THE LOST RACE

You know, diamonds are a lot harder to find than you might think.

I must have spent the better part of two weeks looking in caves and gorges and riverbeds and valleys and abandoned rock quarries without finding a single one. I even checked out a couple of exotic-looking orchards, just in case I was dead wrong about where diamonds came from, but I finally had to admit that there was more to the diamond-prospecting business than met the eye.

Since I was fresh out of funds (actually, there's wasn't nothingfresh about it—I'd been out of funds for quite a long time), I took a job dealing faro when I hit Germiston, a quaint little village a couple of miles east of Johannesburg. I gave it up after a couple of days, though, after I earned enough money to buy a second-hand Chautauqua tent.

I supplemented my meager preaching income by hosting a few friendly games of bingo until I realized that the bingo cards were costing me more than I was winning from the natives, since there wasn't much of a market for boers’ teeth and such other trinkets as they used for legal tender, and finally I made up my mind to light out for Nairobi the next day to see if I couldn't scare up a little more money in British East Africa than I was finding in the Down Under side of the continent.

I told my helpers to show up at noon for their severance pay, but then I got to thinking about the story of Job and decided that a little hardship and disappointment was probably just the kind of strengthening and hardening their spirits needed, so I turned in early and made up my mind to leave town a bit before daybreak. I was snoring away in my hotel room, minding my own business and not bothering no one, when I was awakened by the sound of a door opening.

I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and saw as pretty a little lady as I had ever experienced standing in my doorway. She was dressed all in blue silks and veils that didn't hide half as much as she thought they did, and she had the strangest headdress topping her yellow hair.

“Have you got it?” she whispered, walking into the room and closing the door behind her.

“Ma'am,” I said with a smile, “I've gotit , and to spare. To what do I owe the distinct pleasure of this here nocturnal visitation?”

“The Malaloki armband,” she said. “Where is it?”

“Probably in Malaloki, wherever that may be,” I answered. “However, you're welcome to search every inch of me, which I'm sure you'll agree is a pretty generous offer to make to a total stranger.”

“But youmust have it!” she hissed.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I answered.

“Youare Lucifer Jones, are you not?”

“The Right Reverend Lucifer Jones at your service,” I said. “Yousure you don't want to search me for this here armband?”

“This is not a matter for levity,” she said sternly.

“Neither is breaking and entering,” I pointed out. “Though,” I added, “the Lord does teach us to forgive our brother's trespasses. Of course, He don't say much about our sister's trespasses, but I'm sure you and me can work something out if we just put our heads together.”

“I will ask you one more time: Where is it?”

“I don't know,” I said with a shrug. “On the other hand, I sure am glad that you've asked me for the last time. What would you like to talk about now?”

She looked at me, frowned, and opened the door, and before I knew it two big white guys dressed in leopardskin robes had burst into the room and were threatening me with spears. They both had on the same kind of headdresses as the girl, kind of feathery with a couple of little jewels right at the front hanging down over their foreheads, but somehow the headdresses didn't look as good on them, or maybe it was just that they kept jabbing me in the short ribs with the points of their weapons.

“I must have that armband, Mister Jones,” said the girl.

“DoctorJones,” I corrected her, sucking in my stomach as far as I could as the spears kept pressing against it.

“Make no mistake about it, Doctor Jones,” she said. “Two men have already died this evening.”

“I hope it wasn't nothin’ catching,” I said with as much compassion as I could muster, which truth to tell wasn't near as much as I might have had under other circumstances.

“They died because of the Malaloki armband,” she said meaningfully.

“What is it—some kind of wrestling hold?” I asked.

“An ancient and sacred ornament of the Malaloki, which may be worn only by one of our gods.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint a lovable little lady like yourself,” I said, “but despite my handsome and clean-cut good looks, I ain't no god.”

“The Malaloki armband was stolen two moons past by a disloyal subject,” she continued impassively. “We traced it to Germiston, and here we lost it—until tonight. The man who had stolen it had traded it for food and other worldly goods, the storekeeper had sold it to a Boer, the Boer had given it to a black house servant, and the servant lost it to you in a game of chance. You have it, and now you must give it to us or your life shall be forfeit.”

“But I ain't seen any armbands!” I said as they began prodding me a little harder with their spear tips. “Not gold nor silver nor brass nor any kind.”

