Hours later it seemed he was conscious of light. The b.l.o.o.d.y dirt-fouled beard of a dead guerilla was beneath his throbbing, swollen skull and a dead eye glared into his own. He twisted his head and saw the bullet-riddled body of a dark-haired girl sprawled a few feet away. The crackle of a burning building sounded close by; he could feel the heat upon his back.

Then soft hands were upon his head and the voices of women echoed in his ears. Agony lanced through his brain as they lifted him.

"It is an Allan," a gentle voice said, and his blurred vision caught a fleeting glimpse of a wan oval face above him. "I knew it when I saw that odd sword."

Dimly, he remembered being carried along the dusty street and hearing the drowsy murmur of hushed voices as he was laid upon a mattress of straw. Then the coolness of water touched his throbbing skull and he opened his eyes again. The same oval face, framed now with curling chestnut hair, was close above them. He tried to speak and the girlish head shook negatively. A white finger crossed her lips in command for silence, and she smiled gently.

Thereafter for two weeks Allan Allan lay helpless with a bullet-hole in his right temple. George Thuston and his daughter, Mabel, cared for him tenderly while he raved of Allah, mysterious black cities, witches, warlocks and war. Then one day he awoke again, clear of mind, and asked for his comrades.

"Gone," said Mabel softly, "toward the western coast of the United States. The Union Army is at last taking over control of Missouri. The guerillas of Parker, Anderson, and Younger are being smashed."

"They left word for you to meet them in California. San Francisco, they said...it will be many weeks before you can travel though."

Allan's heart warmed toward the smiling brown-haired girl who antic.i.p.ated his every need. Maybe he had reached an end to wandering. It would be so easy to love this lovely frontier girl. To rear broad-shouldered sons and st.u.r.dy daughters.

Life was simple and direct here in the Middlewest, none of the stifling petty customs and rules of the civilized East to harness a man. Great estates waited to be carved from virgin territory and the breadth of half a continent was yet to be conquered....

Allan Allan found his great sword and belted his revolvers about his waist. His eyes dropped to the ma.s.sive armlet of bra.s.sy metal and he smiled grimly.

Tonight he was to wed Mabel in the village church. After that, there would be no bird-like excursions into the future or from continent to continent. The old hunger to ride forward into the future was come upon him. His fingers touched the little stud.

"Why not?" he asked himself. "I can go forward but a half hour and for the last time enjoy the thrill of racing like a bird above the earth-bound mortals. Then I will lay aside the armlet forever."

He stepped outside the house, and adjusted the stud to its lowest rate. The transparent walls grew about him. He sent the sh.e.l.l of force higher and higher into the air. Clouds fell below him and the air grew thin and cold. He rioted in the swift, silent ease of flight.

Then he remembered the sweet face of Mabel and the weather-beaten gray church where they were to be married. The sh.e.l.l drove earthward again, back to the squalid houses and the dusty streets of Hamdon. He switched off the mysterious force of the armlet for the last time and entered the house.

A giant rose from his seat on the bed. Allan thrust out his hand, glad to see one of his old comrades.

"Just back from the Coast?" he asked, and then realized that his guest could have hardly reached the Coast in the few weeks elapsed.

"No," the other Allan said shortly. "You know where I come from."

Allan gasped. Of course. When he took that last flight into the future another duplicate self was fashioned to replace him in time by the weird scientific magic of the armlet. And this Allan too loved Mabel.

"I'm fighting you," announced the other, "and the best man marries her."

Hours later Allan Allan ruefully examined his swollen face and decided that both eyes were blackened. A grin contracted his puffy features painfully. He was heading westward toward California and the rest of his clan.

The other Allan had won.

Nothing now held him back from further conquest of the future. He moved away from his horses, one saddled and the other two laden with packs, and he looked at the ma.s.sive circlet of metal.

Then he was drifting above the horses and the sullen, broad-shouldered man squatted beside the campfire. This new Allan shook a vengeful fist at the unseen bulk of the time sh.e.l.l above him...

So it came that the warrior from the past came at last to rest in a beautiful little valley in Western New York State. There he rented a cottage, paying for it with old American money of pre-Civil War mintage.

It was 1940, a year when another word cataclysm was engulfing the civilized world. Daily he tramped the wooded hills and at night he read articles and studied dry scientific works borrowed from the nearby library. He had an insatiable appet.i.te for new knowledge.

This is where I met him - at the library. We lived but a little ways apart and so I gave him a lift on his way home. I said something about the Revolutionary War and he corrected me. Before I knew it, he was telling me the story of his life.

At four o'clock the next morning I drove home, stuffed to the ears with stories of Palestine, the Crusades, and the Civil War. That was the first of many such excursions into the harsh and b.l.o.o.d.y past. I examined his armlet, four or five pounds of some mysterious metallic alloy, and gripped the hilt of his weighty Crusader's sword.

There was something magnetic, dynamic, about him, not to be found in modern man....And something pathetic as well. He was a man out of place in the scheme of things. He was a crusader, a fighting man in search of worthy cause. Blood and weapons of lethal purpose he could understand, but the newer weapons of propaganda and pacificism meant nothing to him....

And one day he was gone. I saw him go, or rather the armlet upon his arm disappear - his duplicate self, of course, was left behind.

The fate of a small nation, attacked by a power-mad larger nation intent on world domination, was the reason for his departure. A proud people called to him, he said; doomed though the cause might be, he must go. He crushed my palm in his huge fingers and said goodbye.

And the next day his other body, duplicate Allan Allan, was gone. The cottage was empty. I tore a note from the door that I knew was meant for me.

"Can't rust out here in America," it said. "Joining the air force over the border for service abroad."

Somewhere in Europe with the rain pelting down and the abrupt rocky slope dragging the life from men's sinews, a thousand helmeted soldiers wearily advanced upon a lone, battered tank....

And from the cramped confines of the tank, in unwavering line, marched an endless column of giant men, automatic rifles in their hands, and heavy, cross-hilted swords at their sides....

A hundred - two hundred - on they marched, forward into battle!

end.