Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 6, May 27, 1981

Picking Up by Ernest Savage

Tom Benton felt alone and alien, a stranger even to himself; but that was inevitable. Two years and five months of the phantasmagoria of Folsom Prison had driven him into a shell of privacy that he would have to break, he knew, like an embryonic bird lusting for light and air. An eagle, he thought; and smiled tentatively as the bus pulled off Main Street in Sheldon, California, and nosed into the station just around the corner on Pine.

There was nobody, of course, to meet him. Sheila was dead — and who else would there be? Harry Moss, maybe, Harry being the only person in town who would know he was coming home. Or so Benton thought.

He waited for his suitcase and then walked it a half block up Pine to the Mountain View Motel and registered. He told the clerk he wanted a room for exactly twenty-eight days, and revived an old civilian skill by bargaining him down to twelve bucks a day from fifteen. A first useful peck at the shell. He would come back, but it would take time and what he would need more than anything else was his house, his land, the place he’d lived for forty of his forty-six years. The place Sheila had lived. But it would be twenty-eight days yet...

It was quarter to six and he went back down Pine to the bus station cafeteria for supper. Last night he’d eaten his final meal at Folsom in the usual silence. No one had said, “Hey, Tom, good luck,” even though they knew his time was up. He’d made no friends in prison, no alliances. It would be a self-erasing interval in his life, an unrecorded hiatus; he wanted no fraying of that cord that bound him to his proper place, his home. He’d been a model prisoner, almost invisible; a cipher. They’d paroled him on his first petition.

He didn’t sleep well that night in the motel bed and was up early, out on Main Street before seven. The street was empty, the air cool and sweet, the sky overhead a comforting blue. In Folsom he’d seldom looked up at the sky; he’d kept his eyes level and unfocused. But those twenty-nine months were behind him now. He smiled as a Safeway truck rumbled by on its way to the store at the east end of town; a friendly, familiar sight, another small peck at the shell.

He stopped in front of Charley Ellison’s Bar deliberately, self-consciously, and gave it his full rueful attention. The scene of the crime. They always come back, it’s said. The fight had taken place here, but he didn’t mind thinking about that — it was pre-Folsom, a part of life, a part, almost, of Sheila’s life; the coda.

The big young man had risen from a table when Benton walked in that night. But Benton didn’t notice him in the smoky, dim light, and didn’t notice Hamp Carswell at the same table. If he’d known Carswell was there, he wouldn’t have come in. Sheila had been dead three weeks then and this was Benton’s first attempt at picking up the threads. All he wanted was a cold beer, a little distracting noise.

He sat at the bar. Ellison drew him a beer and quickly went over to put some coins in the jukebox; the place had fallen suddenly silent. But Benton didn’t notice that either. He was gazing into the back-bar mirror and telling himself he looked too damn old for forty-three. He did see the man on his left get up and move two stools away, and that should have told him something, but it didn’t. Then he saw the big young man standing just behind him and Carswell at his table, hunched over expectantly, staring at him. Then, in the sluggishness of his bereaved mind, he recalled the big young man rising instantly from Carswell’s table when he came in — like a trained guard dog, he thought belatedly.

Ellison, in the way of barkeeps sensing trouble, was industriously wiping a clean deck with a damp rag. Benton, without thought, took it from him and wrapped it around his left fist. In high school he’d had one bad fistfight and the knuckles of his left hand — his best punching hand — had hurt for weeks after. It was a simple act of preparatory defense, he claimed later in court, and did not constitute, as the D.A. tried to contend, premeditation. But that night the rag felt cold and hard around his fist and some atavistic observer in his mind was pleased. It was a weapon.

The big young man touched Benton firmly on the shoulder — that was generally agreed upon at the trial — and suggested he get the hell out of the place while he was still mobile.

“Why should I?” Benton asked.

“Because you’ve threatened Mr. Carswell — everybody knows that.”

“I have not threatened Mr. Carswell. And what everybody knows is that Mr. Carswell forced my wife’s car off the road and caused her death.”

“There’s no proof of that.”

“What everybody knows need not be proved. The guilty flee where no man pursueth, kid — and hire guards against no threat.”

“Get out or I’ll throw you out,” the big young man said flatly, and thus made it a matter of pride. Plus something else that Benton would admit only to himself — an opportunity to rid his heart of rage.

“No,” Benton said and swiveled to his feet to face the young man. It didn’t come out in the testimony later that he looked almost happy.

But outside on the street this first morning of his freedom, he wasn’t happy and showed it. He had a prison pallor of face, and still something of a prison pallor of mind. He had killed the big young man with his left-hand weapon, and there was no joy in that. He had not wanted that night, or at any time ever, to kill Carswell, or anyone else, but he couldn’t prove that, of course. He’d wanted only that justice be served, that the illegal death of his wife would be balanced by a legal retribution.

The rage in his heart that night he knew he could contain — as he had for three weeks — and feather out over time. It is everybody’s problem and everybody’s duty to contain the rage that lives in his heart. But there was no doubt in his mind that Carswell was guilty, an opinion shared by most of the town. By ten o’clock of the day after Sheila’s death Carswell had reported his big canary-yellow Cadillac stolen. It was never found, but a sheriff’s investigator had determined that a Cadillac of the same vintage and color had had a front fender replaced the next afternoon in a Sacramento garage, been painted blue, and disappeared. The garage had a reputation for handling such problems quickly.

At the coroner’s inquest, Hampton Carswell did admit to having spent some time that night at Hildy’s Place and to having had one or two drinks there. But he claimed cold sobriety as he drove home over the winding, ill-kept, rocky road that ran past Benton s hundred-acre ranch and was the single link between Hildy’s after-hours house of all joys and civilization. Beyond Hildy’s the wilderness was pristine and almost impenetrable. Sheila had been coming home alone from a late drive-in-theater movie at about the same time, but Carswell claimed he saw no one on the six-mile run to town. The whole right side of Sheila’s dark-green Toyota was streaked with canary-yellow paint. Benton had found it at two o’clock that morning at the bottom of the steep, stony arroyo alongside the road. His wife had not died instantly.

