Brown Limper Staffor came away from the compound utterly ill with envy– he called it “righteousness.”

What a horrible, vulgar spectacle!

All those people crowding about, cheering even, touching his moccasins, absolutely fawning. It was more than a normal sane man like Brown Limper could tolerate.

He had felt he was losing ground lately, and he beat his head to think of ways and means, even criminal, to correct this gross mistake people were making about that Tyler!

Since Jonnie Goodboy Tyler had come to the village last year, prancing about, bribing people with gifts– while really only trying to do them out of their lands and houses– and since Brown Limper had realized that Tyler was not only not properly dead but apparently moving in a larger world and moving far too successfully-Brown Limper had been lying in wait.

When he recalled how he had been put upon and scorned and held up to ridicule by Tyler ever since they were children, he seethed. He had to be careful not to dwell on it too much, for then he would lie awake in bed and roll and toss and grit his teeth and bring on a fever. That the instances of Tyler's doing those things could not be directly recalled or isolated as actual incidents only made it grindingly worse. They must have happened or Brown Limper wouldn't feel this way, would he? It proved itself.

When he heard that Tyler was crippled and likely to die, a flood of relief had poured through Brown Limper. But here he was today, limping maybe but certainly making a nauseating spectacle of himself with those Psychlos.

It was not that Brown Limper had not been trying. Some time since when old Jimson had complained of rheumatism, Brown Limper had kindly shown him how beneficial locoweed was to aches and pains– Parson Staffor had left a supply. Brown Limper had performed this act of humanity right after he had been startled to find old Jimson inclining toward Tyler's criminal proposals to destroy the village and move the people to some desolate mountainside and abandon them there to starve and freeze. Jimson obviously could not be trusted to govern, due of course to his aches and pains. Mercifully now he had retired to his bed and awoke when his family brought him some food. It was so gratifying to see that the old man was out of his pain and not worried and harassed by village affairs. It was, of course, a bit of a burden to take all the work on himself, but Brown Limper was patient and enduring, if a bit pious, about it.

When the Coordinators had come from the World Federation for the Unification of the Human Race, Brown Limper had thought of them as interfering busybodies at first. Then they had shown him some books.

Old Parson Staffor, before he began to chew on locoweed day and night, had taken his responsibilities seriously, both to his village and to his family. He had sought to initiate Brown Limper into the church and had brought out from hiding a secret book no one else in the village knew about called “The Bible,” and in strict privacy he had taught Brown Limper how to read. But Brown Limper had not much cared for a career as a parson, and he had thought it was better to aspire to be a mayor. A parson could only persuade, but a mayor...well now!

It was quite simple logic. There was Tyler, prancing around on his horses, ogling the girls, the young men following his lead and getting into trouble, the Council soft-headedly overlooking his criminal pursuits. And there was Brown Limper-wise, tolerant, understanding, and brilliant– overlooked and even scorned and cast aside. And hadn't Tyler's own father– if he really was Jonnie Goodboy Tyler's father-protested when Brown Limper was born clubfooted and mutated and was allowed to live. Well, maybe not just older Tyler but Brown Limper's mother used to tell him that some had protested but that she had prevailed and saved his life. She used to tell him that several times a week and Brown Limper had gotten the message: the Tylers had attempted to murder him!

So it was only sensible he should be upset and take measures to protect not only himself but the whole village as well. It would be utterly irresponsible not to do so.

These Coordinators had been delighted to find he could read and had given him some texts on “government” and one on “parliamentary procedure” called “Robert's Rules of Order.” They had astonished him by informing him that as the active and only mayor, he was the chief of the American tribe. Apparently nearly all the people in America (they had to show him where it was on the globe) had been slaughtered or died off; his was the principal tribe and, being near the minesite, the most influential group politically.

Getting right down to it, what was this Council? Well, it was the heads of tribes all over the world, and they met or sent their deputies to meet in a sort of parliament right here in his front yard, so to speak.

They mentioned that he of course should be very interested due to the fact that the Jonnie came from there. Brown Limper did not just become interested, he became obsessed!

Were there any other peoples in America? Well, there were a couple found in British Columbia and four found in the Sierra Nevadas-a mountain range to the west– and some Indians-not really from India but called that– in some mountains way to the south. There were Eskimo and Alaskan tribes but they didn't count geographically in America.

Brown Limper had been making progress. Since each Council member had one vote, he engineered the rescue of the couple in British Columbia and the four in the Sierra Nevadas (this was all humanitarian, of course) and settled them in his village as tribes and now claimed three Council votes. He was just now working on the Indian question to get a member of that tribe up here and so have four Council votes.

He hoped he was also making progress in other ways. At the Council he would casually and very truthfully drop remarks about Tyler. How the village had always considered him wild, rash, and irresponsible even though he personally had tried to correct such impressions. He mentioned how as a child Tyler was always running about playing and refused even to draw water for his family, an obligation all well-behaved, thoughtful children had. He made light of any rumor that Tyler had known about the tomb all the time and had hidden the information so that he, Tyler, could go there and rob the honorable dead: Tyler only went now and then, he said, and the parson of the village had once tried his best to correct him and had even taken some of the things the boy had stolen away from him as punishment. Tyler had eventually run away entirely and left his family and the whole village to starve for two winters. As to Tyler and Chrissie not being married, well, actually that was a village secret– the parson had found out certain things when they were children and had forbidden marriage. Not that Tyler cared much for authority– youth being what it

Was...

A lot of the older chiefs from far-off places did not know much of what was going on, and wasn't Chief Staffor the only one around who had been Tyler's own dear companion?

Just a couple of days before, Brown Limper had been argued with by some ignorant lout, a chief from the Siberian tribe, and Brown Limper had a feeling they didn't all quite believe him. So he had been morose. Didn't he know Tyler, the real Tyler? And now this disgusting spectacle of self-aggrandizement today. What a conceited oaf. Ugh! Spit! And now he had the nerve to go around pretending he couldn't walk. Just more mockery of Brown Limper.

Brown Limper had noticed that the Psychlo in the cage seemed to be on very good speaking terms with Tyler. While he did not know what they were saying, it was obvious that they were actually well known to each other. But he had detected some bit of frostiness there.