sighted down the barrel of the rifle, placing the bouncing forehead of the biggest bull atop the knife-edged sight. The buffalo were close! He squeezed the trigger, and the large-bore rifle kicked violently against his shoulder. The herd pivoted as one, swerving away. MacArthur swore for wasting a bullet and took aim at the same bull. But the animal was wounded, and its pace slowed amidst its panicked mates. The stricken animal lumbered to a wobbly halt, staggering lopsidedly away from the herd. It fell to its knees and collapsed on its side, bellowing in fear and agony as it died.
The dwellers, hands still over their ears, screeched their delight. The rest of the herd bolted away, giving MacArthur only hindquarters at which to shoot. Two bullets, two hides. Enough. MacArthur chewed vigorously. The substance in his mouth yielded juices like sparks of electricity crackling against his teeth and throat. He felt tightly wound, a coiled steel spring; his senses were acutely raw; he could see forever; the sounds and the smells around him were abundant and crisp, each a separate and distinct event. Pungent buffalo musk billowed through the air, almost visible, a brown, dusky odor—not pleasant, but no longer putrid. He could smell the tundra grasses, the gunpowder, the cliff dwellers; he could smell his own sharp body odor, and the high-grade machine oil used on the rifles. But—But, something was wrong! The dwellers were whistling—whistling at him. Too loud, it hurt his ears.
The clouds! The clouds were flowing like wild things overhead! They were changing colors—luminescent and pulsing and golden. The clouds were beautiful animals descending from the skies. MacArthur could reach out and touch them. He could fly! He could fly—fly like the animals in the clouds. What was happening? This was not real. His intellect struggled to overcome his senses, but he was no longer sure of anything. Something was wrong with his body—with his mind. He was hallucinating. It was too real, too vivid. Golden horses! Golden horses, heavy chested and silky manes streaming, were running over the prairie. Beautiful. So beautiful. He could smell them.
MacArthur was afraid to move. His very being eclipsed his corporeal form, as if he would burst his skin like an overinflated balloon. The spinach stuff—the cud! He stopped chewing. He dimly deduced the dweller's stimulant was causing him to hallucinate. He spit it out just as his arms and legs seem to disappear; he fell forward, like a falling tree, squarely on his face. Helpless, mouth open and drooling into the tundra, he watched magical horses gallop across the plains, just paces in front of him, thundering hoofs vibrating the ground. What magnificence! Euphoric, he managed to roll over on his back and stare at the sky. Everything was beautiful.
"The thickweed is taken over!" Brappa exclaimed.
The stampeding herds were clear, and a veering wind kept the invisible musk cloud at bay. Braan looked back at the other longlegs, Giant-one and One-arm, stumbling drunkenly over the prairie grasses in the far distance.
"He has spit it out. He will recover," Braan said, standing over the prostrate stranger. "Let us skin the buffalo."
Brave-crazy-one lay spread-eagled, eyes glazed. Braan picked up the discarded wad of thickweed pulp, broke it apart, and placed it in his leather pouch. The hunters pulled out knives, and each headed for a downed animal.
Braan was not long at his task when he noticed the stricken long-legs staggering toward him, head in his hands. His comrades were trying to help him, but Brave-crazy-one rejected their assistance.
"The long-legs recovers," Brappa screeched.
"Its head will surely ache," Braan warbled.
Buccari adjusted her position so that the light from the extravagant campfire fell more directly on the dweller message. She half listened to the raucous banter, feeling peculiarly light-hearted. They were starting a new life, their new settlement awakening. And they had just finished their first year on the planet. Not an Earth year—a full Genellan year—four hundred days, four hundred twenty-six hour days.
"I saw horses. Golden horses!" MacArthur declared.
"You're crazy, Mac," Fenstermacher said. "Tatum says you were all as drunk as a dogs."
"Leave him alone, Winfried," Dawson said. "Look what he did for us. What a feast."
"Dawson' s right, for the first time in her life, Fenstermacher," Wilson said. "Stop picking on Mac, and be thankful you've survived a year on this planet. I don't know how we managed to put up with you."
"Yeah, Winnie," Lee said. "Happy anniversary to us all."
Cliff dwellers and humans sat around the evening fire. The midsummer sun had reluctantly settled behind the soaring peaks, leaving clear skies layered in vivid orange and deepest blue above the stark sawtooth silhouette. The meal was over, but the campfire burned brightly, a celebration of survival.
MacArthur's provision of buffalo steaks and hides had changed the dubious nature of the occasion into a festive and social mood. The campers reveled in the telling and retelling of MacArthur' s adventure, embellishments growing with each new version. MacArthur regaled the listeners, humans and cliff dwellers, with outrageous histrionics and exaggerated sign language. The Marine danced around the fire, pulling Tonto along behind him. The young hunter parodied the dancing human, and soon all the hunters were jumping to their feet and dancing a pagan conga, whistling and screeching in a snaking line behind MacArthur, while the humans pounded out a rhythmic chant, clapping and laughing.