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Day 0, 5:30 AM Sunday, October 9

Thunder? Tom awoke with a jolt. Had it been thunder or a dream? It had sounded like thunder. Had the ground shaken? All seemed quiet and peaceful. His senses began clearing. There were no sounds of rain on the tent. No sounds at all from outside. Must have been a dream.

Sherri muttered something in her sleep and snuggled closer, nuzzling her head onto his shoulder, her warm breath tickling his neck. He kissed her soft blonde hair, content that his dream was going so well, and drifted back to sleep.

Dan felt the line jerk and saw his pole quiver slightly. He tensed, ready to snap back on the pole to set the hook in the jaws of the biggest fish ever caught in the Big Bend River. The best part of fishing, the fantasizing, fueled and drove his imagination. He could see the monstrous catfish's beady eyes cleverly evaluating the worm; its huge tail slowly swaying, propelling its massive body around its helpless prey in ever smaller circles, preparing to snatch the scrumptious, foot-long night-crawler.

Dan moved the pole gently, trying to make the worm seem more alive, more enticing, then laughed at himself as he fell back into reality. Something had probably stolen his bait for the fourth time in the last hour. He reeled in the line and looked hopelessly at the picked-clean hook.

A whisper, then a swooshing squeal from above, a wavy streak of light shooting across the rippling water to the opposite bank, a thunderous explosion jolting the ground, all almost simultaneously, overloaded Dan's reflexes. His eyes riveted in the direction of the loudest sound high on the dark wooded hillside, then squinted disbelievingly. Flying tree limb silhouettes flashed across the clear, starlit sky, cascading aimlessly down into the dark indistinguishable shadows of the woods.

Lightning?

An eerie silence settled over the woods. Even the bugs stopped chattering.

Above, millions of stars and a thin sliver of moon, offering little more than decoration, faintly reflected off the bare, splintered tree top. There was no fire, no smoke, only silence. How could it have been lightning? That close, the flash would've been blinding.

Something must have fallen, but what? He hadn't heard a plane engine beforehand. And a crashing plane would have scattered debris all over the hillside.

Totally engrossed, Dan silently watched and listened. What should he do?

Wake Tom and Sherri! He bolted up the shallow rise to the campsite, surprised at not seeing someone peeking from the tent.

Tom, sure that he hadn't even gone back to sleep yet, was startled by the approaching, frantic shouting.

The tent shook violently as Dan hollered, "Something just crashed on the other side of the river! We gotta check it out. Hurry up and get dressed!"

"What crashed?" Tom asked, crawling from the toasty sleeping bag. He pulled up the tent zipper and poked his head out. Cold, early morning, Autumn air leaked in, sending shivering chills down his goose-bumped, naked body.

"Something crashed?" Sherri yelped, bolting upright, still half asleep, clutching the sleeping bag tightly around her neck. "What crashed? A—" She caught herself, remembering where they were.

"I don't know," Dan blurted, sweeping an arm overhead. "All I saw was a whistling streak of light from the sky." He hurriedly explained, ending with, "…and hurry up. I'll be down at the boat."

The sky was barely beginning to lighten in the east as Tom and Sherri crawled from the tent. The fire was burning brightly, crackling with a surprising zest for a morning fire. A pot of coffee sat on a rock at the edge of the flames, a wisp of sweet, odorous steam drifting up mingling with the invigorating aroma of an expertly laid, hardwood campfire. Across the river, the hillside offered an uninviting, black, mysterious silhouette against the dark, gray sky.

Dan hollered and cursed from the boat, something about the trolling motor. Not nearly as excited, Tom poured a cup of coffee, took a sip and handed it to Sherri.

A little ten-horse outboard gurgled to life accompanied by another yell, "Hurry up people. I can't wait forever."

"And he broke our only flashlight last night," Tom muttered, looking for another cup. The motor revved impatiently. "Sher, have you seen—" he looked around. She was gone. He spun around and saw a shadow scurrying down toward the river. Forgetting the coffee, he stumbled down the dark, rocky slope after her. "It's too damned dark to—"

"We can see good enough," Dan insisted, pointing. "Look at that big tree over there. Something hit it and blew the top off it. Come on, the sun'll be up in a few minutes."

Sherri deftly into the boat and sat down, both hands clutching the steaming cup. Tom untied the boat, pushed off, and jumped in, almost falling overboard as the little motor screamed to life.

Dan twisted the boat around, slammed it into forward, sped the three hundred feet across the smooth river and ran aground. He hopped out, quickly tied the boat to a sapling—ignoring the kind words Sherri directed at him for spilling her coffee—and charged into the brush.

Tom looked around at the brush-tangled riverbank and the dark, dense woods beyond. Being the male of the species, he had the macho urge to lead the way, but Sherri sprinted off like a rabbit, without a word or complaint. He found himself wishing that she'd slow down and ask for some help.

Once through the brush, he was able to see her in the dim light filtering through the trees, and actually caught her when she stopped to look around.

"Which direction… is the tree?" he whispered, trying not to pant.

Dan's' frantic yell stifled her reply. "Over here! Something plowed right into the hill."

They climbed toward his voice, skirting fallen branches from the top twenty feet of the huge tree, and found Dan peering into a hissing cloud of steam billowing from the ground, pointing and waving frantically, "Look at this crater! It's gotta be at least twenty feet across."

They ran to his side, any trace of cynicism instantly evaporating. Dan looked expectantly at Tom, rose his fists above his head, and shook them in jubilation. "Listen to it hiss." Dropping to his stomach, and extending his head over the edge, he futilely waved at the steam boiling from the pit. "I can't see a damned thing. What is—"

Chunks of dirt broke loose from the side under his excited wiggling, disappearing into the sizzling caldron.

"Get away from there, Dan!" Tom dropped to his knees, grabbing Dan's belt. "No telling what's down there."

Dan looked up at him disapprovingly, started to say something, looked back into the hole and mumbled, "Whatever it is, we gotta get it. It's gotta be worth something to—" Tom tugged at him. Dan tried to wiggle away. "Come on, let's carry some water up here and cool it off, and then—"

Tom jerked him back from the hole. "Bullshit! Stop and think!" He paused as if giving Dan time to think, then added, "It's probably a meteorite, and I'm not screwing around with it until I find someone that knows if it's safe."

"Safe?" Dan exclaimed. "It's just hot." A meteorite? That made sense. Seeing dollar signs over the recent public furor for meteorites and the outlandish prices people have gotten for them, his building excitement overwhelmed him. "All we gotta do is cool it off, then dig it up. We gotta get it out of the hole and hide it before you go asking questions. Whadda you wanna do, just give it away?" he demanded, almost losing control.

"Calm down, Dan," Tom said, helping him to his feet and putting a comforting arm around his shoulders. "I won't tell anybody where it's at. I'll just make a few anonymous calls and get some information. Maybe we need a Geiger counter or—"

"Come on!" Dan pleaded. "This thing's probably been floating around in space for millions of years. It can't be dangerous. It's probably just a rock."

"Cyanide is just a rock, too, when they take it from the ground," Tom said, not sure if he was right, but hoping to make a point.

Dan looked at him skeptically, the thought challenging his urges.

Tom continued, "Hell, you might already be poisoned by the fumes you just breathed."

"He's right, Dan," Sherri quickly agreed. "Didn't you hear on the news that some meteorites might be radioactive?" She didn't remember hearing any more about it, though. She had heard that most meteorites were being snapped up by collectors, keeping the scientific community from getting them for study. Maybe they started a rumor so that they might get more of them. She didn't know, but to be safe, she added, "Who knows what that thing is."

Tom quickly backed up a couple steps, wondering if she really knew, or was just trying to be helpful. She did have a special influence on Dan. Almost too special, sometimes.

Dan reluctantly stepped away from the hole, looked back and forth at Tom and the still steaming hole, then smiled.

"Well… maybe you're right. What the hell. A few days won't hurt. Just don't tell anyone where it's at. It's probably not worth anything, but I'd at least like to have it as a souvenir." The dim light hid the contradiction between his words and the look in his eyes. He brushed the dirt from his hands, then wiped them on his jeans. "Let's go have some breakfast. Just don't bitch about not having fish like I promised. I sorta got interrupted…" He briefly glanced at the hole, turned, and started down the hill. "At least, I bet Sherri won't bitch about it."

She was more than delighted. Making breakfast using bacon instead of fish was especially pleasing, since women's work to her macho friends included cleaning the cold, slimy, smelly fish. Not her ideal way to start the day.

Dan's interest in the hole and its mysterious treasure waned, gradually replaced by idle chatter about the giant fish he almost caught, and about the fish that he was going to catch, and the type of fishing he was going to do the rest of the day, finally dwindling down to brief responses, then prolonged periods of silence and deep thought.

They ate breakfast, repacked their gear in the boat, and set off on the final leg of their weekend adventure, floating the second half of the thirty miles from Sherri's cabin down the lazy Big Bend River back to the imaginatively named town of Big Bend; 15,000 souls nestled in the cup of a horseshoe cut by the river as if it couldn't decide which ocean to bless with its clean, clear fluid of life.

Dusk was setting in when they pulled against the dock by the boat launching ramp in downtown Big Bend. Tom's, Lemon Limo, as Dan called the bright yellow Lincoln Town Car, beckoned from the foot of the pier, grudgingly waiting to do the dirty work of delivering the tired travelers and a mountain of wet, smelly, filthy gear to the boring place they'd so willingly deserted only a day and a half ago. Home, sweet home.

Tom dropped Dan off at his apartment, but when they got to Sherri's, she had other ideas. It didn't take her nearly as much effort to entice him into spending the night as he led her to believe.

After a full day of licentious mental foreplay, watching her erotic taunt-tease-and-tantalizing act in her red heart-shaped string bikini, the string pleasantly disappearing between her voluptuous, slightly sunburned cheeks, to blossom in front as a red heart-shaped mound fringed with delicate, beckoning, promising, playfully peeking, curly blonde hairs, and the way the soft red hearts molded themselves over her perky nipples had already made him a willing slave.

But to stop her from using more persuasion would be criminal….

______________________

Day 1, Monday, October 10

Tom would have slept until noon, but once again, Sherri had other ideas. Her relentless lips, teasing hands and soft, hot body urged him awake, and kept him awake until it was time for the bad news. She had to get ready for work, and poor him, she didn't have any time to fix breakfast.

He reluctantly got up and was on the way home by eight, wondering how she could make love half the night and not be hungry in the morning. Maybe he was doing something wrong. He was starving.

The phone was ringing when he got to his front door. He didn't know why a beckoning phone made people rush to answer them. If he wasn't home, he would've missed the call anyway. What could be so important? He banged his shin against the coffee table and knocked the candy dish to the floor in his haste to get to the cursed thing.

It was Dan, noticeably impatient. "Tom, where have you been? I've been calling you all morning. I gotta get my truck, man."

"Hey, I just got home. I've got to clean up and have some breakfast."

"How long's that gonna take?"

"An hour or so. I'll pick you up around ten. Okay?"

"Yeah, all right." He sounded like a kid that wanted something immediately but was forcing himself to be polite, only to spoil the facade by hanging up without saying goodbye.

Tom smelled his clothes, grimaced, and shucked them, letting them drop chaotically to the floor as he headed for the shower, wondering about his best friend.

They were both seven when Tom, an orphan of divorce—a run-away mother, and an immature father—had been brought to Big Bend to live with his Aunt and Uncle. They'd been best friends since meeting on the first day of the second grade. He smiled, thinking about it.

They'd known each other all of ten minutes before the fight started. Fortunately, little boys don't know how to fight effectively. Instead of throwing crisp, accurate punches, they'd grabbed each other and rolled around in the dirt, tearing clothes and screaming childish insults. Dan still insists to this day that he was winning. The teacher called it a draw by rewarding each equally with a paddling—something not allowed in the big cities—then sitting them all day in opposite corners of the room with an actual cone-shaped dunce-cap perched on their heads, and giving each a note that they were duty-bound to deliver to their parents; a confusing thought to Tom since he had no real parents.

What Tom remembered most was the teasing by the other kids. Although, as the day wore on, the teasing diminished, to be gradually replaced by a hint of admiration, especially from the boys. By the day's end, some of the boys actually envied them. They'd gotten into the first fight of the new school year. Their reputation had been established. They were now know as scrappers.

All day long they'd bragged to their own group of admirers that they were going to continue the battle after school. But by day's end, they began to admire each other. That evening they'd walked home together and had grown as close as brothers.

The only things they never settled were, who started the fight, and who won it; two subjects repeatedly rehashed over the years, during lighter moments, usually over a few beers, when reminiscing crept into their conversations. They never had a rematch. Dan knew better. Tom's rapid growth and proclivity toward athletics and Dan's slow physical development, along with his desire for talk rather than action, preferring jokes and parties and girls, while shunning work and strenuous play, and his inherent laziness made it a mismatch. They grew in opposite directions, but as opposites sometimes attract, their friendship grew all the stronger.

Tom always pictured them as a little terrier and a German Shepherd, the terrier thinking it's as big and as strong as the Shepherd, its bark as loud and its bite as ferocious, yet neither overstepping an invisible line. It reminded Tom of the Chihuahua that killed the full-grown Doberman Pinscher; it got lodged in the Doberman's throat and choked it to death.

Chuckling, he got out of the shower, toweled off vigorously, and went into the kitchen to start breakfast. If Dan could only straighten out his life and get a decent job. He hadn't worked in six months. Drawing unemployment and working a couple days a week, under-the-table, at his uncle's garage was enough for him to get by on, but Dan was spending all of his time hanging out in bars and partying, causing him to get behind on his truck payments and rent. And he seemed not to care. Tom wished that there was something that he could do to help, but he knew Dan well enough to know that he had to wait until he was asked.

Dan resented charity almost as much as working.

______________________

It was 10:10 when Tom drove down the street toward Dan's apartment building. He was outside pacing the sidewalk. Tom made a U-turn and pulled to the curb.

Dan jumped in, and trying to appear nonchalant said, "I thought that your limo had broken down. I almost called you again."

Ignoring the hint of jealousy and frustration, Tom pulled back into the street. "Just having a hard time getting myself in gear today. I could have slept till noon."

Dan nodded, idly gazing blankly at the few cars on the street, appearing to be deeply in thought.

Tom drove the three blocks to Main Street and turned left, then asked, trying to start a conversation, "Did you have breakfast?"

"Yeah." Dan looked at something out of the passenger window, avoiding eye contact.

At the edge of the business district, Tom turned left onto highway 19 and settled back for the thirty-mile drive north to Sherri's cabin. He started to say something, noticed that Dan was drumming his fingers on his knees and staring straight ahead, and decided against it. He thought about how different it had been Saturday, when they'd started their weekend float-trip.

