Talmage Powell

The Swamp Searchers

Chapter I

After a week, Charlie still had found no trace of Bobo Hensley and the twenty thousand dollars. The strain was putting a twitch in Charlie’s narrow eyes. Being buried alive up here in the Smoky Mountains was doing unpleasant things to Leah, too. She was just about nuts from having the crickets, frogs, and whippoorwills talk to her at night.

Leah was something to make the local yodelers come out of the hills just for a look. She was tall, had black hair and green eyes, and she knew how to dress her engineering job and walk it around. Charlie was her second husband. Sometimes, when she was sore, Leah compared Charlie unfavorably with her first husband, who had committed suicide.

Being away from city lights was making her short with Charlie. She railed at him and cried in anger, and last night Charlie had slapped her.

With Barney, it was different. He fished every day. The twenty grand wasn’t his. Not Barney Loy’s. That was Charlie’s worry. It was a sort of accident that Barney was here with Charlie and Leah.

Barney sat on the screen porch of the small cottage. The cottage was on a hill overlooking the little village, and the village was on a hill overlooking a neck of Lake Sanloosa. On hills in the distance could be seen the wooded sweep of cool wilderness, with here and there a checkerboard patch that meant a hillbilly farm with com and tobacco struggling to stay upright in its growth on the hillside.

Barney was cool, contented, as he snelled bass hooks. Behind the cottage a mountain stream gurgled. In one of the two small bedrooms Leah was prowling sullenly. Charlie was off somewhere trying to ingratiate himself with these stolid, wary hill people. Trying to get a lead on Bobo Hensley, without anybody knowing that was what he was trying to do. A smart guy, Charlie. Yeah. Only something about these people saw through the smartness.

Leah came out on the porch. She was wearing a print dress. It clung to her like tattoos on her skin. She passed her hand through her mane of black hair, sighed, lighted a cigarette, and sat down in a cane-bottomed chair to watch Barney prepare his fishhooks.

“You’re really serious about this fishing, aren’t you, Barney?”

“Sure.” He was a male, and therefore inevitably aware of Leah’s nearby warmth. But he was plenty sore at her, and Charlie, too. A pair of tramps. And he was sore at himself for not recognizing that fact sooner. Maybe he’d recognized it and just closed his eyes. You had to have a good manager to get ahead in the fight racket, and Charlie was even a little better than good. Or so Barney had believed until recently.

“How can you do it, Barney?” Leah asked between drags on her fag. “Stay out on that lake like you do?”

“Oh, I dunno. I just like it.” He didn’t try to explain. Leah wasn’t the kind to understand. Ever since he’d been a kid he’d wanted to find himself a place like this. A street comer slugger in an East Side slum, he’d wondered what the world was like out where the trees were green and plentiful and the sun shone on something besides concrete and massed bodies.

There had been the training camp in Jersey. But that still wasn’t the dream coming true. Too many reporters and city yeggs flocked in to watch him spar and punch the big bag. To look at his two hundred and four pound mass of muscles like he was a prize boar in a hog show.

Leah put her cigarette out and came over to stand beside Barney’s chair. She touched his shoulder and her fingers were like small flames. “Barney... it looks like we’re going to be stuck here a long time. These people aren’t Charlie’s type. You got a way with them that he hasn’t. Like you got a way with old ladies and kids — and certain young women.”

He lifted a broad placid face that wasn’t too badly marked by seventy-three fights. Her lazy eyes and moist lips made the proposition even plainer than her words had. “You find that twenty grand and Bobo Hensley so we can get out of this place, and you won’t be sorry, Barney.”

“The price, Leah, is a little high.”

She stepped back. She looked as if she wanted to slap him. “What do you intend to do?” she said sullenly. “Just rot away here?”

“Hell, no. I plan to go fishing.”

He gathered up his tackle and walked off toward the lake, leaving her standing there with her hands opening and closing and her face stamped with rage.

I’m through with Charlie and Leah, Barney thought. Charlie wouldn’t be able to talk him out of it, either. Charlie had that quick way of moving and speaking that made Barney always feel like a clunk, even if Barney knew he wasn’t a real lunk-head. But Charlie could bark his lungs hoarse this time without it doing him any good.

Let Charlie find himself a new boy, a fresh sucker to whom he could give a big build-up and then bet against to clean up.

The Kid Delaney fight still rankled. I might have taken that guy if Charlie hadn’t talked me into training with the wrong tactics, even when I felt I was right. Charlie must have kept Delaney tipped off during every moment of training, too. When he’d waltzed into the ring that night, Barney hadn’t a prayer, like an army whose general has passed every communication to the enemy before an attack.

So Charlie had made his twenty grand. So what to do about a guy like that? You got anything to go to the commission with? And you go to the boxing commission and Charlie outtalks you. Maybe he gets it in the neck, but you will never fight again, either. Charlie knows that, is banking on it. And banking on that certain little thread of feeling inside of you that makes it tough for you ever to turn against a guy you’ve once called a friend. Now you cap Charlie’s assurance you’ll keep your mouth shut with Leah’s proposition.

What do they take me for, anyway?

The dock was a floating island of planks lashed to oil drums. In the center of the dock stood a shed where soft drinks and candy were sold. Boats, flat bottoms and classy v-bottoms, were moored around the dock. The dock was hooked to the land by a thirty-foot-long gangplank which floated on more drums and was moored to the bank by ropes.

A wiry old ex-seaman ran the dock. He passed the time of day as Barney bought bait and paid rent on a boat and kicker.

Barney spun the kicker to life and started out over the lake.

He guided the boat in and out of the straits, in and out of the coves, until he was about four miles down the lake. He waited with a minnow and sat back to await the passing of a hungry bass. He’d had good luck here yesterday. Caught two and missed one strike.

With the cool evening air like a caress, he sighed back in the boat and thought of how hot and humid it was in New York at this moment. He wanted only to relax, but his thoughts kept running back to Leah. And Charlie. And Bobo Hensley.

Barney felt himself sweating the sweat of rage all over again. He’d found out about that bet and Charlie had said, “Oh, for cripes sakes, you’d have got your cut!”

As if that squared everything!

That lousy heel. That punk with the fishbelly-white face of a corpse, that consumptive cough, and the skinny body that threatened to rattle its bones together when Charlie put it in motion.

Barney had always felt a little sorry for Charlie because of Charlie’s unhealthy appearance. The sympathy of a man with health and strength roaring through every fiber.

But not now. No more of this soft, sentimental sympathy. Good enough for Charlie because he’d been scared to collect his illegal bet on the Delaney go. Charlie had been sure the plainclothes boys had sniffed a stink and were watch-mg him. Charlie had figured the gambler holding the dough would shag out of town with those cops nosing around. This had distressed Charlie greatly. So Charlie had sent Bobo Hensley to get the dough before it got away for good. Bobo had picked up the money as it had been arranged by phone — only he had kept right on traveling.

