You must-'
'There's lots of things that dogs know that men don't know,' bragged Nathaniel. 'We can see things and hear things that men can't see nor hear. Sometimes we howl at night, and people cuss us out. But if they could see and hear what we do they'd be scared too stiff to move. Bruce says we're… we're-'
'Psychic?' asked Grant.
'That's it,' declared Nathaniel. 'I can't remember all them words.'
Grant picked his pyjamas off the table.
'How about spending the night with me, Nathaniel? You can have the foot of the bed.'
Nathaniel stared at him round eyed. 'Gee, you mean you want me to?'
'Sure I do. If we're going to be partners, dogs and men, we better start out on an even footing now.'
'I won't get the bed dirty,' said Nathaniel. 'Honest I won't. Oscar gave me a bath to-night.'
He flipped an ear.
'Except,' he said, 'I think he missed a flea or two.'
Grant stared in perplexity at the atomic gun. A handy thing, it performed a host of services, ranging from cigarette lighter to deadly weapon. Built to last a thousand years, it was foolproof, or so the advertisements said. It never got out of kilter — except now it wouldn't work.
He pointed it at the ground and shook it vigorously and still it didn't work. He tapped it gently on a stone and got no results.
Darkness was dropping on the tumbled bills. Somewhere in the distant river valley an owl laughed irrationally. The first stars, small and quiet, came out in the east and in the west the green-tinged glow that marked the passing of the sun was fading into night.
The pile of twigs was laid before the boulder and other wood lay near at hand to keep the campfire going through the night. But if the gun wouldn't work, there would be no fire.
Grant cursed under his breath, thinking of chilly sleeping and cold rations.
He tapped the gun on the rock again, harder this time. Still no soap.
A twig crunched in the dark and Grant shot bolt upright.
Beside the shadowy trunk of one of the forest giants that towered into the gathering dusk, stood a figure, tall and gangling.
'Hello,' said Grant.
'Something wrong, stranger?'
'My gun— ' replied Grant, then cut short the words. No use in letting this shadowy figure know he was unarmed.
The man stepped forward, hand outstretched.
'Won't work, eh?'
Grant felt the gun lifted from his grasp.
The visitor squatted on the ground, making chuckling noises. Grant strained his eyes to see what he was doing, but the creeping darkness made the other's hands an inky blur weaving about the bright metal of the gun.
Metal clicked and scraped. The man sucked in his breath and laughed. Metal scraped again and the man arose, holding out the gun.
'All fixed,' he said. 'Maybe better than it was before.'
A twig crunched again.
'Hey, wait!' yelled Grant, but the man was gone, a black ghost moving among the ghostly trunks.
A chill that was not of the night came seeping from the ground and travelled slowly up Grant's body. A chill that set his teeth on edge, that stirred the short hairs at the base of his skull, that made goose flesh spring out upon his arms.
There was no sound except the talk of water whispering in the dark, the tiny stream that ran just below the campsite.
Shivering, he knelt beside the pile of twigs, pressed the trigger. A thin blue flame lapped out and the twigs burst into flame.
Grant found old Dave Baxter perched on the top rail of the fence, smoke pouring from the short-stemmed pipe almost hidden in his whiskers.
'Howdy, stranger,' said Dave. 'Climb up and squat a while.'
Grant climbed up, stared out over the corn-shocked field, gay with the gold of pumpkins.
'Just walkin'?' asked old Dave. 'Or snoopin'?'
'Snooping,' admitted Grant.
Dave took the pipe out of his mouth, spat, put it back in again. The whiskers draped themselves affectionately, and dangerously, about it.
'Diggin'?' asked old Dave.
'Nope,' said Grant.
'Had a feller through here four, five years ago,' said Dave. 'that was worse'n a rabbit dog for diggin'. Found a place where there had been an old town and just purely tore up the place. Pestered the life out of me to tell him about the town, but I didn't rightly remember much. Heard my grandpappy once mention the name of the town, but danged if I ain't forgot it. This here feller bad a slew of old maps that he was all the time wavin' around and studying, trying' to figure out what was what, but I guess he never did know.'
'Hunting for antiques,' said Grant.
'Mebbe,' old Dave told him. 'Kept out of his way the best I could. But he wasn't no worse'n the one that was tryin' to trace some old road that ran through this way once. He had some maps, too. Left figurin' he'd found it and I didn't have the heart to tell him what he'd found was a path the cows had made.'
He squinted at Grant cagily.
'You ain't huntin' no old roads, be you?'
'Nope,' said Grant. 'I'm a census taker.'
'You're what?'
'Census taker,' explained Grant. 'Take down your name and age and where you live.'
'What for?'
'Government wants to know,' said Grant.
'We don't bother the gov'ment none,' declared old Dave. 'What call's the gov'ment got botherin' us?'
'Government won't bother you any,' Grant told him. Might even take a notion to pay you something, some day. Never can tell.'
'In that case,' said old Dave, 'it's different.'
They perched on the fence, staring across the fields. Smoke curled up from a chimney hidden in a sunny hollow, yellow with the flame of birches. A creek meandered placidly across a dun autumn-coloured meadow and beyond it climbed the hills, tier on tier of golden maple trees.
Hunched on the rail, Grant felt the heat of the autumn sun soak into his back, smelled the stubbled field.
A good life, he told himself. Good crops, wood to burn, plenty of game to hunt. A happy life.
He glanced at the old man huddled beside him, saw the unworried wrinkles of kindly age that puckered up his face, tried for a moment to envision a life like this — a simple, pastoral life, akin to the historic days of the old American frontier, with all the frontier's compensations, none of its dangers.
Old Dave took the pipe out of his face, waved it at the field.
'Still lots of work to do,' he announced, 'but it ain't agittin' done. Them kids ain't worth the power to blow 'em up. Huntin' all the time. Fishin' too. Machinery breakin' down. Just ain't been around for quite a spell. Great hand at machinery, Joe is.'
'Joe your son?'
