«Turned left,» he said, straightening. «Thanks be there ain’t been another car past since them tracks were made.» He got back into the car.
«Left don’t go to no old mines,» Andy said. «Left goes to Worden’s place and then back down to the lake at the dam.»
Barron sat silent a moment and then got out of the car and used his flash again. He made a surprised sound over to the right of the T intersection. He came back again, snapping the light off.
«Goes right, too,» he said. «But goes left first. They doubled back, but they been somewhere off west of here before they done it. We go like they went.»
Andy said: «You sure they went left first and not last? Left would be a way out to the highway.»
«Yep. Right marks overlays left marks,» Barron said.
We turned left. The knolls that dotted the valley were covered with ironwood trees, some of them half dead. Ironwood grows to about eighteen or twenty feet high and then dies. When it dies the limbs strip themselves and get a gray-white color and shine in the moonlight.
We went about a mile and then a narrow road shot off towards the north, a mere track. Andy stopped. Barron got out again and used his flash. He jerked his thumb and Andy swung the car. The sheriff got in.
«Them boys ain’t too careful,» he said. «Nope. I’d say they ain’t careful at all. But they never figured Andy could tell where that boat come from, just by listenin’ to it.»
The road went into a fold of the mountains and the growth got so close to it that the car barely passed without scratching. Then it doubled back at a sharp angle and rose again and went around a spur of hill and a small cabin showed up, pressed back against a slope with trees on all sides of it.
And suddenly, from the house or very close to it, came a long, shrieking yell which ended in a snapping bark. The bark was choked off suddenly.
Barron started to say: «Kill them —» but Andy had already cut the lights and pulled off the road. «Too late, I guess,» he said dryly. «Must’ve seen us, if anybody’s watchin’.»
Barron got out of the car. «That sounded mighty like a coyote, Andy.»
«Awful close to the house for a coyote, don’t you think, Andy?»
«Nope,» Andy said. «Light’s out, a coyote would come right up to the cabin lookin’ for buried garbage.»
«And then again it could be that little dog,» Barron said.
«Or a hen laying a square egg,» I said. «What are we waiting for? And how about giving me back my gun? And are we trying to catch up with anybody, or do we just like to get things all figured out as we go along?»
The sheriff took my gun off his left hip and handed it to me. «I ain’t in no hurry,» he said. «Because Luders ain’t in no hurry. He coulda been long gone, if he was. They was in a hurry to get Rooney, because Rooney. knew something about them. But Rooney don’t know nothing about them now because he’s dead and his house locked up and his car driven away. If you hadn’t bust in his back door, he could be there in his privy a couple of weeks before anybody would get curious. Them tire tracks looks kind of obvious, but that’s only because we know where they started. They don’t have any reason to think we could find that out. So where would we start? No, I ain’t in any hurry.»
Andy stooped over and came up with a deer rifle. He opened the left-hand door and got out of the car.
«The little dog’s in there,» Barron said peacefully. «That means Mrs. Lacey is in there, too. And there would be somebody to watch her. Yep, I guess we better go up and look, Andy.»
«I hope you’re scared,» Andy said. «I am.»
We started through the trees. It was about two hundred yards to the cabin. The night was very still. Even at that distance I heard a window open. We walked about fifty feet apart. Andy stayed back long enough to lock the car. Then he started to make a wide circle, far out to the right.
Nothing moved in the cabin as we got close to it, no light showed. The coyote or Shiny, the dog, whichever it was, didn’t bark again.
We got very close to the house, not more than twenty yards. Barron and I were about the same distance apart. It was a small rough cabin, built like Rooney’s place, but larger. There was an open garage at the back, but it was empty. The cabin had a small porch of fieldstone.
Then there was the sound of a short, sharp struggle in the cabin and the beginning of a bark, suddenly choked off. Barron fell down flat on the ground. I did the same. Nothing happened.
Barron stood up slowly and began to move forward a step at a time and a pause between each step. I stayed out. Barron reached the cleared space in front of the house and started to go up the steps to the porch. He stood there, bulky, clearly outlined in the moonlight, the Colt hanging at his side. It looked like a swell way to commit suicide.
Nothing happened. Barron reached the top of the steps, moved over tight against the wall. There was a window to his left, the door to his right. He changed his gun in his hand and reached out to bang on the door with the butt, then swiftly reversed it again, and flattened to the wall.
The dog screamed inside the house. A hand holding a gun came out at the bottom of the opened window and turned.
It was a tough shot at the range. I had to make it. I shot. The bark of the automatic was drowned in the duller boom of a rifle. The hand drooped and the gun dropped to the porch. The hand came out a little farther and the fingers twitched, then began to scratch at the sill. Then they went back in through the window and the dog howled. Barron was at the door, jerking at it. And Andy and I were running hard for the cabin, from different angles.
Barron got the door open and light framed him suddenly as someone inside lit a lamp and turned it up.
I made the porch as Barron went in, Andy close behind me. We went into the living room of the cabin.
Mrs. Fred Lacey stood in the middle of the floor beside a table with a lamp on it, holding the little dog in her arms. A thickset, blondish man lay on his side under the window, breathing heavily, his hand groping around aimlessly for the gun that had fallen outside the window.
Mrs. Lacey opened her arms and let the dog down. It leaped and hit the sheriff in the stomach with its small, sharp nose and pushed inside his coat at his shirt. Then it dropped to the floor again and ran around in circles, silently, weaving its hind end with delight.
Mrs. Lacey stood frozen, her face as empty as death. The man on the floor groaned a little in the middle of his heavy breathing. His eyes opened and shut rapidly. His lips moved and bubbled pink froth.
«That sure is a nice little dog, Mrs. Lacey,» Barron said, tucking his shirt in. «But it don’t seem a right handy time to have him around — not for some people.»
He looked at the blond man on the floor. The blond man’s eyes opened and became fixed on nothing.
«I lied to you,» Mrs. Lacey said quickly. «I had to. My husband’s life depended on it. Luders has him. He has him somewhere over here. I don’t know where, but it isn’t far off, he said. He went to bring him back to me, but he left this man to guard me. I couldn’t do anything about it, sheriff. I’m — I’m sorry.»
«I knew you lied, Mrs. Lacey,» Barron said quietly. He looked down at his Colt and put it back on his hip. «I knew why. But your husband is dead, Mrs. Lacey. He was dead long ago. Mr. Evans here saw him. It’s hard to take, ma’am, but you better know it now.»