Charlie’d been fit for a strait jacket then. He’d wept, real tears. He would cut Bobo up and feed him to stray dogs. But he had to find him first.

They’d gone to Bobo’s apartment, Barney himself so mad he could bust, now that Charlie had spilled his brains in hopes that Barney might have some idea of where Bobo had gone and be of some help.

In the apartment, they’d found that timetable, slid down behind the dresser where it had fallen accidentally. Bobo had made little checks beside the schedule to Bryson City, North Carolina.

Charlie’s lips and eyes had looked as if oil had been poured over them. “The dumb hillbilly punk, he’s gone home with the dough. He was always talking about those mountains above Bryson City, the lake where he used to fish, those hills where he hunted.”

All that before Bobo, big, strong, easygoing Bobo, had got his brains scrambled after having fought his way nearly to the top in the big city. The Mauling Mountaineer they’d called Bobo, but he’d been good only to stay in another man’s corner when Barney had met him.

“What will he do with twenty grand in that wilderness?” Leah had wondered.

“Maybe he’ll buy some pigs,” Barney had said, “to enjoy a higher grade of company.”

The bass failed to show interest in the minnow. Barney weighed anchor and cruised on down the lake. He finally got Charlie, Leah, and Bobo off his mind when he had a strike in the rock-bound inlet he’d learned to call Little Sanloosa Cove.

He worked at the fishing another hour without luck. He noticed that night was creeping like dark oil poured over the jagged eastern peaks.

It was time to get back. After darkness, in this maze of coves, he wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for his chances of finding the boat dock. The kicker popped to life and Barney swung the boat out in the channel. It was later than he’d thought. Those shadows were reaching long toward the eastern shore. He opened the throttle wide and the roar of the kicker banged against the hills, throaty with anger. The boat began to crawl out of the water and plane, the prop churning water like a giant eggbeater. A little spray struck Barney’s face. This was living. Cripes, a little more practice, and he would be a first-class sailor.

He didn’t see the log. It was so sodden with water it must have been prowling just inches under the surface. The boat struck the log with a dull crunch. Up and over the boat started, like a fighter plane peeling off. It was as if Barney had been sitting on a giant spring, and the spring snapped suddenly. Up and out Barney went. End over end, arms and legs flying. The water was hard as a brick wall when he struck. The water gave him a stinging slap on the face that threatened to tear his head off his shoulders.

Bubbling, throwing spray, roiling about him, the water claimed Barney. He rolled down and down until his lungs ached, and then he burst back to the surface, blowing water out of his nose.

When the ringing left his ears, he heard the roar of the kicker fading in the distance. After throwing him like an angry bronco, the boat had righted itself, and Barney watched it charge down the channel, pitching and skipping crazily. It vanished from sight around a far off point of land. The sound of the kicker became a whisper in the majestic silence of the mountains and then faded out altogether. The boat had probably beached itself.

Barney began dog-paddling toward shore. He swam with all the grace of a mastodon. He’d never learned any of the fine points of swimming, but as a kid he’d been able to dog-paddle around East River docks for hours on end.

He pulled himself erect when the water was waist deep and waded to the slippery, chocolate mud shore. Under a tree just above the shoreline, he sat down to snort the remainder of the lake out of his nose and catch his breath.

He was pondering a night spent under the trees. He didn’t relish the thought. He was sopping; the nights up in these mountains sometimes got more than delightfully cool, under such circumstances.

Perhaps he could find a house nearby. He stood, turned toward the hillside, and saw the girl.

She startled him. He stood looking at her for a moment without speaking. She was small and slender and her hair was a mass of gold tumbling to her shoulders. She looked like a very charming mountain sprite in the half light of dusk.

Her voice was warm, husky, serious: “Are you hurt?”

Barney jarred to life. “No. At least I don’t think so.”

She walked toward him, graceful as a wood nymph. Barney, you’re staring, Barney thought. She saw his stare and the drop of his jaw and smiled.

“I’m Josie Calhoun,” she said. “I live in the cabin overlooking the point. When I heard the roar of the motor and the crunch I knew somebody had hit a log. Thought I’d better come down and see. You can dry out at the house if you want.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Barney said in his best manner. “My name is—”

“Barney Loy,” she finished for him. She had turned and started along a path which would have missed Barney’s eyes if he had been here without a guide. He caught up with her.

Walking beside her, he was conscious of his bigness and the homely cast of his face. She was like... like cotton candy at Coney when he was a kid. He said, “How’d you know my name?”

“Oh, most folks around here know you. That Charlie Collins fellow with you, he hasn’t found Bobo Hensley yet, has he?”

“Folks around here seem to know everything,” he said, mimicking her liquid mountain drawl. “You must have mighty fine Western Union service in these parts.”

Her laugh tinkled. “I didn’t mean to make you sore. Strangers always attract attention and folks usually fathom what brings them here. Then word just somehow seeps around, like it’s borne on the wings of birds or filters through the very air itself.”

Her words caused Barney to feel alien in the mountain quiet. The dusk took on a tinge of evil. The harrumpping of frogs on the lake was strangely lonely, disturbing. He thought, hundreds of eyes watching, like chips of blue flint. Word filtering from tight mouths, making its way over the mountainsides, into the hidden coves. Charlie Collins had better watch himself; the tricks that go in New York might not look so smooth here.

Chapter II

He said nothing else to the girl as they crossed a clearing toward the house. Josie walked across a footlog that spanned a creek, waited for him to regain her side, gave him a smile that was more or less impersonal, crossed the packed earth of the yard, and opened the door of the house.

It was a structure of logs, rambling across the hillside. There were electric lights and a living room set in the front room. The place was clean, comfortable, and might have been the summer retreat of city folks.

“You can start a fire in the fireplace to dry out if you like,” Josie said. “I was just getting supper.”

She left him alone in the living room. There was wood laid in the fireplace and Barney found matches on the mantel. He touched fire to shavings, which caught and licked flame about the corncobs, which in turn threw flame against the heavier wood. The fire was beginning to crackle when Josie entered the living room again. She was carrying jeans, blue shirt, and a pair of brogans.

“These are pa’s, Mr. Loy. I don’t think he’d mind you wearing them until you dry yours. Supper on the table in ten minutes.”

She tossed the clothes on the overstuffed chair. Barney picked them up. “I’ve been thinking what you said about Bobo Hensley and Charlie. You got more than passing interest in it?”

“Bobo is my cousin. Lots of cousins in these parts, Mr. Loy.”

“The name is Barney,” he said almost angrily. “And for the record, I’m no cousin of Charlie’s. I’m just along for the ride and because I wasn’t able to make up my mind about that character at first. I was so sore at him I didn’t want him out of my sight, see? But I don’t want to be mixed up in no feud. You can just put the word out in your telegraph system that I like the fishing.”

She smiled. “I’ll do that for you. I’ve seen you on the lake, Barney. And around the village. I’ve wondered how come you keep company with that walking corpse fellow.”