“Wait!” she commanded, holding her hand imperiously above her head, and suddenly the two guys with the weapons backed off a bit. “Possibly you do not as yet know the shape and texture of that about which I speak. The Malaloki armband has no commercial value, but is made of shells joined together in a mystic design of overwhelming power and import.”

“Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?” I said. “I took in what I thought was a little ankle bracelet made of strung-together shells.”

“Thearmband !” she exclaimed, finally showing some emotion, even if not the kind I would have preferred to see from a blonde in a see-through blue wraparound.

“I think it's worthless, you think it's priceless,” I said. “How's about we split the difference and I trade it to you for a couple of them jewels off your headdresses, unless they got some special religious significance too?”

“Doctor Jones,” she said, “we will trade you your life for the armband. That should constitute a considerable profit for you.”

“Considering the alternative, I suppose I could do a mite worse,” I admitted begrudgingly.

“Where is it?”

“I've got a whole bag of junk—begging your pardon—over at my tent. Wait'll I get my clothes on, and I'll take you there.”

Which I did, though we must have made a funny-looking sight stalking through the narrow streets of Germiston at three in the morning. I couldn't see much sense returning to the hotel just to wake the desk clerk, so I slipped a deck of cards into my pocket and made up my mind to head right off for Nairobi once our business was done.

When we got to the tent it turned out that none of us had any matches, so I just started walking around, kind of feeling blindly for the bag. After a couple of minutes I stepped on something that made a pretty loud crunching sound, and I knew that I had found the trinket.

The girl ran over and started pulling stuff out of the bag, and a couple of seconds later she gave out a shriek that would have woke such dead as weren't otherwise occupied at the time.

“What seems to be the problem, ma'am?” I asked out of an innate sense of courtesy.

“It's broken!” she cried, holding up a bunch of busted shells that were hanging together by a few torn threads.

“That's a shame,” I said sympathetically. “Maybe you could hunt up some clams or oysters or something and stitch up a replacement.”

“You do not understand what this means,” she wept.

“Maybe even lobster shells,” I added thoughtfully. “There's a pretty good seafood shop over in Johannesburg, and...”

“Silence!” roared one of the two men, pointing his spear at me.

I didn't see much sense in making helpful suggestions if that was the way they had been taught to respond to an act of Christian goodwill, so I just stood there while the three of them went into a little pow-wow. Finally they broke it up and the girl walked over to me.

“You will come with us,” she announced.

“I really had other plans,” I said, and started telling her about how I aimed to build the Tabernacle of Saint Luke. I got about three sentences into my story when one of the men started jabbing me with his spear again.

“You will come with us,” she repeated. “You will speak to our gods and tell them how the armband came to be broken, and possibly they will spare our lives.”

I took another close look at all their various jewels, which sure seemed pretty common and unimportant to them, and made up my mind on the spot. “I'll be happy to come along with you,” I said with a great big smile. “You may not know it, but speaking to gods is one of the very best things I do, me being a man of the cloth and all.”

We stepped out of the tent and began walking to the north. After we had gotten a couple of miles out of town, the girl turned to me again.

“I hope you understand, Doctor Jones,” she said, “that any attempt to escape while we make our way to Malaloki will be dealt with severely.”

“I give you my word as a Christian and a gentleman that such a thought ain't never crossed my mind,” I said truthfully, naturally assuming that such a verbal contract expired once we got to wherever they kept their jewels.

Well, we walked and we walked and then we walked some more. I kept assuming that Cairo or Marrakech would pop into view any second, but she assured me that we were still in South Africa, and that we weren't heading no farther than Nyasaland, which I hadn't never heard of before, and which I now began picturing as a great huge field of grass with a bunch of baby nyasas hopping around on it.

During our trek I learned that her name was Melora, and that she had learned her English from some missionaries, which was kind of surprising because it seemed like everyone I had met in Africa had learned their English from missionaries and yet I was the only bonafide missionary that I knew of wandering around in the bush. She surprised me still further by saying that her native tongue wasn't French or German or Portugese or anything like that, but was the Malaloki dialect, which was the first time I learned that they invented languages as well as armbands.

We were about ten days into our little journey when we crossed into Nyasaland. The landscape started changing, and pretty soon the bushland turned into a kind of gently rolling forest filled with gently rolling rhinos and leopards and other fearsome beasts that looked like they wanted nothing more than a little snack made of Christian missionary and maybe a little bit of blonde Malaloki for dessert, but our two big spearmen managed to bluff all the animals away, which was undoubtedly for the best since I couldn't see how they could reload a spear if their first fling missed, and we passed through the forest unscathed except for tick bites and mosquito bites and fly bites and being bothered by some rude maribou storks they kept flying overhead right after they'd had lunch, and finally we came to a great big volcanic crater stuck right in the middle of a long plateau.

