The Alien Sheriff -- Part 1
by James Patrick Cobb

From the look of the thing — a point of light that streaked through the sky leaving a tail — I thought it was a shooting star at first.

I made a wish for things to get settled with Renner as far as the boundary dispute between the ranches. I didn't believe in fairy stories but wishing is what you're supposed to do when you see a shooting star.

What looked like a star to me kept falling. Soon, even a dummy like Renner could have told it was no star.

"Take cover!" I shouted to Caleb. "It's coming on us."

He nodded, silenced by fear.

I spotted a large boulder and crouched by that, doubting it would do any good. A thing like that falls on you, you're a dead man. Caleb squatted next to me.

"Put your head between your knees," I instructed and did so myself.

He complied immediately.

When it finally hit, the BOOM! CRASH! BOOM! was the loudest noise I'd ever heard. Having worked with cannons and explosives in the Army, I've heard some loud noises before.

The falling star struck about a quarter-mile from where Caleb and I crouched. I couldn't stop coughing as I tried to breathe. The dust kept coming down, coating my lungs as well as my clothes.

"You all right?" I managed to say.

My son coughed in reply.

I slowly rose to my full height, came out from behind the boulder that saved our lives and surveyed the devastation in the area.

At first, I couldn't see much. My eyes stung and watered from the smoke caused by the small fires the object had ignited. There was plenty of kindling with the drought.

An elongated crater had been blasted into the side of the hill. Within a rough perimeter, the dirt, trees, grass and rocks on the landscape were scorched, partially buried or kicked up and thrown - sometimes all three. A human or animal wouldn't have survived that impact. Indeed, I saw many of the dead or dying, including a nice buck. The boulder Caleb and I took cover behind, thank the Lord, was outside of the circle of death.

The power of the explosion and the fact that I was still alive shocked me. That was one of those brushes with death a person has that he feels lucky to avoid. I took the Lord's name in vain. It was all I could say, surveying the devastation

That oath was also served as a prayer for rain. If the wind blew southeast for long enough, the fires could take hold and spread to the K-10, even from this distance, about ten miles away. If wildfires ravaged the range, Caleb and I would do what we could, but most likely we'd join Renner in starving in spite of prudent planning. It would all go for naught!

It usually doesn’t do a body any good worrying about what could happen. You're just plain better off concentrating on what did happen. I was curious to see what had crashed.

In addition to the buck, I saw a brown bear with a bent spine and other injuries. It writhed and moaned in pain, struggling for life and not getting any air after having been punctured by a number of bulleting rocks. I drew my .45 revolver and put a bullet between its eyes. I'm partial to those majestic creatures. I believe if I'd been born an Indian, the bear would be my spirit animal. They treat me good, and that's why I treated this one good. I've never lost one of my head to a bear attack. And yes, I can tell the difference between a bear mark and that of a wolf.

It had a fine winter coat that would keep someone warm next year. Edith could mend the punctures made by the rocks, I figured.

I considered it a gift from God. I would have never taken one under any other conditions, preferring beaver and rabbit. I wanted Caleb to skin it for me while I inspected the crater.

"Caleb? Boy? You all right?"

"Yeah," he said, slowly rising, grateful to be alive.

I set him to work. "Unhitch your knife and fetch me that bear skin. That's going to make one of us a fine coat."

"What was that, Pa, that fell out of the sky?"

"Don't know. While you're skinning, I'll be looking."

He kicked the ground. "I want to see too! Let me come with you Pa!"

Scowling, I said, "You just shut up and do as you're told. We can't waste time lollygagging around. I'm not going to spend much time looking around. We've got to get to Contention. I'll tell you what's up there when I get back. Skinning that bear is going to take a good piece of time. Get to work."

As I ascended the sides of the crater, I was reminded of the passage from Ezekiel 1 in the Old Testament and some ministers I heard whose sermons predicted the end of the world. I realized that if whatever fell out of the sky, had been bigger and faster, it might have flattened a much wider area - with me and my boy in it. Call it the saving hand of God or blind luck, whatever, having come so close to losing it, I truly appreciated my life at that moment.

