“Of course,” I says. I got up off the bed.
“I could have swore he nipped at you,” Pop says, like he still could believe it.
“We better get back,” I says. “The sheriff wants me to go with him to start the dogs on the trail.”
“Sure,” he says. “They’re gone now to see if they can find something of hers for the scent.”
“That was what I was going to tell him, when you grabbed me,” I says. “Uncle Sagamore had some of her clothes.”
“Oh,” Pop says. He frowned kind of thoughtful. “I don’t know whether I’d tell him that or not. Course, I suppose it’d be all right—No, I expect we’d better not.”
“Well?” I asked. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Well,” he says, “she’s lost, you see, and Dr Severance has been shot, so in a way everything in that trailer has been impounded by the Gov’ment and nobody’s supposed to touch anything until the estate has been settled. It’s kind of legal stuff you wouldn’t understand very well. Of course, it’s all right for the shurf to go in there, but not us. Uncle Sagamore put the stuff back, of course, when he didn’t find her, but it might be a good idea not to say anything about it.”
“Oh,” I says. “Well, I won’t mention it.”
We went back out. Uncle Sagamore and the sheriff had come down close to the front yard and was waiting. The smell from the tubs was pretty bad there, and the sheriff was fanning the air with his hat. In a minute the other deputy came back. He had that pair of gold sandals of Miss Harrington’s—I mean Miss Caroline’s.
Me and the sheriff and the deputy started down below the lake with them holding on to the dogs’ leashes. When we got around on the lower side of it in the timber there was men everywhere, still looking.
“I don’t know how the hell a dawg could foller nothin’ in this trampled-up mess,” the sheriff says, real bitter. “Help! Hah! We’ll be the rest of the fall roundin’ up the lost hunters, after we locate her.”
We went on up through the woods until we was across from the place where we swum, and I showed the sheriff where we climbed out of the water while they was shooting at us. From there it was only a little way through the timber to the little gully with the ferns growing around it. For a wonder, there wasn’t anybody else around, and the ferns hadn’t been trampled on. You could still see the broken one where we had hid.
“You see?” I says. “Right there.”
“Good,” the sheriff says. “I’m glad somebody around this place is a decent, intelligent, common, ordinary, co-operatin’ human being. You’re all right, Billy.”
Being back here on the spot reminded me of how we’d listened to the other gangsters going by in the leaves while we was hid. I told the sheriff about it. “So there must have been three of them,” I said. “Maybe the other one’s still down there, or else he got away.”
He shook his head. “No. He didn’t get away. We found the car out there on the road last night and nabbed him when he showed up. So far he ain’t said a word, so we don’t know whether he got her or not, but the fact you say you heard him makes your story check out.”
“You—you reckon he shot her, Sheriff?” I asked.
He frowned, kind of thoughtful. “No. I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure she’s still alive.”
“It sure looks like they’d have found her by this time,” I says.
“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t it?”
We went over to where the deputy was holding the dogs, and the sheriff let each one of them smell the pair of sandals. They whined a little and looked real interested. Then the sheriff put the sandals inside his shirt and let the dogs over close to where we had laid in the ferns. They whined some more and pulled hard to get over to it. They went snuff! snuff! snuff! with their noses close to the ground, and when the sheriff and the deputy unstrapped the leashes they went swarming all over the gully, eager and excited as anything, and then one of them let out this big booming bark and started down the hill swinging back and forth with his nose close to the ground and his ears flapping. The others followed him.
“They got it!” the sheriff yelled. “They got the scent.”
They disappeared downhill in the trees. We could hear their baying and tell which way they was going, so we ran along after them. The sheriff was pretty lame from that long walk out from town, so he had a hard time keeping up. In a minute we caught sight of them again, crossing a little open space. Four other men was chasing after them then. They was pointing and yelling.
“Hey, Joe,” one of them shouted. “Come on. Them dawgs is on the trail. They’ll lead us to her.”
