ses."

"I don't understand," I said.

"You're all leaving?" Scott asked, with a note of urgency.

"It has been decided. We'll go over the next twenty-four hours."

"But _why_?" Scott said, sounding almost petulant.

"It's not something that I can easily explain. As you must know, the things we
gave you were trinkets to us -- almost worthless. We traded them for something
that was almost worthless to you -- a fair trade, you'll agree -- but it's time
to move on."

Craphound handed me the cowboy trunk. Holding it, I smelled the lubricant from
his exoskeleton and the smell of the attic it had been mummified in before
making its way into his hands. I felt like I almost understood.

"This is for me," I said slowly, and Craphound nodded encouragingly. "This is
for me, and you're keeping the glasses. And I'll look at this and feel. . ."

"You understand," Craphound said, looking somehow relieved.

And I _did_. I understood that an alien wearing a cowboy hat and sixguns and
giving them away was a poem and a story, and a thirtyish bachelor trying to
spend half a month's rent on four glasses so that he could remember his
Grandma's kitchen was a story and a poem, and that the disused fairground
outside Calgary was a story and a poem, too.

"You're craphounds!" I said. "All of you!"

Craphound smiled so I could see his gums and I put down the cowboy trunk and
clapped my hands.

#

Scott recovered from his shock by spending the night at his office, crunching
numbers talking on the phone, and generally getting while the getting was good.
He had an edge -- no one else knew that they were going.

He went pro later that week, opened a chi-chi boutique on Queen Street, and
hired me on as chief picker and factum factotum.

Scott was not Billy the Kid. Just another Bay Street shyster with a cowboy
jones. From the way they come down and spend, there must be a million of them.

Our draw in the window is a beautiful mannequin I found, straight out of the
Fifties, a little boy we call The Beaver. He dresses in chaps and a Sheriff's
badge and sixguns and a miniature Stetson and cowboy boots with worn spurs, and
rests one foot on a beautiful miniature steamer trunk whose leather is worked
with cowboy motifs.

He's not for sale at any price.

--

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