I figured that we were going to hike around it, but Melora walked straight ahead and started following a narrow little path up the side of it. I grabbed hold of her arm and explained that while the top of the crater was undoubtedly a good sight closer to God and Heaven, she didn't have to do this on my account, as I was perfectly content to worship Him from afar, or at least ground level, for a few more years, and besides the path disappeared a couple of hundred yards ahead of us.

For a woman with a short little nose, she sure made a production of looking down it at me. Finally she yanked her arm loose and started climbing again. I called ahead to her that I was going to start back down to the base of the volcano and would meet her on the other side, but no sooner were the words out of my mouth than the two big guys started jabbing me with their spears again, so I didn't have no choice but to follow her.

I did so for maybe a hundred yards when suddenly she just upped and vanished. I mean, one second I was following that beautiful round bottom up the path, which in truth was all that kept me going, and the next second she was gone, beautiful bottom and all. I stopped, scratched my head, and looked around, but couldn't see hide nor hair of her, which was a considerable amount of hide and hair to vanish from the earth all at once. Then I felt a hand on my arm, and I was dragged off the path into a narrow little tunnel.

“Where are we?” I whispered.

“Just follow me,” said Melora.

“Follow you?” I repeated. “I can't evensee you.”

“Grab my hand,” she said.

I reached out for it.

“That, Doctor Jones, isnot my hand.”

I apologized, and after a little more groping around I finally got ahold of what I was supposed to get ahold of, and pretty soon we were wending our way through this damp, winding tunnel. After about ten minutes of walking into walls and into Melora, who may have been softer than the walls but wasn't a whole lot friendlier or more understanding, we emerged onto a large ledge overlooking a village on the grassy floor of the dead volcano.

“Malaloki?” I asked.

She nodded.

A little river wended its way amongst the thatched huts, then went out through a hole it had carved out of one of the walls. This crater didn't hold a candle to some of the larger ones I was aware of, like for instance the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanganyika, but on the other hand the Ngorongoro Crater wasn't awash in jewels and blonde women, so I didn't feel no great disappointment with my current surroundings.

Melora waited until the two big guys had joined us, then led the way down another winding trail to the base of the wall.

A bunch of white women wearing even less than Melora raced up and jabbered at her in some foreign tongue. She talked right back at them, just as quick and incomprehensible, and took me by the hand and led me through the village until we came to the biggest hut, which was located smack-dab in the center. Then she bowed and backed away.

In front of the hut were two grass hammocks, and in each hammock was a grubby-looking white man with a bushy beard. One of them must have been close to seven feet tall, and the other couldn't have been more than an inch or two over five feet. Both of them were wearing khaki pants that had been cut off above the knees, and they each had a batch of necklaces made out of emeralds and sapphires and rubies and other colorful baubles.

“Well, look what we got here, brother,” said the big one.

“Sure as hell don't look like no Malaloki I ever seen,” said the little one.

“What's your name, stranger?” asked the big one.

“The Honorable Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones at your service,” I said, stooping over in a courtly bow. “Begging your pardon, but you gents sure don't sound like Malalokis from what little I've heard you speak.”

“Neither do you,” said the little one.

“No reason why I should,” I said. “I'm an American.”

“So are we,” said the big one.

“Of course,” added the little one, “we're also gods, but around these here parts the two ain't necessarily incompatible.”

“In fact,” continued the big one, “along with being gods and Americans, we're also brothers. I'm Frothingham Schmidt and he's Oglethorpe Schmidt, but them who would consider themselves our friends, or at least express an interest in ever seeing another sunrise, call us Long Schmidt and Short Schmidt.”

“I'm Short Schmidt,” said the little one.

“Well, I'm mighty glad to find a couple of countrymen here,” I said. “You wouldn't happen to have a little something for a thirsty traveler, with maybe just enough alcohol to whip the tar out of the germs?”

“First things first,” said Long Schmidt. “We ain't set foot outside our little kingdom in six years, and we got some important questions to ask about the rest of the world.”

“And well you should,” I said. “You'll be pleased and happy to know that we won the War to End All Wars.”

“Who gives a damn about that?” said Short Schmidt. “We're Pittsburgh boys, Pittsburgh born and bred. Where did the Pirates finish last year?”

