“You’re fishing now,” I said, “and it won’t do you any good. I have a project underway, that’s true, but any publicity right now could raise hell with it. When the time comes, I’ll tell you.”
“When you need the publicity, you mean.”
“I suppose that’s it.”
“Look, Asa, I don’t want the big city papers scooping me on this. I don’t want them to write the story before I have a crack at it. I don’t want to be scooped in my own backyard.”
“Hell, you’re scooped all the time,” I said. “On all the important stories. What else can you expect with a weekly paper? News doesn’t happen on a weekly basis. Your strength isn’t the big stories. They don’t come often enough. People read the Record because you write about the little things, what people do and the small events that happen here. Look at it this way.
If I’m able to pull off what I’m trying to do, it will put Willow Bend on the map. It will help everyone. It will help the businesses here, it will provide more advertising dollars for you. You’ll be better off because it happened. Do you want to muff my chance and yours by rushing into print when that rushing into print might kill the deal?”
‘But I’ve got to write a story of some sort. I just can’t not write anything.”
“All right, then, write your story. Write about the fence, about Ben’s motel, about all the rest of it. Speculate, if you want to, on what is going on. I can’t stop you. I wouldn’t want to. You have every right. Say you talked with me and I would give you nothing. I am sorry. Herb. That’s the best that I can do.”
“I suppose,” said Herb, “you have the right not to tell me. But I had to ask. I had to lean on you a little.
You understand, don’t you?”
“Sure, I understand. How about another beer?”
“No, thanks. Haven’t got the time. We go to press tonight. I have to write this story.”
After Herb had left, I sat there for a while, feeling sorry about the way I’d had to treat him. But I couldn’t give him the story. I understood how he felt; how any newspaperman might feel. The hell of it was that he would get scooped. Before he went to press again next week, the story probably would be out.
But there was, I told myself, no way I could help that.
I got up and threw the empty beer can into the wastebasket, then went outdoors. It was getting into the late afternoon, but the crews were still at work and I was surprised to see how well the fence was progressing. I looked around to see if there was any sign of Catface. I would not have been surprised to have found him staring at me from one of the apple trees. In the last few days, there had been a lot of evidence of him.
Instead of hiding from us, as had been his habit, he had begun sort of mingling with us. But at the moment there was no sign of him, nor of Hiram and Bowser. I walked down the fence line until I reached where the men were working. I stood around for a while watching them, then returned to the house.
A sheriff’s car was parked out in front and a man in uniform was sitting in one of the lawn chairs. When I came up to him, he rose and held out his hand to me.
“I’m Sheriff Amos Redman,” he said. “You must be Asa Steele. Ben told me I’d probably find you here.”
“Glad you dropped by,” I said. “What do you have in mind?”
“Ben told me a few days ago, you might need some guards to patrol the fence. Would you mind telling me what is happening?”
“I’ll tell you one thing, sheriff, it’s legal.”
He chuckled faintly at the bad joke. “I never thought it would be anything else,” he said. “Seems to me you were a Willow Bend boy some years ago.
How long have you been back?”
“A little less than a year,” I said.
“It appears that you plan to stay.”
“I hope so.”
“About the guards,” he said. “I talked with the police association in Minneapolis and they think they can fix you up. Some of the men there have lost their jobs because of an economy cut and should be available to you.”
“I’m glad,” I said, “We will need trained personnel.”
“You having any trouble?” the sheriff asked.
“Trouble? Oh, you mean sightseers.”
“That’s what I mean. There’ve been some funny stories going about. One of them is about a crashed spaceship.” He looked at me closely to see how I would take it.
“Yes, sheriff,” I said. “I think there might be a spaceship. Out there in the woods, under tons of over-lay.”
”Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “If there is such a thing, you’ll be swamped by crowds. I understand why you might need a fence. I’ll tell my deputies to swing around here once in a while and keep an eye on you. If you need any help, you know how to reach me.”
“Thanks,” I said. “And I think you’ll understand, I’d just as soon no credence be given, quite yet, to that spaceship story.”
“Certainly,” he said importantly. “Just between the two of us.”
The phone rang when I was coming in the door. It was Rila.
“Where have you been?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to get you.”
“Just out for a walk. I hadn’t expected to hear from you this soon. Is everything all right?”
“Asa, it’s better than all right. We ran the films this afternoon. They are wonderful. Especially that part with you and Ben polishing off those tyrannosaurs. Everyone was sitting on the edge of his chair.
It was so exciting. That cheeping done by the triceratops was weird, primitive. God, I don’t know what.
Out of this world. Sent a funny feeling up your spine.
Safari is champing at the bit, but we won’t talk with them.”
“Won’t talk with them! For Pete’s sake, Rila, that was the whole idea. That’s why we risked our necks…”
“Courtney has some wild idea. He shut me up, said we would talk later. We are coming back tomorrow.”
“We?”
“Courtney and I. He wants to talk with us. He flew back to Washington this afternoon, but will come, back to New York in the morning and pick me up.”
“Pick you up?”
“Yes, he flies his own plane. I guess I never mentioned that.”
“That’s right. You never did.”
“We’ll be landing at Lancaster. It’s a small plane.
The field there is big enough. I’ll let you know when.”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“Probably sometime before noon. I’ll let you know.”
EIGHTEEN
Courtney McCallahan was a somewhat younger and bigger man than I had expected. It’s strange how one will picture someone mentally before ever meeting him. I suppose it was his name that did it; I had pictured McCallahan as a little gnome of a man, suave, round faced, snow white hair, with an unhurried grace.
In actuality, he was a big man and no longer young, but younger than I had pictured him. His hair was turning and had reached the iron gray stage; his face was cragged, like a block of rough wood that someone had chopped into a face with a dull hatchet. His hands were like hams. Instinctively, I liked him.
“How is the fence coming along?” he asked.
“It’s going up,” I told him. “We’ll build right through the weekend. No Saturday or Sunday off.”
“Double-time, I suppose.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I left that up to Ben.”
“This Ben is a good man?”
“He’s been my friend,” I said, “for the greater part of my life.”
“If you’ll allow me,” he said, “I thought you and Ben were magnificent in that tyrannosaur bit. Took a lot of guts to stand up to those creatures. I’m afraid I might have flunked it.”