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ace?”
    â€œI did mention him,” I told her. “I didn’t elaborate on what kind of thing he is. You wouldn’t have believed me.”
    â€œAnd you thought I’d believe Ezra?”
    â€œWell, don’t you?”
    â€œI’m not sure if I do or not. It sounds like a backwoods tall tale. And Ezra—a philosophical hermit. I never dreamed there were people like him.”
    â€œThere aren’t many. He’s a bitter-ender of a died-out breed. When I was a boy, there were a few of them around. At one time, there were a lot of them. Old batches, my grandmother used to call them. Men who never married, who tended to pull away from society and live by themselves. They batched it—cooked for themselves, washed their clothes, grew little kitchen gardens, kept a dog or some cats for company. They lived by hiring out, working for farmers during busy seasons, perhaps doing some wood cutting in the winter. Most of them did some trapping—skunks, muskrats, things like that. To some extent, they lived off the land, hunting, fishing, gathering wild edible plants. Mostly they lived hand-to-mouth, but they got along, seemed generally happy. They had few worries because they had shucked responsibility. When they grew feeble and were unable to fend for themselves, they either were committed to the old-time poorhouses, or some neighbor took them in and kept them for the chores they could still manage to do. In other cases, someone dropped in on their shacks and found them dead a week. They were mostly shiftless and no account. When they got a little extra money together, they would go out on a drunk until their money was gone, then go back to their shacks and then, in another few months, they’d have scraped together enough for another drunken interlude.”
    â€œIt sounds like a singularly unattractive life to me,” said Rila.
    â€œBy modern standards,” I told her, “it is. What you are looking at is a pioneer attitude. Some of our young people have picked up the idea. They call it living off the land. It can’t be all bad.”
    â€œAsa, you say you have seen this creature Ezra was telling us about, and you talked about panther scares. So other people may have seen it, too.”
    â€œThat’s the only way I can explain the panther stories. It does look faintly catlike.”
    â€œBut a grinning panther!”
    â€œWhen people see a panther, or something they think is a panther, they’re not too likely to notice any grin. They’re scared. The grin, in their interpretation, could become a snarl.”
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “The whole thing is so fantastic. And yet, so is your dig. And Bowser wounded by a Folsom point. And the green dinosaur bones.”
    â€œYou’re asking for an explanation,” I said. “Rila, I’m out of explanations. There is a temptation to tie everything together. But I can’t be sure all these mysteries tie together. I can’t be sure at all. I wouldn’t blame you if you walked away. It’s not a pretty thing to face.”
    â€œPerhaps not pretty,” she said, “but exciting and important. If anyone else had told me, I’d consider walking away. But I know you. You’d be honest in your thinking if it killed you. But it is a little frightening. I have the feeling that I’m standing on the brink of something I don’t understand, perhaps some great reality that will force us to take a new look at the universe.”
    I laughed, but the laugh came out a little forced. “Let’s not take ourselves too seriously,” I said. “Let’s go one step at a time. It’s easier that way.”
    â€œYes, let’s do that,” she agreed, sounding relieved. “I wonder how Bowser is getting along.”
    When we arrived home a few minutes later, it became apparent that Bowser was getting along quite well. Hiram was perched on the back