Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy

by Robert Silverberg

  “What do you think I am?” asked Rack.

  “A man who gets what he wants,” said Alvin.

  “I’m glad you recognize that about me,” said Rack.

  “Everybody knows that about you,” said Alvin. “It’s just that you aren’t too good at picking what you ought to be wanting.” With another grin, Alvin tipped his hat and left Arthur Stuart.

  Well, Rack was as good as his word. He worked Arthur Stuart hard, getting ready for the harvest. A late-summer rain delayed the corn in the field, but they put the time to good account, and Arthur was given plenty to eat and a good night’s rest, though it was the millhouse loft he slept in now, and not the house; he had only been allowed inside as Alvin’s personal servant, and with Alvin gone, there was no excuse for a half-Black boy sleeping in the house.

  What Arthur noticed was that all the customers were in good cheer when they came to the millhouse for whatever business they had, especially during the rain when there wasn’t no field work to be done. The story of the goslings had spread far and wide, and folks pretty much believed that it really had been Rack’s idea, and not Alvin’s doing at all. So instead of being polite but distant, the way folks usually was with a miller, they gave him hail-fellow-well-met and he heard the kind of jokes and gossip that folks shared with their friends. It was a new experience for Rack, and Arthur Stuart could see that this change was one Rack Miller didn’t mind.

  Then, the last day before Alvin was due to return, the harvest started up, and farmers from miles around began to bring in their corn wagons. They’d line up in the morning, and the first would pull his wagon onto the scale. The farmer would unhitch the horses and Rack would weigh the whole wagon. Then they’d hitch up the horses, pull the wagon to the dock, the waiting farmers would help unload the corn sacks—of course they helped, it meant they’d be home all the sooner themselves—and then back the wagon onto the scale and weigh it again, empty. Rack would figure the difference between the two weighings, and that difference was how many pounds of corn the farmer got credit for.

  Arthur Stuart went over the figures in his head, and Rack wasn’t cheating them with his arithmetic. He looked carefully to see if Rack was doing something like standing on the scale when the empty wagon was being weighed, but no such thing.

  Then, in the dark of that night, he remembered something one of the farmers grumbled as they were backing an empty wagon onto the scale. “Why didn’t he build this scale right at the loading dock, so we could unload the wagon and reweigh it without having to move the durn thing?” Arthur Stuart didn’t know the mechanism of it, but he thought back over the day and remembered that another time a farmer had asked if he could get his full wagon weighed while the previous farmer’s wagon was being unloaded. Rack glared at the man. “You want to do things your way, go build your own mill.”

  Yes sir, the only thing Rack cared about was that every wagon get two weighings, right in a row. And the same system would work just as well in reverse when the buyers came with their empty wagons to haul corn east for the big cities. Weigh the empty, load it, and weigh it again.

  When Alvin got back, Arthur Stuart would be ready with the mystery mostly solved.

  Meanwhile, Alvin was off in the woods, looking for Davy Crockett, that grinning man who was single-handedly responsible for getting two separate guns pointed at Alvin’s heart. But it wasn’t vengeance that was on Alvin’s mind. It was rescue.

  For he knew what he’d done to Davy and the bear, and kept track of their heartfires. He couldn’t see into heartfires the way Margaret could, but he could see the heartfires themselves, and keep track of who was who. In fact, knowing that no gun could shoot him and no jail could hold him, Alvin had deliberately come to the town of Westville because he knew Davy Crockett had come through that town, the bear not far behind him, though Davy wouldn’t know that, not at the time.

  He knew it now, though. What Alvin saw back in Rack’s millhouse was that Davy and the bear had met again, and this time it might come out a little different. For Alvin had found the place deep in the particles of the body where knacks were given, and he had taken the bear’s best knack and given as much to Davy, and Davy’s best knack and given the same to the bear. They were evenly matched now, and Alvin figured he had some responsibility to see to it that nobody got hurt. After all, it was partly Alvin’s fault that Davy didn’t have a gun to defend himself. Mostly it was Davy’s fault for pointing it at him, but Alvin hadn’t had to wreck the gun the way he did, making the barrel blow apart.