From the safety of his table at Ellison’s that night, Carswell had hollered, “O.K., kid, lay the bastard out!” The big young man had drawn back a brick-sized fist and had torqued his upper body halfway around to the right, leaving his chin hanging midair. Benton, well-set, flat-footed, had arced his wrapped left hand up to meet it square and the big man had stumbled backward two paces and fallen down dead. Benton knew it at once. With his arm and shoulder still ringing from the impact, he jumped forward and fell to his knees beside the man’s head, then looked up at Ellison and told him to call an ambulance.

Then there was the memory of Carswell’s back, made broad by a thick slab of fat, edging down the hall to the rear exit. He had the shamble of a primate as he moved, the forward lurch of something primeval and ill-formed. He had killed Benton’s wife; and between the two of them they had killed this big young man. In Folsom, that fixed image of Carswell’s flight became for Benton a symbol of all that still links us with our animal past; and when he thought about it that morning he shuddered in the cool quiet air and turned away, partly away from himself.

At eight o’clock the town was coming alive and Benton ducked into the ABC Cafe, sat down at a table, and ordered coffee and a couple of doughnuts. He didn’t particularly want to meet any of his old friends out on the street just yet. The waitress greeted him by name, and he looked up sharply and said, in instant pleased recognition, “Well, Bessie Wright! Hello, Bessie!”

Bessie’s smile blossomed. They’d known each other since high school. She said, “It’s good to see you back.”

“It’s good to be back, Bessie.”

She put her hand on his arm, her face sobered. “Tom, almost nobody around here believes you were guilty.”

“Just the jury.” Benton smiled ruefully. “But I had a fool for a lawyer.”

“That’s what people said. They said that if you hadn’t defended yourself you’d have gotten off.”

“I didn’t think people were all that interested, Bessie.”

“They are. Some are.”

“Did anybody know I’d be back today?”

“I did. Charley Hoskins told me.” Charley was Bessie’s brother-in-law, a deputy sheriff.

“Yes, he’d know, wouldn’t he.”

Bessie went back to her duties and Benton ate his doughnuts and drank his coffee with some pleasure. He’d always liked Bessie and her husband Jack. He and Jack had fished together a lot. It was good to be back, and it would get better now.

At eight-thirty he got up, waved to Bessie, went out, and walked briskly across the street to Harry Moss’s real-estate office, where he helped Harry open his front door for the day. He said, “Hello, Harry,” and Moss’s sleek round face darkened as though caught in some sinful act. But Harry had always been a nervous man, and blushed easily. “Well, Tom — Tom!” he spluttered, but extended no hand.

Inside at his desk, still pink-faced, he showed Benton a folder of records on the ranch — rent and tax receipts, bank-deposit slips, and so forth. Before Benton went off to jail, Harry had urged him to lease the property and it seemed then — and still did — a sensible idea. Not only would it produce useful revenue, Harry had urged, but an empty house deteriorates faster than a lived-in one.

But Harry hadn’t left it at that. Twice during Benton’s sentence he’d appeared at Folsom on visitors’ day with an offer to buy the place, the second offer substantially higher than the first. But Benton had turned both offers down flat. He couldn’t imagine the amount of money it would take to pry him loose from where his heart would always reside. He still couldn’t.

The term of the first two leases Benton had agreed to was one year each. On the third he’d agreed to six months only because he was confident of parole toward the end of that period. And that had happened — twenty-eight days, in fact, before the end of the lease. Now twenty-seven. Tomorrow it would be twenty-six.

Harry cleared his throat, turned pink again, and produced a legal-looking document. Benton recognized it at once — another offer to buy. “No!” he said sharply, reflexively.

“Look at it!” Moss pleaded. “One hundred and fifty thousand bucks, Tom!”

Twenty-five thousand higher than the last offer three months ago, and a lot of money. But it roused only Benton’s curiosity. He said, frowning, “Who are these people, Harry?”

“Your tenants. Same as the last two times.”

“Yes, but who are they, why do they want it?”

“Read it, Tom. The name is McCord. They just like the place, that’s all.”

“Take me out there,” Benton said abruptly. “I want to pick up my truck.” His Ford half-ton, up on blocks, had been left in one of the sheds on the place.

But the request seemed to unnerve Moss. He nearly gasped, “I can’t, I got these calls coming in today.” He fought for more breath. “Tom — listen — I’ll rebate half the commission — another forty-five hundred bucks.”

“Keep your commission, Harry. Just give me a ride out to the place. I want to pick up my truck.”

“Tom — all of it, the whole hundred and fifty grand — it’s yours!”

“No! How come you’re so pushy about it?”

“It’s in your best interest.”

“But not yours, huh? C’mon, Harry — you can be back here in twenty minutes.”

In the still-cool morning air Harry’s round cherubic face glistened with sweat. His fingers drummed the desktop. He wanted a drink desperately and his eyes glanced at the drawer where he kept a bottle. He would rather cut a wrist than take Tom out there, but — they’d told him to, hadn’t they? He watched his front door open and his secretary walk in, late as usual, and he sighed and got to his feet. “Yeah, O.K.,” he said, as though condemned.

Standing in front of his house with a five-gallon can of gas picked up at the Texaco station on the way out, Benton felt a cataract of rage break free and nearly buckle his knees. He’d never known such anger, such grief, not even with Sheila dead in his arms. The house, a plain white-painted clapboard bungalow, looked as though, somehow, it had been lifted up, dipped in filth, and put back down again. Sheila’s beautiful yard was dead — trampled dead, laid waste with evil intent. Nothing lived there any more. Benton, his ears ringing with anger, barely heard Moss’s four-door Lincoln tool rapidly away down the gravel drive.

