The Beyonders by Manly Wade Wellman, Lou Feck Page A

oversized, ill-fitting coats. The head moved a trifle, if that was a head. It was a lump at the top, extra big, rising like a dome, like a pot turned upside down. Gander Eye's right hand slid back to the pistol he almost always had ready in the hip pocket of his dungarees.
    "What you want with me?" he said quietly.
    The shape came toward him, darker than the shadows of the trees. It did not seem to walk, somehow it just stirred along. He heard a soft crackle of noise, like the falling of fine sleet. Closing in on him, it held out an arm, or a finlike something that moved like an arm. Gander Eye fell back a step beside the high face of rock and brought out the pistol. His flesh stirred on his bones, his lips clamped together, but he did not feel afraid. He wondered why he did not feel afraid.
    "What you want?" he demanded again.
    His voice seemed to clank in the quietness around them both.
    It was close to him when it stopped, whatever it was. It was so close that he could easily have shot it where it was biggest. What he could see of it through the cloaking darkness told him that it wasn't wearing real clothes, after all, it was hard and smooth and blacker than the night all over. He thought, or imagined, that it had joints, like pictures he had seen of old armor. He smelled a hotness, like the smell you smelled on a gun when it had been fired over and over and over. He remembered the scorched moss and bark he had found among the thickets the morning after James Crispin had come to town. This must be that same thing, or its brother. Again he wondered why he wasn't afraid of it.
    A faint click in the silence. That armlike projection straightened toward Gander Eye, as though it grew toward him. It was trying to give him something or other it held in what must be claws.
    "No," said Gander Eye. "Nothing for me, thanks."
    By then he had backed close against the rock. He felt it at his shoulders. He aimed the pistol from next to his hip and silently thumbed back the hammer.
    The arm moved again. A louder noise, a ringing thud on the rocks in front of Gander Eye. It had tossed something there, something that had fallen almost at his feet. Next moment it was sliding back away, as swift as a squirrel. It sank somewhere out of sight over the ledge on the far side of the road. He heard a crash of twigs in the woodsy growth below.
    Then it hadn't had any notion of hurting him. It had only tried to give him whatever was lying there in front of his toes.
    Gander Eye stared at the place where it had vanished. He licked his dry lips and carefully squatted down. He put out his free hand cautiously, cautiously. There was a feeling of warmth at that point above the road, and he drew back his hand again without trying to touch anything.
    He took a moment to think about what to do. With his left hand he fished a handkerchief from his pocket and shook it out. Then, with the muzzle of the pistol, he groped among the pebbles until he felt something hard, and coaxed the something upon the handkerchief. Carefully he drew the corners of the handkerchief together to form a slinglike pouch and stood up again, lifting what he had found. It was heavy. Even so far from his fingers, it gave a feeling of warmth. And it was heavy.
    He uncocked the pistol and slid it back into his pocket.
    "Is this for me?" he called into the night. "Well, I do thank you."
    At the moment he spoke, the voices of the night creatures began to whisper and chirp all around him.
    Again he started carefully downward on the roadway. With a woodsman's caution he set a foot down, made sure of firmness beneath, then set the other foot down. It was slow progress until he emerged into better light and could make faster time. But it was a long, long way back to where he could see the scatter of lights from the houses of Sky Notch.
    Nobody was stirring on Main Street as Gander Eye came across from beside the schoolhouse. He paused at his own doorway and looked up and down. Doc Hannum's front