It was early Saturday morning, just after sunrise. Friday, a late season heat wave had blown up from the south and was forecasted to stay for several days, prompting Tom to suggest that they ought to go on one last float trip for the season, something he, Sherri, Dan and usually a date did three or four times a year.

They'd usually stay at Sherri's cabin on Friday night and get an early start Saturday morning, then camp overnight where Goose Creek entered the river halfway to town. This time something had come up and Dan didn't have a date, so they decided to stay in town Friday night and get an early morning start from home. Dan had been his normal, jocular, fun-loving self.

Dan swung his Bronco onto the gravel road leading to Sherri's cabin and hit the steering wheel with his fist, "Now I know why you two always invite me to come along on your float trips." A large grin spread across his thin face and he nodded continuously as if a revelation was flashing through his mind. Then he let out a loud bellowing roar, much too large and deep for his small 5-9, 150 pound body. "First… neither of your cars could pull a boat over this two miles of ruts and holes you call a road." He nodded his head at them as if discovering their secret. "And second…"

He tried to keep a straight face to continue but had to blurt it out between roars of laughter. "And second, you don't have a boat." He laughed so hard he could barely keep the truck on the road.

"And third," Tom added, "we didn't know anybody dumb enough to do it except you." Reaching behind Sherri, Tom punched him on the shoulder. "And besides, you know when to take a walk when Sher gets in the mood."

"And I'm almost always in the mood," she piped in, trying to be one of the boys.

Dan purposely hit a deep chug hole in the road and let out a ludicrous cowboy yell. He winked at Tom and said, "The last time we did this, you and Sher went into the cabin for a half an hour while I put the boat in the water and got it loaded. This time," doing a Grocho Marx with his eyebrows, "how about I take her in the cabin while you put the boat in the water. She looks like she's starvin' for some good loving."

"Sure. Fair's fair," Tom agreed, maintaining a straight face.

"Wow, this is going to be a great float trip," Sherri said, putting her arm around Dan and cooing, "I can't wait to show you what I've learned since the last time, you big hunk."

"The last time?" Tom blurted out without thinking.

Sherri laid her head on Dan's shoulder and purred, "After all, I'm still a single girl with desires like everybody else." She looked at Tom with her lovingly taunting, blue-green eyes, her voice stressing the word single and turning sexy at the word desires.

"Sweetheart, don't you know that Dan's gay?" Tom said, keeping a straight face. "Besides, he gives lousy head."

"Lousy head? He gives great head! And he only acts gay to get other guy's women." She winked, touché.

Dan smiled, wondering if it was such a bad idea.

Tom slid her to his side and began giving her his undivided attention. They were interrupted when Dan pulled up in front of her cabin.

"All ashore that's going ashore," Dan whooped as he jumped from the truck. "And if you two go in the cabin I'm coming along." Sherri looked at Tom and started nodding her head rapidly.

"We'll help you put the boat in the water," Tom said, flicking Sherri on her pouting nose with his finger.

They loaded their supplies into the boat, backed it down to the river, ended up in a water fight that wasn't a smart thing to do on a cool October morning, almost tipping Dan's little fishing boat over in the process, and had a great time the rest of the day….

Dan had been his happy-go-lucky self.

Tom didn't understand this rare bit of pouty moodiness.

About ten miles out of town, Tom again tried to start a conversation. "Where do you think the highway comes the closest to the place where the meteorite hit?"

Dan shrugged and said, "I don't know. Probably a couple miles up the road."

Tom knew that Dan prided himself as being an outdoorsman, a hunter, a fearless explorer, a man that knew every trail and stream and cave within a hundred miles. Ask him a question about the outdoors and, sometimes to the chagrin of the listener, he'd go on and on about his favorite subject.

Tom knew that they'd camped just south of where Goose Creek joined the river, halfway between the cabin and town, and he also knew that the ravine the creek ran through could be seen from the highway. Dan just didn't want to talk about it, or maybe he didn't want to talk about anything. Tom decided to keep quiet and wait for Dan to start a conversation. It didn't work. Dan remained silent, his lips occasionally twitching, as if talking to himself.

At the cabin, Dan said that he had to go to Cedar City and that he'd see Tom tomorrow, then he took off, churning up a cloud of dust.

Tom waited a moment, wondering if there was anything that he should do while at the cabin. It didn't take long for him to decide that the only thing he had to do today was to go home and get some sleep. When a man has a lovely, sensual, wanton, insatiable women, that's one of his major problems. Not getting enough sleep.

Things could be worse.

______________________

Dan turned right onto the highway, drove eighty for a couple miles, turned onto a side road and made a U-turn well back from the highway. Five minutes later, Tom's yellow Lincoln flashed by. Dan waited another minute, then followed, taking his time.

Back at the spot next to the impact site, the Bronco easily negotiated the shallow drainage ditch alongside the road, and the few hundred feet of already harvested wheat field between the highway and the woods where the meteorite had impacted. At the woods' edge, a thick belt of brush, thorny vines and saplings fell to the viscous onslaught by the tubular steel bumper-grill guard, and huge 15x42 off road tires.

Dan wove through the trees, stopping uphill of the crater. Jumping out of the truck, he grabbed his short-handled, worm-digging shovel from behind the seat, and ran to the hole, his anticipation soaring. Somehow, it looked smaller than it had yesterday. Not quite as awesome or mysterious as it had been when filled with hissing, boiling steam.

He looked up at what was left of the huge oak. The trunk still towered above the other trees on the hillside. It looked as if lightning had blown the top off it. Tree branches lay strewn all about. He looked back into the hole and changed his original estimate to closer to fifteen feet in diameter, and about seven feet deep, the sides sloping toward the middle.

He dropped the shovel into it, crouched at the edge and started to slide down. The edge crumbled away and he tumbled face first into the still surprisingly warm dirt below. He scrambled to his feet, cussing and spitting and wiping the dirt from his face. Angrily snatching up the shovel, he stomped the blade into the ground and jerked back on the handle. It snapped, sending him sprawling onto his back. Scrambling to his feet again, muttering at the shovel, angrily brushing the dirt out of his hair, he clenched his fist at the damned hole, more determined than ever to unearth his treasure.

Grabbing the short, metal handle-holder on the blade, he began furiously gouging and scraping at the dirt, repeatedly bitching at himself for not having bought a better shovel.

He made slow progress. Every time he tossed a shovelful up, half of it hit below the edge and tumbled down the sloping walls, ending back at his feet. It was laborious, back-breaking, sweaty work. The hole was hot, and the deeper he dug, the hotter the dirt became. Sweat ran into his eyes and down through a three day growth of beard. His shirt stuck to his skin. Angrily, he ripped off the soaked, muddy thing and tossed it out of the hole.

Nearly exhausted, he paused to rest, gulping in long deep gasps of warmed, muggy air, his heart pounding, his feet getting hotter. Jerking a foot from the dirt, he felt the squish of the sweat and dirt in his boot turning to hot mud.

After catching his breath and calming down, he noticed a slight tingling in his legs and arms. He assumed that it was from the hard work, something he usually avoided. He didn't mind looking like he was working hard, but he couldn't remember when he'd actually applied himself as vigorously, other than maybe during sex.

Screaming curses, trying to get some adrenaline pumping, he attacked the dirt with a renewed vengeance. It was the enemy keeping him from his treasure. There was always something in the way. All his life he'd dreamed of finding something valuable. Days and days of prospecting, searching, dreaming, taking samples to the assayer, his hopes soaring while waiting impatiently for the results, then being dashed when the results came back. Nothing but this or nothing but that, old Ben Johnson, the county assayer would say with the voice of a mortician; patronizingly sympathetic. Always explaining that Dan's sample was nothing but—

The shovel struck something hard! Dan jerked it up and jabbed it back into the ground. It slammed into something hard again.

Dan Jenkins had found a treasure at last! He was sure of it this time.

Taking a deep breath, he gritted his teeth and began frantically clawing the dirt away with his hands. His finger tips scraped along something solid. And hot! He slapped and brushed at the dirt, giggling and laughing almost maniacally.

Overnight, his imagination had run away with him. He'd pictured a chunk of solid gold or platinum or at the very least, a huge blob of silver. Lying in bed as he drifted asleep, he'd started seeing a jewel encrusted rock with diamonds big as baseballs, emeralds like avocados, and rubies the size of tomatoes. He had fallen asleep enthralled, in the land of palaces, and harems, and…

As he cleared a spot, his giggling stopped, the rapture on his thin face transformed into a look of concern mixed with a few wrinkles of disappointment. The object, his dream treasure, wasn't quite what his imagination had conjured up. It looked like a common, black rock. Slowly, deliberately, he dug away at the dirt, wondering if it was another empty dream dashed into his personal, bottomless pit of bad luck and misery.

Shucking off the thought, he reverted to his original thinking yesterday when he'd seen the streak of light and the explosion as something crashed into the hillside. After realizing that it was a meteorite, he knew that even if it had no intrinsic value, it would surely bring big bucks from a collector, or a museum, or one of those scientific research places. Of that, he was still convinced, and seeing it, touching it, having it almost in his possession brought back some of his original enthusiasm, minus the palace and harem.

Scratching at the dirt, clearing the spot wider and wider, he realized that his hands were raw and the heat was becoming almost unbearable. He grabbed the shovel and began trying to dig down around it. As he cleared away more dirt, he saw that it was practically round, not much bigger than a basketball, except for one baseball-size lump surrounded by several smaller walnut-size lumps near the top.

His face, arm, and hands were singed from the heat, but he didn't care, being almost numb with excitement. With the shovel, he tried prying up the rock. It didn't budge. He needed a long pry bar, but all he had in the truck were hand tools.

Suddenly feeling dizzy, he leaned back against the side of the hole, exhausted and gulping for air. It didn't help. It's the heat, he thought. He struggled out of the hole and shakily trudged to the truck. In a few minutes, the cool breeze drifting through the trees partially rejuvenated him as it dried the sticky sweat running down his chest and back.

Taking a hammer and chisel from his tool box and a rag from under the seat, he slid back into the hole. He chipped off the large lump and five of the smaller ones and rolled them into the rag. Samples would have to do, at least until he could figure out how to get the rock out of the hole and move it to a safe place.

He climbed back out, put the rocks in the truck, then began shoveling the dirt back into the hole. Then he piled branches from the shattered treetop over it. When finished, he stood back and checked his work.

Satisfied that it looked like a brush pile left behind by woodcutters, he got into the truck and checked the time. It was 4:15. The assay office would probably be closed by the time he got there. He'd go there the first thing in the morning. Besides, he wanted to get home and clean up, then go to the Blue Bull and celebrate with Sue. He'd have to hurry because she got off at six.

On the way he started feeling nauseous. Thinking that he might have to puke at any time, he rolled down the window. He'd had plenty of practice cleaning puke off the side of his truck. It was much better than doing it in his lap.

Within minutes, waves of total exhaustion swept over him. He fought for the strength to hang onto the wheel, to even keep his head up. As he passed the Bull on the way into town, he seemed to get a second wind. Just enough to get him home. Sue would have to keep until tomorrow, he thought sadly, knowing that when he got home he was going to crash.

______________________

Day 2, Tuesday, October 11

Dan crawled out of bed a little past seven expecting to be sore and stiff. To his surprise, he felt great. The only discomfort was an impatient, gnawing, rumbling stomach begging for food. He looked in the frig and slammed the door in disgust. Yesterday, after getting home, he had laid the rocks on the table and while studying them with tired, blurry eyes, totally unimpressed, he'd eaten the last food in the house, a package of hot dogs. He'd eaten the whole package, dipping them in a jar of mustard and practically swallowing them whole. He had grocery shopping to do, a chore he detested almost as much as taking a shower.

He sniffed under an arm and decided that enough was enough.

After showering and dressing, he called his uncle's garage and asked Tony, the head mechanic, if they could install a winch on his truck.

"You're in luck, my man," Tony said. "We've got a used two and a half ton Kroller here that's almost brand new. The bad news is that I can't get it on for you until Thursday. Bud's out with the flu, or so he says, and I've got a backlog as long as my arm."

That was bad news, but on the flip side, he knew that he could get the winch from them on credit, and that Tony kept his promises, so he acceded reluctantly.

He sat down at the table and looked at the rocks again. The outside of the lumps looked like melted slag, but where it had broken off, something caught his eye. He took it to the window where the early morning sun was streaming in and held it in the light. It was coal black, glassy, with tiny, sparkling flecks of color appearing to wink at him, like looking at a moonless, star-filled sky, except these stars were in color. Tiny silver lines connected the spots. With rising excitement, sure now that it wasn't just a plain, ordinary rock, he slipped on his denim jacket, put the five smaller ones in a pocket, and put the larger one, his personal souvenir, in a junk drawer in the kitchen.

His cat Feral, a large black, battle-scarred veteran tomcat nuzzled insistently at his leg, not about to let his servant leave without feeding him. Dan shoved the drawer in, opened the cabinet door below and scooped out a bowl of dry food, patted his master twice on the head and started for the door.

The phone rang.

Afraid that it might be Tom, he ignored it. Tom had his chance and blew it, he thought as he bolted out the door. He mimicked them disgustedly as he ran down the steps. "Let's wait until we find out if it's safe," Tom had said sissified, and Sherri, Tom's conscious, had quickly agreed. Who needs them. He knew at that moment that it would be his and his alone. He didn't need people holding him back. He'd been poor all his life. They just didn't understand what it was like. Sherri with her cushy job at the bank, and Tom living on royalties from a patent, or stocks, or whatever, didn't have to worry about money. They could wait and fool around and lose this opportunity, but he wasn't about to let this chance slip away. He could still hear the phone ringing as he ran to his truck.

Dan lived on what the locals called, Apartment Row, three blocks of eight-unit apartment buildings, all built from the same basic plans; two-story, hallways from front to rear, parking for tenants only in the alley—the kid's playground. For that reason Dan preferred to park his prized Black Beauty a 96 Ford Bronco, on the street.

As he ran, the rocks tugged uncomfortably at his jacket. He jumped into the truck and pulled three rocks out of the pocket, put two in the other pocket and put one in the glove compartment. He never wondered why he'd brought so many.

On the way out of town, his stomach cramped, rumbled, and growled unmercifully. He stopped at a cafe and ordered four double-decker cheeseburgers to go. He'd never been so painfully hungry. Gulping one burger down before hitting the street, he headed north on highway 19. Ten miles north of town, he turned right on 24 toward Olympia, the county seat of Crawford County.

A small office on Main Street, sandwiched between a shoe store and a dress shop, proudly displayed an excessively extravagant bronze sign; CRAWFORD COUNTY ASSAYER. Dan parked diagonally against the curb as so many Midwestern towns favored in lieu of parallel parking. He optimistically patted his pocket, sure that this time things would be different, and jumped from the truck.

