Read No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) for Free Online Page B

still cold-shouldering Butch and I knew better than to take up again with either Nature Boy or Fancy Pants. They both were mean cusses when they set their mind to it. I was sure we hadn’t heard the last of this feud of theirs and I didn’t want to get tangled up in it by being friends with either one of them.
    It was plenty tough, let me tell you. Here I was with vacation almost ended and no one to pal around with and my live-it gone. I watched the days slip past and regretted every minute of it.
    Then one day the sheriff drove up to the house.
    Pa and I were out in the barnyard trying to tinker up a corn binder that was all tied together with haywire and other makeshift odds and ends. Pa had been threatening to buy one for a long time now, but with all the tough luck we’d been having, there wasn’t any money.
    “Good morning, Henry,” the sheriff said to Pa.
    Pa said good morning back.
    “I hear you been having a little trouble with your neighbors,” said the sheriff.
    “Not what you would call real trouble,” Pa told him. “I busted one in the snoot the other day is all.”
    “Right on his own farm, too.”
    Pa quit working on the binder and squatted back on his heels to look up at the sheriff. “Andy been around complaining?”
    “He was in the other day. Said you had swallowed some fool story that this new alien family started. About some sort of bad-luck critters he’d been harboring on his farm.”
    “And you talked him out of it?”
    “Well, now,” said the sheriff, “I am a peaceable man and I hate to see two neighbors fighting. Andy wanted to put you under peace bond, but I said I’d come over and have a talk with you.”
    “All right,” invited Pa. “Go ahead and talk.”
    “Now look here, Henry. You know the story about them hard-luck critters is so much poppycock. I’m surprised you took any stock in it.”
    Pa got up slowly. He had a hard look on his face and I thought for a minute he was about to bust the sheriff. I was scared, I tell you, for that is something no one should ever do—up and bust a sheriff.
    I don’t know what he might have done or what he might have said, for at that moment Nature Boy’s Pa came tearing down the road in his old jalopy and pulled in behind the sheriff’s car, intending to park there. But he miscalculated some and he smacked into the sheriff’s car hard enough to skid it ahead six feet or so with the brakes all set.
    The sheriff broke into a run. “By God!” he said. “It isn’t even safe to drive out into this corner of the county!”
    The two of us ran along behind him. I was running just because there was some excitement, but I figure maybe Pa was running so he could help Nature Boy’s Pa if the sheriff should take it into his head to get feisty with him.
    And the funny thing about it was that Nature Boy’s Pa, instead of sitting there and waiting for the sheriff, had jumped out of his car and was running up the slope to meet us.
    “They told me I’d find you here,” he panted to the sheriff.
    “You found me, all right,” said the sheriff, practically breathing fire. “Now I’m going to—”
    “My boy is gone!” yelled Nature Boy’s Pa. “He wasn’t home last night …”
    The sheriff grabbed him and said to him: “Now let’s take this easy. Tell me exactly what happened.”
    “He went off yesterday, early in the morning, and he didn’t show up for meals, but we didn’t think too much of it—he often goes off for an entire day. He has a lot of friends out there in the woods.”
    “And he didn’t come home last night?”
    Nature Boy’s Pa shook his head. “Along about dusk, we got worried. I went out and hunted for him and I didn’t find him. I hunted all night long, but there wasn’t any sign of him. I thought maybe he’d just holed up for the night with one of his friends in the woods. I thought maybe he’d show up when it got light, but he never did.”
    “Well, all right,” said the sheriff, “you leave it to