Two more men came charging out of the bushes and took out after the rest. More kept coming. Every time we’d catch sight of the dogs there’d be a bigger crowd after them. We began to drop behind, but we could tell by the trampling and crashing through the brush ahead that there was a whole army of them up ahead of us trying to keep up with the dogs. The uproar got further and further away, going down towards the bottom.
The sheriff had to stop and rest. He sat down on a stump and pulled out the big red handkerchief to mop his face. He sighed and shook his head. “You just don’t know what it can do to you,” he says to the deputy, real bitter and discouraged. “I mean, waking up in the dead of night with the cold sweat on you, wondering what the hell he’ll do next. And the awful part of it is even after you’ve found out, you ain’t going to be able to pin it on him. All you can do is go around and sort of pick up the pieces. He ain’t done a lick of work in forty years that I know of; he’s got plenty of time to plan these things so he’s two moves ahead of you all the time.
“Now you take this one. He knows perfectly well I can’t order that carnival out of here—even if it could get out, which it can’t because the road’s clogged with abandoned cars—which he also knew would happen. He knows I can’t order it out and break up this thing because it’s got a permit to operate in this county. So while the whole damn state’s in a uproar over a naked cooch dancer that probably ain’t even down here, he’s drawin’ a fat rake-off from the hamburgers and dancing girls and wheels-of-fortune and the floozies, beside selling moonshine to ‘em at New York prices and charging them a dollar to park their cars into a solid snarl.
“And now, you mark my words, before it’s over there’ll be something else, too—like maybe a big mudhole suddenly developing in the road and when they do get the road clear everybody will get stuck and have to be pulled out at two dollars a head.”
“Sheriff,” I says, “you mean you still don’t think Miss Caroline was with me?”
He took off his hat and mopped his head again. “I don’t really know what I think any more, Billy,” he says. “I do believe you’re telling the truth, in spite of your handicap of being a member of the Noonan family. I believe she was with you, but where she is now I wouldn’t even try to guess. Do you hear them dawgs?”
“Yes,” I says. “Sounds like they’re pretty far over there.”
He nodded. “They’re about two miles away, and still going across the bottom. That girl was barefooted, and she couldn’t have walked three hundred yards, but before the day’s over you’re going to find out the dawgs has followed her trail somewhere around eighteen to twenty miles, back and forth across this bottom. There’ll be three or four thousand men following ‘em, and every time they double back up past the carnival a fresh bunch of tired ones will drop off the rest and pay a dollar to watch the belly dancers, and eat hamburgers that’ll get smaller and smaller and have more and more oatmeal in them and will be selling for a dollar and a half by sundown. I been through all this before. Not this particular one, mind you, but with the same Sagamore Noonan touches.”
I kind of liked the sheriff, but it seemed to me like he was too excitable and he did too much griping about Uncle Sagamore. I couldn’t see anything wrong with him trying to get as many people as he could down here to look for Miss Caroline. I was worried about her, and I didn’t think we ought to be just si
tting here when she still hadn’t been found.
“Hadn’t we better start after the dogs again?” I says. “They’re still barking like they’re on the trail, and they’ll have to catch up with her sooner or later.”
“You don’t have to follow bloodhounds that close,” he says. “You just listen to see which way they’re going. I think they’re beginning to swing now, so they’ll be back up this way before long. My guess is they’ll go through the edge of that cornfield up there behind the house.”
Well, we waited. And sure enough, it wasn’t but about half an hour before we could hear them and the whole army of men that was following them go crashing through the underbrush and timber about a furlong off to the right of us. We went over there just in time to get a glimpse of the dogs, and then we was running along in a swarm of men. The dogs went up the hill and then, by golly, it was just like the sheriff had said. They cut along the edge of the cornfield, down back of the barn, and then headed out across the bottom again.
The sheriff looked furious, but him and the deputy started back down that way. Several hundred of the men didn’t, though. They broke away and started up through the cars in the cornfield, headed for the carnival and the hot-dog stand. I was hungry too, so I called Sig Freed and we went along behind them.