The slats of the picket fence around the patch of baked front lawn were either askew, broken, or missing, and the gate was hanging on a single hinge. Benton shook himself and blinked his eyes clear enough to stalk stiffly up the walk to the front door and beat hard on the frame of the screen, ripped out where some hand had reached through to undo the hook. His rage was total, black, his eyes dancing with pressure spots as the door edged open and a rail-thin woman peered at him from the inner gloom, a tousle-headed dark-eyed kid clinging to her waist. The word “slattern” leaped into his mind for the first time in his life and he let his rage gather around it like hot magnetized particles of steel. Two other thoughts entered his mind: that he would kill Harry Moss, and that he d better register quickly at the sheriff s office, as they’d told him to do. He had the innocent man’s right to unlimited indignation, but the parolee’s need to behave.

“Mrs. McCord?” he managed to say, and the lank-haired slattern’s head bobbed. A low-keyed acidic stench reached his nose from the house. “I’m Tom Benton. I’ve come to pick up my truck.”

“Go ahead,” she said and the door began to close. “They thought you would.”

He turned, rigid, emotionally back in Folsom, his eyes level and unfocused as he walked by rote around the house to the complex of buildings out back, seeing, but screening from his mind, the clutter, the savage unkemptness of the place. He aimed for the shed, the leftmost building.

One of the codicils of the lease provided for the truck, padlocked in the shed, but his mind, turned sullen and paranoid, knew before he saw the broken hasp where the padlock had hung that that would mean nothing to these people. The two plank doors were swinging loosely ajar. He threw them wide and was surprised more than pleased to see the truck was still there. But it wasn’t on blocks, it was on its tires, and that leavened the surprise. The McCords were trash, as lawless as they were unclean. He would absolutely kill Harry Moss; this was like dumping garbage on Sheila’s grave.

He circled the truck in the gloom of the windowless shed, fearful of damage. But it hadn’t been unmarked when he’d locked it up here. In the mountain country he and Sheila used to explore, a truck got used hard. The driver’s-side fender had had a bad dent, and still had, but no more than that. And the passenger side, scraped its whole length once against a ponderosa’s platelike bark, had sustained no further damage that he could see. But he was thinking about Moss — what he would like to do to Moss, but couldn’t.

“Hello,” a voice said, and Benton saw the silhouette of a man standing in the sun-bright door. “I’m Ben McCord.”

Benton walked up to him, a firm leash on his anger now; he was a parolee, his freedom conditional. But there was a harsh edge to his voice when he said, “How come this truck’s been used? The lease—”

“Well, hell, Mr. Benton, we couldn’ta put more’n twenty-thirty miles on er. Ours busted down last week and we needed it to make a couple trips to town.” He gestured at the can of gas still clutched in Benton’s hand. “You won’t need that,” he said. “She’s got maybe a half a tank.”

“You hot-wired it.”

“Well, hell, Mr. Benton, there ain’t nothin’ to that.”

“Except it’s against the law.” Benton swung the gas can up to the bed of the truck, braced it against the tailgate, and turned back to McCord. He was young, twenty-one, twenty-two, probably the slattern’s son. A wispy blond moustache grew patchily on his upper lip and crescents of blackheads traced the nares of his nose in the bright sunlight. He was wearing a stained cowboy hat, a short denim jacket unbuttoned over a flat, tanned chest and belly, blue jeans, and oil-black, flat-heeled boots. And the family smell.

Benton had much more to say to him — about damages done and trashy ways of life in general — but he kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t afford to feed his languishing pride, and, besides, what good would it do? He got in the truck, started it, and backed out of the shed with a teenager’s flourish. When he wheeled around and aimed for the road, McCord bent over and picked up a rock and jounced it a couple times in his hand, grinning.

Benton stopped first at Moss’s office to offload his rage. But of course Harry wasn’t there, and his girl, not unexpectedly, said she didn’t know when he’d be back. Harry was in hiding.

But Benton had himself under better control now. He was profoundly frightened of precipitating anything that might land him back in the can, and for the next couple of years he’d have to be as inoffensive as a nun. From Harry’s he went to the sheriff’s substation and dutifully registered as a parolee; then he went back to the motel and took a long, needle-sharp shower, letting it almost hurt. Then he put on fresh clothes. It was eleven-thirty and, surprisingly, he was hungry.

He decided to walk the half-dozen blocks to the ABC Cafe, where Bessie worked, and on the way, his mind more orderly now, he wondered how come the Ford, a congenital slow-starter, had fired up that morning on the first turn of the key. It never did that unless it was warm. And then he wondered if what he’d seen tucked under Ben McCord’s belt when he’d bent over to pick up the rock was a gun. He shook the thought away; they’d told him at Folsom that he’d suffer all kinds of delusions for a while, large and small.

Bessie had been working for five hours, since seven, but still looked fresh and cheerful. She was what Benton needed just then, a friendly, wholesome, unambiguous face.

She brought him coffee and when he asked her how Jack was, she told him straightforwardly that he had died of a heart attack eighteen months ago. She made no big point of it — her pain was a private thing, as his had been. Benton, watching as the lunch crowd worked her up to top speed, felt a growing admiration. There were still proud, honest people left in the world; not all were like his recent associates at Folsom, and the McCords, and that butterball fink across the street — to various degrees, felons. From the counter where he sat, he kept a watchful eye on Moss’s office — “Buy A Piece of the Good Earth” emblazoned across the front window — but there was no sign of the man.