  Running lightly through the woods, leaping a stream or two, and stopping to eat from a fine patch of wild strawberries on a riverbank, Alvin got to the place well before nightfall, so he had plenty of time to reconnoiter. There they were in the clearing, just as Alvin expected, Davy and the bear, not five feet apart, both of them a-grinning, staring each other down, neither one budging. That bear was all spiky, but he couldn’t get past Davy’s grin; and Davy matched the bear’s single-minded tenacity, oblivious to pain, so even though his butt was already sore and he was about out of his mind with sleepiness, he didn’t break his grin.

  Just as the sun set, Alvin stepped out into the clearing behind the bear. “Met your match, Davy?” he asked.

  Davy didn’t have an ounce of attention to spare for chat. He just kept grinning.

  “I think this bear don’t mean to be your winter coat this year,” said Alvin.

  Davy just grinned.

  “In fact,” said Alvin, “I reckon the first one of you to fall asleep, that’s who the loser is. And bears store up so much sleep in the winter, they just flat out don’t need as much come summertime.”

  Grin.

  “So there you are barely keeping your eyelids up, and there’s the bear just happy as can be, grinning at you out of sincere love and devotion.”

  Grin. With maybe a little more desperation around the eyes.

  “But here’s the thing, Davy,” said Alvin. “Bears is better than people, mostly. You got your bad bears, sometimes, and your good people, but on average, I’d trust a bear to do what he thinks is right before I’d trust a human. So now what you got to wonder is, what does that bear think will be the right thing to do with you, once he’s grinned you down?”

  Grin grin grin.

  “Bears don’t need no coats of human skin. They do need to pile on the fat for winter, but they don’t generally eat meat for that. Lots of fish, but you ain’t a swimmer and the bear knows that. Besides, that bear don’t think of you as meat, or he wouldn’t be grinning you. He thinks of you as a rival. He thinks of you as his equal. What will he do. Don’t you kind of wonder? Don’t you have some speck of curiosity that just wants to know the answer to that question?”

  The light was dimming now, so it was hard to see much more of either Davy or the bear than their white, white teeth. And their eyes.

  “You’ve already stayed up one whole night,” said Alvin. “Can you do it again? I don’t think so. I think pretty soon you’re going to understand the mercy of bears.”

  Only now, in his last desperate moments before succumbing to sleep, did Davy dare to speak. “Help me,” he said.

  “And how would I do that?” asked Alvin.

  “Kill that bear.”

  Alvin walked up quietly behind the bear and gently rested his hand on the bear’s shoulder. “Why would I do that? This bear never pointed no gun at me.”

  “I’m a dead man,” Davy whispered. The grin faded from his face. He bowed his head, then toppled forward, curled up on the ground, and waited to be killed.

  But it didn’t happen. The bear came up, nosed him, snuffled him all over, rolled him back and forth a little, all the time ignoring the little whimpering sounds Davy was making. Then the bear lay down beside the man, flung one arm over him, and dozed right off to sleep.

  Unbelieving, Davy lay there, terrified yet hopeful again. If he could just stay awake a little longer.

  Either the bear was a light sleeper in the summertime, or
Davy made his move too soon, but no sooner did his hand slide toward the knife at his waist than the bear was wide awake, slapping more or less playfully at Davy’s hand.

  “Time for sleep,” said Alvin. “You’ve earned it, the bear’s earned it, and come morning you’ll find things look a lot better.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?” asked Davy.

  “Don’t you think that’s kind of up to the bear?”

  “You’re controlling him somehow,” said Davy. “This is all your doing.”

  “He’s controlling himself,” said Alvin, careful not to deny the second charge, seeing how it was true. “And he’s controlling you. Because that’s what grinning is all about—deciding who is master. Well, that bear is master here, and I reckon tomorrow we’ll find out what bears do with domesticated humans.”

  Davy started to murmur a prayer.

  The bear laid a heavy paw on Davy’s mouth.