There was a terrific crowd up by the stand now, and you couldn’t hardly get near the carnival. The loudspeakers was blaring and the five girls was dancing on the stage. All the other tents had big swarms around them too. Everywhere you looked there was men.
Murph and his two men was so tired they could hardly move. Murph handed me a hamburger when I finally got up close to the counter. Sure enough, the meat in it was a lot smaller than the one I’d got at noon.
“That ‘ll-be-one-dollar-fifty-no-they-haven’t-found-her,” he says.
“Pop’ll pay you,” I told him.
He looked at me. “Oh,” he says. “I’m getting punchy, kid. I didn’t even recognize you.”
I didn’t see Pop and Uncle Sagamore anywhere, but there was so many men around it would be hard to see them. I tried to watch the girls dancing, but everywhere I stood there was a bunch of tall men in front of me craning to see, theirselves, and anyway they went back inside the tent in a few minutes and the people started buying tickets for the inside show. I tried to get one too, and told the man Pop would pay him.
“Kid,” he says, “come back in fifteen years with a dollar, and I’ll let you in. It’s a promise.” He looked tired too, and his voice was hoarse.
I started to turn away, and then he tossed me fifty cents. “Here, kid,” he says. “Go over to the shooting gallery and shoot a round.”
I finally managed to squeeze my way in there, and I shot fifty cents worth at the little targets travelling across the back of the gallery on a moving belt. I didn’t hit much. When the money was gone I started looking for Pop and Uncle Sagamore. They didn’t seem to be up here anywhere, so I went down to the house. The smell from the tubs hit me in the front yard, as bad as ever, or worse, and that reminded me we never had bottled up any more of the juice to send to the government to have analyzed. Well, maybe, we’d get around to it when Miss Caroline was found and all this uproar died down.
That made me wonder if we would find her. There just wasn’t any use kidding ourselves any longer; she had been lost nearly twenty-four hours now, and it looked more and more all the time like something bad had happened to her. Maybe that last gangster had shot her and put her body in one of the sloughs down there. That made me feel sick, and I was about ready to cry when I went in the house.
Pop and Uncle Sagamore was there in the front bedroom with the door closed, counting another bunch of money out of a flour sack. It was all over the bed.
“They haven’t found her yet, Pop,” I says.
He nodded. “I know. But they will; you just wait. Hell they can’t help it—look at how many of them is looking.”
“I know. Something must have happened to her.”
He slapped me on the back. “No sir, you just buck up. I got a feeling Miss Caroline’s perfectly all right.”
Uncle Sagamore took the sack of money after it was all counted and went out with it somewhere. When he came back we went out on the front porch. We could see Uncle Finley down there on top of the ark, hammering away to beat the band.
“He must figure the rain’s already started,” Pop says. “All these cars showing up around here.”
“I reckon so,” Uncle Sagamore says. “Oh. There’s Harm. I got to talk to him a minute.”
He went up beyond the front yard a little and caught up with a tall skinny man wearing khaki pants and shirt and no hat. He had a bald spot almost like Uncle Sagamore’s. They talked together for a few minutes and then Uncle Sagamore came back and sat down.
It was nearly sundown now, and up there in the big swarm of men around the carnival they was hanging some electric lights on tree limbs and over the stage in front of the girl tent. I guess there was a generator on one of the trucks.
Just then the sheriff and the new deputy and Booger came around the corner of the house. They was really beat down. Booger had red rims around his eyes and a stubble of beard, and his clothes was dusty and sweat-stained. The sheriff was limping and his clothes was in about as bad a shape as Booger’s.
“Set and rest a spell, men,” Uncle Sagamore says. “You look kind of done in. Any luck yet?”
Booger and the new deputy sat down, just kind of collapsing on the steps. The sheriff stood there, swaying a little on his feet and staring real cold at Uncle Sagamore.