As usual, an ancient, weathered, congenial, grandfatherly man, Ben Johnson, the assayer, sat at a wall-to-wall table facing the left wall, his back to the counter, thick, powerful magnifying glasses perched on his nose. Dan had never seen the old man without them, either on his nose, or setting on a prominent wrinkle high on his forehead. Ben twisted around and smiled.

"I haven't seen you in a long time, Dan. I hope you got a ten pound gold nugget you want me to check out." Ben looked sincere but Dan knew that he was joshing him.

"No, Ben. No gold this time." Dan lay one of the rocks on the counter and turned it so the side with the colored flecks and veins were facing Ben. "I found a bunch of rocks like this."

Ben picked up the rock and examined it through his thick glasses. Shaking his head, he opened a drawer under the counter and removed a cylindrical object about six inches long. Sliding a switch on its side, a thin, bright light shone through a lens on one end. He put the other end to his right eye and held the rock against the lit end.

Ben made a few mumbling noises and handed the rock and the instrument to Dan. "I've never seen anything that looks like this. Here, take a look."

Dan had to fight back a smile. Now he knew he had something valuable if old Ben hadn't seen anything like it.

Looking through the magnifier, the colored veins, barely visible with the naked eye, were enlarged to the width of spaghetti. Sprouting from these lines were smaller lines running in every direction, terminating into various colored balls. The larger lines ran to balls that looked like translucent colored marbles, while the smaller lines were tipped with BB-sized silver, gold, and white balls.

He whistled and looked at Ben. "How long will it take you to find out what it is?" The eye Dan had squinted started twitching uncontrollably. He put his hand over it and rubbed. Ben hadn't noticed.

"I'm not sure, Dan. This will have to be sent to the lab. That could take a week… maybe two." Ben picked up a tool that looked like a stainless steel pencil and scratched on the rock. "That's some mighty hard stuff where it's been broken off." Knowing he wouldn't get an honest answer, he asked anyway, "Where'd you get this?"

Dan was already prepared for that question. "Over in the canyon."

The Canyon was an area between two small mountain ranges, about ten miles long, running east to west between Olympia and Bullock. Dan knew that mining claims were still available in the canyon area, and since the alluring traces of gold had petered out years ago, nothing of any significance had been found there. If the sample proved valuable, he planned to stake a claim and find the meteorite there.

"The canyon? Is there much more of this there?" Ben was pumping.

"Ben, let's find out what we've got," Dan said, trying to wink clandestinely, managing only a feeble, fluttering spasm, "then I'll tell you all about it." Ben's face began swaying, shrinking, then growing into a blurry blob. Rubbing his eyes, he heard Ben say, "Okay, Dan, check with me next week." Dan headed for the door, paying no attention to Ben's, "I should know something by then."

Walking back to the truck, a wave of drunken dizziness overcame him. Stumbling against the truck, he grasped the door handle, squinted his eyes and shook his head. For a few seconds his mind went blank. Then random visions from the past began flashing through his head, each being interrupted by another, faster and faster, until his mind was a blur. Still clutching the door handle, he slowly sank to his knees. After what seemed like hours of nothingness, paralysis, silence, blindness, he gradually became aware of traffic noises, then something gripping his shoulders and a meaningless sound totally unrecognizable.

Something was around his chest, squeezing, lifting. Then a loud shout, too close, too painfully loud.

Dan jerked free and spun around to face what he thought was an attacker. As he raised his hand to strike at the blurry assailant, his vision began to clear. He hesitated, focusing on the magnifying glasses nestled in bushy white hair, the long forehead wrinkled in shock, the light, almost yellow eyes sparkling in the sun.

Ed, Ben's assistant, rushed to his side to help. "What's wrong, Ben?"

Seeing the fear and panic in Dan's eyes, Ben stepped back and swept an arm out blocking Ed. "Dan! It's me, Ben. What's wrong? Are you all right?"

Dan relaxed as recognition and fatigue mingled to sweep away the confusion and panic. He straightened up and looked sheepishly at both of them.

"Are you all right?" Ben asked again, stepping closer to offer a hand.

Dan nodded and mumbled, "I'm okay. Just working too hard… I guess."

Ben reached out, offering his hand. "Do you want to come in for a minute and rest?"

Without answering, Dan turned, climbed into the truck and drove away without looking back. He had to get some more sleep.

______________________

Tom was calling Dan for the third time since yesterday afternoon when he had talked to Professor Steintz, a geologist at the University of Illinois. The professor had cautioned him to definitely not touch the meteorite, and that the university had a considerable interest in meteorites, and that they had the equipment to determine the safety of handling it, and that he would call Tom back later in the week. The exact mono-tripe Tom had expected.

When the professor had asked Tom for his name, Tom had hesitated, having called using *67, then rejected his original idea of anonymity and gave his name and number. Why be anonymous if it wasn't safe to touch it? He wouldn't dare dig it up without first having it checked by someone that knew what they were doing. But when the professor asked where it was located, Tom had remained vague and said that it was in the general vicinity of Big Bend. The professor had understood and hadn't pushed the issue.

A question still nagged Tom. What if the thing was dangerous and someone else stumbled across it? And an even bigger question; what if Dan became impatient and wouldn't wait?

The phone had rung at least ten times. He hung up. Was Dan on another three day drunk, which he'd done more and more frequently this summer? Tom thought about opening a beer, then decided to do some work instead.

He spent the rest of the day working on an electronic circuit for a new, much quicker robotic arm to be used initially in automobile manufacturing. Instead of the relatively slow, servo-motor operated arms—the ones that whine to a position, stop, then whine to a longitude and stop again, then whine to a latitude, the operating position, in a basic up-down, north-south, east-west series of moves to arrive at the point where the welding, riveting, painting, or any one of several dozen possible operations are performed—this arm practically popped to the desired position using a spherical, computer grid map to linearly follow a moving object with exacting precision.

Its muscle was supplied by a magnetic liquid made by a fusion process of which Tom wasn't privy to; actually, one of the most carefully guarded industrial secrets since the development of x-ray equipment. It was the next step toward the ultimate goal of making a machine to make a machine.

Someday, raw materials would go into one end of a plant and cars or refrigerators or televisions would pop out the other end, while technicians sat in air-conditioned booths watching monitors, and reading or dozing, marking time until they themselves would be replaced by a machine.

Tom always wondered what was going to happen to all the people when they were no longer needed for anything. They couldn't all be used to repair the machinery. Machines would eventually do that job. Thoughts of Solyent Green came to mind, quickly stifling a growing hunger pang.

Tom enjoyed his work as an engineering consultant. It was all dear Belinda had left him. But what she didn't know, it was all he really wanted at this stage of his life.

Six years of college, four at the University of Illinois and two at MIT had prepared Tom well enough for Belinda to manipulate him into her father's good graces, and his bountiful generosity, which he held sacred for men only.

Jerrad Mallory had no sons to nurture and culture and mold into the helmsman of his financial empire. Mallory cherished an ideal from the past when it came to women. They were to be pretty, charming, sweet-smelling, and refrain from using their brain. And the most important thing, they were supposed to bear sons until the man had enough to carry on his legacy—then they could have a girl for themselves.

His wife had let him down. She'd only given him one daughter, then had a terrible ordeal trying to give birth to a son. The baby was stillborn, his wife lost her uterus, and Jerrad—a devout until death do us part Catholic—envisioned his family tree the fodder of chain saws, leaving nothing but a stump and a wayward branch going nowhere, under a different name, his influence and memories inevitably erased and forgotten.

Belinda knew that her father loved her in the only way he knew how. He idolized her. She was his princess, his pet, his doll, a lovely child in the image of her mother, a charming girl to be pampered, spoiled, and displayed. It infuriated her. She'd never been taken seriously, and worse yet, her father would never consider her to be a suitable heir. She needed a husband and produce a grandson before she could ascend to her rightful throne, the new Mother of the family.

It was only two months after the wedding when Tom realized what a conniving, manipulative, cold-hearted bitch Belinda really was. Tom was nothing but a pawn, a surrogate son for Jerrad, and a vessel to deliver her father's abundant generosity.

Tom's portfolio blossomed; management positions, high salaries, class A stock and options, one percent loans with no fixed due date, company vehicles of all descriptions, from small ATV's to a twin engine Cherokee. He had everything a man could want, except for a women he loved and respected. Or even liked.

By their second year of marriage Belinda became disenchanted. Pregnancy had eluded her. The trying and frustration had made sex a distasteful chore for her. Tom tried diligently to be the perfect husband. Unfortunately, he became more like her father, placing her on a pedestal in a world of lace and frills and folly, no meat and potatoes, no business discussions or financial consultations, nothing meaningful. She had no power to shape her life. Without power she had nothing.

It was four more years of feeling incomplete, a failure in her own eyes, before the revelation hit her; Tom had to go. She had to have a rich, powerful man of her very own, not her father's rich son-in-law. Tom was an agonizing disappointment. He worked too hard. He had disgusting values. He believed in working for what he got, not in getting all he could for the woman he loved. He just didn't understand how much she deserved more stature, power and respect.

With her goal perfectly clear, it only took one summer in Europe to find a suitable replacement.

During the divorce, Jerrad had insisted that Tom stay with the company. He offered Tom more money, more stocks, the Executive Vice Presidency and the accompanying staff to do all the dirty work. Tom refused to accept the fantastic offer. He knew that Jerrad's health was deteriorating and that eventually the majority of the company would go to Belinda and her mother, and he could never work for them even if they asked, which they never would. A hit-man would most likely be their method of dealing with him.

After many, many hours of bitter negotiations, the lawyers finally reached an amicable settlement. Belinda got everything and Tom got to keep his toys; an inexpensive gun collection, a hang-glider, three parachutes, an ATV, and his prize—a Navion 231, a single engine, 250 MPH bolt of joy. He loved that plane, but high blood pressure had cost him his pilot's license. Unable to bring himself to completely part with it, he leased it to a research organization, vowing that he'd get his license back some day.

He also got to keep his bright Mallory-yellow Lincoln Town Car. Not his favorite color, but Jerrad's tactful insistence—furnishing all top executives with a free car and all vehicle expenses if they proudly sported Mallory's company color—had helped broaden Tom's color preferences. Surprisingly, it had grown on him. And his rebel nature soon accepted the color as an expression of someone with the courage to be different. Or he liked to think so, anyway.

From the proceeds of their jointly owned stock, he received 340,000 dollars. A mere pittance considering what they would have been worth in ten years, but Belinda had insisted that they sell the stock. She wanted him out of her life and out of Mallory, forever. Tom had been happy to oblige her.

After the divorce, Tom decided to move back to his home town of Big Bend and take a year off. A richly deserved hiatus from a hectic life of work, responsibility, and the pursuit of money just to have the things Belinda wanted.

Even though he was no longer directly associated with Mallory Engineering, Jerrad insisted on sending him special projects, "Just to keep you sharp in case you change your mind," he always said. Tom understood that the work he did would have to clear Mallory's engineering department, and inevitably be "changed and/or improved" in some way before Mallory's Chief Engineer would put his stamp of approval on it. One person inflating his worth at the expense of others; it was normal corporate politics, to be expected and tolerated.

Tom appreciated Jerrad for the extra income. The interest on Tom's money was enough to get by on, but one week's work for Mallory would pay the bills for two months, keeping him from having to tap his nest-egg. And it was true what Jerrad had said. It did keep him sharp until he decided what to do in the future. Lately, his future included more and more of Sherri.

He'd met her while opening a personal account at the Mercantile Bank. She was one of six or so assistant vice-presidents, a title used more for impression than function. She'd been pleasant, courteous, friendly, and damned hard to date, refusing his enticing offers three times. He finally had to follow her to lunch and "accidentally" bump into her in the crowded cafeteria-style restaurant, as both headed for the only vacant table. In this kind of restaurant it is common for strangers to share a table without asking, but Tom did ask, and he used the moment to display all of the grace and manners he could muster. Practically forced, without the slightest hint of a smile, she had politely consented. Over lunch and conversation the icicles had gradually melted.

Even though they hadn't known each other—at twenty-seven, six years his junior—they'd both been raised in Big Bend and had gone to the same schools and the University of Illinois. With much more in common than they could cover over lunch, he had asked her to dinner and she had accepted. That evening Cupid shot the hell out of Tom, over and over and over. But somehow, none of the arrows found Sherri's tender spot.

On their third date, she responded physically, her pent up passions boiling forth wildly, with total abandon, giving freely and taking voraciously.

Thinking back the next day, Tom wondered why getting everything he'd ever dreamed of in a sexual partner still lacked so much. He should be ecstatic. Instead, he felt as if he'd spent the night with two nymphomaniacs on their first day out of prison. Totally drained and satiated, but… It suddenly came to him. He was really falling for her—she was intelligent, gorgeous, upbeat, sweetly erotic and open-minded, tender and kind, self-sufficient, and much wiser than her years would dictate—but she wasn't falling for him.

She'd loved the romantic evening, the pre-foreplay courtship and wooing, the tender moments, and the trek from the couch to the waterbed to the shower and back to the waves. But not once, even in the throes of passion, had she used the "L" word directed at him personally. Repeatedly, she had said that she loved the place, the moment, the food, the view, what he was doing to her, his body, his breath, his muscles, his touch, and on and on. But never that she loved him as a person. Not that he expected her to really love him, but he did expect her to fake it a little. It would give him an opening to tell her how he felt.

Even the mighty Miller Omelet failed to crack her resolve. Only two things kept them together—the challenge of thawing her frozen emotions, and great sex.

After three months of spending two to three nights a week together, usually at his apartment, she began casually dropping hints of their living together, but she still wouldn't say that she loved him unless she was nearing an orgasm, then afterwards it was as if the word was missing from her vocabulary. She'd revert to using praise and compliments as a substitute.

He tried everything; fancy restaurants, romantic weekends, bouquets and bouquets of flowers, loving cards and gifts, demonstrating his domestic side by shopping and cooking, which he was very adept at, and even avoiding her to see if she really wanted him. Nothing worked. She always waited for him to make the advances. It drove him nuts. He'd found the girl that would make his life complete and she seemed to need some mysterious thing that he was unable to provide.

The look on her face when he asked her if she wanted to go to Chicago for the weekend convinced him that something really horrible had happened to her there. She'd talk about everything up until the time she had graduated from UI, but the four years between then and when she'd moved back to Big Bend two years ago—initially to sell her father's farm after he passed away—were a total blank. She wouldn't talk about it. She made no big deal over it. She'd simply change the subject. If Tom pushed the issue, she'd come up with some excuse to go home, or if they were at her house, suddenly she wouldn't feel well; end of party, time for him to go home. He quit asking; it wasn't worth it. There was nothing that could have happened during that four year period that would make him think the less of her, so he decided to let her keep that part to herself. In a way, it helped alleviate any necessity on his part to go into detail about his lousy marriage.

They shared each other's keys, their beds, and their happy times together. What more could a man ask for? Accepting that argument appeased his curiosity, his need to know, and for the present it was working.