“Third or fourth, as I recollect,” I answered.

“Damnthat John McGraw!” said Long Schmidt. “Tell me, Doctor Jones—who won the Kentucky Derby of 1917?”

“Seems to me that it was Omar Khayyam,” I said.

“Yahoo!” cried Short Schmidt, tossing a necklace into the air. “If we ever get back to Casey's Bar, old Flathead Mahoney is gonna owe me a double sawbuck!”

“We didn't mean to forget our manners, Doctor Jones,” said Long Schmidt. “It's just that certain things are very important to us. Now we'll join you in that drink.” He clapped his hands twice, and a couple of ripe young maidens brought us a round of fruit drinks, with just a little something extra added.

“So, Doctor Jones,” said Short Schmidt when we had all had a couple of long swallows, “what brings you to the kingdom of the Malaloki?”

“Friendship, curiosity, an adventurous spirit, and mostly a woman named Melora,” I said.

“Ah, yes, Melora,” said Short Schmidt. “Lovely girl.”

“Our wife,” added Long Schmidt.

“One of ’em, anyway,” said Short Schmidt. “Truth to tell, Jones, the blasted village is damned near overflowing with goddesses-by-marriage.”

“Easy now, brother,” said Long Schmidt. “Doctor Jones is a man of the cloth. Perhaps he disapproves.”

“No such a thing,” I assured them. “Solomon had a pile of wives, and the Good Book never said a word against him.”

“Doctor Jones,” said Short Schmidt with a smile, “you got the makings of a right friendly neighbor.”

“Thank you kindly,” I said. “You fellers mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

“Go right ahead,” said Short Schmidt.

“Who are the Malaloki, and how'd you ever get to be gods here?”

“Well, that's kind of a long story, Doctor Jones,” said Long Schmidt. “Me and Short came over to Africa seven years ago to scare us up some diamonds. Didn't seem that hard when we planned it, but I'll be damned if we could find a single one.”

“Diamond mines is well hid in these parts,” I agreed.

“Mines?” exclaimed Short Schmidt. “Son of a bitch! We thunk they grew inside oysters!”

“That's pearls,” I said. “Did you find any of them, at least?”

“Never even found an oyster,” said Short Schmidt. “Came near to getting et by crocodiles a couple of times.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, if you ever go oyster hunting again, I think you'll have a little more luck in the ocean than in the rivers.”

“We ain't likely to ever see a ocean again,” said Long Schmidt mournfully. “Let me get back to the main thrust of our tragic story, Doctor Jones, so you'll know why we're so happy to see you.”

“Be my guest,” I said, taking another drink that one of the local maidens offered me.

“Like Short told you, we came here to seek fame and fortune, mostly the latter. Matter of fact, we had a little more fame with the local constabularies than we could handle, which is how we came to take our leave of the civilized portions of Africa and head inland.”

“We set up shop as traders,” added Short Schmidt. “We'd make a round of the Zulus, swapping brass cartridges for goats. Then we'd trade the goats for salt, trade the salt for cattle, and sell the cattle at market. It was a tidy little business.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Well, we had a little difference of opinion with a tribe called the Shona about whether having a couple of friendly drinks and smokes together constitutes a bonafide proposition of marriage, and we had to take our leave of them a little more quickly than we would have liked.”

“Perfectly understandable,” I said.

“My thoughts precisely,” said Long Schmidt. “I just wish the Shona could have seen it that way. Anyway, we took off in the middle of the night, and since our bushcraft ain't exactly up to snuff, especially by Shona standards, we kept on running for two days and two nights, just to make sure that we weren't being followed too closely.”

“And on the third morning,” continued Short Schmidt, “we ran up against this here crater. We were both feeling kind of tired and out of sorts, what with having been running for our lives all that time, so we thought we'd climb up the wall of the crater a way and take a little rest once we were out of sight. Well, we stumbled onto some tunnel or other, and an hour later here we were, surrounded by the lost tribe of the Malaloki.”

“Of course, they ain't so lost as they was,” added Long Schmidt, “with both of us and now you stumbling across them, but they're lost enough. I don't think we'll ever get out of here.”

“Make up your mind,” I said. “Are you gods or are you prisoners?”

“Well, truth to tell,” said Short Schmidt, “there seems to be a fine and highly technical legal line between the two. Seems that their legends told of a couple of gods who would come here disguised as white men.”

“Well, you got no problem that I can see,” I said

“Hah!” snorted Long Schmidt.