Bessie brought his after-lunch coffee and he said impulsively, “I just got my wheels back a while ago. How about taking in a film at the drive-in tonight?” He wasn’t normally an impulsive man and he surprised himself, but he was pleased when she actually paused a moment before saying, with old-time modesty, that she’d be happy to.

He arranged to pick her up at seven-thirty and lingered on until he saw Moss’s Lincoln move cautiously up the street and into the alley that served the back of his office block.

He’d known Harry Moss most of his life — and known of him. A short round man, he’d been the natural butt of jokes since his school days, an object of fun. And of rumor. Benton thought he understood him — that the sometimes shady, sometimes quick-handed deals he made were a way of getting back at the world. Napoleon had the same problem. But Moss was a good realtor, or so it was said — a producer, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, etc. When you wanted something done, you saw ole Harry. For instance, when you wanted your house wrecked.

His show of nerves that morning, his reluctance to take him out to the place, and the speed of his retreat were explained. But he seemed now about to faint when he looked up from his desk and saw Benton standing five feet away. His girl, late back from lunch, hadn’t been there to fend him off or announce him.

His wretchedness pleased Benton and he just stared at him a while, testing a tactic in intimidation he’d picked up in jail: say nothing, let the other guy prepare his surrender before you fire your first shot. A counselor at Folsom was master of the technique. He let another fifteen seconds tick away before he sat down and said, “Offhand, Harry, I’d say about two thousand bucks’ worth of damage. Further inspection will no doubt reveal more. The picket fence, the house, the outbuildings — and God knows what your clients have done to the insides of the place. I’ll take your preliminary check for two grand as earnest money, or whatever you guys call it.”

“Tom—”

“I gave you a power of attorney to lease the place to responsible people. You put a family of subhumans in there.”

Moss had gotten a little more breath back. “I had no ch—” He shook his head, warding off panic. Nothing was working out for him, and now nothing would. It was too late.

“You had no what? No choice? How come you had no choice?”

“Hamp—”

“Hamp? Hamp Carswell?”

Benton considered the unexpected name. Carswell had to do with Sheila’s death — and the young man’s. Carswell was the symbol of death implanted in Benton’s mind; not of leases, tenants. What had he to do with this?

Still the cool interrogator, Benton asked, “What about him, Harry?”

Moss was plainly terrified. “They were friends of his. He asked me to—”

“Asked — or told?” Some old scuttlebutt surfaced in Benton’s mind — that Carswell owned Hildy’s Place and Moss had traded his commission on the deal for a piece of the action. He could easily see Carswell in the role of master pimp, a little less so Moss; but it would outrage the moral precepts of neither.

Carswell had been a shadowy figure in town for years, always a lot of money, but the sources of it obscure. A big car. No wife or family, a mixed bag of friends — mostly low, some bought outright, like the bodyguard Benton had killed. But it all made no sense. He repeated his question less acerbically, genuinely curious.

Moss, sensing reprieve, gushed, “He told me to, Tom. I mean, I really had no choice.”

Another Carswell hireling, Benton thought; Hamp’s man on the Chamber of Commerce. But it explained nothing.

“Why did he tell you to?”

Moss pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped sweat from around his eyes. For a moment he seemed to think he was alone and got out the bottle of booze, his guilty eyes darting around. Then he squirreled it back in the drawer, blinking at himself. There was far more on his mind than a bad set of tenants and a couple of thousand dollars’ loss.

Benton, seeing this, waited for an answer; and then, suddenly illuminated, knew what it would be. “Because he hates my guts, doesn’t he?” he asked, and thought, Of course, of course, pleased with his sense of revelation.

Moss nodded and smiled damply and got out the bottle again.

“Because he wants to hurt me, huh, Harry?” Benton said abstractedly, the picture clearing further. “Because he knows that I know he killed my wife.” And also, he thought, the young man he helped me kill. “So he strikes out at me the only way he can — he puts a family of vandals in my house.”

Moss nodded again, looked at the bottle in surprise, and put it back in the drawer.

Benton was ruminating darkly now, but the clearing picture still made no sense. He said, “Harry, how come these offers to buy the place? If what he wanted to do was wreck it, how come the offers to buy?”

Moss had regained some control. “Those were from the McCords.”

“A hundred and fifty thousand bucks! Are you telling me they’ve got that kind of money?”

“I guess they do, Tom. I’ve got a five-thousand-dollar check accompanying the offer.”

“Have you deposited it?”

“I just got it yesterday. It’s in my desk.”

“Just for fun take it over and deposit it, see what happens. Aren’t you supposed to do that anyway?”

“Not until the seller signs the acceptance.” Moss’s voice had gained strength; this was good old real-estate talk. “Sign it and I’ll take it over right now.” A smile quivered across his lips.

Unexpectedly, Benton was tempted. The thought of the desecrated house sickened him. The thought of what that slattern probably had done to Sheila’s beautiful kitchen was more than he could bear. Stiffening, he rejected the temptation, but it had brought him full circle. “Harry,” he said, “I’m gonna want you to repair the damages. I’m gonna want the place put back the way it was.”

Moss’s smile brightened. “Sure,” he said. “No problem.” He got out the bottle again, as though for the first time, and went over to his water cooler for paper cups. “Let’s have a drink on it.”

Benton studied him coldly, saw the shake in his hands, the glisten of returning sweat on his brow. There was a lot more here than Moss had revealed, more than a few bucks’ loss and a touch of proper chagrin. Moss had been a realtor in a growing town for twenty-five years; he had the money and was probably used to the shame. Benton stood up and said no. The terms of his parole didn’t allow him to drink, but that wasn’t it. Moss was morally wounded. He stank of it. It was, in part, a prison smell, and Benton had had enough of that.