There, at the bottom of the crater, lay the astounding cause of the destruction: a saucer-shaped craft. On one side was a panel that I reasoned was a door after trying to figure out what else it could be. Even a mongoloid like Renner could have seen it was a conveyance of some kind and the person that is going to be driving the conveyance has to have some way of getting in it. The impact caused the metal around the door of the saucer to bend, practically begging me to come over and pry it open and see what was inside.

Forget the bearskin. I knew I'd regret spurning heaven's gift, however. When the buzzards, ants and other scavengers got to it, and they would, they'd ruin the whole thing.

Curiosity had just got better of me as it sometimes does. "Caleb! Get up here!" I ordered.

I didn't need to tell him to stop skinning twice. He had no appreciation for a fine animal or the value of things. He ran up breathlessly, showing he could hurry when he wanted to, appearing almost instantly at my side. "What? . . . What in tarnation is that?"

"We're going to see. Fetch me a heavy stick and run back up."

Caleb found one from among the trees that the explosion had discarded. He scrambled back up the side of the hill. You could tell from the look in his eyes that this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. Was I just too plain old to know that kind of excitement? I wasn't excited, not like that. I felt like I was entering some kind of troubling territory. I wanted to be back on the trail to Contention City. I had business to do that it wouldn't do to forget. Still, I couldn't ignore this.

Grabbing my hatchet that I stored in '49er's saddlebag, I chopped off the roots and branches. I fashioned a dull edge on the top of the improvised lever as quickly as I could. The trunk was too thick to work into the crack otherwise. I took as little of the green wood off as I could, so as not to weaken the lever. I didn't know what I could use to pry open the door if my hastily made lever didn't work. This one was perfect.

"I'll be fit to be tied if I don't find out what's in this . . . whatever it is."

"Do you have any idea what it is?"

"No."

"It came out of the sky."

"I saw that."

"I wonder what it can be?"

I didn't say anything.

Caleb nodded as if I said something of significance. "I wonder where this comes from?" he said.

I didn't speculate out loud. I just concentrated on working. I can't talk and work quickly at the same time.

I jimmied the edge of my improvised crowbar in the fold and my boy and I put all of our weight and strength on that lever until I thought that the wood would surely splinter and rend. I was pleasantly surprised when it didn't. They don't call them plants ironwood for nothing.

Amazingly and gradually we defeated the metal. The door slowly bent back. The craft's structure had been already partially weakened by the crash, otherwise I'm sure we couldn't have affected it, solid as the metal was, and knowing what I later learned about the craft's origins later. The further we bent the door back, the better able I was to hear the groans issuing from inside. It didn't take a genius to realize something living was trapped in there. The question: How long could it go on living after such a horrific crash?

We figured whatever was groaning was probably dying. That reinforced our determination to get inside. We jammed the stick further into the opening. From there, we stood with our boots sticking inside and lifted using all of the strength we had in our legs and backs. After reaching a certain point, the strain let up. Giving way, popping, bending and groaning, the door slowly opened.

When we had the door fully open, I almost dropped it before I caught my breath. The hazy sunlight streamed in, revealing the mysteries inside the craft, a phantasmagoria of technology unimagined. If I hadn't had a drink in a week, I would have doubts about whether I was sober.

The creatures inside looked roughly human. I say roughly because their proportions weren't correct. Especially their heads. They were too big. They were unlike any other animal that I had ever seen either. I didn't seriously consider that they could be animals. There would be no way mere animals could build and drive a contraption like this.

Their suits looked like a woodcut out of a King Arthur storybook, except that instead of metal armor, they were sewn out of a silver metallic fabric that, to the touch, felt something like muslin. I'm sure King Arthur would have given anything for fabric like that if it protected from sword blows the way that steel and chain armor did. It was light.