Her car made her even more mysterious. It was a seventy-thousand dollar Dodge Viper. She told him that she'd bought it from part of the proceeds from selling her father's farm. It sounded plausible, but…

It was five-thirty when he shoved his work aside, picked up the phone and called her. He almost hated himself for the questions that went through his mind about the blank portion of her life. Had she been a hooker? A criminal? She was attractive enough and more than talented enough to have been a porn star, or a mistress of some big-shot politician or business tycoon, or maybe she'd been a hit-woman. He could see her on a roof top, her sniper rifle taking bead on some unsuspecting forehead and coolly pulling the trigger. His imagination exploded into bits of giggling little fruit flies. Those things were impossible. Weren't they? She was the epitome of kindness, tenderness, and the joyous, wonderful side of life. Maybe she'd been in a convent and had a relapse and was expelled or whatever they do to fallen angels. Sure, that must be it, he hoped.

Silly thoughts must race through ones mind pretty fast because the phone had only rung about five times when this strange, breathless lady answered.

"Hi, Sher. It sounds like I'm already there," wondering if…

"Just carrying this big bag of groceries in when I heard the phone ringing." She dropped to a slower, softer, sexier voice. "I ran as fast as I could, thinking that it might be my fantasy lover aching to come over here and make love to me and clean my house and wash the dishes and write long, mushy love letters to me while I'm at work and… and…

Tom recognized the not so subtle hints as the beginning of her opening up to him. A delicate matter, this combination of honesty blended with the charade necessary to change a man to a woman's liking.

"Sounds like you need a trained orangutan that can write, or a man willing to be kept and used and abused…over and over and over…"

She waited for more, pondering, then continued her training, totally ignoring his remark. "Hon, I've just bought the two most scrumptious looking steaks I could find. Would you care to join me in a feast fit for the gods?"

"If it's good enough for the gods, how could I, a mere mortal totally driven by urges and desires and passions and lusts, even think of refusing? What would you like me to bring?"

"Just bring a voracious appetite for a wanton woman and a lot of energy… and a surprise." The training continues.

"Okay babe, see you in an hour."

Tom did the normal things a male animal in heat does an hour before a hot, torrid date. He showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, put sweet smelling stuff in places he hoped she'd sniff out, and hummed some ridiculous tune that wouldn't go away. This time it happened to be Home On The Range. He felt silly. Was the branding-iron coming closer?

Running for the door, he remembered the surprise, detoured to his secret hiding place and grabbed two surprises and bolted out the door for some heady bliss.

Sherri lived three blocks away on Canal Street, what Tom called the Yuwwi section. They weren't Yuppies, meaning young urban professionals. Instead, they were young urban workers with illusions. The workers with the better jobs, the higher hopes, but definitely not professionals.

As he got closer to her house he could feel his anticipation building. Maybe it was his imagination, but lately he felt more at home at Sherri's than at home.

Having already reached the stage where they'd exchanged keys a couple months ago, but still showing the respect of a single person, he gave the door two soft taps, waited about three seconds, then let himself in. The sound of running water and humming drifted from the partially open bathroom door. Wondering if the female animal in heat does the same things as the male, he eased up to the bathroom door and peeked in. There was the female animal, obviously in heat, he fantasized, dabbing something right above her light brown pubic hairs.

So they do think like us! As if he didn't know. He watched for a moment, admiring his beautiful lady doing things to her perfectly shaped body, just for him. It was a high in itself. Her light, almost blonde hair—he hated the term dishwater blonde—already blow-dried, cascaded wavily down to mid-back. Her profile accentuated a pert, pink-nippled, medium-sized breast—probably a "B" cup, he thought, wishing that he knew what those letters really meant—and her taunt, flat, athletic stomach, and a derriere fit for Playboy. He was struck by how her eyes looked more green and sparkling when viewed from the side.

Feeling like a voyeur, he reluctantly backed up a couple steps and gave the wall two knocks, heard her turn the water off and close the medicine cabinet door.

He jumped in front of the door, feeling like a kid and said, "Waula."

She spun toward him, leaped into his arms, and kissed him as if she hadn't seen him for a month. He especially liked this part of his training.

______________________

Dan pulled into the gravel parking lot in front of the Blue Bull, his favorite hangout, and slid to a stop beside three fully decked-out choppers. He barely noticed them. The Bull was a favorite hangout for the wilder types. Unless you had a bike, a hot rod, or a pickup, you'd feel out of place here.

His present favorite girl, Sue somebody—he didn't remember if she'd ever told him her last name, and really didn't care—worked the day shift.

Most people thought Sue was a whore, but he knew better. She simply liked men. It wasn't her fault that she couldn't find a man that she wanted to stay with. At least she kept trying, and trying, and trying. The fact that she changed men more often than most of them changed socks, only made her more attractive to him. Pure, innocent, virginal types never interested him. The nastier the girl the more he liked her. And she didn't expect a man to spend a fortune on her. A few drinks, an occasional pizza or burger, a kind word, and she'd be ready for anything. Nostalgic romance in the car. Spontaneity in the woods. A romp on a picnic bench. Or whatever else that sounded good at the height of the moment.

Sue reminded him of his mother. She'd brought more uncles home than he could keep track of, and she had been a kind, loving mother. If his uncle's didn't treat him right, his mom made them leave or wait in the car until she was ready to go. But he was sure that his mother would never have done the kinds of things that Sue did. His mother hadn't been that kind of girl.

When Dan entered the crowded bar, he spotted Sue at the juke box in her working uniform, a cut off tee shirt and a pair of tight, white short-shorts, her waist-length, pitch-black hair swaying to the music. She was feeding quarters from a glass into the machine, proceeds from a wiggle-and-tease collection for the music that seemed to happen more and more often as the night wore on. The box never stopped playing or eating quarters. Sue had told him that when the quarter counter got too high, they had a button behind the bar to click them off. Even knowing that, he was an easy touch when a cute girl brought the glass around, smiled and leaned against him and purred.

He walked up behind her and whispered in her ear, "Hi, tight ass." She pushed her butt back against him and wiggled.

"You oughta know, big guy," she said, looking around to see who was there. Dan assumed that she had recognized his voice. She hadn't.

When she turned around, the skin-tight shirt and shorts made her look deliciously naked and shaved.

The first time he'd seen her, almost three months ago, he remembered thinking that her face was too thin, her nose was too skinny, and her lips were too large for her skinny face, but her body was ripe, plucking ripe.

Looking at her now, he realized that he'd been wrong. She was absolutely beautiful, and her body would make any man quiver and quiver and quiver…

"Woman, you look good enough to eat."

"I hope so. You know how that turns me on," she said, smiling her available tonight smile. "Have a beer. I get off in twenty minutes." She skirted teasingly around him and went behind the bar.

As Dan walked toward a stool, reveling in his luck at finding Sue in the perfect mood, he heard someone say, "Who's the scrawny shit?"

Reflexively glancing toward the voice, Dan saw three raunchy looking men sitting in a booth, arrogantly leering at him. They wore black leather jackets sporting chrome chains and studs—obviously the bikers, he assumed. Realizing that they were referring to him, he almost said, "What the fuck you looking at?" but held his tongue and took a seat at the bar, his back to them.

Through the loud music and dissonant bar racket, he could hear their laughing and chatter. He was sure that it was all directed at him. His thoughts turned to ways of hurting them. The more he fantasized, the more his anger grew, until just hurting them wasn't enough. His imagination ran wild. He could see him smashing their faces in, breaking their arms, gouging out their eyes, and then when they were begging for him to stop, he'd strangle them one at a time with their own chains. Then he'd…

Dan's left eye started to twitch, his heart started beating fast and hard, the blood noticeably throbbing in his ears. A dribble of spittle ran from the side of his mouth and hung on his chin. He shook his head and wiped his chin with the back of his hand, surprised at his thoughts. He didn't understand why he felt so violent. He'd always attracted trouble and gotten in more than his fair share of fights because of a tendency to have a bigger mouth than his fighting ability could support, but he never literally wanted to kill anybody before the fight started. During, maybe. Afterwards, never.

If he won the fight, which happened on rare occasions, he'd be more satisfied than angry. And since he always fought to the bitter end, when he lost a fight, he wouldn't be in any condition to retaliate. Usually he'd be unconscious, and by the time he was physically able to effect revenge, sanity would creep in and convince him that it wasn't worth it. Or that it had been his fault to begin with.

A loud series of taunting guffaws came from behind. His anger continued to build, then Sue brought him a beer and his mind switched back to her shorts.

He forgot the men, but his nerves were on edge. His stomach and back muscles were practically vibrating. He tried to smile at Sue and said, trying to be upbeat, "Give me a double shot of Jack, too."

Sue looked at him, subtly appraising his condition. Satisfied that he could take it, she poured a double-shot glass to the brim and gave him her best the customer is always right smile and a barely perceptible come-on pout with her lips. To Dan it was a cum-on pout. It should have been enough to capture his mind and mood. Normally it would have. It was a strange feeling. He wanted to do both; have Sue, hurt the shitheads, have Sue again, and… get drunk.

He downed the shot, took a drink of beer, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Then motioning with his eyes, "Know those pricks over there in the booth?"

She glanced over, then looked inquisitively at Dan. "Yeah. That's Clyde Driegeo, the one with the scar down his face, and his brothers. They call the big one, Ox, and the ugly, skinny, weasel-looking one is Guido. They're the meanest bastards I've ever seen in here. They say the Driegeoes practically run Joplin," she said, a mix of contempt and admiration on her face.

Dan nodded sullenly. He'd heard about the Driegeoes, some hotshots who had moved in from New York and hung with Hank Carter, a local, small-time, nobody pug and his gang of misfits.

"They better take their smartass mouths back to Joplin."

Sue was taken aback. She couldn't believe what she'd heard. Not from Dan, anyway. "Just stay away from them, Dan. They're some mean motherfuckers. They're not just bikers. They've got a gang that's involved in all kinds of business. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah. Sure. I'll stay away from them… but they'd better watch their fucking mouths. I don't give a shit how mean they think they are," he spat, wild hate glaring in his glassy, rock-brown eyes. "When they look down the barrel of my shotgun…" He paused, relishing the thought.

"You just cool it, big guy," she whispered, glancing around, hoping he hadn't been overheard. "I'll be off in a few minutes." Trying to defuse his anger, she sensuously flicked her tongue around her lips, then briefly formed them into a round, soft, moist pucker of promise.

When some women try that, they resemble pigs, but when Sue did it, men squirmed on their seats. And she knew it, all too well. That's what excited Dan about her. She was good and she knew it, and was willing to prove it, almost anytime, anywhere.

Passion sucked some of Dan's anger toward the bikers, down to his groin, leading his mind back to Sue's shorts. His mounting impatience slowed the clock to a crawl.

Sue tallied the cash drawer, dumped her tip jar into her purse, grabbed a sweater from the rack at the end of the bar, and knowing that all eyes were on her shorts, seductively walked to the empty stool next to Dan, provoking a whistle from someone. The whistle actually calmed Dan's anger. It made him feel proud. Nobody was threatening him. They were admiring him. He felt like a stud. A big, good-looking, virile stud. He was suddenly very happy and content.

Sue nuzzled his neck and purred in his ear, "Do we have time for a drink or do you want me so desperately that you can't wait?" The words were for Dan, but her actions were designed to make the men within earshot, or eyesight, or those imagining their wildest fantasy, wish that they'd tipped more. She knew they'd do better the next time.

"Both. I'm desperate, but waiting just makes it that much better." He laughed as if he'd just told a joke, but he really needed a couple more drinks. And a few drinks in Sue was always a good investment. "Let's have a double-back. That last one really hit the spot." Sue signaled the bartender and let her right hand slip onto Dan's lap.

As their drinks were served, one of the bikers made a remark that Dan couldn't quite make out, then they started roaring with laughter. Dan's mood switched instantly. An intense urge swept through him. He wanted to get his shotgun from his truck and kill them. He pictured lining them up against the wall and shooting them in the gut. Then kicking them in the face until they died. Then he wanted to lay Sue in their hot blood and fuck her brains out. Fuck her until she screamed.

Before he could act out his scenario, the thought of his shotgun only being a single-shot twenty-gauge, and Sue's thigh rubbing teasingly against his, brought him back to the cold reality of the situation. He had to make a choice. Sue or revenge. Even in his slightly drunken state, he realized that he couldn't have both. He'd get his ass stomped so bad that he couldn't cum for a week. Maybe with a better gun…

Sue put her arm around his neck, slipped her other hand inside his shirt and lightly ran her fingers around and down… He forgot the men and turned his attention back to her. It was like flipping a switch. Angry to the point of exploding, then horny—then both.

They finished their drinks. Dan stood up and looked around. Still on the fence, undecided. The bikers were gone. Quickly scanning the bar, he saw them standing by the pool table in the back.

Horny prevailed. He took Sue's hand. "Maybe we better go. I want to be in top shape for you tonight."

Feeling the tension brewing in him and knowing that trouble was but a few moments away, Sue didn't hesitate. Not that she didn't relish watching a good fight, but there was something different about Dan that she found quite erotic.

When they got outside, she hopped in the driver's side of the truck and slid over, giggling as she straddled the floor shift. Dan started to get in, but stopped and looked at the three motorcycles parked side by side next to his truck. He'd barely noticed them when he'd parked. Now they seemed to taunt him with their loud, flashy arrogance. Setting next to his truck, all shiny and sassy, boldly snickering at him even more insolent than the smartasses that rode them. He got in his truck, started the motor, then got out and kicked the nearest motorcycle over toward the others. The first one fell against the second, causing it to fall over onto the third one, toppling like dominoes.

"What in the fuck are you doing?" Sue yelled.

"That's foreplay, hot pants," he smiled wickedly. "Doesn't that turn you on, just a little bit?"

She just shook her head and smiled back elfishly. He knew she'd love to see a big fight. She was that kind of girl. Nasty and mean and probably the best piece of ass in town. And she was his for the night. And looking at the bikes, he was a happy man once again.

They went to her apartment and did things men only dream of and most women wouldn't even consider. Dan pictured Sue as being a great porn star. She'd work the cast to death, and enjoy every minute of it.

______________________

Day 3, Wednesday, Oct 12

Sometime during Sue's kinky wake-up ritual, and building through a shower together, Dan began feeling an unusual attraction to her. It was as if she belonged to him. She was his, really his. He owned her completely. It felt right, and he loved it. He'd spent many nights with her and never before felt as if he owned her.

Standing at the door, entwined in a lingering goodbye, and not knowing why, he reached into his jacket pocket, took out one of the rocks and handed it to her. It wasn't the same as giving her a ring to denote ownership, but he felt a sense of control with the offer.

"What's this?"

"Something that's going to make us rich, Babe. You keep that as a reminder of this day."

She kissed it politely, then kissed him with practiced and perfected relish, and slipped the rock into her robe pocket.

