Stanley G Weinbaum

The Mad Moon Stanley G Weinbaum

When a party of slinkers undermines his shack, Calthorpe and Neilan flee into the Idiots' Hills, hoping the slinkers cannot follow them into the rarefied atmosphere. In a narrow valley between two peaks, they find a deserted city, apparently built by more-civilized previous generations of loonies. When opposed by the modern loonies, the slinkers form a narrow, dense mob, which Calthorpe destroys with a "flame pistol". This attracts Lee Neilan's father Gustavus, himself in search of her, and effects reunion. In gratitude to Calthorpe for saving his daughter, Gustavus offers him charge of a ferva plantation near Junopolis; whereupon Lee proposes her own marriage to Calthorpe.