The dark visor over their heads was constructed out of a glass that couldn't be seen through.

As amazing as all of this was to my widened eyes and queasy stomach, perhaps the most amazing thing was that one of the creatures was stirring and the other wasn't. How anything could have survived such a crash and explosion to have even been able to stir afterwards, I will never be able to fathom.

"Where do you think they come from Pa?"

"How am I supposed to know?" I snapped. Discovering things I knew nothing about frightened me and frazzled my nerves. "Maybe they're from Asia or someplace like that. Grab the one that's moving. Let's get him out."

I knew there was no way the Chinese had crafts like this that could fly through the air, not when they were having to send all of their people over here to work on the railroad. If they could build something like this, they surely could build their own railroad.

One has to reason that if they could build something like this, what need would they have with a railroad? This kind of craft, even though it crashed, was not the work of people who bothered with such things as railroads.

It gradually began to dawn on me that what I was looking at didn't come from Earth. But how could I say that out loud to Caleb and not sound crazy? At the time, we believed God created us to be the only intelligent creatures in the universe, with the black, red and yellow man and the Arab being below the white man in intelligence. The white man was supposed to rank as master of the Earth. Still, even a white man couldn't build something like this flying ship. I found it all very troubling.

Furthermore, both of these creatures were smaller than your typical Chinese railroad worker, and, like I said before, with different body proportions.

I guessed they were from China, with plenty of doubts about my guess. I'd been to the hills around San Francisco years before and had seen a few different types of orientals - but I'd never been to the Orient and there was no way that I'd seen every type of Oriental. A Swede would look different from a Frenchman even though both came from Europe. These could be of a type that didn't have to come to the United States to work on the railroad, I figured.

I tried to wedge myself in the door so that I could get a better grip on the shoulders of the driver. "The only way for sure that we're going to find out more about this contraption and about this creature is if we can get him out of here."

The creature groaned in pain when I started to lift him out of the ship, but as there was no other way to get him out. I ignored the groans and went on.

"Sorry if this hurts you," I said, aware he probably couldn't understand English. "I've got to get you out of here."

I was aware that when you jar people with a back injury that, even after they heal, they sometimes can't move their legs and arms. My wife was an intelligent woman who studied medicine. We had many interesting conversations about the topic. I hoped whatever race this man was part of, that the same fate wouldn't befall him, that God had seen fit to build him different from us.

"You all right, sir?" I asked the creature when I laid him out on the ground. I slipped the visor off of him, and found out that I'd been thinking correctly. He was a creature. No man looked like he did, with his bald head, enlarged, coal-colored eyes and greenish cast to his skin.

This was shaping up to be the weirdest day of my life. "So you from China?"

He didn't answer.

After I laid him on the scorched earth, the creature rocked himself and brushed at something that wasn't there. It looked to me like he was possessed, but I knew that he probably injured his head.

Edith told me people acted funny sometimes after they had a head injury. I wished I'd been paying better attention to what she was saying when she said it. I also wished Edith was there, because she's studied lots of medicine. She'd do better at it than I would.

The next best thing to having her here would be to take him to her. There was no other place to take him to anyway. "Get me '49er, Caleb. We need to take him home to Mom."

I didn't bother removing the creature's clothes because I heard that could make a man bleed even more, if he was bleeding.

Caleb didn't move, riveted to the ground by the shock of the creature's appearance.

"Look, son, he might be uglier than Medusa's little sister, but he's still one of God's creatures and we've got to try to save his life. Now go fetch '49er and be quick about it!" I thundered.

That got him to move. It's terrible how I sometimes have to yell at him to get him to do anything. Together we loaded him onto my horse.

"Now ride back with him," I said, figuring my horse could easily hold both my boy and the alien. They couldn't have weighted more than 230 pounds (104.3 kilograms) put together. "I'm going to go through the saucer and see what's in there, see if that other one is alive, though I doubt it. I'll be back at the ranch with Bear in a bit," I said.

"What about the bear, Pa?" he asked.

