Page:Weird Tales v34n03 (1939-09).djvu/29

Rh it was going to wake up and cry, and then it decided not to. Someone was humming, though the lights weren’t on. A drowsy, sleepy sound. It made my eyelids droop, and my fingers began to relax from the fence.

OMETHING startled me. It was Catalina. She’d come out of the house, and slipped right up on me. She caught my hand as if I belonged to her, and we set out across the fields and through the thickets. She hadn’t put on another dress.

Catalina was whispering things in Spanish. English didn’t quite express her thoughts. She was tickled to meet someone who didn’t run and scream. Her hands were warm now, and so were her lips.

Once we were back on the tombstone, she told me the story of her life. That proved she was wired up one hundred percent feminine. It seems she grieved herself to death about a fiance some Gringo ruffian had shot to pieces.

She laughed right out when I asked her about the chances of seeing her turn into a wolf. "Oh, you are so funny! A vampire, she is a vampire. A werewolf, that is something different.”

None the less, I was doing some tall pondering. She seemed more substantial, since that queer, short trip to the cottage. And there had been a lot of pernicious and common anemia around Palo Verde. The butcher shops were sold out of calf liver by nine every morning, and at sixty cents a pound, the working classes couldn’t afford it. I began to get new angles on Prof Rodman’s frenzy about synthetic blood for transfusions.

This put me on the spot. Vampires are settled by having a wooden stake driven through their hearts while they’re lying in their graves. A prospective jurist has to be public-spirited, like the judge who sentenced his own son to hang. Professional ideals, I mean.

But Catalina was alive, in a way, and even if I were licensed to practise law, it would take a lot of constitutional amendments before I could be judge, jury, and executioner. Anyway, I liked her a lot. Maybe I could get her to change her ways.

"Honey,” I said finally, “you’re a damn devastating menace, picking on kids. Whyn’t you tackle grown-ups?”

Tears were in her eyes when she looked at me. "Ees too many of the college people. They drink gin, they smoke feelthy cigarettes. My stomach”—she patted herself in the appropriate spot—"she is weak.”

Me, I hadn’t smoked for so long I’d forgotten the taste. I was economizing, having to pay that fine for rioting at the theatre. Catalina’s grief touched me. She needed young blood, and the way people live in this year of grace was unpalatable.

Then I got the answer. I said, "Baby, I’ll save you and the kids of Palo Verde.” With a dramatic gesture, I bared my throat. "Drink deep!”

She slowly drew back. "But no. I love you, do you understand? It will kill you, and you are nice. You do not run and scream. Have you ever lived one hundred and twenty-nine years without any friends?”

"It’s been bad enough the past four years, going to school and being broke,” I told her, which was the truth. "But listen. Prof Rodman is inventing a tonic that builds blood. I’ll take a bottle of it. That way, it’ll be fine for everyone concerned.”

This intrigued her, though explaining it was tough. In the first place, I didn’t understand the details, and in the second place, women are awfully dumb about scientific things. She ended by saying it was perfectly clear.

"If you are sure,” she said, eager yet hesitant.

Catalina’s teeth were whiter than a toothpaste model’s. For a second, I felt