And, the country was new. He'd never thought he'd have a crack at a new country again, a new, good country. Often, he'd thought how lucky people had been who were born a hundred and fifty years ago, moving into an easy, rich country like the Ohio or Kentucky when it was new, instead of the bitter North.
The Harn would be a nuisance—Ed did not think of it as the Harn, of course, but just as "they"—but he supposed he could find a way to clean them out. A man generally could, if varmints got troublesome enough.
And the man in forest-green whipcord, well, he could have been just an hallucination. Ed did not really believe in hallucinations, but he had heard about them, and there was always a first time.
Ed sighed, looked at the clock, measured the bottle with his eye—still better than three quarters full.
All in all, he guessed, he'd leave the door into the other world open.
He put old Tom out and went to bed.
The first order of business seemed to be to get better acquainted with the Harn, and first thing in the morning he set about it. He took the rabbit out of the live box and tethered it in a spot in the other world close to the hole, where raw earth had been exposed by a big blowdown, sweeping the ground afterward to clear it of tracks.
Getting better acquainted with the Harn, though, did not mean he had to have it come in and crawl in bed with him.
Before going to bed the night before, he had set half a can of snuff to steep in some water. He loaded a bug gun with this and sprayed the ground around the hole into the other world. From the reaction yesterday, he judged the stinging units did not like tobacco juice, and this should discourage them from coming through.