  “Prayers are done,” intoned Alvin. “Gone the sun. Shadows creep. Go to sleep.”

  That’s how it came about that when Alvin returned to Westville, he did it with two friends along—Davy Crockett and a big old grizzly bear. Oh, folks was alarmed when that bear come into town, and ran for their guns, but the bear just grinned at them and they didn’t shoot. And when the bear gave Davy a little poke, why, he’d step forward and say a few words. “My friend here doesn’t have much command of the American language,” said Davy, “but he’d just as soon you put that gun away and didn’t go pointing it at him. Also, he’d be glad of a bowl of corn mush or a plate of corn bread, if you’ve got any to spare.”

  Why, that bear plumb ate his way through Westville, setting down to banquets without raising a paw except to poke at Davy Crockett, and folks didn’t even mind it, it was such a sight to see a man serve gruel and corn bread to a bear. And that wasn’t all, either. Davy Crockett spent a good little while picking burrs out of the bear’s fur, especially in the rumpal area, and singing to the bear whenever it crooned in a high-pitched tone. Davy sang pert near every song that he ever heard, even if he only heard it once, or didn’t hear the whole thing, for there’s nothing to bring back the memory of tunes and lyrics like having an eleven-foot bear poking you and whining to get you to sing, and when he flat out couldn’t remember, why, he made it something up, and since the bear wasn’t altogether particular, the song was almost always good enough.

  As for Alvin, he’d every now and then pipe up and ask Davy to mention whether it was true that Alvin was a burglar and a plowstealing prentice, and each time Davy said no, it wasn’t true, that was just a made-up lie because Davy was mad at Alvin and wanted to get even. And whenever Davy told the truth like that, the bear rumbled its approval and stroked Davy’s back with his big old paw, which Davy was just barely brave enough to endure without wetting himself much.

  Only when they’d gone all through the town and some of the outlying houses did this parade come to the millhouse, where the horses naturally complained a little at the presence of a bear. But Alvin spoke to each of them and put them at ease, while the bear curled up and took him a nap, his belly being full of corn in various forms. Davy didn’t go far, though, for the bear kept sniffing, even in his sleep, to make sure Davy was close by.

  Davy was putting the best face on things, though. He had his pride.

  “A man does things for a friend, and this here bear’s my friend,” said Davy. “I’m done with trapping, as you can guess, so I’m looking for a line of work that can help my friend get ready for the winter. What I mean is, I got to earn some corn, and I hope some of you have jobs for me to do. The bear just watches, I promise, he’s no danger to your livestock.”

  Well, they heard him out, of course, because one tends to listen for a while at least to a man who’s somehow got himself hooked up as a servant to a grizzly bear. But there wasn’t a chance in hell that they were going to let no bear anywhere near their pigsties, nor their chicken coops, especially not when the bear clearly showed no disposition to earn its food honestly. If it would beg, they figured, it would steal, and they’d have none of it.

  Meanwhile, as the bear napped and Davy talked to the farmers, Alvin and Arthur had their reunion, with Arthur Stuart telling him what he’d figured out. “Some mechanism in the scale makes it weigh light when the wagon’s full, and heavy when it’s empty, so the farmers get short weight. But then, without changing a thing, it’ll weight light on the buyers’ empty wagons, and heavy when they’re full, so Rack gets extra weight when he’s selling the same corn.”

  Alvin nodded. “You find out if this theory is actually true?”

  “The only time he ain’t watching me is in the dark, and in the dark I can’t sneak down and see a thing. I’m not crazy enough to risk getting myself caught sneaking around the machinery in the dark, anyway.”

  “Glad to know you got a brain.”

  “Says the man who keeps getting himself put in jail.”

  Alvin made a face at him, but in the meantime he was sending out his doodlebug to probe the machinery of the scale underground. Sure enough, there was a ratchet that engaged on one weighing, causing the levering to shift a little, making short weight; and on the next weighing, the ratchet would disengage and the levers would move back, giving long weight. No wonder Rack didn’t want Alvin looking over the machinery of the scale.