Dan left with a feeling of accomplishment. He now had a woman of his very own. One to do with as he pleased. It was a strangely powerful feeling. One he never recalled ever having before. But it felt right. It felt like the feeling belonged and should be nurtured to even higher levels.

As soon as he closed the door, his mind switched from Sue to a juicy, blood-rare steak. Severe hunger pangs unmercifully twisted and squeezed his stomach, a flood of delectable visions flashed through his mind.

He drove to the One Stop Cafe, the best place in town if you were really hungry for a huge breakfast, and ordered the only steak on the menu. A Lumberjack Special; a breakfast steak with three eggs, biscuits and chipped-beef gravy, hash-browns, and a stack of dollar cakes—small pancakes a bit larger than a silver dollar, kiddingly called dog biscuits because they were made with bits of various leftover ground meats.

When Dan saw the waitress walking toward him with an enormously large oval platter, his mouth began to water, but when she set it before him, he frowned at the small, overdone steak, picked it up with his fingers, and ate half of it in one bite.

The waitress watched, her brow arching slightly in amusement as the man gulped it down with very little chewing. Knowing that pigs appreciate food and usually tip well, she asked pleasantly, "Will there be anything else?"

Dan managed to say, "One more Special and a side of sausage," before taking a second bite, the remainder of the steak. She gave him a quizzical look and started to say something. He scooped up a whole egg with his fork and fingers and shoveled it into his mouth. She quickly repeated his order and walked away.

After gorging himself, to the distasteful amazement of several patrons, his mind gradually returned to the problem of getting the meteorite out of the hole and taking it somewhere safe. With the winch, he could easily get it out of the hole and into the back of the truck by winching it up using a tree branch and driving the truck under it. But he couldn't leave it in the back of his truck. He had to hide it, and to do that, he'd need help.

While he was mulling this over, he got the waitress's attention and ordered a piece of pie. He ate one bite and shoved it away, knocking a plate off the table. It tasted like shit. She refilled his coffee cup, picked up the plate, and quietly walked away, hoping the kook wouldn't call her back to complain. He forgot the pie, his thoughts returning to his problem.

Suddenly he slammed his open palm down on the table, drawing varying degrees of irate looks from the other customers, picked up the check, and headed for the cash register, oblivious of anyone, or their stares.

He'd thought of the two Raker brothers, Jed and Sol. Two country boys who eked out a living doing odd jobs and selling small amounts of pot that everybody knew they grew themselves, but nobody seemed to know where. They were strong, didn't shoot off their mouths, and would do just about anything for a few bucks. And best of all, they were stupid enough to be trusted not to come up with any bright ideas of their own.

He drove out of town, past the Blue Bull, turned right on Mills Road and headed east into the rising morning sun. Five miles later, he turned onto the winding gravel road that led to the Raker's secluded shack in the rolling, wooded hills.

He drove up their driveway, and being in character, the two brothers were rolling around in the dirt, their arms and legs entangled in some sort of wrestling holds. An obvious mismatch. Sol, the younger brother, looked to be twice the size of Jed, but even with his brute strength and massive body, he appeared to be barely holding his own against Jed's tall, thin, sinewy, squirming body.

Dan pulled beside them and turned off the motor. Sol, who had managed to roll on top, turned his head, and recognizing Dan, lifted his hand in a quick wave. Jed, taking advantage of Sol's momentary lapse of attention and with the help of a swinging right forearm, managed to topple Sol off him. They both jumped to their feet. Jed, appearing to be the angrier of the two, sprang at Sol's midsection. Sol swatted him to the ground with one swing of his left arm and turned to greet Dan.

Interrupting their intellectual endeavors wasn't high on Dan's list of favorite things to do, but when he told them that he had a job for them on Friday, their eyes lit up. When he told them that he didn't want anybody hurt or any property destroyed, their excitement dwindled noticeably, but promising them a hundred bucks a day piqued their interest anew.

"We'll be here," Jed said. "Just have the money." Sol slapped Jed on the back. Jed started to punch him, but held up in deference to their new employer.

"We start early," Dan said emphatically, testing the authority of his new position as their boss, "so be ready to go by seven." They gave him a less than happy look at his new demeanor.

With that, Dan thought it was best to leave so that they could continue their exercise or whatever they were doing. They were back at it before he got out of the driveway.

Usually, Dan didn't drink so early in the day, but he couldn't think of anything else to do. The winch wouldn't be installed until tomorrow, and if he went home, Tom would probably drop by to check on him. He didn't really want to talk to him until after the meteorite was moved.

So he drank, ate like a pig, drank some more, moved to another tavern and repeated the process. The more he drank, the more he thought of Sue. The more he thought of her, the more convinced he became that she should be with him, not working in a sleazy tavern. He began thinking about how he would ask her to quit that lousy job and come with him, then it suddenly hit him; he didn't have to ask her. She was his. He'd just tell her. She'd be thrilled to be with him. He almost got up to go get her immediately, then his thoughts switched back to the meteorite and his plan. He ordered another beer.

Time dragged by, then two hours flew by so fast he wondered if he hadn't passed out. Once while driving to another bar, he was overcome by a fit of itching, then spasmodic cramps forced him to stop on the side of the road and wait until they stopped.

He must have dozed awhile. His watch said it was a little after five. He started the truck and headed for the Blue Bull. Sue got off at six, and he didn't want to miss her.

Normally, after spending the night with her, he wouldn't even think about sex for three or four days. This time it was different. He wanted her more than ever. But he wanted her for more than sex. He wanted to feed her and protect her and take her away to the mountains and… He couldn't believe it, but he had the urge to get her pregnant and raise a family. The feelings were new to him, but they felt natural and right.

On the way to the bar a man in a small, gray Honda Civic passed and gave Dan the finger. He didn't know what he'd done to make the man mad. Usually he'd return such a gesture with the ultimate insult; he'd laugh at them as if what he'd done had been done on purpose and he thought it was funny. This time he was in no mood to laugh. He returned the finger and barked curses at the man. He had an overwhelming urge to jerk the sucker out of the sissy little car and beat the shit out of him. Literally beat the shit out of him. Then kick him in the ass to smear it all around. And then stomp and…

Speeding up, he caught the Honda waiting at the next stoplight. The man stuck his arm out the window and shook his fist at Dan and screamed something unintelligible, but as the truck rolled menacingly close to his rear bumper, he pulled his arm back inside and nervously watched for the light to change as the truck kept inching closer.

There was only one car in sight, a dark-blue station wagon approaching the intersection from the left traveling at least forty, maybe forty-five. As it came closer Dan could see the woman behind the wheel, her attention shared between the road and the two children she was chastising in the front seat beside her.

Quickly estimating the time and distance, Dan stomped the gas pedal and released the brake just as the wagon approached the pedestrian walkway. His big V-8 roared, rubber tore at the pavement, the Honda bounced forward, the frantic driver mashing on the brake, its locked up tires bouncing and skidding.

The women in the station wagon looked from the kids to the road, horror stretching the skin on her face into a grotesque, silent scream. Dan slammed on his brakes just as the man in the Honda, with quick thinking, stomped on his own accelerator to get out of the way of the speeding wagon.

Simultaneously, the woman's quick reflexes jerked her wheel to the left to avert a collision. Her foot had just touched the brake pedal when her already altered course caught the now accelerating Honda in the driver's door. Dan saw the man's head snap to the left, pop out of the side window and slam into the crumpled hood of the station wagon as the hood reared up as if striking out at the careless driver. The wagon's weight and velocity drove both cars into the corner of an old brick-based, wooden warehouse. The wagon appeared to continue crushing the Honda until it burst, turning into a roaring ball of fire as if it were fighting back.

Dan quickly glanced in all directions, suddenly realizing what he'd done. To his amazement, there weren't any witnesses running around pointing the finger at him. Nobody was shouting or screaming. He looked back at the roaring fireball. It was fascinating, spellbinding.

People began streaming out of buildings, and traffic magically appeared from all directions, vehicles stopping in haphazard disarray, well back from the flames, their occupants watching helplessly, some horrified at catching a glimpse of the charred figures burning in the cars.

A distant siren wailed. Dan decided to wait for the cops and enjoy the scene of his sweet revenge. He'd tell them how the idiot in the Honda had run the light. How the poor woman had fought in vain to avoid a collision. How she'd reached for the children as the impact had driven their unrestrained bodies into the dash, their little faces smashing into the windshield, bulging the glass into a million stars. And how the fire kept him from trying to rescue them. And how he had to stand by helplessly, and…

He shook his head. Lying was one thing, but acting remorseful would be difficult.

He watched the fire licking at the eaves of the building, the flames starting to dance on the roof. His eyes drifted to the right and rested on a sign between two large dock-height doors. Big Ben Paint & Supply Co, flickered in the light of the fire. It was going to be a big fire.

He hadn't had as much fun in a long time.

______________________

The revenge had been sweet, but the cops managed to take the joy out of it. Because of the fire and the crowd that had gathered, they'd been too busy to take a statement from him, and made him stick around long after boredom set in.

The fire roared on, continuing to grow as paint and thinner barrels burst, but as the fire grew, Dan's interest dwindled. He'd fixed the man in the Honda, but somehow he felt cheated. The man had turned to charcoal and disappeared, leaving Dan standing on the street. Now he was going to be late and it was the man's fault.

Every time he asked the cops if he could go, they'd say, "In a moment, sir." Thirty minutes later, when the moment finally arrived, one of the cops started asking him questions. Where was the wagon when the Honda entered the intersection? Could he estimate the speed of each car? Where was he and how fast and how far back and was he sure that the light was red for the Honda and what seemed like a million other questions. Then he had Dan walk up and down the street with him to point out the exact spot where the vehicles were at during every step of the accident, and particularly, where Dan's truck had been. Did the wagon try to stop? Dan said no. Did the Honda try to stop? Dan got some more revenge. He said the Honda sped up on purpose, apparently trying to beat the wagon, but that little ole car just didn't have the power. And twisting the knife a little more, Dan offered that he thought the man was probably drunk, what with the way he'd been weaving all over the road. The cop shook his head in disgust. He'd seen too many nasty drunk-driver accidents. But in the smoke-filled air and because of the confusion, he never realized that Dan wouldn't be able to touch his own nose with his eyes open.

The cop asked Dan about the tire burn-marks at the intersection. Dan played dumb. The cop dismissed them as previously existing.

______________________

A long, trying hour later, Dan was barreling toward the Bull, cussing the cops for spoiling his fun and making him late.

He needed Sue more than ever.

The same motorcycles were again parked in front of the door! He pulled in beside them. Picturing the bikes being in the place of the Honda brought a slight grin to his face. His thoughts were on the upswing when he shoved open the door to the bar.

His rising spirits crashed to a new low. The first thing he saw was Sue sitting with Clyde Driegeo, the biker. They were sitting in the same booth by the wall. The sleaze had his arm around her and she was turned toward him with her leg across his lap. His other hand was somewhere under the table. Dan knew where.

"Hey, you fucking pig. Get your hands off my girl," he screamed into the room full of shocked faces, only seeing one. The one with the wide, sunken eyes. The one with the jagged scar running from his left eyebrow to the corner of his mouth, making him appear to have a grotesque smile on one side, competing with the sneer on the other. The really ugly one.

Totally taken by surprise, Sue jumped up and turned toward him. All she could say was, "What in the fuck do you mean? Your girl? You don't own me!"

Clyde slid out of the booth, made a barely discernible motion with his head to his brothers, and started toward Dan.

"Outside, punk," he said, pointing toward the door.

Dan arrogantly motioned for him to come ahead. When Clyde got close, Dan looked toward the door to throw him off guard and then hit the ugly, scar-faced, woman-stealing creep with a haymaker. Clyde staggered, his flat-topped, short-billed cap sailed across the room, but he managed to stay on his feet.

Guido glanced at Ox and smiled. They both knew what was in store for the little punk who had dared to sucker-punch Clyde.

Shaking grogginess, Clyde took an aggressive step forward.

Dan grabbed a handful of his funky, greasy hair with his left hand and smashed his right fist into the man's smiling scar, even harder than before. Something crunched. Was it a tooth, a jaw, his own knuckles? Dan didn't care. He thought of the Honda. The man in front of him looked puny by comparison. He dug his other hand into the biker's hair, jerked him face down onto the floor and started smashing his face onto the wood-chip covered concrete floor.

Clyde squirmed and flailed out with his arms. All he could do was hit Dan's forearms, which only helped to slam his own face harder on the floor. He tried to get one of his arms between his face and the floor to cushion the impact. Dan started laughing, jerking the helpless biker's head in different directions to avoid the arms, repeatedly smashing his bloody face on the concrete.

His laugh ended abruptly. The lights went out.

When Guido realized that Clyde was beaten, he grabbed a long-necked beer bottle, ran around behind Dan and shattered it above Dan's right ear. Dan dropped instantly. Guido was an expert at disabling and maiming. One of the necessary skills for survival when one wasn't exceptionally strong was to learn technique, and he'd become an excellent technician. Dan was out for the count.

Guido and Ox helped Clyde to his feet.

Somebody hollered that the police were on their way. The Driegeoes avoided cops almost as much as they avoided church. They half-carried their semi-conscious brother out the door. Sue looked at Dan's crumpled body, frowned, and followed them. As soon as Clyde could ride, she hopped on with Guido. Dan was already a fading memory.

When the police got to the bar, Dan was just coming around. The barmaid told the cops what had happened, but since there wasn't any damage done to the bar, and the people Dan had been fighting had left the scene, they didn't want to press charges. But since Dan had started the fight, he cops decided to arrest him for being drunk in public. At least he wouldn't be able to start anymore fights this night.

The crowd at the bar gradually drifted into groups, recounting every detail of the fight, over and over, birthing the legend of the time Clyde Driegeo got his ass whipped by one of their local boys.

______________________

Sue wasn't paying any attention to the road and had no idea where she was. Going home with the vanquished instead of the victor had deadened the exhilaration she'd felt during the fight. Even though Dan was the real loser, knocked out and probably spending the night in jail or the hospital, Clyde was the beaten one. He rode ahead, clutching the handlebars of the big machine as much for support as guidance, never looking back. Guido and Ox stayed back a respectful distance, obviously aware of their brother's moods and temper.

She closed her eyes and laid her head back on the sissy bar, her feet on the high-pegs, her legs alongside Guido's chest. She squeezed her legs teasingly against him and drifted into the mood spurned by the vibration of the power beneath her, the wind whipping through her hair, the freedom of the moment, going faster than the world, leaving it behind. She felt as if she was moving on to a newer, better, more exciting place in this world.

