The Beyonders Read Free

table. Knives and forks and paper napkins were there already. Crispin returned from washing his hands and Doc motioned him to a chair. They helped themselves from the dish and from a plate of hot corn bread cut into squares. Crispin poured wine from the bottle he had brought.
    "This Burgundy is good," said Doc, tasting his glassful.
    "So is our dinner," said Crispin. "I wonder how it's made."
    "Slowly knows that."
    "Chopped meat, " she said, "and a can of baked beans, and tomatoes and onions and green peppers and seasonings. Doc always likes it."
    "So do I like it, and always will when I'm lucky enough to have some." Crispin took another forkful. "I never had it before."
    "The formula is Slowly's," said Doc, buttering a morsel of bread. "I don't know in what order the elements go in. I only know she'll use one certain brand of beans, and when the Longcohrs don't have them, she cooks something else."
    "It's a banquet," vowed Crispin. "You see, I paint, and usually I don't stop work at noon. I take something to munch while I keep on painting. I'm already anxious to get at some studies hereabouts."
    "I liked your picture I saw," said Doc, "and 1 want to see more."
    Crispin smiled. "Let me say, I'm no great thundering master. I've had a few shows and have sold pictures now and then. Otherwise, I've some money to live on, and I'd rather paint than anything else. I saw photographs of this country up in New York and came down on impulse. That's more or less my life story, Doctor and Miss—is it Slowly?"
    "Celola," she said gently. "Folks call me Slowly. I reckon that comes easier."
    "My own life story isn't intricate, either," said Doc, sipping wine. "When I was young, I ran a dispensary and infirmary for lumberjacks. I went away to work out a career in medicine, and I had sense enough to come back here where I'd been happy." He sipped. "I'm still happy."
    "So shall I be." Crispin gazed at the clifflike shelves of books. "What particular interests do you have, here in your library?"
    "Well, I read history and literature that's been long enough around to prove it's good; medicine and general science, and quite a few works on folklore."
    "Doc lets me read in his books when I have time," said Slowly as she began to gather up the dishes.
    "Folklore." Crispin seemed interested. "There must be a treasure of that in a place like this."
    "Most of the folks have tried to outgrow it," said Doc, smiling above his glass. "They don't even talk about it much. Some of it might be staying with the Kimber settlement, up on Dogged Mountain from here."
    "Miss Slowly's folks," said Crispin, looking at her.
    "I was an adopted Kimber," Slowly informed him, turning at the kitchen door. "I came to Sky Notch when I was fourteen. I was going to school, and Miss Barnett—she was teaching—had me to live with her in the little teacherage. She's gone, but I still stay there."
    "Living with a teacher was good for Slowly," said Doc. "She got mathematical enough to be the Sky Notch town clerk. "
    Slowly went into the kitchen.
    "Folklore interests me," said Crispin, "and all the science it seems to fit into."
    "Like witchcraft," supplied Doc. "Like interpreting dreams. Maybe like unidentified flying objects."
    Crispin blinked. "You believe in those? Have you read about them?"
    "I have some books. About believing, let me just say I suspend judgment, on those and other things. I'm perfectly willing to be convinced, by a satisfactory firsthand experience. "
    "What if one flew down into your yard?"
    "Then it would be an identified flying object. I'd believe it, in spite of the skeptics."
    "The skeptics who laughed at beliefs in flying dragons," offered Crispin. "But they proved to be true when they dug up pterodactyls."
    "That was a big one they dug up in Texas, wasn't it?" asked Doc. "Pterosaur, though, they call it instead of a dragon. Big enough to carry off a sheep or a man even, if there'd been any in Texas sixty million years ago."
    "About the Kimbers," said