Exploits by Mike Resnick Page B

not to shoot you.”
    “Capturing Clyde Calhoun ?” he said excitedly.
    “You've heard of him?”
    “I've seen all his movies and read all his books,” said Hightower. “He's one of my boyhood heroes.”
    “I'm sure he'll be mighty glad to hear it,” I said.
    “But surely I'm not in any danger from him,” continued Hightower. “I mean, doesn't Capturing Clyde always bring ’em back alive?”
    “Well, now, that's subject to various delicate shades of interpretation,” I said. “But I think it's fair to say that them what he brings back without eating or skinning first is generally alive. Still,” I added, “if I was you, I'd introduce myself to him right quick, and preferably when he wasn't carrying his gun.”
    He stood up and looked up the mountain.
    “I'm afraid that won't be possible, Doctor Jones,” he said.
    “Why not?” I asked.
    “Because when you fired your rifle you started an avalanche that seems to have brought down half the mountain. We could be days or even weeks getting back to your cave.”
    “What are we going to do in the meantime?” I asked.
    “I've got shelters hidden all over the mountain,” answered Hightower. “We'll find one that hasn't been covered by the avalanche and use it for a headquarters while we try to clear the trail to your cave.”
    Well, I couldn't think of no better alternative, and so I followed him to one of his shelters, where he had a fire going and an old hand-cranked Victrola and lots of Rudy Vallee records, which weren't really to my taste but were a lot better than just sitting there listening to the wind whistle by.
    He was real interested in finding out what events of Earth-shaking import had transpired since he'd left the States in rather a hurry, so I told him about how the Red Sox had traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees, and how Clara Bow had encouraged the Southern California football team to win the Rose Bowl, and that one of our Presidents had died but I couldn't remember which one. He was especially glad to hear that Morvich had won the 1922 Kentucky Derby.
    “I put all my money on him just before I took off,” he explained.
    “Well, you ought to have a tidy nest egg waiting for you when you finally go home,” I said.
    “I doubt it,” he replied with a sigh. “My bookie was Guido Scarducci.”
    “Maybe there's some subtle little nuance I'm missing here,” I said, “but ain't Guido Scarducci the fellow that's out to kill you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then why on earth did you bet your money at his particular establishment?”
    Hightower shrugged. “He was the only bookie in Montana.”
    I suddenly found myself silently agreeing that Tibet was probably just the place for him to hang out while his survival skills were catching up with the rest of his growth, but I kept these sentiments to myself since I make it a practice never to offend anyone over eight feet tall unless it ain't avoidable.
    The nightly blizzard came and went, and we were out at sunrise the next morning, digging a path up to Clyde's cave. It wasn't all that hard to dig through the snow, but every half hour or so we'd come to a boulder that we couldn't climb over or walk around, and as you might imagine it kind of slowed our progress. Hightower was afraid Clyde might be trapped in his cave, but I figured that Clyde was used to taking care of himself in strange lands and ticklish situations, and in truth the one thing that kept me going through all them days of digging and shoving boulders down the mountainside was the thought of all that jade sitting there in my picnic basket.
    After a week we ran out of food and had to change shelters, and after two more weeks all the shelters were plumb out of food, and we figured if we didn't reach Clyde in another day or two we were going to have to climb down the mountain and borrow a little food from some of the locals. Hightower assured me that it wouldn't be no problem, since whenever they saw him they started screaming and running the other