“Uncle George! Uncle George!”
The two men were silent, shaken by the suddenness of it. Stack turned his flash around. “We better move,” he said, licking his lips. “You can see where the bank’s undermined here in spots. It gave way with the old guy right here.”
“Come on, let’s get away from the edge,” McVey said. He yanked on the rope that was attached to Joey, pulling the dazed boy away from the falls.
“We gotta try to find him!” Joey wailed.
“You crazy?” Stack said. “Nobody could live through that. He’s already pounded to death on the rocks.” He looked at McVey. “So now what?”
McVey shone his flashlight on Joey’s white, fear-struck face. “It looks like it’s up to you, Junior,” he said grimly. “You know these woods, don’t you? Been out here with the old boy before, haven’t you?”
Joey nodded, as though he only half heard.
“Your uncle said there was a way around the falls. Longer, he said, but it’s probably a damn sight safer. You know the way?”
“There’s an old logging road,” Joey said. “I... I think I could find it from here.”
“You better,” McVey growled. “I’m warning you, sonny-boy, you try to pull one on us and I go back after your old man and your old woman, and that pretty teacher—”
“I... I think I can find it,” Joey said in a shaken voice.
“So... get started!”
For half an hour they floundered around in brush and fallen tree limbs. Suddenly Joey turned, pointing with his flashlight. “Old logging road. You can see it,” he said to McVey.
They moved with greater ease now. The road was rough, but there was no obstacle of undergrowth.
“Even if it is longer we can move faster,” McVey said to Stack. He gave a little jerk on the rope and gestured to Joey to speed it up.
And then things happened so suddenly that McVey had no chance to act.
Directly in front of them the headlights of a car sprang into light. At the same instant Joey plunged forward, flat on his face. McVey had only a fleeting glimpse of the figure that stepped into the beam of light ahead of them — the dripping figure of Uncle George. He had raised a rifle to his shoulder and quite methodically he pulled the trigger. McVey’s body jerked upward like a marionette on strings, then pitched sideways into the darkness. There was a round black hole in the center of his forehead.
Uncle George turned the gun slightly to the left.
“No!” Stack screamed. “Don’t shoot!” He swung his arm and threw the .45 he was carrying into the underbrush. “Don’t shoot!”
“Hold it, George!” another voice said. “We need him to do some talking.” Sheriff Egan stepped forward into the light, a shotgun cradled in his arm. “You hold dead still, brother, unless you want a double load in your gut!”
Uncle George took three quick steps to the fallen boy and knelt beside him, cradling him in his arms.
“You did fine, boy,” he said unsteadily. “You did just fine!”
It was all Joey could do to keep awake. His mother had given him two aspirins and a cup of hot tea. He was wrapped in blankets, and the heat from the kitchen range made him so drowsy that he felt his head drooping and he had to fight to listen.
Joey’s mother and father, and Uncle George, and Sheriff Egan and the lovely Miss Graves were all there. They had all made a great fuss over Joey. Miss Graves had actually kissed him. His mother kept telling him he ought to get to bed, but she smiled at him gently and didn’t press the point.
“These guys knocked over a diamont merchant in Montreal,” the sheriff was saying. “Killed him and got away with about a half a million dollars in stones. Had ’em in that brief case all the time! They figured they could drive away at night — and ran right into the flood. When they saw Russ Toomey waving his torch at ’em they thought it was a police road block and they deliberately ran him down.”
“I still don’t understand the rest of it, Mr. Egan,” Esther Trimble said. “How did you know to go to George’s shack in the woods? And how did Joey know what to do?”
“It’s George’s story,” Egan said.
Uncle George chuckled, and his pale blue eyes moved affectionately to Joey, who smiled back sleepily. “Fellow with a gun always figures he’s stronger than the fellow he’s covering,” Uncle George said. “And he usually thinks he knows more than the poor sucker who’s looking into his gun barrel. That was McVey. He fell into a trap when he made that up about arguing with Russ Toomey, but he was still top man — the smartest guy on earth. We didn’t have any choice, it seemed, but to do just what he said — not with that gun pointed at Joey’s head! But we weren’t entirely licked.”
“I’ll say!” Red Egan chuckled. He was sitting next to Janet Graves and Joey guessed she must be too interested in the story to notice that the sheriff’s hand was resting against hers.
“I tipped Red off right away there was trouble,” Uncle George said. “Told him I was heading ‘south to Hyland Brook.’ Hyland Brook is north of here in the next county! I told him I was going to take these fellows over the west ridge into New York State. Red knew as well as I did that if we went over the west ridge we’d wind up in Massachusetts. Told him we were taking a camp kit he’d given Joey — which he never gave him. Mistake after mistake that the two strangers couldn’t suspect — so Red knew there was trouble, and he also knew enough to let me play in my way!”
“Always let you play it your way, George.”
“Then I told Miss Graves here to tell Red to meet me at my shack in the woods and stay under cover till he heard from me.”
“How could you tell her?” Hector interrupted. “You were never out of McVey’s sight — or the other fellow’s.”
“There were three people in this town who made friends with Russ Toomey,” Uncle George said. “There was Joey, first and best, and me, and Miss Graves, who tried to teach the poor deaf and dumb boy a little on the side. So we learned to talk his way — with our hands! I stood at the door with McVey staring right at me and told Miss Graves with my hands what to tell Red. And then in the car I told Joey what was up — the same way. You remember the Devil’s Slide, Esther — when we were kids? Water comes over the falls — overhang up top. At the bottom there’s a pool hid right behind the water coming over the falls. I told Joey I was going to dive in there. They wouldn’t be able to see me through the overflow — not in the dark with only flashlights. Then Joey was to stall a while and finally lead ’em along the logging road to my shack.”
“You were taking a pretty big gamble with Joey’s life,” Hector Trimble sputtered.
Uncle George’s face was grave. “Yes, I was, Hector. But don’t think for a minute McVey was going to let us go after we’d served his purpose. He’d have left us both in the woods — dead. Had to take a chance. So while Joey was leading ’em around in the woods I lit out for the shack. Red was there, and we parked his Jeep heading straight up the road. I’d told Joey the minute the headlights came on he was to dive flat on his face.”
“You told him that — with your hands?” Esther Trimble said.
“Right in the car — right in front of Stack. You might say Russ Toomey brought his own killers to justice,” Uncle George said.
“But weren’t you scared, Joey?” Esther asked. “Weren’t you scared maybe George hadn’t made it back from the falls? Joey?”
Uncle George looked tenderly at the boy. “I guess we could all do with a little sleep,” he said.
Victor Canning
Flint’s Diamonds
© Copyright, 1963, by Victor Canning