She went out, and Barney pulled the blind and began climbing into her old man’s clothes. They had a clean, nice smell of strong soap. So she had seen him around the village. How in blazes could he have seen her and not have it register?

She served him com pone, hominy, thick slabs of fried ham, and collard greens. Halfway through the meal, thunder began to roll over the mountains and rain began to beat a lulling rhythm on the shingle roof. Barney ate until he was filled with a pleasant glow. He helped Josie stack the dishes in the kitchen sink. Rain was hammering against the windows now, and when she went back into the living room she stood with her back to the fire, and it made her very beautiful.

They were shut away here in a world all their own, and Barney took her in his arms and kissed her. Her lips were warm and sweet and her body flowed against his for a moment. She stepped back and Barney found himself gasping to breathe.

She slapped his face hard, though her features held no anger.

“You think I’m fresh, huh?” Barney said, holding his cheek. “You didn’t like that?”

“Maybe I did, but I’m just a helpless mountain girl and you shouldn’t try to take advantage of me.”

Barney wasn’t sure she was so helpless; he grinned, “Okay, so I was fresh — but I won’t apologize. You don’t apologize for something you enjoy very much.”

She was smiling again. She studied the rain pouring down the dark window. “You’ll get drenched. And you’d never find your way to the village or back to the boat dock in pitch darkness, 1 suppose you’ll have to stay here, at least till the rain stops. But you sit over there — and I’ll sit here.”

Barney took the chair she indicated, and she curled in the chair across the fireplace from him. Like a kitten. She asked a question or two and Barney found himself talking about himself. It was a new experience. He’d never been very talkative before, especially with dames. But he told her about little adventures he’d had as a kid, what life in the big town was like, and he found her a good listener.

The fire burned low, but the rain didn’t stop. Barney quit talking finally. She was sleepy-eyed. She yawned, said, “Looks like I’ll have to offer you the settee for the night.”

She rose, lifted down the rifle that hung on wooden pegs over the fireplace.

Barney gave the gun an askance look. He didn’t like guns. He said, “What’s that for?”

“Pa’s logging on Big Hickory.” Josie smiled. “This little fellow will have to stand in his place. Good night, Barney.”

She entered the bedroom, reappeared long enough to toss him a quilt with a crazy pattern and a pillow; then the door closed behind her and Barney heard it lock.

He rolled in the quilt, lay looking at the dying embers of the fire. He felt strangely young and happy. He went to sleep with a smile on his face.

Later he snapped awake, a feeling of alarm jolting through him. He didn’t know how long he had slept, or who was in the room with him. Maybe Pa had finished logging on Big Hickory. Mountaineer fathers and shotguns became an unpleasant correlation in Barney’s mind.

He stumbled off the sofa, watching the shadow over near the window, and bumped into the second man. Startled at the new presence, Barney threw a right, felt it connect, acting on the assumption that anyone who entered in this manner could be up to no good. There was a grunt; then a chunk of steel slapped the side of Barney’s head. He sat down on the floor so hard the house timbers groaned with the strain.

A switch clicked. A light flared up. Josie said, “Leave him alone, cousin!”

Barney took his hand away from the side of his bursting head. Sitting with his legs splayed, he saw Josie in the bedroom doorway, her face tight, the rifle in her hands. Shuffling away from the open window was Bobo Hensley. And just to Barney’s right, standing over him, was a big hillbilly with a black beard, black eyes, and an equally dark look on his face.

Bobo had never been pretty and a hundred-odd fights had made such a mass of cartilage of his face that he was something out of a nightmare. He was bald and had the lumpiest ears in the fight racket. He looked at Josie and said in a voice filled with gravel, “Be careful with that thing!”

“You be careful. Mr. Loy is a guest in this house. You ought to show a little mountain courtesy. The idea, breaking in this way.”

“Shucks,” Bobo said, “we didn’t mean evil. I just got to talk to Barney, is all.”

Bobo’s plaintive words and doleful expression caused Josie to lower the rifle. She came forward to help Barney back on the settee. She touched his hurt with gentle fingers.

Bobo came forward, offered his hand humbly. “Barney, it’s good to see you. This is Skip Merrill. Skip, you apologize to the man for hitting him.”

The big mountaineer slid his pistol in his overalls pocket, hooked his thumbs in his galluses, worried a cud of chewing tobacco in his stubbled paws, and looked Barney over. He didn’t seem to think Barney was so tough. “Reckon I can, at that. Apologies, Barney. Didn’t calculate to bop you. Just intended to make you quiet-like.”

Barney decided to let it pass. He didn’t like the faint sneer of contempt in Skip Merrill’s eyes. Merrill was fully as large as Barney and seemed to be thinking what a pleasure it would be to take this citified prize fighter apart just to show the boys up and down the cricks that he could do it.

I don’t think I’m gonna like Bobo’s pal, Barney thought.

Josie crooned over him and said she would get turpentine to take the soreness out of his lump.

Bobo watched Josie pat the pungent medicine on Barney’s head. Bobo blinked his eyes now and then. He shifted his gaze to Barney’s face. “I saw you on Sanloosa when you hit the log. Saw you meet Cousin Josie. We kind of ambled up this way, and been waiting in Pa Calhoun’s barn until we decided you wasn’t coming out tonight.”

Bobo licked his lips. His eyes were worried. Barney found himself feeling sorry for Bobo, remembering little favors Bobo had done him, the way Bobo, in Barney’s comer, always seemed to suffer every punch that landed on Barney’s face or body.

“Look,” Bobo said, “Charlie Collins being down here has kind of got me pinned down.”

“You took his twenty grand?”

Bobo nodded. “I’m gonna level with you, Barney. I had to have that money. I need it like a bass fish needs his scales. I need to use it in a hurry, for something extra special. So I got to get Charlie out of my hair.”

Here it comes, Barney thought, the pitch.

“Tell you what,” Bobo said in his halting tone, “I don’t want to see anybody getting hurt, even that skunk Charlie. What I’ve got to do won’t take all the money. I’ll make a deal, split with Charlie.”

It seemed to Barney to be rather cockeyed reasoning. He said, “You will make a deal with Charlie — for Charlie’s money?”

Bobo said seriously, “I figure Charlie owes me that money. You don’t know Charlie like I do. He sold me short all down the line. He sold me for the quickest buck. I might be fighting even yet if Charlie had handled me different.”

Barney studied Bobo’s ugly, sad face. Barney was willing to concede a certain point. Charlie would have a tough time collecting the dough from Bobo through legal channels. Possession here seemed to be ten points of ownership.

It was anybody’s dough, under the present setup. Hell, Barney thought, I’ve got as much right to it as anybody. I’m the guy who took the beating for the dough.

The thought angered him. But he kept his mind on Bobo and Charlie. “What’s your deal?”

“I’ll give Charlie back half the dough,” Bobo said, “if he’ll promise to get out of these hills and not make any trouble. Otherwise he’ll get all the trouble he’s asking for, and I’ll keep all the money.”