He left Moss unscrewing the cap of the bottle and walked out. Moss’s girl still hadn’t come back from lunch and Benton wondered in passing if she had something on him too. Probably a lot of people did.

Outside, he looked across the street at the ABC Cafe and thought lugubriously, My God, I’ve got a date for tonight. He smiled quickly, a pleasant relief for his face. She got off at two, she’d told him, and it was quarter to now. He was tempted to wait and walk her home, like a schoolboy and his girl, but he needed to deal first with the growing mass of worry in his mind. In twenty-seven more days they could ruin the place forever.

Sheldon High School was on the north border of town, not far from the Mountain View Motel. The football field had been cut out of the wilderness that still surrounded the school grounds, a noble stand of ponderosas backdrop to the scoreboard.

In his student days Benton walked to school through the woods from the ranch, a distance of three miles, entering and leaving through a gate under the scoreboard. Occasionally he’d take the school bus for the five-mile trip back home by road, but he’d come to love the early-morning walk through the cool and silent trees.

The old path was still there, less distinct than it once was but still negotiable. It would bring him out on the southeast corner of his nearly square hundred acres. His house was on the southwest corner of the property, a short half mile away. Between the two points a thick belt of pines curved north and west until, a few miles farther on, it embowered Hildy’s Place in fraudulent charm. Between the trees and the house Benton’s father had cleared forty acres of nearly level land for pasturage. Benton and Sheila had run their one cow and three horses there — all sold before he went to jail.

East of the trees the ground fell away gradually to Timberslide Creek, winding and dancing through the National Forest that adjoined Benton’s eastern line. The ground there was stony, the topsoil thin and patchy, host to manzanita, wild azalea, and other small tenacious growth. Once, eons ago, the river, or a river, had run the full length of the eastern border, building and leaving behind a thick stratum of sand, gravel, and rock but, unlike most ancient river beds in the Sierra, little or no gold. Benton’s father had spent a lot of time and money proving that.

Benton had no inkling of what he’d find when he emerged onto the property east of the trees. He had intended going straight on to the house, approaching from the blind side. He had noticed that morning with his rage-dimmed eyes a long stack of cut and split pine, a dozen cords at least, four or five years’ supply for the house fireplace. And he had noticed too the imprint of heavy-duty equipment tires crossing the dusty compound in front of the shed. The impressions had trickled upward into his consciousness through the middle hours of the day and were clear now. Something was going on, something illicit and damaging to his land. He had to learn what it was and stop it.

If any of the machines had been running that afternoon he’d have heard them before he saw them. As it was, he emerged onto a clear gravelly ledge in full view of the operation, retreating reflexively into the brush until he saw that no one was there. Anger surged through him again, enhanced this time by a foot soldier’s fear. He’d stumbled unexpectedly onto an enemy camp, and he understood then and believed in McCord’s gun. They were mining the ancient river bed — five, six hundred yards of it ripped open like a wound. It was awesome and brutal.

Still partly hidden, he surveyed the scene like a scout. A skip-loader/backhoe rig lay resting in the shade of one of the long deep cuts it had made in the land. It was a placer operation. It took more back than brains, but the skip-loader would do the work of ten men. Benton could see a length of plastic pipe snaking through the brush from Timberslide Creek below. They pumped their water up from there to feed the long, gently graded sluice box, big as a launching ramp.

The skip-loader had chopped raggedly into the higher ground along the western edge of the working zone, had scalloped into the stand of trees. Three tall ponderosas were down; others had fallen before, their grotesque uprooted stumps drying in the sun, their trunks no doubt cut, split, and stacked back at the house. The earth along the cut was eroding rapidly, a process that would be hard to stop, a fatal cancer on the land.

Benton had seen enough, too much. He turned away, fighting tears of helpless rage.

They’d ruined his house, and they’d ruined his land.

It was quarter after six and Moss was preparing to leave when Benton drove his truck up Moss’s drive and trapped the Lincoln in its lair. The trunk of the Lincoln was open, one suitcase already stowed away. Moss wasn’t going to hide out for a few hours this time, he was going to run.

Benton was hot from the long hike through the woods, and from the fires that burned within. He got out of his truck, picked up at the motel, and walked through the open side door of the house. Moss had seen him, was waiting in the kitchen, wavering on his feet, drunk. Mrs. Moss was a floral-print dress and a greying thatch of hair retreating through a door. She too had probably had enough of her husband.

Benton had no sophisticated plan of attack this time. He said right off, angrily, “Harry, it’s gonna cost you a hell of a lot more than two grand to put things right out there. Sit down and start talking. I want to know everything that’s going on, all of it, nothing held back!”

Moss had within him that special engine that functions best on booze; and sometimes only. He sat down docilely at the kitchen table, drank deeply from a glass already half empty, and said, almost eagerly, “It’s Hamp, Tom. It’s been Hamp from the start. He put the McCords up to wrecking your house — he knew they’d do it just naturally.”

“Who the hell are they anyway?”

“People he’s known for years. They were squatting on some land he owns in the valley. He’s rich, Tom, very very rich.”

He poured more from a bottle into his glass and raised it shakily to his mouth.

“Tell me again about these offers to buy the place,” Benton said. “And don’t gimme no garbage about it being the McCords. How come Carswell wants to buy what he’s wrecking?”

Harry waved a hand. “But it was the McCords, it is the McCords, Tom. They want to buy it.”

“Using what? Carswell’s money?”

“Yes. They don t have a dime.”

“So why?” Benton sat down at the table and took command of the bottle, his hand wrapped around the base. He didn’t want Moss to curl up inside the thing, not just yet. From the front part of the house, music had started, loud — Mrs. Moss was insulating herself from her husband’s world.

“God!” Moss said. “It’s a long, dumb story.”

“Tell it to me.”

