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it like a rabbit spitted by the gaze of a hunting serpent. Then the thing was gone and the fear was gone, and Deehalter’s practiced fingers slid a live round into the chamber of the ought-six.
    “Wh-what’s the matter, Dee?” Kernes whimpered. He was pitiful in his nakedness, more pitiful in his stunned surprise at where he found himself. Kernes really hadn’t known what was happening, Deehalter realized. Perhaps Alice had begun to guess where her husband had been going in the night. That may have been why she had been so quick to run, before suspicion could become certainty.
    “Dee, why’re you looking at me like that?” Kernes begged.
    Deehalter stood. His ankle only throbbed. If his first bullet had killed the creature as it should have, he would have buried the body and claimed that something had dragged Kernes away. Perhaps he would have buried it here in the mound from which the creature had escaped to begin with. Alice and Dr. Jepson could testify to the cattle’s previous injuries, whatever they might surmise had caused them.
    The same story would be sufficient now.
    “Goodbye, you son of a bitch,” Deehalter said, and he raised his rifle. He fired point blank into the smaller man’s chest.
    Kernes whuffed backwards as if a giant had kicked him. There was a look of amazement on his face and nothing more; but momentarily, something hung in the air between the dead man and the living, something as impalpable as the muzzle blast that rocked the hillside—and as real.
    Deehalter’s flesh gave and for a startled second he/it knew why the Indians had buried their possessed brother alive, to trap the contagion with him in the rock instead of merely passing it on to raven and slay again. . . .
    Then the sun was bright on Deehalter’s back, casting his shadow across the body of the man he had murdered. He recalled nothing of the moment just past.
    Except that when he remembered the creature’s last red leer, he seemed to be seeing the image in a mirror.

A LAND OF
ROMANCE

    L. Sprague de Camp had greater influence on me as an SF reader and writer than anyone else. After World War II, a number of fans became publishers, joining August Derleth of Arkham House in reprinting works from Golden Age and earlier pulps. The Clinton (Iowa) Public Library in 1957 had a large collection of these books. (The entrance of major publishers, particularly Doubleday, into the SF market in the early ’50s crushed the niche companies with the exception of Arkham House itself.)
    Two of the small presses, Fantasy Press and Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. collected a good deal of Sprague’s fiction from Astounding and Unknown (Worlds) . Either his rigor, intelligence, and focus on plot formed my opinion of what SF and fantasy should be, or they perfectly matched the model lurking somewhere in my childish subconscious.
    In later years I got to know Sprague on terms of friendship, though we weren’t as close as I was with Manly Wade Wellman, his contemporary and friend from the ’30s and ’40s. I encouraged Jim Baen to reprint the stories of Sprague’s which I most liked. I did introductions for the volumes and stories in the style of Sprague’s work as part of that encouragement.
    Harry Turtledove, who like me was greatly influenced by Sprague, proposed a de Camp Festschrift to Baen Books. I happily wrote “A Land of Romance” for it, trying to create a story that Sprague might’ve written for Unknown .
    I’ll add two minor notes about the story itself. The full name of the former Secretary of Defense is Robert Strange McNamara, and the greatest buffalo meat entrepreneur in the country is Ted Turner (at the time I wrote the story, Mr. Jane Fonda). Both of those facts have bearing on the text.
    * * *
    T he marketing bullpen at Strangeco Headquarters held seventy-five desks. Howard Jones was the only person in the huge room when the phone began ringing. He ignored the sound and went on with what he was doing. It was a wrong