Bobo stood up, moved toward the door, Skip Merrill a sardonic shadow beside him.

Barney said, “Leah wants to get out of here.”

“That Leah,” Bobo said.

Skip Merrill grinned; he had broken, yellow teeth. “Some babe. What kind of playmate is she, Loy?”

Barney looked at him levelly. “She’s warmer than a kewpie doll,” he admitted. “But Charlie ain’t. He’s got ice in his veins. He may not want to leave so bad. I don’t think he’ll take your deal, Bobo.”

“Maybe I got a way of forcing the deal,” Bobo said darkly.

Barney studied Bobo’s face again. Bluff or bravado wouldn’t work in this setup. He saw neither in Bobo’s face.

“You just do me this one favor, Barney,” Bobo said. “We’ve always been friends, but I won’t sponge on friendship any further. Just outline the deal to Charlie, see if you can help swing it, and meet me tomorrow night just after moon-rise at the cabin on the point overlooking Little Sanloosa. You can’t miss the place. Meantime, Skip and me will locate the boat you lost and fetch it back to the dock.”

“I don’t want to be dragged into this,” Barney told him. “But I’ll run this one errand.”

“I told Skip you would. Maybe a little pressure will fix things so that we can iron out the details tomorrow night.”

Bobo and Skip went out. Josie stood by the fireplace, very pensive. “That Leah, Barney — is she really such a... warm playmate?”

Barney looked at Josie’s trim back and grinned. “She’s got a bucket of hot coals where most dames carry their hearts.”

Josie whirled on him, and Barney’s face went stiff. His kidding had misfired. Josie had tears brimming in her eyes.

Barney reached out, his face contrite, his mouth open to try to say something soothing.

“Don’t you touch me, you big hunk of overgrown muscle! Cousin Bobo has done nothing but give you a build-up every time your name was mentioned. But now I believe Bobo really is punch drunk.”

She picked up that rifle again, marched into the bedroom, and slammed the door. Barney let his hand drop and closed his mouth. He felt terrible. He hadn’t known Josie long, but he wanted to know her a lot better. A crazy kind of dream was beginning to stir in the nethermost parts of his mind.

He sat on the settee. But he wasn’t sleepy any longer. The rain had stopped. Moonlight was filtering through the window. He might as well go back to the cottage in the village.

“Cripes,” he muttered, “but I feel lousy.”

Leah cooked breakfast the next morning, scrambled eggs and scorched bacon. She shoved the food before Barney and Charlie, sat down at the end of the table, and poured herself a drink from the bottle of bourbon she had set out.

Charlie, who had the physique of a scarecrow, hunched his shoulders and picked up a fork. “Lay off that stuff, baby. It’s not a healthy breakfast.”

Leah looked out over the silent mountains and shivered. “Why don’t you take a running jump in the lake? You can’t find Bobo Hensley, and you’re not man enough to take the twenty grand from him if you did.”

Charlie’s thin hands began to shake. “You let me find Bobo and I’ll get the dough,” he said. “I’ve dealt with tougher characters before.”

“Big talk — and meantime we rot. I don’t see what I ever tied onto you for.”

“A meal ticket, baby. Just like your first husband.”

“We’ll leave my first husband out of this,” Leah said, splashing a second drink into her glass. “He was more of a man than you’ll ever be.”

“Maybe I ought to punch you one,” Charlie threatened, “and show you just how much of a man I am.”

This, Barney thought, can go on indefinitely.

“I saw Bobo last night,” he said.

Charlie dropped his fork and Leah spilled her whiskey.

“You... you get the dough?” Charlie asked. He tried to laugh. The sound was forced, patronizing, and it sickened Barney. “You wouldn’t hold out on me, Barney?”

Barney whittled Charlie down with his gaze. What a prize sap I was ever to hook up with this character, Barney thought. But Charlie could be plenty smooth when he wanted to be. Smarter boys than Barney had been taken in by him. Barney guessed there were two Charlies, really, the one who put on the suave front and this other one who had begun to be revealed when the money disappeared.

“You really think Bobo would hand over that money to me?” Barney asked.

Charlie’s thin face grew glum. “No, I guess not. Bobo have anything to say to me?”

“He wants to make a deal.”

Leah stiffened on the edge of her chair, lynx-eyed. Charlie laid down his fork with an elaborate motion. “A deal?”

“Bobo says he will split the money.”

Charlie cracked his colorless lips in a mirthless laugh. “Some boy, Bobo. What does he take me for?”

“I told him you wouldn’t do it.”

“Did I say I wouldn’t?”

Barney studied Charlie’s face. Charlie had something up his sleeve. Barney felt a tremor of fear for Bobo pass through him.

Charlie flung his arms wide in a charitable gesture. “I don’t mind living and letting live, Barney. Where do I meet Bobo?”

“I meet him first,” Barney said. “Tonight.”

“Arrange things for me, pal, and we’ll all be one happy family again.”

“Yeah,” Barney said. He watched Charlie turn to Leah. That calculating expression in Leah’s eyes didn’t change. She knew Charlie was up to something but she couldn’t figure what.

“See, baby,” Charlie told her, “we’ll be getting out of here before long now, and I’ll give you a grand to buy a new winter coat.”

Still chortling, Charlie left the cottage to buy some cigarettes in the village. Leah watched him walk down the path out of sight; then she tossed off her drink. She got up to move around closer to Barney; she was a very delectable image in shorts and halter.

“Thanks, Barney, for trying to fix things.”

She poured herself another drink, offered the bottle to Barney, and sat looking at him. Her lips were ripe, red, and glistening wet. She was bored stiff and Barney knew he could kiss her if he wanted to.

“I didn’t try to fix anything,” he said. “I ran into Bobo by accident, through a little cousin of his who lives four or five miles this side of the boat dock.”

She laughed. “Female cousin, Barney?”

He nodded, said seriously, “It ain’t over yet, Leah. Not by a long shot. Charlie won’t go around handing out ten thousand dollars.”

“I know. I had the same feeling — that he’s planning something. I think he intends to meet Bobo, throw down on him with a gun, and take all of the money.”

“Well, he’d better be careful. This is Bobo’s country, his league. He’s running with a tough sidekick named Skip Merrill. Something powerful is driving Bobo to keep that dough. I had the feeling he intends to keep it, even if he has to kill for it.”

Her green eyes darkened. “He sounds determined.”

“He’s got just one thought in those scrambled brains — to keep at least half the dough. When Bobo grabs an idea like that, nothing will cause him to let go.”

She leaned toward Barney. “Then,” she said, a huskiness slipping into her tone, “it’s still partly up to you, Barney. You got to fix it so we can get out of here. You can do it, acting as middle man.”

“I don’t like the sound of that phrase, middle man. I don’t want any part of this setup.”

Her smile came, slow and liquid. She moved her lips close. “Even for me?”

“I think,” Barney said, “I’d better go fishing.”

