I laid him down, rubbed my shin, and took inventory. First I checked that the brief flurry of action on the ridge had attracted no attention at the house half a mile away. Then I massaged my shin some more, and looked down at the man who had kicked it. In addition to the lethal, high-laced shoes and the now-misplaced hat, he was dressed in overall pants, a gray work shirt, and the dark coat of an old suit, frayed at wrists and elbows. The 'rifle beside him was a.300 Savage Model 99, perhaps the best of the old lever actions, although the Winchester was the one that got all the glory. This specimen was so old that the bluing had worn off all the metal parts, leaving them silvery, and no finish remained on the stock, but the bore was clean and seemed to be in good condition. His optical equipment was an ancient pair of field glasses that could have gone to war with Robert E. Lee or maybe Ulysses S. Grant.
I found some keys on him, a pair of rimless glasses in a hard case, a small plastic container of unidentified pills, a blue bandana handkerchief, some loose change, and a two-bladed pocket knife with the stag handle worn quite smooth. There was also a wallet containing a driver's license made out to Harvey Bascomb Hollingshead, 72, of Bascomb, Kentucky. I sighed, looking down at the thin, stubborn old face. I'd missed the age by a few years. I rubbed my shin once more. For a septuagenarian, he kicked hard.
I tied his wrists with his belt and his ankles with mine, used his handkerchief to gag him, and slung him over my back. Well, I'd like to be able to say it was as easy as that. Actually, slight as he was, he made a heavy and unwieldy load, and I was out of practice and maybe a little out of condition. Swimming and fishing in Mexico with attractive blonde company isn't the best preparation for heavy backpacking.
It took me three tries to get him up; and then I thought I'd end up in the coronary ward before I managed to transport him through the brush to the grove of trees in which Martha was waiting. I didn't take him all the way to the car, however. I didn't dare leave him alone with the girl. Her unpredictable humanitarian impulses might well cause her to revive him and turn him loose. Having labored hard over this warm body, I had no intention of losing it.
I hid the old man in a ditch, therefore, and went back up the hill for the rifle and glasses I hadn't been able to manage on my first trip. I also remembered to pick up the fallen hat. Martha wasn't very good about obeying orders. When she heard me coming, instead of playing possum as instructed, she jumped out of the rental car and ran to meet me.
"Mart, what have you been doing all this time? I've been going out of my mind worrying… What's that'?"
"Spoils of war," I said, moving past her to lay the stuff on the hood of the car.
"So you got him." Her voice was suddenly flat. "Did you… did you have to hurt him?"
I glanced at her sharply, but she was quite sincere, and quite oblivious to the fact that the man whose health she was now worrying about was a man whom she'd recently been denouncing as totally non-human.
"I got something," I said. I fished out the ring of keys I'd confiscated and handed them to her. "Find the right one and open up the back door of this ancient hearse, will you, while I bring it in."
She had the doors open by the time I came staggering up with my bound prisoner. I dumped him into the rear of his vehicle, not too gently. I was getting tired of lugging him around, and my shin still hurt. Martha stared at him.
"But that old man isn't… That can't be the Carl you've been telling me about!"
"You're so right," I said. "He can't be. Get that gear from the hood and toss it in here, will you? Don't be seared of the gun. I've got the cartridges in my pocket." While she was gone, I checked the bandana gag to make sure it wasn't too tight. To hell with his wrists and ankles. I didn't want to strangle him, but gangrene didn't worry me. He could do a lot of talking before he died of gangrene. As I've said, I was a little tired of the old gent, and he was a complication I didn't appreciate. "Okay, you drive the Chevy; I'll handle this wreck," I said as Martha put the rifle, hat, and glasses beside the old man. "Follow me, but stay well back so it won't look too much as if we're together. Hold it!"
We stood motionless, listening, as a car drove by on the dirt road, but it went on without slowing or stopping. Martha was looking down at the unconscious captive.
"But… but who is he?"
"Miss Borden," I said, "allow me to present Mr. Hollingshead, of Bascomb, Kentucky."
"Hollingshead?" She frowned briefly. "Hollingshead! That was the name of one of the students who… Dubuque, Hollingshead, and Janssen."
"Right," I said. "Apparently, Mr. Hollingshead is another of those perverted oddball characters you object to so strongly, who resent having their kids shot. At least I can't think of any other motive that would bring him clear from Kentucky and put him on the ridge above the sheriff's house with a loaded rifle."
She didn't respond to my sarcasm. She just said: "But haven't you got him tied awfully tightly, Matt? Those straps look as if they're cutting off the circulation."
I stared at her, a little awed. She was so consistently inconsistent it approached true genius.
I said, "Sweetheart, what in the world are you worrying about? By your own definition, that's not a human being lying there. That's just another vengeance-machine. Who cares about its lousy circulation?"
"Damn you, Matthew Helm…"
She glared at me, swung away, and marched over to the white sedan, her long, phony hair and the brief, crisp pleats of her skirt bouncing indignantly in unison. The car door slammed, and the engine started with a roar. I got the old truck going without any trouble. Half an hour later we were a safe distance, I hoped, from Fort Adams and its burly sheriff. We were parked beside a dim wheel-track across the open prairie, in a kind of fold of land that hid us from the highway a few hundred yards away. I went back, opened the rear of the truck, and saw that my passenger's eyes were open. I turned to Martha, who'd come over, and drew her aside to where the old man couldn't see or hear us.
"There are two ways of doing this," I said. "I can trick him into talking, maybe, or I can try to force him to talk. It's up to you."
"What do you mean?"
I said, "If you don't play along with the lies I'm going to tell, I'll have to get rough. The choice is yours. Cooperate, or watch me go into my Inquisition routine. I'm real good at twisting arms and pulling fingernails, if I do say so myself."
She hesitated. "All right," she said reluctantly, after a moment. "All right, Matt. I'll play along as well as I can."
I went to the truck and untied and ungagged Mr. Hollingshead. I put my belt back where it belonged, and moved my short-barreled revolver from a pocket to its home in front of my left hip, now that there was something to hold it there once more. It took a little while for speech and circulation to return to the old gent, but it took him no time at all, after he'd managed to sit up, to spot the location of his lever-action rifle.
I saw his eyes flick that way and back to me. I reached into my pocket and brought out a handful of.300 Savage cartridges and showed them to him. He nodded slightly and paid no more attention to the rifle. I saw perspiration appear on his forehead as the blood started working its way back into the constricted areas. At last he licked his lips and spoke.
"Help me stand up, Sonny." A look of faint amusement came into his faded blue eyes as I hesitated. "What's the matter, you afraid of a feeble old man teetering on the edge of the eternal grave?"
"Feeble old man, hell," I said. "You forget, Gramps we wrestled a little. I've got a big bruise to show for it. I don't want any more."