It was common knowledge around Dog River that Chief Cooley "had it in for" Don Anderson and his wife. At the annual spaghetti feed at the Grange Hall in April, Cooley sat next to Fred Moss and talked to him in an undertone for half an hour. Later that month, when Anderson went out to sign a contract for some remodeling, Moss informed him that he had changed his mind. The same thing happened with another customer in May.
Mr. Beumeler, the Lutheran minister, preached a sermon on forgiveness on the first Sunday in June, taking as his text Matthew 18:21-35, the story of the unjust servant, ending with the verse: "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses."
As the congregation filed out after the service, Chief Cooley shook the pastor's hand and smiled. "Nice sermon, Reverend," he said.
Early in July, the Ander~ons put their house up for sale and moved to Chehalis, Washington, where Anderson went to work for a builder named Keegan.
Urged by an instinct he could not explain or suppress, Cooley cruised the back roads on weekends and slow afternoons, visiting hunting lodges and remote farms and filling stations up and down the river. He talked to the rural mail carriers in Dog River, Mosier, Odell, and Dalles City; not much happened out in the country that they did not know.
In August he got a call from Steve Logan, the Route 1 carrier in Dog River. "Say, Tom, you remember yon asked me to keep an eye out for anything peculiar out on my route?"
"Sure do."
"Well, this may not be what you want, but there's something really funny out on Dyer Road. Somebody moved in out there, put up a box, name of Hawkins. Been getting mail regular for three-four months."
"What's funny about that, Steve?"
"Why, nobody out there knows him. I talked to Clyde McFarland and Bill Funsch and old Miz Gambrell, they all live on that road, and they say they never heard of this Hawkins, and there's no place for him to be. Nobody's moved in out there, or built a new house, or a trailer, or nothing."
Cooley put down his cigar carefully. "Tell me whereabouts that is exactly, would you, Steve?" He took down directions on the back of an envelope, nodding. "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I'll check into that, Steve, many thanks."
Cooley parked his car on the farm road, just below the crest of the rise, looking down on the county road and the cluster of mailboxes. He watched through binoculars when the mail truck came by, stopped briefly and drove on again. The day was clear and still. An hour passed. Cooley got out and went behind the car to take a piss. When he got back in and raised the binoculars, he saw a flicker of movement back in the trees on the other side of the county road. He stopped breathing. There it came again; now a figure was crossing the road. It was the kid, all right. He went straight to the mailbox at the end of the row, took something out, turned, and walked back. Cooley watched him until he disappeared into the trees.
He knew better than to try to follow the boy's tracks; he would leave footprints of his own and the kid might see them next time. Instead, early the following afternoon, he entered the woods a hundred yards away, climbed a ridge, and followed it back about a quarter of a mile to a basalt outcrop where the trees were thin. He stayed there, drinking coffee laced with rye whisky out of a thermos, until he saw the kid moving through the underbrush. He marked the direction he had come from; when the boy was out of sight, he moved down the ridge another few hundred yards and waited. In ten minutes the boy was back; Cooley watched him out of sight through the trees and then went home.
The next day he took up his station farther away from the road, and the next day farther still, extending his observation points little by little, until on the fourth day he was rewarded: he saw the boy climb the opposite slope and disappear into a thick stand of fir. He watched the ridge-line, visible through the trees, and did not see him emerge.
The next day he was watching when the boy came down from the hillside. As soon as he was out of sight Cooley scrambled down the slope, jumped over the little stream, and climbed the opposite ridge fifty yards away from the point where he had seen the boy appear. Halfway up the hill, he worked back through the trees in the other direction. There it was: a house built of scrap lumber in an old oak tree. In the shadowless light he could see the footholds nailed to the tree-trunk in a zigzag line: they were made of sawed-off pieces of oak branches, most of them with the bark still on; their color and texture was so close to that of the trunk that from a few feet away they would have been unnoticeable.
Cooley drove out to his cousin Jerry's place a few miles outside Odell. Jerry was three years younger than Cooley, a lank; hollow-checked man. They talked on the front porch; it was late in the evening, and Jerry's wife was yelling at the kids in the kitchen.
"Here's the way it looks to me," Cooley said. "When he goes out to get his mail, we move in. When he comes back, I'm up in the tree house waiting for him, and you're behind the bushes. That sound all right?"
"Sure, but why not just be there when he comes out and then nail him? Easy as pie."
"Because if anything goes wrong, either he ducks back into the house and we have to go in after him, or else he's out of the tree and off into the damn woods. If you don't want to do it, tell me."
"No, I'm in."
"Got a gun?"
"Sure -- same old Police Special."
"I don't mean that. A rifle -- what kind?"
"Remington .30-30, sweet little scope. Last year, doe season, I got one right behind the ear at two hundred yards."
"No good." A scope would just get in the way. Wait a minute." Cooley went out to his car and came back with a short-barreled rifle.
"This here is an Enfield carbine, for jungle fighting. War surplus, I got it from a place in Corvallis four years ago. The ammo is .303 British, ten in the clip and one in the chamber. Plink some tin cans with it tomorrow, get used to the feel. Monday morning, I pick you up and we go. That a deal?"
"Okay, Tom."
They parked their cars on the country road, out of sight of the mailboxes, and went into the woods. Jerry had the carbine and his Police Special, "just in case," and Cooley was armed with his usual Colt .45. They followed the ridge down to the observation point Cooley had used before. Shortly after noon they saw the boy come down from the hillside. When he was out of sight, they crossed the valley and climbed the slope to the treehouse. Jerry clucked his tongue admiringly. "Imagine him doing that," he said.
"It's just a damn treehouse, Jerry."
"Sure, but way out here? Pretty slick kid."
Cooley spat. "We've got about an hour before he gets back. Pick yourself a good spot right over there in the brush and just take it easy. No smoking, he might see it or smell it. Soon as he starts to climb the tree, you get a bead on him, but don't pull the trigger unless he starts down again. Chances are you won't have to do a thing."
"You sure you want to do it this way? I mean, be's just a kid."
"Jerry, that's the reason. Suppose I haul him in, what will the law do? They'll put him in the juvenile detention house for a year, maybe, and then he's walking around, and my kid is dead."
Jerry nodded. "Guess I'd feel the same way."
Cooley climbed the footholds, eased the door up and looked in. He saw wooden shelves, a canvas camp chair, a bucket. When he eased himself inside and let the door swing shut behind him, it was black dark. He turned on his flashlight. From the walls, painted figures looked back at him. They were angular, outlined in black paint and filled in with blue, red, and yellow; they looked more like Indian designs than what a kid would draw.