“Hamp salted that old river bed your dad tried to work once. He wanted the McCords to work it, to tear the whole thing up. He knew it would start an erosion process that wouldn’t quit, that would work into the trees—”

“Salted it? You mean he planted gold in it?”

“Yeah — dust, and a few nuggets. He’s kept it up for two full years now. He salted it as they worked — like dangling a carrot in front of a mule. Hidden out there, nobody but them knew it was going on.”

“And you.”

“All right, and me — but not at first, Tom.”

“You could have stopped it.”

“No, I couldn’t! I didn’t have the guts. You don’t know those people.”

Benton paused, assessing Harry’s fear and feeling obliquely awed by Carswell’s fixation, or compulsion, or whatever it was. He went on, almost intoning, “And Carswell bought all that equipment, piped the water up from the creek, provided the gold for salt—”

“That’s what he did, and it’s cost him a bundle. But he didn’t give a damn about that. I’m not sure why, Tom, but he truly hates your guts.”

“So the McCords talked him into buying the place — or trying to — before I got out of Folsom.”

“Yeah. But that didn’t bother him either. He knew you wouldn’t sell, not in a million years.”

Benton leaned back, still puzzled, the anger still a painful knot in his chest; and not so sure any more that he wouldn’t sell. Moss emptied his glass and looked lovingly at the bottle in Benton’s grip. “Later,” Benton said. And then he said, “They must have forced him to make the offers to buy. They must’ve got gold fever bad — and Carswell was too chicken to admit the truth.”

“That’s what happened — at first anyway.”

“And you, Harry?”

“Me?”

“You. Where do you fit in? How come you know all this?”

“Hamp told me. We used to be in business together.”

“Yeah, I know — Hildy’s Place, the whorehouse.”

“That’s been — we closed it down. Hamp lives there now. He comes over from there at night to salt the — er, mine.”

“Harry, tell me — did the McCords sign the offers, or did you forge their signatures? What I mean is — can they write?”

“They can write. They signed.”

“In your office?”

“What difference does it make? Listen Tom, how about a drink?”

“Later. So you know them, you’ve dealt with them, it wasn’t all done through Carswell. They signed the leases too — right?”

“Right.”

“And you’re just as scared of them as Carswell is.”

“More so — you’ve got no idea.” His eyes were fixed on the bottle.

“How many of them are there? I saw three.”

“Five. Mama, two grown boys, a kid, and the old man. Each one worse than the other. Tom, listen—”

“Later. Harry, I want them out of there. What do I have to do to get them out right now?”

“Oh, no, not that!” Moss wasn’t drunk enough not to blanch. “Oh, no, Tom!”

“What do I have to do? What do you have to do as my agent?”

“Tom, for God’s sake, let them Jive put the lease!”

“The sheriff — right? The sheriff has to throw them out.” Benton paused, tasting his own words, like salt, like bile. “The sheriff.” He a parolee, barely twenty-four hours back in the world and hollering cop. He sighed gloomily. He’d loosened his grip on the bottle and Moss snatched it away at once, didn’t bother with the glass. Music thundered through the house. Benton stood up, frustrated and disgusted. “You stay in town,” he said. “No running away.” A pro forma warning. Moss would run nowhere for a while; when he finished the bottle, he might conceivably be able to crawl to bed.

The first show started at eight-thirty — a western he’d seen last month in prison. But he didn’t disclose that oddity to Bessie. He’d picked her up at eight, a little later than planned. He’d had to shower again and put on his last set of clean clothes, but he didn’t tell her that either. Instinctively he wouldn’t mix the Moss-Carswell-McCord world with hers. It would be like poisoning a well. He wanted only to relax for a few hours in non-threatening company, to give himself perspective on the next twenty-six days.

They ate popcorn and drank Coke and Benton thought of it as supper. He hadn’t had time to eat. But she, he found again, was good for him, her very presence proof of order, clarity, decency.

There was a lot of bang-bang-bang from the speaker that hung in the cab of the truck. Two groups of horsemen were trading shots on the screen. It was a noisy part of the film, obscuring what was about to happen outside, but he had a flashing premonition. He saw the shadowed figure just beyond his door window and reflexively ducked his head. His right hand, holding a Coke, shot out to hook Bessie’s neck and pull her down. The drink soaked her shoulder and breast; the bullet creased the pad of Benton’s thumb and hit her head. Shards of glass exploded across Benton’s bowed and twisted neck and Bessie slipped heavily from his hold against the door. Popcorn had spilled all over the place.

He didn’t hesitate a heartbeat; shock would come later. He started the truck and roared away, trailing the speaker cord, his bloodied right hand bracing Bessie’s limp body as he made the series of short sharp turns to get out of the place.

At first they said she’d probably live. And then they said she wasn’t badly hurt at all, that luckily the slug had rounded the base of her skull beneath the scalp and emerged above her right ear — it had no doubt given her a concussion, its severity to be determined later, but no fracture. He, in the meantime, with his hand treated and bandaged, could relax in the waiting room or go home.

A deputy sheriff named Michaels had arrived ten minutes after Bessie had been wheeled into the operating room. He’d listened politely to Benton’s angry story and then gone back out to his car. Twenty minutes later, with Benton planted in his chair, hand held high to reduce the throb, Michaels returned, his notebook out and a minatory look in his eye.

He sat down next to Benton and said, “You tell me a guy named Dan McCord fired the shot.”

“I said ‘probably,’ almost certainly. I didn’t get much of a look at him, but he had a cowboy hat on and—”

“Not many guys out here in the wild west wear cowboy hats, huh?”

Benton didn’t like Michaels’ tone of voice. He said, “Meaning what?”

“You just got out of Folsom, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Yesterday. I registered at the station today.”

“How many enemies did you make in Folsom?”

“None. Nor friends. What the hell has that got to do—?”