She realized that she was really on water skis, crouched low, skimming over rippling foam, dodging shark's fins, schools of barracuda, thousands of piranha closing from all directions snipping at her feet, holding tightly to the taunt rope, chasing the roar of the engine far ahead, obscured by thick fog, going up hill, then the rope going slack, the engine slowing, then stopping, the fins closing in, sinking, sinking—

"Do you believe this? The broad's asleep." Guido playfully slapped her on the leg. She lashed out, her nails clawing at his back.

Spinning from the bike, Guido slapped her hate contorted face, toppling her off the far side onto the ground.

She screeched and jumped up, fire in her eyes, then looked around, grinned sheepishly and said, "Wow, what a dream!"

Clyde slowly got off his bike, looked at her a second, and shook his head, slightly disappointed at her antics. "You loaded on something?"

"No, I, ah… I was just tired, and had this crazy dream. But I feel great now." She gingerly slid an arm around his waist, waiting for an indication of him wanting help.

Not noticing, Clyde turned to Guido, scowling, "I'll bet that goddamned Hank didn't leave anybody here. Go check. And turn on some lights!"

Sue didn't understand. The place was dark, but there was a quarter moon, the sky was clear, and the stars seemed extra bright. She didn't have any trouble seeing. Suddenly Clyde bent over, then crouched down. Sue thought he was having a problem until she heard, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty."

A black streak ran to Clyde's feet, purring loudly. He picked it up and stroked it. Abnormally brilliant spotlights came on, flooding the entire yard around the house with daylight. Surprised at how much the light hurt her eyes, she shut them and heard Clyde say, "This is my baby." Squinting, she looked at him curiously. "His name's Double D, but don't you dare call him Dee Dee." He patted the cat's head. "We don't like it, do we?"

Sue reached out and gave the cat a perfunctory pat and manufactured the semblance of a smile, hoping Clyde couldn't tell how much she loathed cats. He seemed satisfied with her response and started toward the house.

She glanced around. Scattered about the clearing around the house were partially stripped cars, fenders, cycle frames, engines, and piles of separated scrap metal. Sue wasn't impressed by what looked like a small scrap operation run by a poor gang of local social dropouts, and had no idea that it was now a facade for a growing enterprise.

Thanks to an Army Major in ordnance with a need for a new coke supplier, and a Colombian drug importer with a lucrative market for weapons, Clyde Driegeo's struggling gang have been provided a two-way supply and demand bonanza. It was something Sue wasn't likely to ever know about. Clyde never let women know more than they absolutely needed to know. He always said, "Mix women and business and you go broke. Mix women and drugs, you go broke and end up in jail, or dead."

Disappointed by the outward appearance of the place, Sue's attention turned to the house. It was a typical two-story, white, clapboard house with a full porch running across the front, large wooden framed windows with brown trim adorned each side of the oversized, double-door entrance. They reminded Sue of church doors, definitely out of place, almost ridiculous looking. At least it wasn't some dilapidated shack she had expected the bikers to flop in.

Inside was much more than she'd expected. A wide-screen TV shared the honors with a large colonial fireplace on the far wall of the living room. A head high stereo cabinet as wide as a couch contained stereo equipment, amplifiers, mixers, VCR's—she spotted two and another thing that looked like one—some ham radio equipment that she was vaguely familiar with, and rows and rows of tapes and CD's.

The rest of the furniture met typical bachelor standards; mismatched, comfortable-looking, and arranged with no rhyme nor reason. Then she realized that everything looked fairly new and expensive. Cash register bells rang in her head. This might be her kind of people.

Before she could ply her charms on Clyde and establish herself in this new world, he turned and said, "I'm going to bed. Don't let anybody bother me."

Sue took that as her cue and followed him into the bedroom. He lay across the bed and let her remove his boots, then his jeans, but when she tried to get him interested in her, he became sullen and finally told her to leave him alone and go to sleep. Her passions aroused, and sleeping definitely not the answer, she waited until he started snoring then quietly slipped into the living room.

Guido was listening to music and clipping on a bud, an anxious bong waiting on the coffee table. After a few hits, he persuaded her, with very little effort, to let him ease her frustration.

She accepted in desperation.

______________________

Cliff Marlow, the Big Bend Chief of Police was sitting at the duty desk talking to his second-in-command, Sergeant Joe Bains, when Kawalski escorted a sullen, disheveled prisoner through the front door and led him to the counter along the right side of the lobby.

"This the one from the Bull?" Joe asked, walking around the counter, scrutinizing Dan?

"Yeah, Joe, this is the one," Kawalski answered smiling. "You probably don't know Dan Jenkins, personally," then nodding at the Chief, "but Dan here's an old friend of ours. Comes to see us about once a year, spends the night, then goes on his way, a happy, reformed man."

The chief nodded. "Who beat him up this time?"

"You won't believe it, Chief," Kawalski paused, a smile spreading across his wide, large-featured face. Large bushy brows, a large nose, and large ears all combined in a mix that gave him a rugged, believable face that would work as well on a politician or a priest. He looked proudly at Dan and then back to Joe and then to the Chief. While building drama for his announcement, he removed Dan's handcuffs. "Dan here just left a permanent tattoo on the Bull's concrete floor using Clyde Driegeo's face and about a pint of Clyde's blood, so you guys treat him good, you hear."

"Clyde Driegeo?" Joe said amazed.

The chief looked at Dan and then skeptically at Kawalski. "How'd that happen?"

"Seems that Clyde was messing around with Dan's girl. Dan called him a few names, and when Clyde asked him to go outside, Dan lit into him. Had him down on the floor bashing his face on the floor when one of Clyde's brothers cold-cocked him with a long-neck."

"I would've killed the bastard," Dan said rubbing his wrists. "The next time he fucks with me, I will."

"Dan," Cliff said fatherly, "as much as I'd like to keep the Driegeo bunch out of town, I've got to warn you, stay away from them. They're bad news. If you have any more trouble with them, call us. We'll be more than glad to lend a hand."

Kawalski added, "The Driegeoes had left the scene by the time we arrived. The manager of the Bull said that there were no damages, so they're not pressing charges. If anything, Dan will probably drink on the house for a while. They don't like the Driegeoes any more than we do."

"Then why'd you bring him in?" Joe asked.

"Well, I… you know how much trouble we have out there at the Bull. Witnesses said that he threw the first punch. If I let him go just cause I don't like the guy he was fighting, we'll be out there all the time, playing referee. I had to bring him in for something, so I figured I'd just charge him with drunk in public." He looked from Joe to the Chief for confirmation.

"You did right, Ski," Cliff said. "He's either drunk or out of his mind for messing around with that bunch."

Kawalski slipped his handcuffs back in his belt pouch. "It's back to the streets for me. I'll drop the report off before I go home."

Looking at Dan through different eyes, showing a mix of admiration, consternation, and disappointment, Cliff asked, "How's your head?"

Dan touched the lump over his right ear and winced. "There's nothing wrong with my head compared to what his is gonna be like when I find him."

Cliff felt the need for a sermon, some fatherly advice that he always shared with a local when the need arose, but it would have to wait. Dan was too drunk and too angry to listen to reason. "You know, Dan, even if you started the fight, hitting you in the head with a beer bottle could be considered an assault with a deadly weapon. If you want to press charges—"

"Shit no! I just want outta here. I ain't fucking with no courts. I'll take care of my own problems." Dan glared defiantly at the two cops.

"Sounds like the boy's made up his mind," Cliff said. "Let's get his property and put him up for the night."

If Sergeant Joe Bains ever smiled, now would be the time when one was expected. He loved being a cop. His immaculate, heavily starched, crisp-pleated uniform was his temple, not his small 5-6, 135 pound body. His .44 magnum and his cuffs and his nightstick were his vestments. He was a no-nonsense, by-the-book police officer who really believed that he was performing a noble service for mankind.

As a kid his hero had been the cop named Friday on the reruns of Dragnet, but he could never understand why Friday never wore his uniform. Joe wore his uniform even when off duty. He hated civilian clothes. "An Officer of the Law should dress like an Officer," was one of his favorite sayings. His second favorite was, "An Officer of the Law is an Officer twenty five hours a day."

"Okay, hero, you've earned the best room in the house. Give me your jacket and empty your pockets on the counter."

Dan handed him the jacket and started removing the items from his jeans. Joe checked the jacket pockets and found a cigarette lighter, a pack of Certs and two rocks. He placed them on the counter with Dan's other belongings.

The Chief jotted down the items and slid them into a manila envelope. When he came to the rocks he looked up. "Been prospecting again, Dan?"

Not wanting to bring attention to the rocks, he answered stoically, "Nah… just thought they might be pretty if they were polished."

"You want them put in your property?" Cliff asked.

"I just wanna get out of here."

Cliff took that as a no, left them on the counter and sealed the envelope. He slowly shook his head at Dan. "You know the rules. On a drunk charge you have to spend the night in the tank, but since you're a special guest, I'm going to give you a luxurious private cell. In the morning, post twenty-five bucks and you're on your way."

Dan looked around, like he was looking for a way to run. Joe grabbed his arm. There was a brief moment when it looked like Dan would become violent, but then he relaxed and mumbled some expletives that Joe took exception to.

Cliff shook his head at Joe. "Here, Dan. Sign this property slip and Joe will tuck you in."

When they'd gone, Cliff leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. The automobile accident and fire on Fourth and Taylor had upset his dinner schedule. He'd told the day crew to stop by the scene on their way home and do what they could to help. Wally and Sam, their reliefs, had been on their way to work when they spotted the smoke. They were still at the scene. Kawalski was putting in some overtime as the only active patrol car. He and Joe were stuck minding the station. Actually, he enjoyed sitting at the duty desk. It made him fell more involved in what was happening. He felt isolated and alone in his office. Marie always teased him about turning his office into a lounge for the cops that did all of the real work. "No sense in letting it go to waste," she'd say, or, "Using it for a storage room would be better than nothing." He almost agreed with her.

"All tucked in, Chief," Joe said coming up the steps from the four basement cells. "How long are we going to be here?"

"Probably another hour."

Joe leaned on the counter and idly rolled one of the rocks around. He picked it up and inspected it in the light.

"Don't tell me that you're a rockhound, too," Cliff said with an uninterested flick of his hand. "If it's not gold or doesn't shine like a diamond, a rock's just a rock to me."

"Yeah, me too, but look at this thing." Joe handed it to Cliff, and picked up the other one. "It's got some strange looking colors in it."

Cliff raised it toward the light, almost to arm's length before it focused, hoping that Joe didn't notice that he had to hold things farther and farther away to see clearly. Getting glasses was inevitable, but he didn't want to face it yet. The thought made him feel older than fifty-two. Even though he had excellent job security, and being in tip-top physical condition was no longer a requirement, he wasn't ready to accept age's relentless transgressions. The thought of living on his pension left him with an empty feeling of failure. He'd always dreamed of having more; of retiring with a motor-home and a healthy bank account, not with a fishing pole and a bucket of worms.

The rock got his attention. The light sparkled off the strange colored veins running through it. He rolled it around in his fingers. It looked as if it had recently been broken from a larger rock. The outside was nondescript looking, but the inside—

The phone rang. He picked it up with his left hand and reached for his pen. It was gone. Opening the middle desk drawer with the hand holding the rock, he dropped it in and picked up a pencil. After taking the call, he shut the drawer and picked up his hat.

Joan wants me to pick up a prescription at the drugstore on the way home and it'll be closing soon. "Then I'm going to go by the fire. Watch the fort. If you have to, call Marie and have her come back in for a while."

"Sure, Chief." Joe actually enjoyed being alone in the station, and in charge. Being single, if it was up to him, he'd live at the jail. Being a cop was his life. Being the Chief of Police was his dream. He looked at the gray hair, the wrinkles, the excess weight, and the cigarette in the chief's nicotine-stained hand, and smiled. Maybe someday soon…

He waited until Cliff had gone, then went to his favorite place; the Chief's office. He sat in the Chief's chair, put his feet on the Chief's desk, looked at the Chief's phone, and waited for something important to happen. He was in charge.

______________________

Day 4, Thursday, October 13

At six-thirty in the morning, Dan walked out of the jail, surprised that he had no headache or hangover. In fact, he felt great. Feeling again for the lump over his ear and finding nothing, not even a hint of tenderness, left him bewildered, wondering what had happened to the goose-egg. Had he dreamt it? Hadn't he beat the shit out of the biker? Of course he had. He vividly remembered smashing the creep's face onto the concrete floor. He would've killed him if the cowards hadn't sneaked up behind him. The next time…

A car drove by, the driver looked the other way when Dan raised his thumb. Dan cussed and waited, desperately hoping to catch a ride. It was two miles across town to the Bull. Feeling great didn't mean that he wanted to walk to his truck. He had lots to do today. The most important thing was to get his truck to the garage and get the winch installed.

He walked across the street to the pay phone in front of Glaser Drugs, dug some change from his pocket and dialed Tony's home number. He answered on the first ring.

"I was just about to leave for work. What's up?"

"Are you still going to install the winch on my truck today?"

"Sure. Bring it in early and I'll get it out by mid-afternoon."

"Good. But I've got a problem, Tony. My truck is parked at the Bull and I'm downtown at Glaser's."

"Hey, man, that's no problem. I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Thanks, Tony." Then intentionally sounding like an after thought, "Oh, and Tony could you do one more favor for me?"

"What's that?"

"When we get to the bar, will you drive my truck to work and let me use your car today?"

"Ahhh…" The boss practically considered Dan a son, and he didn't sound like he was drinking, so it seemed okay. "Yeah, I can do that. I don't plan on going anywhere today."

______________________

Ben had worked on Dan's sample practically nonstop since Dan had walked out the door. Not even sharing it with his assistant, Ed Bailes, who would have filled the table with books, and spouted college terminology even old Ben wouldn't understand. The college generation kids were too smart and didn't know anything, was the way he felt about them.

He was procrastinating, and he knew it. He didn't have a clue. He rolled the rock around between his fingers, shook his head, scratched two days growth of beard, and felt the sinking feeling of failure overtaking him. With all his years of experience, he thought that he could figure out the composition of any rock. But this time he was beaten.

Reluctantly, he swiveled his chair toward Ed and cleared his throat. Ed turned his slicked-back, coal-black-haired, widow-peaked head, and looked at him with beady almost-black eyes, his arrogant face trying to shape itself into a mask of innocent expectation.

A revelation swept over Ben. He hated his assistant's guts! Why hadn't he realized that before? They'd never been close, but had always worked together amicably. They were from different worlds, different generations, different ideals, but so what. That never mattered before. They did their job then went their separate ways. No problem. That's what most people did. God, he couldn't stand to look at the little weasel and he definitely wasn't going to ask for his help. As a matter of fact, he was going to look for a way to fire him. It wouldn't be easy. It's never easy to fire a state employee, but he made a personal vow that he'd find a way. Even if he had to frame him.

"Ed, break off a piece of this rock and send it to the Denver lab. I want a complete analysis." He handed the rock to Ed, and before Ed could respond, he continued, "I've got to go. You lock up."