“No luck yet,” he says. “But we expect to find her any minute now. The dawgs is making their fourth trip across the bottom, hot on her trail. As near as I can figger, that adds up to about seventeen miles. She was barefooted and hadn’t even been off pavement before in her life, so it stands to reason she couldn’t be very far ahead of ‘em now.”
Uncle Sagamore scratched his leg with his toenail. “Well sir, it would sure seem like it.”
The sheriff nodded. “Unless, of course, she’s stretched out into a real hard run. You got to take that into consideration; she’s only been going twenty-four hours. And after she wore off the tender part of her feet, say up about half-way to her knees, they might quit bothering her and she could make better time.”
Uncle Sagamore nodded too, with his lips pursed up. “She sure is a puzzling thing, all right, Shurf. For the life of me I just can’t figure it out.”
The sheriff exploded then. He stuck a finger right in Uncle Sagamore’s face and yelled, with his face purple. “Sagamore Noonan! Where is that girl?”
Uncle Sagamore looked at him in surprise. “Why, Shurf, how would I know? Ain’t I been looking for her myself practically night and day?”
Before the sheriff could say anything else, somebody called him from up near the edge of the crowd. We all looked up that way, and it was Otis. He came limping down through the yard, and he looked about as done in as the others. His eyes was red like he hadn’t had any sleep, and he hadn’t shaved.
The sheriff rubbed his hands across his face and says to Otis, “How’s it going out there?”
Otis kind of collapsed on the steps too. “Well,” he says, “they got the highway clear, with road blocks set up so no more hunters can get through to clog it up again. There’s three wreckers and a bulldozer workin’ on the road now, movin’ the cars out of it where they can an’ dozin’ a path around where they can’t. They’re half-way in from the highway, and likely the whole road’ll be open by midnight. Somebody ran over the last one of Marvin Jimerson’s hawgs, though, just a while ago, and he’s filed suit against the county.”
“How’s things in town?” the sheriff asked.
Otis shook his head. “About the same. Women is picketing the courthouse. The PTA, the Women’s Club, and the League of Women Voters held a combined mass meetin’ in the high school and they’re goin’ to wire the governor to send the National Guard if you don’t get these men
out of here by mornin’. A few of the reporters has found their way back to town on foot, and word’s got out about the belly dancers and the carnival and the girls, so there was some talk at the meetin’ of charterin’ a helicopter to bring a delegation out here, but there wasn’t enough money in the treasuries.
“The road blocks is going to try to hold back the car-loads of women as soon as word comes through the road’s clear into here, but they won’t be able to hold ‘em long if there ain’t signs of this breakin’ up by morning.” And if them women get in here I’m sailin’ right out across that bottom on foot and I ain’t goin’ to stop this side of the West Coast.”
The sheriff shuddered. “Well, men, you got any ideas for gettin’ ‘em out of here? If we tell ‘em that, most of ‘em will be afraid to go home. They’ll figure that since they’re goin’ to be in the dawghouse anyway they might as well live her up as long as they can. There ain’t no hope of findin’ that girl so we can convince ‘em it’s all over. She ain’t really down in the bottom—” He stopped then and his eyes got real hard. Then he went on, looking at Uncle Sagamore.
“But maybe if I could make ‘em understand they been homswoggled by this crooked old wart hog here, and gypped into spendin’ their money and getting theirselves in the dawghouse with their wives—”
“You reckon you could make ‘em see it?” Booger asked, showing a little interest for the first time.
“I can sure try,” the sheriff says. “They sure must be beginning to wonder theirselves why a whole army of men ain’t been able to find a girl in a place that size.”
“But, look,” Otis says, with a real nasty smile. “We couldn’t do that. They might lynch him.”
“Oh, of course not,” the sheriff says. “Hell, how could they? There’s four law officers here to protect him, and only about eight thousand of them.”
Seventeen
The diamond bikini Page 17