“Everybody makes enemies in jail.”

“I didn’t. I’m telling you, McCord was—”

“So this enemy of yours gets out a little ahead of you and lays in wait. He gets his chance tonight at the drive-in, and you tell me it’s a guy named McCord. O.K., why do you tell me that? Because you knew the McCords saw you this evening. You figure your best defense against them is a good offense. But it’s not so good, Benton.”

“What are you talking about? Saw me do what?”

“Kill Mr. Hampton Carswell. Run him over the cliff, just like you claim he did your wife.”

Benton stared at him. Their colloquy had been low-keyed, but the room had grown quiet, was watching. Benton thought it was some kind of a trick, cruel as it was clumsy. “You’re kidding,” he said finally. “Is he dead?”

Michaels smiled coldly. “As a doornail. Since about seven o’clock. Three McCord men, including your friend Dan, saw you do it.”

“You’re crazy! They’re crazy!”

“Sure we are, everybody but you.” He stood up. “Come on outside, Benton. Let me show you something you didn’t have time to fix. Pretty cool, I must say, taking your girl friend out to the movies so soon after.”

With his hand in firm custody of Benton’s left elbow, Michaels steered him out through the emergency-room entrance to where he’d parked his truck. There were two other deputies there and two county cars, roof-lights pulsing. One of the two men held a flashlight in his hand, while the other, on his knees at the right front fender of Benton’s truck, was examining, in the concentrated beam of the flash, a variety of damage there. Michaels released Benton’s elbow and bent forward to look. The man on his knees said, “It’s fresh — as of today, I’d say, and white as the driven snow.” He got to his feet. “We’ll send it to the lab tomorrow, but tonight’s book says it’s paint from Carswell’s car. This your man?” He was looking at Benton, his eyes pleased.

“That’s him, Sarge.”

“All that happened three years ago,” Benton protested. “I hit this tree up in the hills.”

“Sure you did — one of those white painted ones.” The sergeant smiled blandly and went to one of the county cars to use the radio.

An ambulance wheeled into the emergency drive and touched its horn, the siren winding down. Benton’s truck was slightly in its path and Michaels got in quickly to move it away.

Benton hacked off a pace, and then another. A car followed the ambulance up the drive and the third cop watched it as Benton turned and went between two parked staff cars and kept going. He figured that if he had a thirty-second lead he might make it, adrenalin pumping through his system like tap water.

Moss’s garage was empty and Benton took it hard, nearly ready to quit, to give it up. He’d come two miles from the hospital, mostly through brush and trees. He looked like what he was, an escapee, scratched, torn, and bleeding. His bandaged hand pulsed with pain.

A light was on in Moss’s kitchen, and even from the foot of the drive he could hear music. He walked up to the side door and found it open. The music was deafening, a full-volume roar. Benton shouted, “Mrs. Moss!” but got no answer.

He went through the kitchen and down a hall, tracking the source of the sound. It was in a den/alcove off the living room, a stereo set-up, a long-playing tape on a reel the size of a bike tire. He switched it off; it would be unbearably ironic if a neighbor called the cops to complain. The silence was sudden and sweet. He called Mrs. Moss’s name again, but got no response. It was after eleven. Cautiously now, a true thief in the night, he crept down a long hall, looking through doors. In the room at the end he saw Moss on his face on the floor. His wife had flown the coop, not the man, but an icy question loomed in Benton’s mind: was he just drunk, or dead? Had the McCords been here already? Benton didn’t really want to know, or even to touch the fat little man, but he had to. Delicately, with the toe of his shoe, he prodded a thigh, and heard the prone figure mumble, “O.K., Emily, O.K.”

Moss was sick in the bathroom, and then demanded a Bloody Mary, said he wouldn’t talk without one, so Benton made him one in the kitchen, brought it back, and watched him empty it in one long swig. The effect was magical — a stagey sigh, a contrite little-boy smile playing around the lips. But it didn’t pick him up on the real world.

“What I want to know,” Benton growled, all his patience gone, “is this: if they set me up for Carswell s murder, how come they tried to kill me?”

Moss belched and smiled proudly — no longer sick, but drunk again. “Kill one, kill two,” he said foolishly, sitting on the john. “You don’t know it, old sock, but you signed a ten-year lease on your property yesterday. Or was it the day before? What time is it?”

“I did what?”

“Well, O.K., I did it for you — free service of Moss Realty, twenty-five years in one location, forgeries a specialty. I’ve lied before.”

Benton saw a glimmer of light. “Harry, you knew they were gonna kill Carswell, didn’t you?”

Moss giggled.

“Listen, they tell you everything. They like you to know exactly what they got in mind, the McCord boys. Special technique they got to scare the hell out of you. Why aren’t I in San Francisco by now?”

“Your wife probably is. She took the car.”

Moss reacted. He might be about to rejoin the real world, sweat marking his return.

“They used my truck to sideswipe Carswell’s car, just enough to leave some paint,” Benton went on. “But you knew that too, didn’t you, Harry?”

“Not for sure. I didn’t wanna believe it. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t wanna believe.”

“Then they ran Carswell s car over the edge with his body in it. Tonight, Harry.”

“Tonight?” Harry’s surprise seemed genuine. “That was dumb,” he said. But he had an overriding interest and thrust out his glass. “ ’Nother.”

“Not now. So yesterday they made you draw a ten-year lease on my place and forge my signature on it.”

“With mineral and timbering rights — Tom, please!”

“So they could continue hunting gold even if I wasn’t back in jail for Carswell’s murder, or even if I was dead — preferably dead. Which you knew too. You knew they planned to kill me when they made you forge the lease—”

“No — not for sure.” For a moment Moss’s round face seemed sober and sincere. “Not even at all. I figured I was next, I knew too much. I was running from them, not you.”

