“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
“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.”
“We had big guns,” I said, “and, besides, there was no place to run.”
We got into the car, with Rila next to me. She put both hands on my arm and squeezed hard.
“The same to you;” I said.
“I forgot to tell you about the films,” she said. “And you forgot to ask. They’re safe. In the vault of a New York bank.”
“As soon as this matter becomes public,” said Courtney, “we’ll have distributors bidding for them, and bidding high.”
“I’m not sure,” I said, “that we’ll want to sell them.”
“We’ll sell anything,” said Rila, “if the price is right.”
I backed out of the parking space. There were only a few other cars. Courtney’s plane and another were the only ones on the strip. Over in the ramshackle hangar, on the other side of the field, I knew, were a few others, locally owned.
A mile or two down the road, at the edge of town, we came to a small shopping center — a supermarket, a hardware store, a small department store, a branch bank, a men’s clothing store, and a few other shops.
“Let’s pull in here and park,” said Courtney. “Away from other cars.”
“Sure, if you want to,” I said, “but why?”
“Please humor me,” he said.
I pulled in and found a place to park at the near edge of the parking area. There were no other cars nearby. I shut off the motor and sat back in the seat.
“This is a conspiracy,” said Courtney. “I shudder at the possibility of eavesdropping.”
“So go ahead,” I said. I looked at Rila and saw that she was as puzzled as I was.
Courtney squirmed into a comfortable position.
“I’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights,” he said, “considering your position, and in many respects it seems to me you could be vulnerable. Oh, so far as I can determine, this project of yours is entirely legal.
Unique, of course, but legal. But the thing that worries me is that Internal Revenue can clobber you but good-If everything goes as well as I expect it will, you’ll be making a lot of money, and when someone makes a lot of money, it’s always been my position that as much of it be kept as is possible within the framework of the law.”
“Courtney,” said Rila, “I don’t quite understand …”
“Do you have any idea the bite IRS can take,” he asked, “out of a million dollars?”
“I have a rough idea,” I said, “but only a rough idea.”
“The trouble is,” he said, “that you won’t have the opportunity of the business pattern, such as is found in