Ben spun and strutted out the door, leaving the arrogant face to attempt any expression it wanted, as long as he didn't have to look at it.

Ed watched the old man leave, then picked up the rock and sat down at the table to perform a skilled, diamond cutting act, an occupation he dreamed about every day. Only the cruelties of fate and a lack of money had made him settle for the lowly position as an assistant assayer. He looked forward to changing that in the near future.

The colored veins in the rock captured his attention, intrigued him, then totally fascinated him. He picked up the magnifying pencil and gazed into the depths of another universe. An hour went by in the space of a minute.

______________________

Tom knew that it wasn't unusual for Dan to disappear for a few days. He might call it a fishing trip, or simply camping out, or caving, or mushroom hunting, but all of his outdoors trips invariably involved some sort of prospecting. He'd usually call and talk about his upcoming adventures and try to entice Tom into going along.

The only time that Tom wouldn't be asked along were the times when a girl was involved and most of the agenda consisted of indoor activities. Even on those rare unplanned excursions, those conceived over drinks in a bar late at night with no thought of tomorrow, Dan would at least call the next day and subtly brag about his conquest, and if he was to be gone for any length of time, he'd ask Tom to go by and feed his cat.

The way Dan's original excitement of the discovery had turned so quickly to complacency, the way he'd acted on the way to his truck, and his unexplained absence, all left Tom with a nagging feeling that he should have immediately reported the meteorite, regardless of Dan's wishes.

Making up his mind to check out the meteorite site again and then report it, he picked up the phone and dialed Sherri's number. She answered on the second ring.

"Hello," she breathed.

"Baby, why do you always answer the phone so sexy sounding?"

"Well," she purred, "I'm always hoping that the next call I get will be from my fantasy lover. And in my fantasy, he'll need some encouragement from me because he'll be a little bit shy, and…"

"Yeah, I can imagine. And he'll probably be so horny that he'll do anything your little ole heart desires."

A small moan caressed his eardrums.

She whispered softly, "One of my fantasies is to keep him that way."

"And in your fantasy, you probably want dependability, security, loyalty, devotion, and maybe an eternal worshipping of your mind and body, or something like that. Close?"

"That's a good start, but…"

"Oh, I forgot the most important thing. Availability. Which, by the way, just happens to be my specialty."

"Hon," she admonished softly, "usually, availability only counts when it's accompanied by unlimited wealth and poor health, but in your case, extra good health along with semi-unlimited wealth might be acceptable. Of course, I'll have to think about it for a moment."

"Well, don't take too long. I've got a great idea. Let's go to the cabin this weekend and you can give me a complete physical. If you do a thorough job, and I pass, I'll let you count my change." He paused to listen to her effervescent chuckling.

"I know that I'm perfect on all of those other points," he paused again until she got over her hysterics, wondering why counting his change was so funny.

______________________

Sometime during the night, Sue remembered hearing lots of noise. First, there had been motorcycles roaring around the house, then drunken raised voices and laughing, and doors slamming. She had started to get up, then heard Clyde screaming to knock it off. The noise had stopped instantly. Figuring that Clyde was in a foul mood, she drifted back to sleep.

A small spot of light startled her. What was it? She sat up in bed and looked around. Beside her, Guido muttered something and rolled over. Then she realized that the light was a small hole in the drapes. Blackout curtains, she figured, probably with a bullet hole in it. She grabbed her watch from the nightstand. 9:12. She was going to be late to work. It was a lousy damned job, anyway. A noise downstairs and a nagging curiosity kept her from going back to sleep.

She rolled out of bed, felt around the floor and found her clothes, then shuffled blindly to the door, hoping her shoes were downstairs. Spotting the bathroom, she cheered up her aching bladder, then wondered if she needed a shower. A sniff under her arm assured her that she smelled just fine.

The smell of coffee made her think of food and how weak she was from hunger. Clyde was sitting in the kitchen, elbows on the table, head in his hands, idly watching a steaming cup of coffee.

"Good morning," she said cheerfully.

Fingers slowly spread, an eye peeked through, and a strained voice mumbled, "Yeah, it's a great goddamned morning."

She walked behind him and began massaging his shoulders. Dropping his hands, he slowly rolled his head around. Looking at his face told it all, but to act like she was sympathetic and concerned, she asked, "How do you feel?"

"I fell just the way I wanna feel until pay-back time. The more I hurt, the more I'm gonna pay back. You know what I mean?" He made an effort to make a wicked smile. "Imagine how your friend's gonna look."

His face was still a mess. Some of the puffiness had gone down, but his left eye was completely swollen shut, his upper lip was twice its normal size, and his nose belonged on a clown. It was purple and looked broken.

"I hope you kill the bastard." Her own words surprised her. She didn't have anything against Dan, except that he was a jerk sometimes, and always a loser. He didn't have nearly as much to offer as Clyde, who seemed to have plenty of money, owned lots of good things, and had his own men to do whatever he said. And, best of all, had taken a beating fighting over her. Plus, he promised revenge, which meant another fight, hopefully, one he'd win. If only she could get closer to the man. But so far, her female charms weren't working on him as they did on most men.

Then she remembered the rock. Slipping it out of her pocket, she looked at its nondescript features and saw an indescribable jewel. Almost reluctantly, she handed it to him. "The other day," forgetting that it was only yesterday morning, "he gave me this special rock and said that it would make us both rich. Do you know what it is?"

He looked at it and frowned. "What's this, some kinda stupid joke? Looks like a plain old fucking rock to me."

She flinched, "Hey, I'm not shitting you, Clyde. He acted serious… but then, he gets drunk and likes to act big…" Had Dan played a joke on her?

Clyde turned the rock around in his fingers. Something glittered. He held it closer, then mumbled, "I'll be right back," and walked outside. Holding the rock in the sunlight, he gazed into its entrancing, alluring, mysterious depths for several minutes, spellbound.

When he came back inside, Sue noticed that his interest had risen.

"Let me take this to a friend of mine. He'll know if it's worth anything." He slipped it into his pocket without waiting for a reply.

"Sure, whatever you want," she willingly agreed, knowing that he wasn't asking.

They ate breakfast, then he begged off taking her to work and had Ox do it. She knew better than to argue with him.

______________________

Day 5, Friday, October 14

Getting up early was not Dan's favorite way to start the day, but because of a stupid law, it was illegal to park a boat on the street overnight and apartment rules prohibited using parking spaces in the alley for trailers of any kind, so he stored it in the impound lot at his uncle's garage. He wanted to hook it up and be gone before the garage opened, otherwise, he'd be expected to have an interesting story to tell about where he was going. He was in no mood for small talk today.

Having already crammed the truck's toolbox with camping gear and food, he made one last check, patted a pocket containing his life savings, a lousy eight hundred twenty dollars, and started for the door. Feral, sitting on the counter, something Dan usually remedied with a vicious swipe, arrogantly reminded him of his duties. He stroked the cat a moment and filled its bowl.

When he walked out of the building a kid was standing in front of his truck looking at the new winch. Instantly becoming furious, he ran to the kid, grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around, then shoved him to the ground.

"Get away from my truck, you fucking little snot!" Dan screamed.

"Hey, I was just looking at the winch." The kid scooted backwards several feet then jumped up and ran.

"You goddamned punk bastard. I catch you around my truck again, I'll kill you."

Dan angrily jumped into the truck and drove down the street, not seeing the kid hiding beside a house, nor seeing the rock sailing toward his truck.

The kid didn't realize that an errant throw, the rock falling harmlessly behind the speeding truck, had probably saved his life.

______________________

Tom was still asleep when the phone rang. It was professor Steintz from UI.

"Mr. Miller," the professor began, "I have talked to the Federal Geological Agency about your discovery and they said someone will call you. I thought you would like to know."

"They'll call me? You gave them my number?" he blurted, still half asleep.

"I'm sorry… I, ah… I took the liberty of reporting it, thinking that you would want me to save you the trouble. If—"

"No. That's all right, professor," he lied, fully awake now.

"You weren't planning on keeping it a secret, were you?" the professor cautioned.

"No, but I didn't really want to tell anyone where it's at until I find out where I stand legally as far as ownership."

"You don't have to worry about that. If it landed on your property or you acquired it legally, you will retain full ownership, provided that it proves to be safe."

"Are you sure that there's no way I can tell if it's safe without having to tell someone its location?"

"There is no way unless you have the necessary equipment and the proper education." Obviously assuming that Tom was an unfortunate, improperly educated commoner.

Score a minus one for the professor, Tom noted.

"Well, thanks for your help, Professor."

"Please let me know what happens, will you." More a demand than a question.

"I'll do that, and thanks again for the trouble you've gone to," Tom said as politely as he could to someone that had just awaken him with bad news. After a few minutes of thought, he realized that maybe the professor had actually done him a favor. Saved him from having to make the decision about reporting it. Dan wouldn't like it, but it was too late now.

______________________

Dan swung past Sherri's cabin with the Raker brothers and drove down to the river. After launching the boat and making sure that Jed understood his instructions, he sent them downriver. Then he drove upriver on the old fishermen's road trying to avoid the dense, encroaching brush threatening to claw up the highly polished, five coats of lacquer on Black Beauty.

In about a mile he found the only other place he could remember north of the cabin where a boat could be readily loaded, and not knowing the present condition of the old road further north, only that it ultimately worsened to nothing but a foot path, he'd chosen this place to hide the trailer in the woods and go from here by boat. Backing the trailer into a stand of cedar trees, he unhooked it, and started back to meet the Rakers.

Back at the field leading to the meteorite site, he scanned the ground carefully for tire tracks. Finding none other than his own, he drove to the edge of the hole and checked the brush pile. It was undisturbed. Having at least thirty minutes before the Raker's arrival, he began clearing away the brush.

That quickly finished, he got out the two new shovels he'd bought yesterday and a length of chain. While leading out the winch cable, he heard a boat motor coming downriver. It slowed. He sounded two short blasts on the truck horn and waited. The motor sped up, slowed, then stopped.

In a few minutes he heard Jed and Sol crashing through the brush.

When they got to the hole, Dan handed each of them a shovel, explained the task, and proudly assumed the position as boss by standing majestically at the edge of the hole.

Sol's concentration wandered when a shovel of dirt mysteriously found its way into his boots. Naturally, the eagle-eye of the boss only saw Sol pushing Jed to the ground.

"Goddamnit Sol, quit fucking around," Dan barked, imitating a drill sergeant to better get the ex-soldier's attention. "We got work to do. You wanna screw around, do it later."

"Yeah, you stupid asshole," Jed chided, "you're just like your momma." Then Jed looked at Dan and smiled, establishing himself as the one with the superior intelligence. Sol shrugged, indifferently.

Dan returned the smile, thinking, good, stupid help is sure hard to find.

With order restored, it only took them fifteen minutes to dig down to a solid object. They whooped and yelled as if they'd struck buried treasure, until they brushed off the dirt. Both looked up cynically. Jed disgustedly pointed at the rock. "This what we've been digging for?"

"That's it," Dan answered banally, containing his excitement. They both looked at him as if he was crazy.

"This is just a goddamned rock," Jed scoffed. "What the fuck good is it?" Sol grunted something unintelligible.

"I know a scientist that wants to study it," Dan lied nonchalantly, trying to deter them from any ideas of a double cross. They sure as hell didn't know any scientists.

"Study a rock? Who the hell—"

"Just dig the goddamned thing out!" Dan yelled, tossing a chain at Jed. "And wrap that around it!"

Jed dodged the chain, mumbled something, picked up a shovel and started digging.

Fifteen minutes later, a chain sling secured around it and hooked to the winch cable, Dan started raising it.

"You guys better get outta the hole. I'd hate to see that rock come loose and squash one of you." And keeping a straight face, "It might not be worth as much if there's blood and guts all over it."

They both jumped back to the far side of the hole, scrambling in the loose dirt, trying to get out.

Even though the nearly round, two-foot diameter rock weighed over three hundred pounds, the 5000 pound winch barely whined.

While taking off the chain, Jed noticed the spot where Dan had previously chipped off the samples.

"Hey, look at the colors inside this thing!" He brushed away some dirt, touched the area with his finger, then scratched at it, and jerked his hand away, "Hey, it makes my finger tingle!"

Dan quickly touched the rock and felt a warm sensation in his hand. He felt around the rock with both hands. "It's still warm, that's all. You should've been here the other day, It was as hot as a potbellied stove, buried in the dirt sizzling away."

"What is it? Did it come from space?" Jed asked, his excitement building.

Thinking quickly to defuse Jed's excitement, Dan replied, "Yeah, I think so. The scientists I showed a sample to thinks that it's an unusual rock formation and it might give them a clue as to why the dinosaurs died."

"What? Stupid geeks. They can't tell that by looking at a rock." Jed looked smugly at Sol, then back to Dan. "Can they?"

"Sure they can. Ask Sol. He was in the Army. They teach that kinda stuff there." He strained to stifle a chuckle.

Sol was sitting at the edge of the hole, white as a sheet, his head sagging to the side as if he was about to pass out. He swiveled his eyes from one to the other and said nothing.

"See. He don't know nothing." Jed beamed.

Dan smiled slyly at Jed, as if appreciating his superior intellect.

"Come on. Let's get this thing down to the boat.

Jed slowly slumped to his knees. "God, I feel tired. Gotta rest a minute." He stretched out on his back. Sweat beads broke out on his forehead. Sol took the cue and lay back himself.

Dan looked at them disgustedly, then picked up the shovels and chain and threw them in the truck bed. He rewound the winch cable then sat in the truck to give them five minutes rest, remembering how tired the digging had made him.

Time seemed to stand still. He didn't realize it, but thirty minutes had gone by when Sol stirred and sat up. Sol punched Jed on the shoulder, instantly provoking a scuffle. Dan hopped out of the truck and jumped between them, holding them apart with a hand on their chests. Jed slapped his hand away. Dan shoved Sol to the ground and in one continuous motion, without thinking, hit Jed high on the cheekbone sending him toppling toward the edge of the hole. He heard Sol coming from behind and jumped to the side. Sol's arm bounced over Dan's ducking head. Dan shoved Sol forward into Jed, now teetering groggily at the hole's edge. Both fell into the hole.

Suddenly realizing what he'd done, that he was out in the woods with two lunatics, who'd literally rather fight than fuck, Dan broke for the truck and his sissy 20 gauge. He grabbed the door handle and froze. Hoots and laughs and sounds of scuffling came from the hole. He cautiously crept back and peeked. They were locked in a wallowing struggle to get on top of the other, both having a good time.

He watched a minute, gradually regaining confidence. What he'd thought was becoming a deadly serious situation, being beaten to a pulp by the two criminal retards, or having to kill them, was only more fun and games to them.

He stepped to the edge of the hole, stood tall, authoritatively, hands on hips, and barked, "That's enough grabassing. Save your goddamned energy to get this thing in the boat."