Chapter III

That night a pale moon poured cream over the hills, threw shadows into the valleys and coves, and turned to silver reflections in the dark water of the lake. During the day Barney had recessed from his fishing long enough to cruise slowly from the boat dock to Little Sanloosa and back again. He wanted to make the trip by water and needed the certainty that he could navigate in the darkness. He had also spotted the tumbledown, deserted shack above Little Sanloosa. He hadn’t seen the house at first, but after he’d cruised into the cove he’d picked it out of the trees, an ivy covered mass of logs blending with the hillside.

Now, with the moonlight at his back, he cut the kicker and stood in the boat as it drifted toward the bank. It bumped gently. Barney went over the prow with the line in his hand. His feet slipped on the dark, slick mud. He snubbed the line about a stump just above the water line. Then he started up the hillside.

Frogs and crickets sang lullabies; but Barney’s nerves refused to be soothed. He struck the brush line and waded through brambles, muttering darkly. He was sweating by the time he came out of the brush into the clearing where the tumble-down cabin stood.

He paused a moment at the edge of the clearing. From his hip pocket he slipped the jack handle he’d picked up in an idle moment today. He wasn’t really anticipating trouble; but with twenty thousand dollars floating around he didn’t feel it wise to take too many chances.

The cabin was dark and seemed to be deserted. The front door was standing crookedly, hanging by one rusty hinge. There was a strong earthy smell inside the cabin.

Moonlight filtered feebly through the cracked window, touching a paleness over an old stone fireplace, a broken-down table and bench. Barney’s body was blocking a part of the moonlight; and when he shifted, he saw Bobo.

He caught his breath and the jack handle fell from his fingers. Bobo was sitting on the floor of the cabin, his shoulders sagging against the wall. A crimson well had been opened through a jagged wound in his hairy neck.

Barney fought about four impulses at once. To run. To yell for help. To shut his eyes, and tell himself this wasn’t true. To see if anything could be done for Bobo.

Given a second to steady himself, Barney knew there was really no decision to be made. He dropped on his knees at Bobo’s side. Bobo was his friend, and it lumped Barney’s throat and made him very mad to see him hurt like this. He was a big, dumb clunk, but he’d never done anything to deserve this.

Barney jerked out his handkerchief to make an effort at stemming the flow of blood. It was already becoming a coagulated mess on Bobo’s neck. It didn’t seem that he could help any. He already looked dead.

Then there was a twitch of Bobo’s lids, and his eyes opened. They were glazed, the pupils wide and dark with shock and fear.

“It’s me, Bobo,” Barney said gently. He saw some of the wild terror leave Bobo’s eyes.

“The money, Barney... Get Josie to take you to Cold Slough.”

The words were stretched out and took great effort. Bobo closed his eyes again and Barney decided to get him in a more comfortable position and run like crazy for help, a telephone, a doctor.

Before Barney could move him, Bobo coughed bloody froth. He opened his eyes once more; they were filled with some kind of message. And Barney knew that he couldn’t help him now. Neither could he fathom the message in his eyes.

“Murder, Barney,” Bobo gurgled. “Strictly murder...” He kept right on talking, but it was silent talk, just a movement of his lips. Maybe he thought he was shouting it. The message seemed to leave his eyes. But he wasn’t making a sound, and Barney couldn’t read lips. Then Bobo burped, like a baby, almost, and fresh blood spilled over his lips.

Bobo died. Barney saw the light go out of his eyes; then Barney sat back on his haunches and discovered a hot feeling in his eyes that might mean tears. He thought about the time he’d known Bobo and what a friendly lug he had always been. Then frustration began roiling in Barney as he realized that Bobo had not only labeled his death as murder but had gone ahead to tell the who, how, and why of it. Only it had been the silent talk of the dead, the talk of a man in whom the fighting instinct had tried to operate until the last.

Barney eased Bobo to a sitting position and folded the large, heavy hands across the great barrel structure of chest. Then Barney rose, slid the small flashlight out of his hip pocket and played it over the room.

Near Bobo he found the gun, a secondhand thirty-eight revolver. He decided he’d never seen the gun before. It could belong to anybody.

He stepped to the door of the cabin, switching off the flashlight. He smelled the odor of earthy perspiration before he heard the quick shuffle of a foot. He started his body about in a spin. Halfway around, the blow caught him on the side of the head. A great light bloomed in his brain, and he saw the large shadow moving out from its hiding spot outside the door jamb. Then the light went out, leaving nothing but a black void.

At last into the void began to filter sensation, which was anything but unpleasant. Barney had the grandfather of headaches. A hand was on his shoulder, shaking him.

He said, “Lemme alone!”

A light played like fire against his closed lids. The hand shook him again. He remembered Bobo, and he opened his eyes.

A Coleman lantern was hissing softly, throwing a glaring white light over the moss-grown interior of the cabin. Barney rolled his head. Charlie and Leah were here; and there stood Josie, looking down at him and biting her lip.

Barney had never seen the man who held the lantern. He was a huge individual with shoulders that sloped off into an elephantine stomach. He wore no coat, and his shirt sleeves were rolled halfway up his thick, hairy forearms. Barney saw the gleaming star pinned just over the shirt pocket. With a sinking sensation that almost overpowered his headache, he lifted his gaze to the man’s face. It was a heavy, cruel face with thick lips, sagging jowls, fleshy nose, cold gray eyes; the creased forehead slid off to become a bald pate.

Josie knelt at Barney’s side. She touched his sore head and managed a wan grin. “Looks like I need the turpentine bottle again. Barney, this is Sheriff Tyne Conover. Tell him what happened. He thinks you killed Bobo.”

“I was slugged,” Barney managed.

“Yeah?” Tyne Conover said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Right sure you didn’t get in a hurry to get out of the place, trip over that old stick of firewood there and slam your head against the door jamb?”

“I was slugged,” Barney repeated. “Period. By a creature on two legs I wouldn’t hardly call human.”

“And how about the money?” Conover demanded.

“What money?”

“Don’t play dumb.” Conover glanced at Charlie; then he wrapped Leah in a very appreciative gaze. “These folks say you was to meet Bobo here in regard to a little matter of some money he stole. When you became pretty long overdue, they set out to find a cousin of Bobo’s you’d mentioned. Josie, naturally, she being the only female cousin of Bobo’s living four or five miles from the boat dock where you said. They figured Josie might know where you and Bobo were to meet. She knew, all right. She heard Bobo tell you the spot, but she wouldn’t bring ’em here alone. She fetched me, and look what we found.”

Just look, Barney thought. I don’t want to. I never wanted in this setup in the first place.

“Barney,” Josie said, a sob in her voice, “I never reckoned on finding what we did. Or I’d never have brought Tyne into it. At least I’d have given you a chance to run.”

Barney felt cold sweat breaking on him. There stood Leah and Charlie both damning him with their eyes. And there was Tyne Conover looking ready to lick his chops. And here was Josie not believing he’d killed Bobo, but knowing that her belief wasn’t worth a plugged nickel.

