BIDDY AND THE SILVER MAN
By E. K. JARVIS
A man came out of the sky and they took him and hanged him from the nearest tree thinking that they lynched a devil. But perhaps they crucified a saint instead—there in the beauty of the desert. And what place could be more worthy of being called a second Calvary?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic February 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a typical blazing Arizona day. Pitiless sun distorting the desert and making Sage Bend look like a toy town off in the distance. Sage Bend and the surrounding desert were bone-dry, furnace-hot, and generally depressing, but there were compensations. Buck liked it and Biddy liked it because it was a country where a small crippled girl and a tiny burro could go almost anywhere they pleased without danger.
Biddy was twelve. Polio had struck during her tenth year necessitating a clumsy brace on her left leg. Thus it was a little difficult to play with the children of Sage Bend and so Biddy's father had brought Buck in from the Circle-7 ranch to be her companion.
Buck was a shaggy philosophical burro with ears almost as long as his legs. He was gentle, rugged, and small enough for Biddy to mount all by herself. Reliable, too. Buck would take Biddy anywhere she wanted to go but he insisted on getting home to the little corral behind the house at a reasonable hour so there was never any coming in after dark.