Benton sighed wearily, his hand banging away like a drum. He’d seen only three of the McCords, but he understood Moss’s fear of them and even felt some distant sympathy for the dead Carswell. A dog shouldn’t run with wolves; when they’re hungry they eat him first.

“Hamp told them he’d salted the place,” Moss mumbled, “but they didn’t believe him. He was trying to get rid of them and they knew it. They figured he wanted the gold for himself, so they figured they had to kill him—”

“And figured to pin it on me.”

“Tom, I gotta have another drink!”

“Later, Harry.”

“I should be on a plane for Hawaii by now. You’d make a lousy steward.” Moss was capable of some self-mockery, but not much. His need was primal, the glass held out like a beggar seeking alms.

Benton raised his hand again to reduce the pain. The bandage showed a growing stain of blood. He said, “I’m gonna call the cops now, Harry. I want you to tell them what you’ve told me, plus all the missing details.”

“A drink first, for God’s sake!”

“When you’ve gotten started with them. I don’t trust you, Harry.”

Moss slumped and Benton got up and went to the kitchen to use the phone and make another drink. On his way, the front doorbell rang and he angled across the living room to answer it, switching on the light as he opened the door. A cop stood on the porch, smiling. He said, “We got this call about some loud music—” Then his smile faded, he backed away a pace and drew his gun. “You’re Benton,” he said.

Benton nodded tiredly. “I was just about to—”

“Put your hands behind your head,” the cop snarled, “and shut up.”

Charley Hoskins lit a cigarette, sipped at his hot coffee, and watched his wife Eleanor and her sister Bessie begin to clear the table. His eyes reported that they were a good-looking pair of women, but Benton had conceded that long since. He was waiting now for something else, the rest of the story. He said eagerly, “So tell me, Charley.”

Hoskins blew smoke at the ceiling and glanced at the kitchen door. “Well, Monday evening when you got back from Folsom,” he said, “it got complicated. They had Carswell locked up in the house with his hands and feet bound. Moss had been there and gone after writing up that last offer to buy and forging the ten-year lease — and with his instructions to bring you out the next morning.”

“The ten-year lease was their contingency plan.”

“Yeah, sort of. But they had just one basic plan — to get control of the property and get rid of Carswell, hopefully in that order.” Hoskins sipped again at the coffee. Dishes rattled in the kitchen. “They didn’t really plan to kill Carswell until later — just in case you accepted the offer to buy. They’d need his money to complete that — but they’d already planned to hang his killing on you.”

“And when that looked shaky,” Benton said, “their fall-back plan was to kill me and rely on the lease.”

“Yeah,” Hoskins said. “But what really screwed things up for them was Carswell breaking loose early Tuesday morning and damn near getting away, beating up his car in the process and killing himself.”

This is what — among other things — Benton had waited through a long pleasant meal at Hoskins’ house to learn. “How?” he said.

“They had him in the back bedroom — you know the one. He busted out a window and cut the cords that bound him on shards of glass. They had his car — the white Chrysler — parked in the big barn, keys in it, and he got to it before they could stop him. He drove it right out through the barn door and when he wheeled around to head for the road, Ben McCord shot out one of the front tires and Carswell drove it smack into that mountain of cordwood and broke his neck.”

“Jesus—” Benton said.

“And then some.” Hoskins sipped more coffee. “Which ruined phase one of the master plan — buying the place — and badly compromised phase two — framing you for his death.”

“But they tried that anyway.”

“Yeah. They already had your truck back on its tires. They took it out and ran it against the Chrysler to mark it with paint — which they’d figured to do anyway before Moss brought you out to pick it up. But, of course, they didn’t figure on Carswell being dead at the time. They figured — assuming you didn’t accept the offer to buy—”

“Which I damn near did—”

“They figured to do that later in the day with Carswell merely knocked out at the time and then they’d have a ten-year lease, plus you back in the can.”

“But, my God, Charley, they must have known it wouldn’t work!”

“They weren’t sure it wouldn’t, being basically stupid — gold stupid, Tom. But to cinch things for ten years anyway, they sent Ben out to pick his time and knock you off. They gave him a deadline — if you’ll forgive the expression — of eight-thirty.”

“Gold!” Benton said, shaking his head and pondering briefly on the bloody history of the stuff. “How much did Carswell salt the place with?”

“About forty thousand dollars’ worth — that they found.”

“My God!”

“Right. And then to cover themselves for the Carswell death they called our office and claimed they saw you force him over the edge. But it didn’t take us long to see through that frame.”

“Just long enough,” Benton said, smiling, “to scare me to death.” He leaned back in his chair, comfortable in this house, and mused on the matter of retribution in the form of poetic justice. Carswell’s Chrysler had landed no more than ten feet from where Sheila’s Toyota had been found — and the McCords hadn’t known where that was. Coincidence — or some other force we haven’t yet defined, a question for others to answer.

He watched Bessie come in for another load of dishes and smiled at her, pleased that she blushed as she turned back toward the kitchen. It was only three days since she’d been shot, but except for the turban arrangement on her head you’d never know it. His presence seemed to liven her, as hers did him.

“I don’t understand Carswell,” he said to Hoskins. “I thought I had him figured out — on a kind of metaphysical level, a guilt complex attached to me, and even shared by me, but—” He shrugged.

Hoskins stubbed out his first after-dinner cigarette and lit a second. He glanced at the kitchen door, was satisfied with the sounds he heard from there, and said quietly, “We did some research on him, Tom. He used to run dope in San Francisco in the early sixties. Made a pile and never got nailed. But then one day his wife got blown up in a wired car that was meant for him. It broke him up and drove him out of the business.”

Benton had listened carefully. “So—?” he said.

“It may mean nothing,” Hoskins answered. “But her name was Sheila.”