Sol, now on top, rolled over and jumped to his feet, a dangling arm jerked Jed up. Dan wavered. Had he been a fool, coming back to the hole without the gun?

Jed rubbed his jaw. Dan took a small step backwards as Jed stepped toward him. Sol looked as if he was ready to charge out of the hole, tensely awaiting for the word from his brother.

Jed reached up within grabbing distance of Dan's leg and said, "For a skinny little guy, you got a mule kicking punch. Not good as Sol," evoking a wide smile from his proud brother, "but good enough. Give me a hand outta here… Boss."

Relieved, and proud of himself, Dan resumed command, the pecking order firmly established. He was the boss and Sol would do what Jed said, rebuking him only playfully. It was back to work.

With little difficulty they rolled the rock down through the brush to the river. While Dan and Jed were trying to figure how to load it without tipping over the boat, Sol picked it up and placed it in the middle of the boat. Dan added another plus for his crew. Good, stupid, and strong.

When Dan told them that he'd meet them on the bank of the river one mile north of Sherri's cabin, Jed asked, "Why take it upriver instead of into town?"

It was a silly question. They knew. Didn't they? Dan tried to remember what he'd told them. He couldn't.

Thinking Dan hadn't heard him, Jed started again, "Why take—"

"Because I said so!" Dan snapped, then seeing and heading off Jed's building rage, he added, "It was a surprise." Jed arched a brow, Sol grinned expectantly. "I'm going to show you the best hiding place in the county." Jed's curiosity was aroused, Sol's grin stretched even wider.

"You gonna hide this rock?" Jed looked at him suspiciously and started to say something.

Dan quickly said, "We're gonna hide it, and you two are gonna stay with it a few days while I try to make a better deal."

"Stay with it a few days? You never said nothing about that," Jed grumbled.

"How many days?" Sol piped in.

"I don't know," Dan said, becoming impatient. "Three, four days, maybe a week. However damned long it takes."

"Gonna cost you." Jed insisted.

"Hey, man I told you I'd give each of you a hundred bucks for a day's work, now you're gonna get a few more days work." He stopped and glared at them.

They looked at each other. Sol was grinning; Jed looked serious, suspicious. "We want two days up front." Dan started to object. Jed added, "Or you and this fucking rock take a swim."

Dan grudgingly reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills, looking much more than eight hundred plus—the teller had no large bills in her cage and he'd impatiently taken it in twenties. It was truly his life's savings; money he had vowed to never touch except for an absolute emergency. Paying the rent had never been important enough to touch his nest egg. Keeping his truck from being repossessed qualified as an emergency, but luckily, he had always been able to squirm ahead of that threat. It all seemed so petty now that he was going to be rich. He quickly peeled off twenty bills, and handed ten to each of the now smiling faces.

"Two days." Finding good, stupid, strong, cheap help was an act of God. "Now get going, and don't tump the goddamned boat over getting there."

Jed got in, started the motor and waited for Sol to push off. When Dan was sure that they were started up the river, and without sinking, he got into his truck and headed towards the cabin.

Fifteen minutes later, Dan was at the rendezvous point. After unloading the food and camping supplies, and hiding the truck across the road in the woods, he still had at least an hour to wait. His ten horsepower motor would really have a struggle pushing the overloaded boat against the current.

He checked his pile of supplies, wondering if he'd thought of everything. There were blankets, a Coleman lantern, a can of fuel, and miscellaneous camping items he'd hastily thrown together for the Rakers. It wasn't much, but then he didn't have to stay with them, and he really wasn't concerned about their comfort. They were only his flunkies. The thought crossed his mind that their usefulness would only be temporary. He could only think of one good way to terminate them and still keep his secret. He dwelled on the thought for a moment with a smile on his face.

Suddenly he realized that he was starving.

He'd brought a cooler, not to keep food cold, but to keep animals and bugs out of the six loaves of bread, the four boxes of chocolate donuts and several bags of assorted chips. The real food, the meat, was all canned. Two three-pound canned hams and six cans each of Spam, tuna, and sardines. He figured that should last them until his return, probably Monday or Tuesday.

He opened a can of Spam, dumped it onto a filthy hand and started cramming it into his mouth. When through, he licked his hands and then wiped them on his pants.

Now he had nothing to do but wait. A heavy, lazy drowsiness swept over him. He spread out a blanket and lay dawn. Watching sparrows flittering through the trees, his mind drifted nostalgically back to the time when he'd discovered his secret place.

______________________

Every spring when school let out, Tom's uncle Vern invited Dan to go somewhere with them. Usually it was a combination fishing, hunting, camping trip. One year they went with someone that Tom's uncle worked with at the quarry. He had a cabin on the Big Bend River thirty miles north of town.

At the age of twelve, Dan didn't really like to fish and hunt. He preferred to explore, climb trees, and search for caves and sinkholes. He always dreamed of finding a big gold nugget or a diamond the size of a baseball. He knew that there was something somewhere that was supposed to be his. Something valuable. Something that would let him live the life he wanted to, without having to work in a filthy factory, or hot, dusty quarry, or grub around in the dirt, growing something to make a meager living. He wanted more out of life. He'd find his fortune somewhere and move away from the lousy country town in which destiny had so cruelly dumped him.

On their second day at the cabin, they'd gotten up early and gone upriver in the boat. When they stopped to fish where the river and the bluff converged, Dan asked them to put him ashore so he could look around. Tom had chosen to stay with the adults and fish awhile.

Bluffs and especially caves had always intrigued him. That was where the Earth's mysteries were hidden. He explored every crack and hole looking for his elusive treasure, something that Jesse James or Indians or pirates had hidden.

That morning Dan followed the bluff away from the river. This particular bluff wasn't as interesting as some of them he'd explored. It didn't have the usual irregularities that excited his imagination. It was more like a perpendicular wall, two hundred feet high. The top edge was jagged as time had released huge chunks of it to the forest below. He followed it as it gradually curved to his right.

At first, the ground at the bottom of the bluff was flat and the bluff rose at a ninety degree angle, but as he went farther around the curve, the ground started sloping up and intersected the bluff higher and higher. He knew that the ground didn't go all the way to the top because he'd been watching the bluff from the moment he saw it rise higher than the tree tops, about a half mile from the cabin.

He stayed at the top of the slope. He estimated that he was almost a third of the way along the bluff and almost around the curve when he came to a twenty foot deep ravine that was from twenty to thirty feet wide sloping down to the flat ground. It looked as if the ravine dead-ended directly into the bluff. Avoiding the steep climb down the side of the ravine, he went to the bottom of the slope and walked back up inside the ravine. As he climbed towards the bluff, he became disappointed. He could plainly see that the ravine didn't go anywhere. It stopped at the bluff. If there had been anything else to do except kill time, he wouldn't have bothered climbing to the top….

______________________

Dan didn't recognize the strange noise. It was moving, getting louder and louder, coming closer. Sue's panting and moaning, instead of drowning it out, only made the sound more alien, almost sinister. He rolled his head back and forth, avoiding her searching lips, trying to see past her. Mistaking his movements for orgasmic thrashings, she responded more passionately. The sound roared threateningly closer, becoming unbearably loud. Tossing Sue off, ignoring her protesting squeals as she tumbled off the bed onto the floor, he jumped up and swung toward the raucous invader, ready to meet the attack.

Crouched in a fighting stance beside the water, his eyes locking on the source of the sound, he awoke. Instead of the loud horrendous, threatening racket, he saw a boat and heard the soft, mellow drone of a small outboard. It had seemed so loud, almost deafening, a moment ago. He didn't understand.

Startled at recognizing the boat as his, and seeing his brain-dead, cheap help going by without noticing him, channeled his defensive energies into infuriated frustration. Stretching his lips in a strange, yet seemingly familiar way, a screeching, shrill, warbling whistle erupted from his mouth. Reveling at the effect his newly discovered talent had on the Rakers as they snapped their heads toward the ungodly sound, Dan did it again and waved a fist in the air in mock anger. He smiled inwardly, then growled curses as Jed whipped the boat into a sharp U-turn, tilting precariously close to capsizing.

An insanely stupid grin distorted Jed's already ugly face as he plowed the boat onto the bank and whooped, "Watch out, Boss."

Trying to control his anger, in desperate need of their strong bodies, and finding extra strength in thinking the word, termination, Dan jumped into the boat, grabbed Jed by the jacket, and overzealously helped him forward.

"You two get the gear loaded. I'll drive." Impatiently blipping the throttle, he watched them load the meager supplies and wished that he'd brought even less.

The loading completed, and after a cussing, jerking bout with the stubborn gearshift lever, they started upriver.

It was a beautiful autumn day, the air a bit crisp on the water, tempered pleasantly by a warm sun and cloudless sky. Sol saw a fish jump and dangerously rocked the boat, slapping Jed on the back and turning to point it out, showing Jed with exaggerated motions how large it had been, as devout fishermen will do. It reminded Dan that he'd forgotten the fishing tackle. He was spitefully pleased at the lapse of memory.

A couple miles upriver, about fifty yards below where the bluff's arc intersected the river, Dan beached the boat on the shallow right bank, his anger at Jed totally forgotten.

Fighting a sudden feeling of exhaustion, he feinted enthusiasm. "Okay, men, here's where you really start earning your money." The Rakers didn't seem to share his jovial mood. "First, get that camping gear unloaded so we'll have some room to wrestle the rock out." Jed got out and Sol started tossing their gear to him, which Jed haphazardly pitched to the ground.

Dan watched, idly holding the tiller, wondering if they'd be able to get the rock to the cave without some kind of dolly and maybe a block-and-tackle.

When the gear was out, Dan got up to help with the rock, but Sol snatched it up, swung it over the side and dropped it to the ground. If that big, muscled hunk can hold out, Dan thought, we'll get it to the cave. The dark cave. Did I forget to bring a flashlight? He dug through one of the bags, found it, and slipped it into his pocket. Jed looked questionably at him, but said nothing.

With Sol carrying the bulk of the weight by cradling the rock in his arms, and Dan and Jed helping on each side, they struggled along, taking a rest every few minutes. In less than an hour they were at the top of the ravine. Dan fell to the ground, panting.

"This is a good hiding place," Jed said, looking at the brush covered end of the ravine.

Jed and Sol waited patiently while Dan caught his breath, then watched curiously as he crawled into the brush, saying, "Wait here."

The minutes dragged by.

"Dan," Jed finally said. "Do you want this thing in the bushes?"

There was no answer, no sound. Jed parted the brush and crawled in until only his feet stuck out. "Dan…" he said tentatively. There was still no answer. Frustrated and angry at himself for starting to feel afraid, he hollered. "Dan, goddamnit, where are you?" He waited a minute then scurried back out. "He's gone! Goddamnit, Sol, what happened to him?"

A rustling in the brush made both of them instinctively jump back.

Dan's head poked out. "Just checking to see if you'd realize that there's a cave in here."

"A cave? You sonnabitch! You scared the shit out of me!" Jed glanced at Sol to see if there was a hint of agreement on his face. Sol only shrugged.

"Let's get the rock in here," Dan said, retreating back into the brush, pleased that they hadn't seen the well-hidden cave opening concealed behind a huge slab of rock that had probably fallen from the top of the bluff a million years ago.

The space between the slab and the bluff was as big as a door, but it was completely hidden by brush. Even if the brush wasn't there, the opening to the cave, being at a right angle to the face of the bluff, wouldn't be visible from below.

With Dan holding the flashlight and giving instructions, it only took Sol and Jed a few minutes to get the meteorite through the fifty-foot long, garage-door size entrance tunnel into a large cavern.

"All right, guys, let's get back to the boat and get the rest of our things."

Sol and Jed stood and gaped, their mouths hanging open in awe.

"What kind of fucking place is this?" Jed asked, grabbing Dan's flashlight and swinging it around. He made one complete circle illuminating an enormous cavern about fifty feet wide and over twice as long. The roof sloped irregularly from about ten feet high around the walls to about fifteen feet high in the center. Then the light seemed to skitter around of its own accord, stopping to probe cracks and holes, ledges, and jagged pieces of rock sticking out from the walls. No one noticed that the cavern was surprisingly free of stalactites and stalagmites.

"I never been in a cave like this," Sol said, snatching the flashlight from Jed.

"Hey, cocksucker! Gimme back the light."

Dan stepped between them and took the light from Sol. "You'll have plenty of time to check the place out after we get the rest of our things." Dan turned and walked into the tunnel, leaving them standing in the dark. They hesitated a moment, slightly put off by his abruptness, but before the light completely disappeared down the tunnel they forgot any objections they were harboring and hurried after him, glancing briefly back at the encroaching blackness.

Dan crawled through the brush and started down the ravine. Once again a wave of total exhaustion started overcoming him. It had been a long day for him and it was only half over. He still had to drive the boat back to the truck, hook up the trailer, load the boat, and drive thirty miles back to town. Then after getting back he'd still have to take the boat to the storage yard and unhook it before going home. Thinking about it only deepened his fatigue.

His other option was to hide the boat and walk the two miles back to his truck. The thought of the long walk brought to mind another option. He could hide the boat and spend the night in the cave with the Rakers. He didn't really have any reason to go home today. His only pressing chore was to call the assayer on Monday.

As he trudged toward the river, nagging doubts began to surface about his plan of leaving the Rakers to guard the meteorite. Was he sure that they could be trusted? What if they had a fight and one of them broke a leg or something, or one of them got bitten by a snake, or drowned, or any number of things, and the other one went for help? He couldn't let that happen. He'd have to put them out of their misery if something like that happened. And what if they decided to steal the rock? He'd ruled that out when he hired them, but how could he be so sure. Three days was a long time to leave them alone.

Dan stopped at their things, looked at them thoughtfully for a moment, then decided. "You guys ought to be able to carry everything in one trip. I'll be along in a few minutes." He knew a perfect place to hide the boat; a slew where the bluff and river met, but he felt better not letting them know about it.

He watched bemused as Jed stacked most of the supplies on Sol's cradled arms, picked up two light bags of groceries, and doing all the grunting and complaining, led Sol into the woods.

Dan pushed the boat off the bank, jumped in and only having to go about fifty yards upriver, flipped on the trolling motor. The slew was more concealed than he'd remembered, overhanging brush completely enshrouded the entrance. Using the branches, he drew the boat in by hand, tied the bow line to a sturdy bush and headed for the cave, arriving just as the Rakers were setting down the supplies.

Dan lit the Coleman lantern and sent Sol out to find some firewood, not mentioning that he'd forgotten to bring an ax. Sol never asked. Then Dan picked out a smooth spot by the wall on the right of the opening and spread out a blanket.

When Sol came back with his first armful of wood, Dan told him to roll the rock against the wall beside his bed. When the rock was where Dan wanted it, he told both of them to go out and get more wood while he started a fire.

Dan was starting to enjoy himself.

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