word to you.
I shook my head. “I don’t know about that. That is the kind of sticky business I had hoped we could avoid. When anyone travels into any sort of historical situation, a lot of care must be taken or you’ll wind up with a mess on your hands.”
“But you must have known,” said Herb, “that the problem would come up.
“But that’s the point,” said Rila. “Almost no one could afford to at the rates we’ll ask. Tourism should be discouraged even if people are willing to pay.
Tourists would be trouble.”
“I think,” said Ben, “we should take business as it comes. Weed out the phonies, like our Inca character, but take a hard look at all legitimate proposals.”
We talked then, idly, easily about other matters, paying attention to our drinks. Ben’s motel was up and a few of the units were ready for occupancy. The building was larger than he originally had intended and he was considering constructing a second one. The parking lot was making money. A lot of people in the village were offering rooms for rent. We were having trouble getting enough guards to patrol the fence and guard the gate; for the moment, the sheriff had assigned deputies to the gate until we could find men to replace them. Herb had turned the operation of his paper over to his former assistant and was planning to print daily free advertising sheets of four to six pages, to start with, to be handed out to the flood of visitors who were anticipated, the first surge of them already in evidence. Some village people were upset by the public influx, which they thought would change the easy life the town had known before, but various organizations, particularly the women’s groups, were planning chicken suppers, strawberry ice cream festivals and other fund-raising schemes.
We finished the drinks and Rila said to me, “And, now, Mastodonia. I’m dying to show it to you.”
TWENTY-ONE
It was spring in Mastodonia and everything was beautiful. The mobile home stood on top of a little ridge no more than a half-mile or so from where the time road brought us through. Just down the slope from the home, a grove of wild crab-apple trees was ablaze with pink blossoms, and the long valley that lay below the ridge was dotted with clumps and groves of crab apples and other flowering trees. The open places were a sea of spring flowers, and the entire area was swarming with songbirds.
Two four-wheel drives were parked to one side of the mobile home. From the front entrance, an awning extended outward, and just beyond the awning was a large lawn table, a gaily striped umbrella sprouting from the center of it.
Overall, our new home had a distinctly festive look.
“We bought a big one,” said Rila. “Sleeps six, has a nice living area and the kitchen has everything you’d want.”
“You like it?” I asked.
“Like it? Asa, can’t you see? It’s the kind of hideaway that everyone dreams about — the cabin by the lake, the mountain hunting lodge. Except that this is even better. You can practically feel the freedom There’s no one here. You understand? Absolutely no one here. The first men to reach North America won’t cross from Asia for a thousand centuries. There are people in the world, of course, but not on this continent. Here you are as alone as anyone can manage.”
“You done any exploring?”
“No, not by myself. I think I’d be afraid alone. I was waiting for you. And how about you? Don’t you like it here?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. That was the truth; I did like Mastodonia. But the concept of aloneness, of personal independence, I knew, was something to which one would have to become accustomed. You’d have to let it grow upon you.
Ahead of us, someone shouted and it took a moment to locate the place where the shout had come from. Then I saw them, the two of them, Hiram and Bowser, rounding the slope just above the grove of blooming crab- apple trees. They were running, Hiram with an awkward, loping gallop, Bowser bouncing joyously, every now and then letting out a welcoming bark as he bounced along.
Forgetting any dignity — and in this world there was no need for dignity — we ran to meet them. Bowser, running ahead, leaped up to lick my face, gamboling around in doggish raptures. Hiram came up panting.
“We’ve been watching for you, Mr. Steele,” he said, gasping for breath. “We just took a little walk and missed you. We went down the hill to see one of the elephants.”
“Elephants? You mean mastodons.”
“I guess that’s right,” Hiram said. “I guess that’s the name for them creatures. I tried to remember the name, but I forgot. But anyhow, we saw a real nice mastodon. It let us get up real close. I think it likes us.”
“Look, Hiram,” I said, “you don’t go up real close to a mastodon. It’s probably peaceful enough, but if you get too close to it, you can never know what it might do. That goes for big pussycats, as well — especially those that have long teeth sticking out of their mouths.”
“But this mastodon is nice, Mr. Steele. It moves so slow and it looks so sad. We call it Stiffy because it moves so slow. It just shuffles along.”
“For goodness sake,” I said, “an old beat-up bull that has been run out of the herd is nothing to fool around with. It probably has a nasty temper.”
“That’s right, Hiram,” Rila agreed. “You steer clear of that animal. Or any animal you find here. Don’t go making friends with them.”
“Not even with a woodchuck, Miss Rila?”
“Well, I guess a woodchuck would be safe enough,” she said.
The four of us went up to the mobile home.
“I have a room all my own,” Hiram said to me.
”Miss Rila said it is my room and no one else’s. She said Bowser could sleep in it with me.”
“Come on in,” said Rila, “and see what we have here. Then you can go out in the yard …”
“The yard?”
“The place with the lawn table; I call that the yard.
Once you look around inside, go out in the yard and look around. I’ll make lunch. Will sandwiches be all right?”
“They’ll be fine.”
“We’ll eat outside,” said Rila. “I just want to sit and look at this country. I can’t seem to get enough of it.”
I looked through our new home. It was the first time I’d ever been inside one of them, although I had known a number of people who had lived in them and seemed well satisfied. I particularly liked the living area — seemingly plenty of space, comfortable furniture, large windows, thick carpeting on the floor, a bookcase filled with books Rila had taken from my small library, a gun rack beside the door. The whole thing was a lot more luxurious, I had to admit, than the house back on the farm.
Going outside, I walked down the ridge, with Hiram striding along beside me and Bowser bouncing ahead.
The ridge was not particularly high, but high enough to give a good view of the surrounding countryside. There below us to the right flowed the stream, the small river which had flowed in the Cretaceous and still flowed in the twentieth century through Willow Bend. Through millions of years, the land had changed but little. It seemed to me that the ridge was somewhat higher than it had been in the Cretaceous, perhaps higher than it would be in the twentieth century, but I could not be certain.
The river valley was fairly open, broken only by the scattered clumps of flowering shrubs and smaller trees, but the ridges other than the one we stood on were heavily timbered. I kept an eye out for game herds, but there seemed to be none. Except for a couple of large birds, probably eagles, flying high in the sky, there was no other sign of life.
“There he is,” Hiram called, excited, “There is Stiffy. Do you see him, Mr. Steele?”
