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But …
    Enough.
    I would have liked to’ve written more extensively about how Ted and I wrote together, but Paul Williams has covered some of that in the story-notes, and the rest is whispers and memories. So, at last, after more than twenty years, Ted, I’ve kept my promise. In full.

    To say, at finish, only this. I miss my friend. I miss Ted’s charm, his chicanery, his talent, his compassion. I miss them because they will never, not ever, not embodied in anyone or anything, never ever exist on any plane we can perceive. Those of you who never met him, who have only read him, can know what an emptiness there will forever be in your life. Because I know the emptiness in mine.
    Harlan Ellison ®
30 January 2007
Sherman Oaks, CA

Ride In, Ride Out
    Beware the fury of a patient man
.
    —John Dryden,
Absalom and Achitoph
el
    Midafternoon and he came to a fork in the road. Just like the rest of us in all our afternoons, whether we know it at the time or not.
    Younger Macleish liked the left fork. His horse’s sleepy feet preferred the right, a bit downgrade as it was, and Macleish thought what the hell, he was ready to like the right fork too. He liked the country right, left, and whatever, from the white peaks feeding snow water to high timber and good grama range, across and down through the foothills where the low curly bunch-grass grew, and on to the black-earthed bottomland. But then it didn’t need to be all that good to please Younger Macleish today. He was of a mind to like salt-flat or sage, crows, cactus or a poison spring, long as the bones lay pretty there.
    Around the mountain (right fork, left fork, it’s all the same) and three hundred miles beyond lay fifteen thousand well-fenced acres and a good warm welcome. Ninety-nine times Younger Macleish had said no to his cousin’s offer, for he had some distances to pace off and some growing up to do on his own. Now he’d said yes and was ambling home to a bubbling spring and an upland house; not too far away lived a pair of the prettiest blue-eyed sisters since crinolines were invented, while down the other way—if a man found he couldn’t choose—lived an Eastern school-marm with a bright white smile and freckles on her nose. Right now he had four months pay in his poke, his health, a sound horse, a good saddle, and no worriments. If a man likes where he’s been and where he’s headed, he’s fair bound to like where he is.
    As the shadows grew longer, this horse, he thought approvingly, has the right idea, for the trail is good and the passes this side of themountain might make a little more sense after all. And if things are as they should be, there’ll be a settlement down yonder, maybe big enough for a hotel with a sheet on the bed and a bite of something other than trail bacon and boiled beans.
    With the thought came the settlement, opening up to him as the trail rounded a bluff. It was just what he had in mind, plus a cut extra—a well-seasoned cowtown with a sprinkling of mining. It had two hotels, he saw as he rode in, the near one with a restaurant and a livery right handy to it. There was a mercantile, more cow than plow, and half the barber shop was an assay office.
    Younger Macleish rode up to the livery and slid off. He hooked an elbow around the horn and arched his back hard.
    “Ridin’ long?”
    Macleish turned around and grinned at the tubby little old bald-head who stood in the carriage door. “My back says so … Treat hosses po’ly here, do you?”
    The old man grinned in return and took the bridle. “Misable,” he asserted. “Whup ’em every hour.”
    “Well, whack this’n with a oat or two an’ give him water if he wants it or not.”
    “He’ll rue the day,” said the oldster, his eyes twinkling.
    Macleish followed him far enough inside for a glance to assure him that water really was there and that the hay was hay. Then he unbuckled his saddlebags and heaved them over his shoulder. “Which one o’ them hotels is