"Never mind about the bear. Git!" I said. "You don't see something like this everyday - if you ever see it at all."

After we moved the first creature, I realized I could move the second one alone. They only weighed half as much as a man.

I checked to see if he really was dead. I didn't see him breathing or moving. When I removed the inside of his faceplate, I found it covered with blood. Then, I was sure that the creature was dead. I was surprised to see that the blood was red, looking like it could have come from the inside of a person. I started to think again that maybe this was a new type of oriental I'd never seen before.

Opening the boxes and bags I took out of the craft, I tried to figure out what the items were for. I couldn't, and wouldn't, guess. One of the objects that I found in great quantity looked like a nail with thin curling ends. They weren't metal. They were more like the hard skin that a fingernail is made out of.

There was no way I'd try to build a house with one of those. Something like that wouldn't hold wood very well and would break when you hammered.

I guessed they weren’t intended to be used as nails, though that's what they looked like. If creatures were building things to fly around in like this craft that they'd be using a different type of nail.

The fake nails intrigued me. I took all of them because the creature might need them when his condition improved. He also might be able to tell me what they were used for. I'd accept something of the sort as a payment.

Considering that the creature might not get better, my next hope was that I could find somebody who could do something with all that I was recovering. At the very least these things would give my son and I proof that all this had happened when I told this story to others. Not that I really cared: I knew what had happened. If somebody didn't want to believe us, they wouldn't. They'd probably explain the whole story away by telling us that we grew out our fingernails, cut them, and shaped them into different weird objects and call us liars. Who knows what kind of explanation they'd come up with.

I had to have the ship. Let them try to explain that one away. I had to think of a way to get it back to the ranch. That would be tough for anybody else to explain away. And, maybe if the creature got better, he could fix it and take me for a ride in it. Ever since I was a boy I'd wanted to fly.

When I returned to the K-10, my wife was already hard at work trying to save the creature's life.

"How's he doing?" I asked her, removing my hat as I stepped inside. She had me trained as she was always fussy when it came to manners.

"He seems to be resting comfortably when I leave him alone. He doesn't resist when I try to examine him. Hope he lives."

"Me too." I said. "Later, go and see the things I was pulling off that skyship. Someday I'd like to find out what they do. Ain't nobody going to call us liars when they see this weird stuff."

"Buck, I don't think he's human," she said, tucking the creature into the quilts.

"You don't think maybe he's some kind of Oriental?"

"No. I've heard stories about creatures like this, creatures from another world," Edith said.

"I always thought they were made up."

"I guess not," she replied. "What exactly happened? From here it sounded like some kind of a cannon went off."

I shrugged. "Don't really know for sure. Probably the skyship got hit by some lightning from that storm that was blowing up in the sky.

"I'm taking Guzmán and Nuñez back to see if there's anything else we can get from the ship. Don't think I can bring the whole ship back, so tomorrow why don't you go and see it? Becky can watch this critter."

Though I was hungry, I didn't wait for the victuals Mrs. Nuñez was fixing up that afternoon in the kitchen. Getting back to that wreck was more interesting than eating, a rare opinion for me.

Caleb unloaded the bags and boxes I'd fastened onto '49er as I rounded up Nuñez and Guzmán.

"Grab a lantern and hitch up the wagon, hombres. It's going to be dark before we get back," I said.

They eagerly performed both tasks. "What are we going to see when we get there?" they asked.

"If I told you, you probably wouldn't believe me. You just better wait for yourself."

The craft was gone when I returned with my men. I stood in the middle of the crater, describing what Caleb and I had seen. I was grateful my men believed everything. They'd seen the proof, the strange creature we'd rescued as well as the material I'd taken out of the skyship. Who couldn’t help but believe?

"Damn," I said, cursing the disappointment of the missing skyship and the scavenged bear carcass, images that were becoming more fully fixed in the forefront my mind.

I won't ever forget them.

©2003 StoriesByEmail.com

Virginia Host