The Big Front Yard and Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak

stumbling, half asleep even as he walked, he went back to the pickup.
    He leaned against it and tried to pull his wits together.
    Continuing as he was would be a useless effort. He had to get some sleep. He had to go back to Willow Bend and fill the tank and get some extra gasoline so that he could range farther afield in his search for Towser.
    He couldn’t leave the dog out here – that was unthinkable. But he had to plan, he had to act intelligently. He would be doing Towser no good by stumbling around in his present shape.
    He pulled himself into the truck and headed back for Willow Bend, following the occasional faint impressions that his tires had made in the sandy places, fighting a half-dead drowsiness that tried to seal his eyes shut.
    Passing the higher hill on which the milk-glass things had stood, he stopped to walk around a bit so he wouldn’t fall asleep behind the wheel. And now, he saw, there were only seven of the things resting in their cradles.
    But that meant nothing to him now. All that meant anything was to hold off the fatigue that was closing down upon him, to cling to the wheel and wear off the miles, to get back to Willow Bend and get some sleep and then come back again to look for Towser.
    Slightly more than halfway home he saw the other car and watched it in numb befuddlement, for this truck that he was driving and the car at home in his garage were the only two vehicles this side of his house.
    He pulled the pickup to a halt and stumbled out of it.
    The car drew up and Henry Horton and Beasly and a man who wore a star leaped quickly out of it.
    â€œThank God we found you, man!” cried Henry, striding over to him.
    â€œI wasn’t lost,” protested Taine. “I was coming back.”
    â€œHe’s all beat out,” said the man who wore the star.
    â€œThis is Sheriff Hanson,” Henry said. “We were following your tracks.”
    â€œI lost Towser,” Taine mumbled. “I had to go and leave him. Just leave me be and go and hunt for Towser. I can make it home.”
    He reached out and grabbed the edge of the pickup’s door to hold himself erect.
    â€œYou broke down the door,” he said to Henry. “You broke into my house and you took my car –”
    â€œWe had to do it, Hiram. We were afraid that something might have happened to you. The way that Beasly told it, it stood your hair on end.”
    â€œYou better get him in the car,” the sheriff said. “I’ll drive the pickup back.”
    â€œBut I have to hunt for Towser!”
    â€œYou can’t do anything until you’ve had some rest.”
    Henry grabbed him by the arm and led him to the car and Beasly held the rear door open.
    â€œYou got any idea what this place is?” Henry whispered conspiratorially.
    â€œI don’t positively know,” Taine mumbled. “Might be some other –”
    Henry chuckled. “Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter. Whatever it may be, it’s put us on the map. We’re in all the newscasts and the papers are plastering us in headlines and the town is swarming with reporters and cameramen and there are big officials coming. Yes, sir, I tell you, Hiram, this will be the making of us –”
    Taine heard no more. He was fast asleep before he hit the seat.
    V
    He came awake and lay quietly in the bed and he saw the shades were drawn and the room was cool and peaceful.
    It was good, he thought, to wake in a room you knew – in a room that one had known for his entire life, in a house that had been the Taine house for almost a hundred years.
    Then memory clouted him and he sat bolt upright.
    And now he heard it – the insistent murmur from outside the window.
    He vaulted from the bed and pulled one shade aside. Peering out, he saw the cordon of troops that held back the crowd that overflowed his back yard and the backyards back of that.
    He let the shade drop back and started hunting for