The Thing in the Stone
Clifford D. Simak
1
He walked the hills and knew what the hills had seen through geologic
time. He listened to the stars and spelled out what the stars were saying.
He had found the creature that lay imprisoned in the stone. He had climbed
the tree that in other days had been climbed by homing wildcats to reach the
den gouged by time and weather out of the cliff’s sheer face. He lived alone
on a worn-out farm perched on a high and narrow ridge that overlooked the
confluence of two rivers. And his next-door neighbor, a most ill-favored
man, drove to the county seat, thirty miles away, to tell the sheriff that
this reader of the hills, this listener to the stars was a chicken thief.
The sheriff dropped by within a week or so and walked across the yard to
where the man was sitting in a rocking chair on a porch that faced the river
hills. The sheriff came to a halt at the foot of the stairs that ran up to
the porch.
‘I’m Sheriff Harley Shepherd,’ he said. ‘I was just driving by. Been
some years since I been out in this neck of the woods. You are new here,
aren’t you?’
The man rose to his feet and gestured at another chair. ‘Been here three
years or so,’ he said. ‘The name is Wallace Daniels. Come up and sit with
me.’
The sheriff climbed the stairs and the two shook hands, then sat down in
the chairs.
‘You don’t farm the place,’ the sheriff said.
The weed-grown fields came up to the fence that hemmed in the yard.
Daniels shook his head. ‘Subsistence farming, if you can call it that. A
few chickens for eggs. A couple of cows for milk and butter. Some hogs for
meat — the neighbors help me butcher. A garden of course, but that’s about
the story.’
‘Just as well,’ the sheriff said. ‘The place is all played out. Old Amos
Williams, he let it go to ruin. He never was no farmer.’
‘The land is resting now,’ said Daniels. ‘Give it ten years — twenty
might be better — and it will be ready once again. The only things it’s
good for now are the rabbits and the woodchucks and the meadow mice. A lot
of birds, of course. I’ve got the finest covey of quail a man has ever
seen.’
‘Used to be good squirrel country,’ said the sheriff. ‘Coon, too. I
suppose you still have coon. You have a hunter, Mr. Daniels?’
‘I don’t own a gun,’ said Daniels.
The sheriff settled deeply into the chair, rocking gently.
‘Pretty country out here,’ he declared. ‘Especially with the leaves
turning colors. A lot of hardwood and they are colorful. Rough as hell, of
course, this land of yours. Straight up and down, the most of it. But
pretty.’
‘It’s old country,’ Daniels said. ‘The last sea retreated from this area
more than four hundred million years ago. It has stood as dry land since the
end of the Silurian. Unless you go up north, on to the Canadian Shield,
there aren’t many places in this country you can find as old as this.’
‘You a geologist, Mr. Daniels?’
‘Not really. Interested, is all. The rankest amateur. I need something
to fill my time and I do a lot of hiking, scrambling up and down these
hills. And you can’t do that without coming face to face with a lot of
geology. I got interested. Found some fossil brachiopods and got to
wondering about them. Sent off for some books and read up on them. One thing
led to another and — ‘
‘Brachiopods? Would they be dinosaurs, or what? I never knew there were
dinosaurs out this way.’
‘Not dinosaurs,’ said Daniels. ‘Earlier than dinosaurs, at least the
ones I found. They’re small. Something like clams or oysters. But the shells
are hinged in a different sort of way. These were old ones, extinct millions
of years ago. But we still have a few brachiopods living now. Not too many
of them.’
‘It must be interesting.’
‘I find it so,’ said Daniels.
‘You knew old Amos Williams?’
‘No. He was dead before I came here. Bought the land from the bank that
was settling his estate.’
‘Queer old coot,’ the sheriff said. ‘Fought with all his neighbors.
Especially with Ben Adams. Him and Ben had a line fence feud going on for
years. Ben said Amos refused to keep up the fence. Amos claimed Ben knocked
it down and then sort of, careless-like, hazed his cattle over into Amos’s
hayfield. How you get along with Ben?’
‘All right,’ Daniels said. ‘No trouble. I scarcely know the man.’
‘Ben don’t do much farming, either,’ said the sheriff. Hunts and fishes,
hunts ginseng, does some trapping in the winter. Prospects for minerals now
and then.’
‘There are minerals in these hills,’ said Daniels. ‘Lead and zinc. But
it would cost more to get it out than it would be worth. At present prices,
that is.’
‘Ben always has some scheme cooking.’ said the sheriff. ‘Always off on
some wild goose chase. And he’s a pure pugnacious man. Always has his nose
out of joint about something. Always on the prod for trouble. Bad man to
have for an enemy. Was in the other day to say someone’s been lifting a hen
or two of his. You haven’t been missing any, have you?’
Daniels grinned. ‘There’s a fox that levies a sort of tribute on the
coop every now and then. I don’t begrudge them to him.’
‘Funny thing,’ the sheriff said. ‘There ain’t nothing can rile up a
farmer like a little chicken stealing. It don’t amount to shucks, of course,
but they get real hostile at it.’
‘If Ben has been losing chickens,’ Daniels said, ‘more than likely the
culprit is my fox.’
‘Your fox? You talk as if you own him.’
‘Of course I don’t. No one owns a fox. But he lives in these hills with
me. I figure we are neighbours. I see him every now and then and watch him.
Maybe that means I own a piece of him. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if
he watches me more than I watch him. He moves quicker than I do.’
The sheriff heaved himself out of the chair.
‘I hate to go,’ he said. ‘I declare it has been restful sitting here and
talking with you and looking at the hills. You look at them a lot, I take
it.’
‘Quite a lot,’ said Daniels.
He sat on the porch and watched the sheriff’s car top the rise far down
the ridge and disappear from sight.
What had it all been about? he wondered. The sheriff hadn’t just
happened to be passing by. He’d been on an errand. All this aimless,
friendly talk had not been for nothing and in the course of it he’d managed
to ask lots of questions.
Something about Ben Adams, maybe? Except there wasn’t too much against
Adams except he was bone-lazy. Lazy in a weasely sort of way. Maybe the
sheriff had got wind of Adams’ off-and-on moonshining operation and was out
to do some checking, hoping that some neighbor might misspeak himself. None
of them would, of course, for it was none of their business, really, and the
moonshining had built up no nuisance value. What little liquor Ben might
make didn’t amount to much. He was too lazy for anything he did to amount to
much.
From far down the hill he heard the tinkle of a bell. The two cows were
finally heading home. It must be much later, Daniels told himself, than he
had thought. Not that he paid much attention to what time it was. He hadn’t
for long months on end, ever since he’d smashed his watch when he’d fallen
off the ledge. He had never bothered to have the watch fixed. He didn’t need
a watch. There was a battered old alarm clock in the kitchen but it was an
erratic piece of mechanism and not to be relied upon. He paid slight
attention to it.
In a little while, he thought, he’d have to rouse himself and go and do
the chores — milk the cows, feed the hogs and chickens, gather up the eggs.
Since the garden had been laid by there hadn’t been much to do. One of these
days he’d have to bring in the squashes and store them in the cellar and
there were those three or four big pumpkins he’d have to lug down the hollow
to the Perkins kids, so they’d have them in time to make jack-o-lanterns for
Halloween. He wondered if he should carve out the faces himself or if the
kids would rather do it on their own.
But the cows were still quite a distance away and he still had time. He
sat easy in his chair and stared across the hills.