“The problem,” said Short Schmidt, “is that twoother white guys wandered in here about fifty years ago, and after they'd got all the ladies pregnant and picked up the choicer gemstones, they just up and left.”

“So the Malaloki have decided that as long as we stay here we must be gods, and we can do damned near anything we want,” continued Long Schmidt. “But the second we leave, we've proved that we're just men after all, and they've got about twenty beefy young men on the other side of that crater wall waiting to make pincushions out of us.”

“I can see where that might get to be a nuisance,” I agreed.

“That's why we sent Melora after you,” said Short Schmidt.

“By the way,” I said, “I'm supposed to tell you that Melora didn't break the sacred armband. I kind of stomped on it accidentally.”

“'Tain't noways sacred anyhow,” said Short Schmidt. “We knew that one of the young bucks was going to Germiston for some seeds to plant, so we snuck it into his pouch and told Melora that he'd went and swiped a sacred object.”

“How come?” I asked.

“Melora ain't exactly the most humorous critter we've ever run into,” said Long Schmidt. “We figured she'd move heaven and earth to get that armband back, and we were kind of hoping that she'd wipe out enough locals so that someone would follow her back here, like maybe an army or something big like that.”

“So while we're delighted to see a fellow countryman, and especially one who knows how the Pirates are doing these days,” said Short Schmidt, “I'd have to say that on the whole you represent a considerable disappointment to us, meaning no offense.”

“None taken,” I said. “Whoare the Malaloki, anyway?”

“As near as we can figure it,” said Long Schmidt, “they're the descendants of some Roman outpost. Probably been living in the crater some fifteen hundred years or so. A few of ’em leave every now and then to buy things we can get down here and to learn a little English, but they always come back. For a while there we and Short really talked up the outside world in the hope that one by one they'd all go out and make their way and leave us alone here with the jewels, but so far it ain't happened.”

“So here we are,” concluded Short Schmidt, “gods of the Malaloki, with the power of life and death over our subjects and every whim catered to—so long as we don't walk more than six hundred yards from where we are now. We may never see the Pirates again!”

“Power of life and death, you say?” I asked.

“We're gods, ain't we?”

“Why not kill ’em off and just walk out free as birds?” I suggested.”

“We've thunk it over long and hard,” admitted Short Schmidt. “But while we don't back off none at a little serious swindling and cardsharking, murdering a whole lost tribe would probably put us off our feed.”

“Of course, we may eventually get around to killing off all the menfolk,” added Long Schmidt. “I don't like the way they look at us whenever we get married, which is pretty damned often now that I come to think of it.”

“Well, now, brothers,” I said, “you sound right happy and fulfilled as things stand. What in the world would you do if you ever got out of here?”

“Run like hell,” said Short Schmidt devoutly.

“I mean after that,” I said.

“See if we couldn't land us a grubstake and marry us a couple of good women and settle down, making sure to buy lifetime season tickets to the Pirates. Is old Honus Wagner still playing for them?”

“He quit five or six years back, as I recollect,” I said.

“Damn!” said Short Schmidt. “No wonder they ain't won any pennants to speak of.”

“Damnthat John McGraw and his Giants!” added Long Schmidt passionately.

I could see they were bound and determined to talk about baseball for a few hours, so I decided that it was a good time to take my leave of them. “Well,” I said, “this has been a fascinating experience, hobnobbing with a couple of flesh-and-blood gods and seeing a lost civilization and all, but I think maybe the time has come for me to depart.”

“What makes you thinkyou're going anywhere?” demanded Long Schmidt.

“What reason have you got to keep me?” I said. “I told you everything I know about baseball, and nobody's got around to declaring me a god yet.”

“First you got to help us get out of here,” said Short Schmidt. “After all, fair is fair.”

“I don't see nothing fair about it,” I said, getting a little hot under the collar.

“Don't look so glum, Jones,” said Long Schmidt. “If you actuallydo figure a way to get us out of here, we'll let you scoop up a handful of gems on the way out.”

Which of course put a whole new light on things.

I let one of their wives lead me to a little hut, and I lay down in a hammock and divided my attention between her and the problem at hand, spending most of the night tackling first one and then the other. And by morning I had the solution.

I hunted up Melora, who was about as giggly as ever, which is to say not at all, and told her that I had hit upon a way to turn her gods and husbands into a pair of contented stay-at-homes.

“Truly?” she said, her eyes widening.