  The solution, as Alvin saw it, was simple enough. He told Arthur Stuart to stand near the scale but not to step on it. Rack wrote down the weight of the empty wagon, and while it was being pulled off the scale, he stood there calculating the difference. The moment the wagon was clear of the scale, Alvin rounded on Arthur Stuart, speaking loud enough for all to hear.

  “Fool boy! What were you doing! Didn’t you see you was standing on that scale?”

  “I wasn’t!” Arthur Stuart cried.

  “I don’t think he was,” said a farmer. “I worried about that, he was so close, so I looked.”

  “And I say I saw him stand on it,” said Alvin. “This farmer shouldn’t be out the cost of a boy’s weight in corn, I think!”

  “I’m sure the boy didn’t stand on the scale,” Rack said, looking up from his calculation.

  “Well, there’s a simple enough test,” said Alvin. “Let’s get that empty wagon back onto the scale.”

  Now Rack grew alarmed. “Tell you what,” he said to the farmer, “I’ll just give you credit for the boy’s weight.”

  “Is this scale sensitive enough to weigh the boy?” asked Alvin.

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Rack. “Let’s just estimate.”

  “No!” cried Alvin. “This farmer doesn’t want any more than his fair credit, and it’s not right for him to receive any less. Haul the wagon back on and let’s weigh it again.”

  Rack was about to protest again, when Alvin said, “Unless there’s something wrong with the scale. There wouldn’t be something wrong with the scale, now, would there?”

  Rack got a sick look on his face. He couldn’t very well confess. “Nothing wrong with the scale,” he said gruffly.

  “Then let’s weigh this wagon and see if my boy’s weight made any difference.”

  Well, you guessed it. As soon as the wagon was back on the scale, it showed near a hundred pounds lighter than it did the first time. The other witnesses were flummoxed. “Could have sworn the boy never stepped on that scale,” said one. And another said, “I don’t know as I would have guessed that boy to weigh a hundred pounds.”

  “Heavy bones,” says Alvin.

  “No sir, it’s my brain that weighs heavy,” said Arthur Stuart, winning a round of laughter.

  And Rack, trying to put a good face on it, pipes up, “No, it’s the food he’s been eating at my table—that’s fifteen pounds of it right there!”

  In the meantime, though, the farmer’s credit was being adjusted by a hundred pounds.

  And the next wagon to come on the scale was a full one, while the scale was set to read heavy. In vain did Rack try to beg off early
—Alvin simply offered to keep on weighing for him, with the farmers as witnesses so he wrote down everything square. “You don’t want any of these men to have to wait an extra day to sell you their market grain, do you?” Alvin said. “Let’s weigh it all!”

  And weigh it all they did, thirty wagons before the day was done, and the farmers was all remarking to each other about what a good corn year it was, the kernels heavier than usual. Arthur Stuart did hear one man start to grumble that his wagon seemed to be lighter this year than in any previous year, but Arthur immediately spoke up loud enough for all to hear. “It don’t matter if the scale is weighing light or heavy—it’s the difference between the full weight and the empty weight that matters, and as long as it’s the same scale, it’s going to be correct.” The farmers thought that over and it sounded right to them, while Rack couldn’t very well explain.

  Arthur Stuart figured it all out in his head and he realized that Alvin hadn’t exactly set things to rights. On the contrary, this year Rack was getting cheated royally, recording credits for these farmers that were considerably more than the amount of corn they actually brought in. He could bear such losses for one day; and by tomorrow, Alvin and Arthur both knew, Rack meant to have the scale back in its regular pattern—light for the full wagons, heavy for the empty ones.

  Still, Alvin and Arthur cheerfully bade Rack farewell, not even commenting on the eagerness he showed to be rid of them.

  That night, Rack Miller’s lantern bobbed across the yard between his house and the mill. He closed the mill door behind him and headed for the trapdoor leading down to the scale mechanism. But to his surprise, there was something lying on top of that trapdoor. A bear. And nestled in to sleep with the bear wrapped around him was Davy Crockett.