Someone opened up the door of the cab, and another one reached in and hurled Riley to the ground.
The trucker crawled along the ground on hands and knees and sobbed.
Leave him alone! yelled Blaine.
The girl turned around. Her thoughts were level, sharp: Keep away from him! Don’t touch him! Don’t do a thing to him.
But, Anita . . .
Not a thing, she said.
He’s a dirty reefer. He’s using silver shot.
No!
They backed away.
We’ll have to go, Anita said to Blaine. Will you be all right?
With him, you mean?
She nodded.
I can handle him, he told her.
My name is Anita Andrews. I live in Hamilton. My phone number is 276. Tattoo it.
Tattooed, said Blaine, showing her the words and numbers.
If you need help . . .
I’ll call.
Promise?
Promise (cross upon a throbbing heart).
Riley lunged and had the gun, was staggering to his feet, a hand groping in his pocket for a shell.
Blaine flattened in a dive. He caught the man just above the knees, his shoulder slamming hard, one arm about the body, the other slashing at the gun and missing.
And as he leaped, he yelled: Get out of here! Every one of you!
He hit the ground and skidded, face down, on the broken pavement. He felt the shattered blacktop scraping on his flesh, tearing at his clothes. But he still kept his grip on Riley and dragged the man down with him.
The skidding stopped, and Blaine groped blindly for the gun, and the gun barrel came lashing down out of the darkness and struck him across the ribs. He swore and grasped for it, but Riley had it raised again for another blow. Blaine punched out desperately in the darkness, and his fist caught yielding flesh that grunted at the blow. The gun thudded down, missing his face by the fraction of an inch.
His hand snaked out and grasped it and jerked, twisting as he jerked, and the gun came free.
Blaine rolled, carrying the gun with him, and scrambled to his feet.
Out at the edge of light, he saw Riley coming in a bull rush, with his arms outspread, with his shoulders bunched, his mouth a snarling slit slashed across his face.
Blaine lifted the gun and flung it out into the darkness with Riley almost on him. He sidestepped, but not quite far enough. One of Riley’s hamlike hands caught him on the hip. Blaine spun with the hand and sidestepped again. Riley tried to check his rush but seemed unable to. He twisted his body frantically, but his momentum drove him forward and he slammed with a resounding whack into the front end of the truck.
He folded then and slid into a heap. Blaine stood watching him and there was no motion in the man.
The night was silent. There were just the two of them. All the rest had gone. He and Riley were alone with the battered truck.
Blaine swung around and looked into the sky and there was nothing there but the moon and stars and the lonesome prairie wind.
He turned back to Riley, and the man was alive, he saw. He had hauled himself into a sitting position, braced against the front end of the truck. There was a cut across his forehead where he had struck on metal and there was no fight left in him. He was out of breath and panting and there was a wild glare in his eyes.
Blaine took a pace toward him.
“You damn fool,” he said. “If you’d fired at them again, they’d have been on top of us. They’d have torn us to pieces.”
Riley stared at him, and his mouth was working but no words came out — just the one word: “You — you — you.”
Blaine stepped forward and held out a hand to help him to his feet, but Riley shrank away from him, pressing his body tight against the truck as if he would intrude into the very metal.
“You’re one of them!” he shouted. “I guessed it days ago. . . .”
“You’re crazy!”
“But you are! You are afraid of being seen. You stick close to the truck. I always am the one who goes for the eats and coffee. You won’t ever go. I always bargain for the gas. It is never you.”
“It’s your truck,” said Blaine. “You have money and I don’t. You know I am dead broke.”
“The way you came to me,” wailed Riley. “Walking from the woods. You must have spent the night in them there woods! And you never believed in nothing, the way ordinary people do.”
“I’m not a fool,” said Blaine. “That’s the only reason. I’m no more PK than you are. If I were, do you think I’d have ridden this far in your junk heap of a truck?”
He strode forward and seized Riley and jerked him to his feet. He shook him so his head bobbed back and forth.
“Snap out of it!” yelled Blaine. “We’re safe. Let’s get out of here.”
“The gun! You threw away the gun!”
“The hell with the gun. Get into that truck.”
“But you talked with them! I heard you talking to them!”
“I never said a word.”
“Not with your mouth,” said Riley. “Not with your tongue. But I heard you talking with them. Not all of what you said. Just pieces of it. I tell you that I heard you.”
Blaine pushed him back against the truck and held him with one hand while with the other he opened the cab door.
“Get in there and shut up,” Blaine said, bitterly. “You and your God-damned gun! You and your silver shot! You and your hearing things!”
For it was too late, he told himself. It would be useless telling him. It would be a waste of time to show him or to try to help. Perhaps if he ever guessed the truth, he might lose his last thin fingerhold on reason and finally go insane, wallowing in a morass of guilt associations.
Blaine walked around the truck and got in on the other side. He started the engine and wheeled the vehicle back into a highway lane.
They drove for an hour in silence, with Riley hunched into his corner. Blaine felt his watching eyes.
Finally Riley said: “I’m sorry, Blaine. I guess that you were right back there.”
“Sure I was,” said Blaine. “If you had started shooting—”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Riley. “If you’d been one of them, you’d have thrown in with them. They could have whisked you anywhere you wanted quicker than this rig.”
Blaine chuckled. “Just to prove it to you I’ll pick up the eats and coffee in the morning. If you’ll trust me with the money, that is.”
FIFTEEN
Blaine sat on the stool in the hamburger joint, waiting for the man to bag a half-dozen sandwiches and fill the pail with coffee. There were only two other customers in the place, and they paid no attention to him. One had finished eating and was reading a paper. The other, poised above his plate, was shoveling in a gooey mess that originally had been eggs and fried potatoes but now looked like some new kind of dog food from being thoroughly mixed together.
Blaine turned from looking at the men and stared out the massive slab of glass which comprised two sides of the building.
The morning street was quiet, with only a few cars moving and only one man walking.
Probably it had been foolish, he told himself, to come out like this in an utterly mad and perhaps rather useless attempt to throw Riley off his guard, to attempt to reassure him. For it was more than likely that no matter what he did and no matter what Riley said, the trucker would continue to carry some suspicion.
But, Blaine thought, it would not be for long, for they must be near the river, and Pierre must be just a few miles to the north. And a funny thing, he thought — Riley had never told him where he had been going. Although it was not queer; it fit in with all the rest of it — the man’s evident fright and his secrecy concerning what he carried.