“No need of wasting any more time,” Conover said. “I’ll let you cool your heels in my jail. It’ll go easier with you if you tell me where the money is.”

“I didn’t kill Bobo and I wasn’t looking for the money!”

“That’s your tale?”

Barney nodded. “And I’ll keep right on telling it.”

Conover helped him to his feet, snapped handcuffs on his wrists. Barney looked at the cuffs and a coldness seeped into the bottom of his stomach. Josie was looking at the handcuffs too. She pressed herself against Barney. She was very slim, warm — and trembling. Conover said, “Stand aside girl.”

“If I had pa’s rifle, you’d never take him, Sheriff.”

“I don’t like that kind of talk! You get yourself along home!”

Charlie fidgeted from one foot to the other. Barney looked at him, said hoarsely, “Get me a lawyer, Charlie!”

“Sure,” Charlie said. “A lawyer for the guy who steals my dough?”

Barney looked at him and Charlie backed up a step, even if Barney was wearing handcuffs. “Okay,” Charlie said, “I’ll get a lawyer. I’ll help you out of this jam if I can. But I won’t forget it, Barney!”

The next day Leah came to jail to visit Barney. Tyne Conover came to the cell to announce her presence. The jail was in the rear of a rambling frame building; there were two other cells, though Barney was the only occupant at the moment.

Conover’s eyes wanned as he watched Leah walk into the cell. Conover licked his lips and his gaze didn’t miss a movement of Leah’s body. She was wearing a sun-backed yellow dress today, and it added humidity to an already hot day.

Conover stood in the cell doorway a moment, just looking at her. She turned, gave him a smile, and he hitched his pants and his chest swelled a trifle. “You need anything, just call out,” he requested.

“I’ll do that,” Leah said.

Conover closed the iron-barred door. Leah looked about the barren cell, at its single lumpy bunk and scabby walls. She crinkled her nose, lighted a cigarette. “How goes it, Barney?”

“Lousy.” Barney stood looking at the sinking sun through the single window; he turned back to Leah. “This Conover yegg ain’t going to strain himself working. He found a body. He found a fall guy on the scene with — he thinks — a twenty-thousand dollar motive. He found a gun and sent it over to the county seat, and it has my fingerprints on it, naturally, since I picked it up when I watched Bobo die. It’s neat, cut and dried, and Conover is patting himself on the back.”

Leah sat on the edge of the bunk, crossed her legs, and rested her elbow on her knee. “What can be done for you, Barney?”

“I dunno. But I know one thing. I’m going to keep screaming. I’m going to yell my head off. I know my rights. I’ll make Conover keep looking, one way or another. There were other visitors at that cabin last night, Leah. Just wait until I get a lawyer. Where in blazes is the lawyer anyhow?”

She shrugged. “Charlie went into the county seat this morning. Conover got there ahead of him. Nobody much seems to want the case.”

“They can’t do it to me!” Barney was aware of panic slipping into his voice. Down here in these hills, the native populace determined what could or could not be done. He felt as if a web were tightening about his chest.

Leah glanced at the corridor outside the cell door. She turned her gaze back to Barney. “Too bad you’re not out of here.”

“Yeah. What do I do? Dissolve the bars with spit?”

“There might be a way.”

“You tell me.”

She smiled. “And make myself a party to a jail break? You’re not too dumb to grab your opportunities, Barney, without having everything put to you in spades.”

She moved to the cell door, called, “Sheriff Conover...”

He appeared in the corridor, walked back to the cell, opened the door. He had a pistol in his hand to cover Barney. Leah gave Barney just one flick of her eyes, and he felt the hackles rise on his neck as she looked at Conover. Barney guessed what she’d meant when she spoke of opportunities.

She gave Conover a strong dose of come-on with those green eyes and he began to grin. She moved to the cell doorway, worried the button on his open shirt collar between her fingers, and slugged him with her smile.

“Barney is very good friend, Sheriff. You wouldn’t mind if I brought him something to eat?”

“Course not.”

“And maybe you and I — just the two of us — could talk over Barney’s case?” “Yeah, and there might be even more interesting conversation,” Conover suggested with a leer.

“How you do talk!” Leah laughed. It was a warm sound, and Conover responded to it and her warm nearness. He couldn’t help looking at her, and his gun shifted a little, and Barney moved. Conover just had time to start swinging the gun up and get a shout formed in his throat when Barney buried a left in the soft midsection. Conover doubled over, dropping the gun and grabbing his paunch. Barney straightened him with a right to the jaw that laid him on the floor in a state of utter unconsciousness.

“Cripes,” Leah breathed. “You didn’t need to try to break his neck!”

“I haven’t hurt him. He’ll come around in a few minutes. You’d better stick here and let him think you brought him to.”

Leah stared at Conover as if she believed it impossible for a man to be so immobilized by two punches. Barney shook her shoulder until the dazed, blank expression faded from her face. He bent, took Conover’s gun.

“Give me ten minutes,” Barney said. “When he comes around, tell him what a tough time you had bringing him out of it. Just stroke his cheek a time or two and he’ll forget to consider you might have had anything to do with it.”

He left her standing there looking at Conover with a certain distaste on her face.

The rear door of the jail building opened on an alley. It was deserted. Barney slipped outside. The alley joined a dirt road that wandered up the mountainside, the village lying below. He ducked back in the alley when he heard the rattle of a pickup truck. The truck passed, leaving a heavy dust pall. Barney moved in the midst of the dust, crossed the road, and gained the brush above the road.

Under a tree, he paused long enough to let a breath out of his lungs and take his bearings. Below him the jail, a few stores, houses, and a movie theater where pictures were shown twice a week. Above him the silence of the mountains, still a trifle frightening to Barney. Off yonder in the distance, the sparkling jewel of the lake. But this Cold Slough that Bobo had mentioned — Barney hadn’t any idea where it was.

He moved like he was doing road work, with a tireless, mile-eating gait, along a path that led toward the upper reaches of the mountain. Right now he wanted only to put distance between himself and Conover.

He tried to keep his thoughts away from Conover. The sheriff might even shoot him on sight, now. The thought of bloodhounds occurred to him. He’d never seen a bloodhound, but he’d read plenty of stories about them. It gave a guy the creeps to think of being chased by those big, hungry creatures. They didn’t give up, but kept coming, on and on, their baying like a trumpet note of doom. Then they ran a man until he was crazy with fear and exhaustion. And finally they closed in on him.

Escaped cons always chose streams to shake bloodhounds, and just on the chance that Conover would use dogs, Barney found a creek and waded it until he was limp with exhaustion.

Chapter IV

He traveled with the sun at his left until it dipped behind the mountains and died its daily death. Darkness came, bringing a cool breath over the land. Barney rested under a tree, keeping in mind his direction, the location, and the distance he’d traveled. If he made a mistake in his calculations, or judged wrong, he’d get lost within thirty minutes, traveling in darkness. That would mean his last chance was gone for keeps.

