I found my thicket and burrowed into it until I was almost out of sight. It wasn’t cold at all — the breeze didn’t get that close to the ground. I laid there, trying to listen to everything and pick out a man’s footsteps through the natural sounds and I’ll be darned if I didn’t fall asleep.
Two men woke me and they weren’t over fifteen feet from me. I could see one of them outlined against a slightly lighter patch of brush, but the other one was in shadow. They were talking in whispers but I could hear one say: “My foot’s damn near killing me.”
The other one said: “A blister! And you’re crying about it like it was a broken leg. Shut up and listen!”
They kept quiet a moment and I shoved the safety down on the automatic.
In a minute the one that had been complaining about his foot said: “I still think we should have stopped at the camp. We could have asked questions. I don’t like this.”
“It was your idea in coming back here to see what happened,” the other one said. “It’s like I said. Somebody’s keeping watch down there. There’s still a few coals where he built a fire and I can see where he’s rolled up in a blanket on the other side of it. Look there.”
He pointed and again they kept silent. Then the first one said: “Might as well go first-class. I’ll knock him out and we’ll look the truck over. I know I hit that kid, up in the road, but I want to see what happened down here.”
I kept flat on my stomach, just like I was. But I stuck the automatic out and said, “Don’t move!” from that position.
They moved fast and in two different directions. I shot once at the man who’d said he’d done the shooting up in the road — and I knew I’d missed as soon as I pulled the trigger. One of the men shouted — I couldn’t tell which because my ears were ringing from the noise of the gun — and then one of them shot back at me. I held the gun on the flash of his, as near as I could, and tried again. I couldn’t see him at all, but I knew it was the one who hadn’t done the shooting — the one who wasn’t complaining about his foot.
From farther down the hill, three more shots came my way — just as fast as they could be fired — and I heard Rawlins shout: “Hold ’em, Bryant!”
With that, the man who’d done the last shooting started running. I could hear him going through the brush, crashing through it with as much noise as a horse would make. I didn’t hear anything of the other man, so I called to Rawlins: “One of them’s still here. Keep back.”
He said, “Keep back hell!” and came panting up to where I was. He was holding a big club, and his hair was all tousled from where he’d been lying down. He didn’t have his glasses on and his uniform coat was unbuttoned with the collar loosened and he didn’t look at all like the strict careful officer he usually did. He said: “You hit anybody?”
I whispered, “Here, take the gun!” and passed it over. “You stay here — you’re a better shot than I am. I’ll get a bit away and turn the flash on. He’ll shoot at it and then you can nail him.”
“He may hit you. There’s been enough murder here tonight.”
“I’ll get behind a tree,” I said.
I did — twenty feet away — and stuck the flash out and turned it on and waited for the shooting to begin but nothing happened. I kept moving the flash back and forth, but not seeing where it was pointing, and all of a sudden Rawlins said, in a funny voice: “It’s all right. Come on, Bryant.”
I stepped out from behind the tree and he said: “Right ahead of you. You caught him with the light once. Our side’s getting in, now.”
And then I saw the man, lying face down and all spread out. He wasn’t moving and I held the light on him while Rawlins went up, covering him with the gun. He bent down and took a gun from the ground by the man’s hand and then I went up.
We turned him over and Rawlins said: “That’s marvelous, Mr. Bryant, marvelous! Between the eyes, shooting in darkness. I congratulate you, sir.”
I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t. When I’d shot at the flash of the dead man’s gun I’d gotten lucky for once. I’d hit him right between the eyes and what that heavy .45 bullet did to him was something not to see.
I said finally: “It wasn’t the right one. It wasn’t the one that shot the boy up in the road. He ran the other way, when I told them to not move.”
Rawlins said grimly: “This is a start. We can find who this man is, and from that we can locate his friend.”
Chapter Four
Rawlins Gets His Gun
We were still looking at the dead man when the boys from the camp got there. There were about a dozen of them — Ward had sent that many, both for safety and because he knew that none of the boys would have gone along that road at night alone after what had happened. They stopped above us, flashing lights all around, and called: “Captain Rawlins! Mr. Bryant!”
We went up to the road. The spokesman was a tow-headed kid, not over eighteen if that, and he was so excited he could hardly talk.
He said: “L-l-l-lieutenant W-ward sent us. There’s more trouble at the camp, sir, and Lieutenant Ward t-thinks you should go back there. H-he sent us after you.”
“What’s happened,” asked Rawlins.
“Somebody was sneaking around again, sir,” he said more calmly. “The cook was working late, getting ready for breakfast, and he heard ’em. He ran out and held one of them and then Lieutenant Ward came. There was some shooting and one of our guys got shot. He shot three times at the lieutenant though, sir, and the lieutenant didn’t know it was one of our guys when he shot back.”
“One of our boys! Is he hurt?”
“He’s dead. And the lieutenant said to tell you the telephone line is down. He said he’d have sent a truck out tonight but that it couldn’t get past this bad place in the road.”
I said: “What about the man the cook was holding? The one he grabbed when he ran outside, after hearing the noise? What about him?”
“That’s the guy that got shot, Mr. Bryant. He had a gun and he shot at the lieutenant, after he’d pulled away from the cook. His name was Joe Biggers, Mr. Bryant. He was in that bunch that runs around with Blacky Deiss.”
“That would be Richard Deiss?” the captain asked.
“Yes, sir. He’s from Gary, he and the guys that hang around with him.”
Young Deiss had been puzzling me for some time, but I didn’t think this was any time to go into further conversation about him. I hadn’t liked the boy, but put that feeling down to just not caring for his flip manner and talk.
The captain said heavily, to me: “This caps it. This puts the lid on it. I’ll be up before the board on this. I’ll face charges. Poor Ward — I’ll bet he’s in agony.”
“There’s an answer to it, sir. I’ve got a hunch Ward will come out all right.”
“Oh, they’ll call it an accident, no doubt. Will that make Ward feel any better? Will I feel any better — knowing one of the boys in my charge was shot by one of my officers? Knowing another officer lies dead here for God knows what reason?”
I said: “I’m willing to bet the telephone line was cut — and that the road will be wrecked, down at the pass where we go through that rock fill. I’ll bet that’s another place we’ll find the road tampered with.”