“Trust me,” I said confidently.

“It is almost too much to ask.”

“It all depends on you, Melora,” I told her.

“What must I do?” she asked.

“I want you to pick up a couple of rubies or emeralds from wherever it is you guys are hiding them, and then go on a little shopping trip to Germiston for me.”

I had to explain what I wanted two or three times before she finally understood, and I told her to make sure to take a couple of husky lads along to haul my purchase back.

Then, after she left sometime around noon, I brought out the Good Book and decided to see if I couldn't bring a little of the true religion to these white heathen and get them to cast their false gods out into the cold, just in case my other idea didn't work.

Well, I was at it for the better part of three weeks and no one got converted, but we all had a fine old time singing hymns and trying to live up to the doings and deeds of all them holy men, especially in regard to all the begatting they did.

The Malaloki were fair to middling cooks, and were the first of Roman descent I'd run across who didn't smother everything in tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. The Schmidt brothers had shown them how to make a kind of wine from fermented fruits that didn't taste too good but packed one hell of a punch, and between the eating and the drinking and the begatting I sure couldn't see why they were so all-fired eager to leave.

Twenty days after Melora left she returned, with her two companions lugging a batch of packages. I had them put the stuff into my hut before the brothers saw them, and went to work. When I was done assembling everything, I made sure it all worked and then called Long Schmidt and Short Schmidt over.

“What have you got to show us, Jones?” said Long Schmidt, ducking his head down to get in through my doorway.

“Looks kind of like a radio,” said Short Schmidt.

“Shortwave,” I said.

“Should that mean something?” asked Long Schmidt.

I held the earphones between them and started cranking the dynamo.

"The Pirates lead two to nothing in the seventh, and John McGraw is calling Heinie Groh back and is sending Frankie Frisch up to pinch-hit with runners on first and—"

I pulled a tube out of the set and smashed it on the floor of the hut.

“My God!” wailed Short Schmidt. “What have you done?”

“Nothing much,” I said pleasantly. “I got a spare hidden away.”

“Where?” screamed Long Schmidt in agonized tones.

“Why, if I told you, it wouldn't be hidden much longer, would it?” I asked.

“Fix it!” screamed Short Schmidt.

“It'smy radio,” I said. “I put it together and I attached it to the dynamo and I even laid six hundred feet of antenna up the side of the crater. I'll fix it when I feel like listening to it again. Right now, though, I'm planning on taking a nap.”

“We'll kill you!” bellowed Long Schmidt, tears streaming down his bearded face.

“That ain't going to get you your tube,” I said.

“What do you want for it?” said Short Schmidt, getting down on his knees and sobbing a little.

“Oh, nothing much,” I answered. “Maybe just my freedom and a handful of gemstones to tide me over during hard times.”

“That was to be your reward for getting us out of here,” said Long Schmidt accusingly.

“Why not think over your position for a minute?” I said. “You got more wives than you can shake a stick at, you got a couple of cushy lifetime jobs with no heavy lifting, and you got the Pittsburgh Pirates just a couple of huts away. You got more precious stones than anyone ever thought existed, and nice weather, and three squares a day. Are you sure you reallywant to leave?”

They put their heads together and muttered under their breaths for a while. Then Short Schmidt walked over to his own hut and returned a minute later with a big metal box.

“One handful,” he said, opening it up. “No more.”

I reached in and pulled out a fistful of rubies and sapphires and other such trinkets and stuffed them into my pockets. Then I took them out behind my hut to a little spot I'd marked, dug down about five or six inches with my fingers, and handed them the tube.

“Anything I can do for you two when I reach civilization?” I asked, preparing to take my leave of them while they were fiddling with the shortwave. “Any messages you want me to deliver?”

“Just send a note to our folks back in Pittsburgh telling them we're okay,” said Short Schmidt. “And maybe find a way to tell the Pirates they need more left-handed pitching.”

Just then the Giants score three runs in the top of the eighth, and I could see that there wasn't much sense in trying to talk to them any longer, as they were spending all their energy calling down their godly wrath on John McGraw, so I took my leave of them.

Melora shot me the first smile I had ever seen from her and walked me to the tunnel and guided me through and didn't even holler when I didn't exactly grab her hand again.

We finally made it to the plateau that the crater sat on. I kissed her good-bye real courtly-like and, with a handsome fortune in my pockets, I set off for civilization with the happy knowledge that me and God would finally be co-landlords of the Tabernacle of Saint Luke.