Josie seemed to be alone in the house. He watched the place for ten or fifteen minutes after his furtive arrival. He saw no signs of any other human being — only Josie’s shadow passing the lighted window now and then.

He guessed Pa Calhoun was still busy at his logging.

Barney was still in no mood to take chances. He hung back close to the brush line and tossed a handful of pebbles against the side of the house. Josie was passing the window. He saw her stop. He threw more pebbles. She hesitated, disappeared from his line of vision. A few seconds later the front door opened, and she came out with Pa Calhoun’s rifle in her hands.

Barney tossed more pebbles. They rattled on the planking of the porch. Josie whirled around. “Barney?”

“Yeah. You alone?”

“So much alone I’ve been about to bust with it,” she said, coming from the porch to meet him in the yard. She stood with her head tilted, looking up at him. Suddenly she started crying. Barney couldn’t have that, and he folded his big arms about her. She seemed to like it, and wept against his chest.

“Tyne Conover was here,” she said. “Oh, he was mean-mad, Barney! He had a lump like a banty egg on his jaw and he swore he was going to take no more chances with you.”

“How long ago?”

“Just before nightfall. Said he was going back to the village and get a bunch of men together and deputize them. Barney, it’ll be awful. There’ll be white liquor sneaked along despite everything Conover can do. These men are all born hunters. They live it, breathe it, all of them swear by hunting. They’ll figure this a mighty thrilling hunt — only you’ll be the game! Barney, you can’t face it. I don’t care if you’ve got Cousin Bobo’s money. Let’s just get out of here...” She stopped speaking, looking stunned at what she had said. “I didn’t mean to put in that way. You... you didn’t ask me to go, did you?”

Barney was scared; but he was mad too. He might make an escape from these mountains. But always Bobo’s murder would be hanging over him. What kind of life would he have then? “I’m not going,” he said abruptly. “If I were, you would go with me. Instead, you’re going to take me some place else. You know a place called Cold Slough?”

“Sure. It’s a cove about six miles from here. Bobo’s uncle, Josh Hensley lives there. Uncle Josh raised Bobo, after his parents died. He’s a kindly, fine old man, Barney. He’s the reason Bobo grabbed the money.”

“Why would Bobo get it for Uncle Josh?”

She seemed on the point of explaining; then she said, “You’ll see when we get there. Come on. We’ll use Pa’s pickup and drive by the dirt road.”

Barney sensed sickness and despair the moment he entered the cabin nestled in Cold Slough Cove. The cabin was built low into the hillside against the blasts of winter and heat of summer. It was old and filled with the lingering odors of smoked ham, moist earth, and salt pork. A sparrow-like old woman was in the outer room, greeting Josie and acknowledging the introduction to Barney. Josie introduced Barney as Mr. Simpkins, and Barney knew it was because there was no telling how this old lady would react to the presence of the man accused of Bobo’s murder.

The old lady was Uncle Josh’s wife; she had reared Bobo.

Barney followed Josie into the next room. He was prepared for sickness, but the sight of the old man stunned him.

Paralyzed. No control at all. And in great pain.

Blast Bobo, anyhow, for sending me here, Barney thought. This was Bobo’s first thought, this old man, as he lay dying. He was counting on me wanting to do something about it.

Uncle Josh said, “You’re a friend of Bobo’s?”

“Yes,” Barney said softly.

“A fine boy, Bobo. Soon as he heard about my accident, he came right down.

“The trouble’s down there — in my back. Had a mean bull. He broke his chain. Nigh gored Ma. It was pretty frightful when that bull hit me.

“They want to send me off to a surgeon that fixes these kind of cases. That takes a whop of money. Course Bobo was going to take care of all that. Now Bobo is...” The old man stopped speaking. He touched a pale tongue to dry, cracked old lips. “Sheriff Conover was up here today. Says Bobo was murdered. Says Bobo stole the money from a fight manager.”

“Bobo never took anything that didn’t really belong to him,” Barney said.

He’s sure gonna feel lousy when he learns the truth for once and all, Barney thought. He felt dismal.

Barney and Josie finished their visit with the old man and went into the kitchen where the old lady invited them to a long table with benches on either side. Barney drank strong black coffee which had been ground in the coffee mill in the far comer of the kitchen. He ate biscuits, side meat, and a platter of eggs, touched up with golden butter and strawberry preserves.

After he and Josie visited with the old lady, they went out to Pa Calhoun’s pick-up.

Barney asked, “Skip Merrill live anywhere around here?”

“On down this road. The second cove. It’s about three miles.”

“You go on home,” Barney suggested. “I got an idea where Bobo’s money might be found.”

Josie’s face was grave in the moonlight. “Skip Merrill means trouble, Barney.”

“Who did Bobo stay with?”

“He lived alone, since his wife died two years ago. Barney...”

“I’ll be careful. I’ll see you at your house by dawn. You’ve still got Pa Calhoun’s gun” — he grinned — “so I won’t worry about you.”

He strode down the dirt road, his thoughts ticking along on the task ahead. The night promised to be a long one.

The second cove, Josie had said. About three miles. In years of road work, Barney had come into the ability to judge road distance with accuracy. That must be the house, the one just ahead. It was set thirty yards back from the road and looked like a weathered box with a gabled lid. Lamplight made yellow squares of the front windows, which were small and set high.

Barney walked up a path that yearned for the removal of weeds. He slipped Tyne Conover’s revolver out of the waistband of his trousers, rapped on the door. After a moment, footsteps sounded inside.

The door cracked a trifle, and Barney set his weight against it, slamming it open.

Merrill staggered to a stop in the center of the room. He looked at the gun and fright came into his eyes. He had taken off his shirt and his shoulders hunched under his dirty gray union suit top. He mustered enough brag to bring a sneer to life on his lips. “Pretty high and mighty with that gun, ain’t you?”

Barney ignored him. He moved closer to Skip, and sniffed. Skip glowered.

Barney said, “It’s the same sour stink I smelled when I was slugged in the doorway of that cabin on Little Sanloosa. You’re the boy who hit me, Skip, and I’m of the opinion that you’ve got Bobo’s money.”

“You aimin’ to shoot the truth out of me?”

Barney eyed Skip’s shoulders, patting the barrel of the gun in his other palm. With a sudden motion he slid the gun into the corner behind him.

Skip roared with the ferocity of an angry bull, and charged. Barney sidestepped and knocked out two of Skip’s snag teeth. Skip staggered back. Barney punched him in the stomach. Skip lost all his wind. Barney hit him on the nose, and it began bleeding. Skip threw one punch. It was feeble. Barney took it on his shoulder, measured Skip’s jaw. Skip, he remembered, had slugged him twice. Once with a gun in Josie’s, a second time on Little Sanloosa.

He hit Skip on the jaw. Skip staggered against the wall, and pots and pans crashed in the next room. Skip reeled away from the wall throwing wild haymakers.

Oh, cripes, this isn’t even fun, Barney decided.

