Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 104: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

104 JOHN WYNDHAM He stared at them. ‘I was right behind you, and I heard no calls,”’ he said. Sally and Katherine looked confusedly at one another. ‘‘ But we did,” Sally told him again. ‘“* Everybody for miles must have heard it,’ I told him. ‘‘ There was the pony screaming, too.” I led him round the clump of bushes, and showed him the savaged pony and the dead creature. It seemed as if he hadn’t expected that evidence, but he wasn’t altogether appeased. He demanded to know who we all were. We told him, and showed our identity tags. Luckily, Michael had already ridden off. “You don’t look as if yvou’re from the Fringes,’ he admitted grudgingly. ** Of course we aren’t. Why should we be? ”’ He surveyed us all again, frowning. ‘‘ You didn’t know the Fringes have got spies out? ”’ he asked. “No,” we told him. He still wasn’t satisfied. ‘‘ I’d say it’s a good half-hour since that pony did any screaming,” he said, turning to Sally and Katherine. ‘‘ How did you two manage to come straight to this spot? ”’ Sally opened her eyes surprisedly. ‘‘ This was the direction it came from, and then when we got nearer we heard the little girl crying,” she told him. ** It was very good of you to follow it up,” I put in, “‘ but it’s all over now, and luckily she wasn’t hurt. We'd better get her home, and thank you both for coming to help.” They took that up all right. ‘They congratulated us on Petra’s escape, hoped she would get over the fright quickly, and rode off. The man hesitated, still looking puzzled. Finally, he gave the three of us a long, searching stare, and then rode off in the wake of the other two. We watched him disappear among the trees. ‘‘ Who is he? ”’ asked Rosalind uneasily. I could not tell her. He was not a man I had ever seen before, nor had our names seemed to mean much to him. Automatically I started to put the question to Sally in a thought-picture, only to come up against the barrier of distress that Petra was still making. It gave one a strange, muffled feeling to be cut off from the rest like that. Rosalind started walking her horse homeward, still trying to calm Petra down. I collected the dead pony’s saddle and bridle, and the arrows out of the creature, and then followed them. During the evening the disturbance fluctuated from time to time; then, at last, it diminished quite steeply and disappeared. *“'Thank goodness for that! She’s asleep at last,’ came from one of the others. *“ Who was the man?” Rosalind and I asked, simultaneously and anxiously. It was Sally who answered, “‘ He’s fairly new here. My father knows him. He has a farm a bit less than halfway to Kentak. It comiclooks.comnn