He knocked out two more teeth, connected with the black-beard jaw again, and Skip fell to the floor. He lay groaning, and when he felt the touch of Barney’s hands as he tried to pull him to his feet, the groans became whimpers.

Barney allowed Skip to mouth broken, incoherent pleas for a moment; then he suggested flatly, “Shut up!”

Skip quieted.

“Where’s the dough?”

“I dunno.”

Barney worked his right hand into a fist, drew it back, and Skip amended, “In the loft.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs. Up that ladder. In a trunk.”

Then, as if he were hearing it in a dream, Barney heard Charlie Collins’ nasal voice say, “That’s nice to know.”

Barney stiffened; Skip raised his head; they both looked at the doorway. Charlie and Leah walked in. Charlie was smiling with his thin lips. His white flesh looked ghostly in the flickering lamplight. “Nice of you to make enough noise to cover the sound of our arrival and warn us a little party was going on,” Charlie said. “I believed your tale of getting slugged, Barney, and also your story about Bobo having a tough sidekick named Skip Merrill. It wasn’t too hard to find where pal Skip lived, and I waited for night to keep anyone from seeing me drive up here. Now it seems you’ve saved me a little trouble.”

Barney looked at Tyne Conover’s gun where it lay, far away in the corner. Strictly a sap, that’s me, he thought. He looked in Charlie’s eyes and began to feel the cold touch of fear.

Charlie said, “Leah, scoot up that ladder and start tearing apart any trunks you find. We’ll have the dough and be out of here by morning.”

“Just like that, huh?” Barney said. “And I take the rap for Bobo’s killing?”

“I’m sorry about that, Barney, but, for all I know, you did kill him.”

Barney watched Leah walk to the ladder that led up to the loft. He thought, Leah killed Bobo.

It fitted like a glove. Bobo had repeated his assertion at Josie’s that he could bring pressure on Charlie. He would force Charlie to lay off. But he didn’t have anything on Charlie, Barney was reasonably certain — or he would have used it before. Who else, then, was there to put the pressure on? Leah, of course. And she, Bobo had figured, could call Charlie off.

A clunk, that’s me, Barney thought. Bobo had practically told him what kind of goods he had on Leah. Murder, he had said as he died, strictly murder. He hadn’t been talking about his own death; anybody could see that it was murder in his case. Another death, then. And what death? Leah’s first husband, of course. Not suicide after all, but murder. It had to be that way. No other picture fitted the frame.

Barney could picture it in his mind. Bobo getting to Leah, telling her she’d better call Charlie off if she knew what was good for her, telling her that he was meeting Barney that night in the Little Sanloosa cabin, and Charlie had better be brought around so that Barney arrived with the right news. Leah getting that unregistered gun she or Charlie had picked up sometime in the past, going to the cabin, hearing the kicker as Barney came in over the lake.

She would have had plenty of time. The sound of the kicker in Barney’s ears would have kept him from hearing the shot. Then she’d made a quick exit, leaving Bobo for dead.

And waltzing in the shadows, lured on by the hopes that he could somehow get that dough for himself, had been Skip Merrill. Unknown to Leah. The joker in the deck.

Leah started up the ladder. Barney watched the swing of her legs and hips. He said, “Charlie, she’ll probably end up crossing you the way she’s crossing me right now.”

Leah stopped going up the ladder, and Charlie’s mouth tightened. “What do you mean by that?” he said.

“We had a little deal of our own, Leah and I — after Bobo told me about her killing her first husband.”

Leah gripped the braces of the ladder to keep from falling. Charlie shifted the gun toward her. “No, don’t believe him! It isn’t true! Bobo knew — he heard you in the Jersey training camp the night you came in drunk and threw it in my face, Charlie. It was your fault. Since that time, Bobo has known. But he didn’t tell Barney. And I didn’t make any deals! Honest. You got to believe me!”

“Then how does Barney know?”

“He’s guessing — only now does he know for sure. You were too quick to doubt me and throw that gun on me.”

“I don’t trust you,” Charlie said. “You had me alibi you that night — and later, when I guessed that it hadn’t been really suicide. I knew you’d play me for a sucker.”

“It was a drunken brawl, Charlie. I didn’t mean to kill him. I’ve told you a hundred times.”

Barney looked at them, each wary of the other, bound together by a bond so dark and evil it caused him to shudder. A pair of tramps... Gripes, what a complement!

Barney was edging toward that comer where the sheriff’s gun lay. Then Charlie seemed to jar to life again, and he centered his gun on Barney.

“Okay, Leah,” Charlie said, sounding suddenly almost tired. “What do we do with them now?”

“Make it look like they killed each other in a fight,” Leah suggested.

“No,” Charlie said.

“You haven’t much choice,” she pointed out. “You’re accessory after the fact in one murder. I’ll swear you killed Bobo yourself if you try to turn me in. You’ve got to pull the trigger, Charlie!”

Charlie was sweating. It stood out on his forehead in heavy drops. Then he was pulling the trigger. But the crash of the gun came from outside, and Charlie’s revolver flew from his hand.

Josie stood spread-legged in the doorway with Pa Calhoun’s rifle in her hands.

“Barney, my boy, Skip Merrill I reckoned you could handle. But when Charlie Collins’ car passed me, heading this way, I thought I ought to turn that pickup truck around. I parked down the road far enough to slip to the house here quietly. I almost took too long, didn’t I?”

“Cripes, yes,” Barney said.

Leah took a step toward Barney, her green eyes frantic. “Barney, I gave you a break. I helped you get out of the cell.”

“Yeah, in hopes that Conover would shoot as I made the break or hunt me down with a gun in the hills — which would have closed the case in a nice package. You wanted that, knowing I was going to keep on screaming until I got the right kind of lawyer. You wanted the case closed in a hurry, because you were guilty. You looked awfully disappointed when I slugged Conover so fast and put him out of action until I could get away.”

Her shoulders slumped, then straightened. “Okay, Barney. Maybe I’ll have more luck with a judge and jury.”

“Maybe. But I doubt it, if Skip saw you coming out of that cabin on Little Sanloosa.” He looked at Skip. “State’s evidence?”

“You’re dern tootin’!”

The next day just before noon, Barney beached his rented boat below Josie’s house. He found her in the living room. She asked, “How is it going?”

“Conover is clearing up details fast. Found one of her footprints to back up Skip’s statement. Charlie’s scared stiff. He and Leah both will be trying to outtalk each other before nightfall. The twenty thousand that started all this has been impounded.”

“And you, Barney?”

“Well—” He was thoughtful. “Bobo was my buddy. I’ve got a few grand salted away. Enough to help Uncle Josh some and still have a buck left over to pay down on a fishing camp around here some place.”

Josie squealed.

Barney grinned. “Been thinking I’d get out of the fight racket.”

“Cripes, looks like I’m hooked, don’t it?” He seemed very happy as he reached for her.

“Man,” Josie said, “never been a bass fish in the whole of Sanloosa hooked more firmly!”

Content

Talmage Powell
The Swamp Searchers

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV