Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

I: The Man Who Kept His Promise

Long evening shadows of live oak and chaparral stretched across the rutted wheel tracks as Kendricks rode his tired mare down the hill into town.

He was a tall square-shouldered man, rimed with dust and sweat, and he held himself stiffly erect in the saddle as the mare picked her way down the main street through a confusion of riders, buggies, and wagons.

Except for the crowd of farmers, cowboys, and mill men that filled the street, Oak Flat might have been any one of the dozens of small towns that Kendricks had ridden into in the past few weeks — a cluster of frame houses, a string of high-fronted stores, a mingled smell of dust, manure, and smoke.

Kendricks reined the mare over to the town’s livery stable and swung stiffly from the saddle. He peered into the dark interior of the frame building, then rapped sharply on the open door. A balding man wearing a leather apron came limping out.

“We got no more room — full up,” he said, grinning.

“Is there another stable in town?” Kendricks asked.

“No, ya just bet there ain’t,” the man said, “but fer a buck ya can turn yer hoss out in the corral back of the stable.”

“For five could you find her a stall, a measure of oats, and give her a rubdown?”

“Fer five — silver — I could do a lot of things,” the man said, suddenly respectful. He took the mare’s reins as Kendricks fished the coins out of his pocket. “When’ll ya be wantin’ her? Tomorrow, I guess, after the show’s over, huh?”

The tall man untied his saddlebags and slung them over his shoulder.

“Is there a hotel in town?”

“Yes, sir, ya bet there is, right down the street. The Antlers — but I’ll bet they’re full up too. It ain’t every day business is this good. Ya just bet it ain’t.”

Kendricks walked down the board sidewalk, his boot heels thumping hollowly. Teams and wagons lined the hitch rails in a yellowish haze of dust. Some of the farmers had brought their families with them. They had unhitched their horses and fed them hay. The women were busy spreading quilts in the wagon beds and handing out food to their noisy youngsters.

Kendricks stepped into the first saloon he came to. He put his saddlebags on the bar, pulled off his dusty hat, wiped his sweaty face on his shirt sleeve, and ordered a beer. No need to ask the usual questions this time. Aching with weariness, he let his body sag against the stained and polished wood.

The beer was warm and flat, but it quenched his thirst. He drank slowly, listening to the boisterous flood of talk and laughter that swept around him. The bartender wore a broad happy grin — it was a great day for business. Abruptly Kendricks paid for his drink and left.

The hotel lobby was crowded. Kendricks pushed his way to the desk and asked for a room.

“You gotta be kidding,” the clerk said, cleaning his fingernails with a penknife. “There ain’t been a room here since this morning.”

“Any other hotel in town?”

“Nope,” the clerk shrugged. He glanced slyly at Kendricks. “ ’Course, if ya don’t mind payin’ a little extra, I mought just manage to squeeze ya in with a feller in Room Twelve.”

“I don’t mind.”

“In that case it’ll be four dollars — in advance, that is.”

Kendricks paid him and laid his saddlebags on the desk.

“I’m going out for a while. Put these up for me.”

“Well, I dunno as I want—”

“Do it, and I’d not like to see anything happen to them.”

“All right. Yes, sir.”

Kendricks went back to the busy street. In the middle of the square formed by the town’s only crossroads a wooden structure towered stark and raw. Men were still working on it, clinging like flies to the two uprights, lifting a heavy cross beam into place.

Kendricks walked across the square and looked up at it. One of the onlookers nudged him with a bony elbow.

“Stranger here, ain’t ya? Never seen no better lookin’ gallows, now did ya? By golly, we don’t have many hangin’s, but when we do we fix things up good and proper.”

The thud of workmen’s hammers echoed back from the store fronts.

“Where’s the Sheriff’s office?” Kendricks asked.

“Right down there,” the man pointed with a gap-toothed grin. “Of Matt Starrett, he don’t go much for fancy hangin’s, but Geary had a lot of friends in these parts, and there ain’t a hell of a lot Of Matt ken do about it.”

The Sheriff was sitting alone in his office behind a battered oak desk. As Kendricks entered he swung around, grimly alert, a small man with the toughness of worn leather and sharp, cold gray eyes.

“I’m Bill Kendricks,” the tall man said slowly. “I’ve come a long ways.”

The Sheriff stood up. He wore a heavy revolver in a low-slung holster and he moved as though the weapon were a natural part of him.

“Kendricks,” he said. “Any relation of the boy’s?”

“Brother.”

A flicker of light touched the Sheriff’s cold eyes. “Sorry about the mess out there,” he said. “Some fools’ll make a circus out of anything — even a hanging.”

“Yes,” Kendricks said.

“The boy got any other kinfolks?”

“Folks are both dead.”

“I suppose you wanta see him?”

“Yes.”

Kendricks stood stolidly while the Sheriff ran his hands over his tall body.

“You’d be more of a fool than you look if you tried to break him out.”

“Yes,” Kendricks said again.

“Come along,” the Sheriff said. He took a large ring of keys from his desk drawer and led the way out the back of his office into a debris-littered alley.

The jail stood by itself — a small squat building of stone with a metal roof and a heavy ironbound door. The Sheriff, watching Kendricks steadily, fumbled with the keys, then opened the door. It swung back on protesting hinges and a hot, fetid smell curled out of the darkness inside.

“You stand right there in the door where I can see you,” the Sheriff said, and stepped aside.

Kendricks stood in the doorway and peered into the dark. The only light and air came from a small barred window up near the ceiling, and in spite of the thick stone walls the heat was stifling. The room was divided by a grille of iron bars into a narrow hallway and two cells. Each cell contained a bunk, a rusty pail, and a heavy chain riveted to an iron ring set into the stone floor.

One cell was empty. In the one next to the door the chain was padlocked around the bare ankle of a man lying on his face on the narrow bunk, his blond head buried in his arms. In the sticky heat he was shivering, and his sweat-soaked clothing clung to his thin body.

“Tod,” Kendricks said.

The man on the bunk jerked. He leaped to his feet and flung himself against the bars. The chain on his leg clattered across the rough floor. His young face was gray and waxy beneath the soft, pale stubble of his beard. As his startled eyes fixed on Kendricks they glittered with a sudden wild hope.

“Bill!” he cried shrilly. “I knew you’d come! You couldn’t let me die like this! I sent you word — weeks ago. What took you so damn long? Tomorrow they’re gonna hang me. Tomorrow—” His thin gray fingers clutched the bars.

“I happened to hear,” the older man said. “I haven’t been home since you run off. I been looking for you.”

The boy tried to smile. Tears trickled down his checks and his mouth twisted grotesquely. “Sure I left,” he said. “I wanted to see something — to do something — ’fore I got so old and settled down. You can understand that, can’t you, Bill?”

“I can’t understand you killing a man.”

“I never killed nobody!”

“A couple of witnesses and the judge and jury thought you did. They said you bushwhacked a man named Abe Geary — shot him down after he licked you in a fair fight.”

“It weren’t a fair fight! The damned bully!” The boy’s reddened eyes narrowed. “I tell you I didn’t kill him. But anyway, what difference does it make?” His thin, high-pitched voice dropped to a whisper. “You gotta get me out of here. You got no time to do it legal. The Sheriff’s got the keys. Half the time there ain’t even a guard. I don’t give a damn how you do it, Bill — but you gotta get me outta here!”

“I think you did kill Geary.”

“What if I did? He had it comin’. You swore to Ma you’d look after me. When she was dyin’ you swore to her on the Bible that you’d take care of me. You never broke a promise in your life, Bill.”

“I don’t aim to break my word now, Tod,” the older man said heavily. “I looked after you for years — getting you out of scrapes, trying to see to it you did what was right and honorable.”

“You get me out of this,” the boy panted. “You get me out of here and I’ll do like you say. You won’t never have no more trouble with me again — I swear you won’t.”

“You can’t give a man back his life.” Kendricks turned away slowly, his square shoulders sagging.

“Wait!” the boy shouted. “Bill, you can’t leave me here! Bill!” He pressed his face against the bars and stretched out his hands with desperate appeal. The older man looked at him, seeing the bony wrists, the thin white arms, the frightened childish face, the mop of straw-colored hair.

“You done talkin’ to him?” the Sheriff called out.

“Yes,” Kendricks said. As he walked down the alley he heard the Sheriff slam the heavy door shut and lock it and he heard his brother’s hysterical screaming.

Kendricks walked back to the hotel, got his saddlebags, and went upstairs to Room 12.

It was empty and he pulled off his boots and lay down on the bed. After a time the town grew quiet and a small plump man in a checked suit stumbled happily into the room, undressed, and tumbled into bed beside Kendricks where he fell instantly asleep, snoring loudly and smelling of cheap whiskey.

Kendricks, awake in the dark, thought of his brother. Not the Tod who was a sniveling wretched man in the jail cell, but the boy he once was, bright-eyed and laughing. The daydream was so real that the older man groaned and buried his face in the hard pillow.

Toward morning he slept fitfully and awoke as the sky grew light in the east. He slid off the bed quietly so that he would not disturb his snoring companion and went to the window. Already the people camped in the streets were stirring. The smoke of a small campfire rose across the bright sky, and a horse stamped and whickered.

Kendricks pulled on his boots, splashed water into the basin, and washed his face. He took his razor from his saddlebags and shaved carefully, using the hotel’s cracked and smelly bar of soap. He emptied the basin into the slop pail, rinsed the basin, wiped it dry, and hung the towel neatly in place. He put on a clean shirt and combed his thick hair.

On the street, beneath the hotel window, people were beginning to pass, their shoes drumming on the boards, their voices low-pitched and full of nervous excitement.

Kendricks took a .45 Colt revolver from his saddlebags. He checked the action, loaded it, and put it inside the waistband of his pants under his shirt. He went down the stairs and joined the crowd as it moved like a fast-flowing river toward the square.

The gallows towered overhead, the splintery green lumber glistening with pitch drops in the early morning sunlight. As Kendricks stepped into the open square, the crowd that had been pushing and shoving and fighting for the best view grew suddenly silent and intent.

The door of the Sheriff’s office opened and a small procession emerged. A pale young preacher came first, his hands clasped in prayer. After him came the Sheriff and a grim-faced deputy supporting between them the prisoner in a white shirt and dark trousers, his hands bound behind him. Two other men, solemn and dressed in black suits, followed.

Kendricks walked slowly forward. The street was silent except for the soft sluff-sluff of shoes in the powdery dust. The stumbling prisoner, his mouth hanging slack, his face beaded with sweat, stared with unbelieving horror up at the waiting noose.

The tall man reached the procession.

“Out of the way, Kendricks,” the Sheriff said sharply. “There’s nothing you can do now.”

The boy’s terrified eyes fixed on his brother’s face. “Bill!” he screamed. “Help me! Don’t let them!”

He flung himself toward Kendricks, dragging the Sheriff and the deputy with him.

“Help me!”

With one smooth quick motion the tall man drew the Colt from his shirt front, cocked it, and fired point-blank into the boy’s chest.

The prisoner’s thin body jerked back and a bright fountain of blood gushed from the wound. The boy’s childish face lost its sudden look of incredulous bewilderment and took on the blank and impersonal stare of death.

Kendricks dropped the revolver in the blood-spattered dust. “I promised Ma I’d look after him,” he said. “I promised her he’d never hang like his Pa did.”

II: Why Don’t You Like Me?

Lying on her back under the old truck and tightening the last of the oil pan bolts, Luddy didn’t here the Jeep drive into the yard until it pulled up close to the machine shed and stopped.

She wiggled out from under the truck as Sheriff Fred Kyle swung his big booted feet to the ground.

“Hello, Luddy,” he said politely enough. He ought to be polite — after all she had a vote the same as anyone else in the county; but she could see in the way his gray eyes passed over her coolly, indifferently, what he thought — like all the others — that if a woman worked with her hands and didn’t stay dressed up pretty with her hair curled and her face painted—

“Hello, Fred,” she said, making her voice deep and still. She picked up a rag and wiped her grease-blackened hands.

“Thought I’d better come by and tell you,” he said. “Man broke out of jail last night. We were holding him for murdering a couple of women with a knife. He’s dangerous. I’m not trying to scare you, Luddy, but it would be a good idea if you stayed in town nights till we get him.”

She laughed harshly. “No man ’ud bother me, Sheriff,” she said. “Besides I got a twelve-gauge shotgun in there and I know how to use it.” Probably better’n you do, Sheriff — little Freddie Kyle she’d gone to school with and licked at everything, even baseball and arithmetic. Now he was the Sheriff acting smart and wearing a tin badge, and telling her to go stay in town.

The late afternoon sun shone on his short blond hair, on his tanned skin, on the bulge of muscles under his neatly pressed khaki shirt. At least the soft-skinned, cow-eyed Eva Petrie he’d married kept his shirts ironed.

“You’ve been running this place nearly ten years, haven’t you, Luddy? Ten years since your Pa died?” He looked around at the straight, tight fences, the painted barns, the fat cattle grazing in the lush pasture, the newly mown hayfields. “You’re doing a fine job. A man couldn’t do better.”

“Thanks,” she said wryly, “and I’m nearly thirty and I’ve never been kissed!” She knew she had said the sudden, almost irrational thought aloud when he looked at her sharply. That’s what came of being alone so much, of never having anyone to talk to; thoughts became words, and words thoughts, without reason or purpose.

She felt her whole body grow stiff and hot with embarrassment. She looked away from the sharp-eyed Sheriff and saw one of his deputies sitting in the Jeep, a beefy, round-faced man grinning contemptuously at her.

“Get out of here,” she said thickly, “and take that gawking ape with you.”

Fred Kyle was frowning at her. “We came here to warn you, Miss Vadick,” he said with cold formality. “This man we’re looking for seems harmless. He’s only twenty and he looks as sweet and innocent as a young angel, but he’s a psychotic killer and he’d as soon shove a knife into you as eat breakfast. I’d be within my duty to order you into town until we catch him — you living alone this way, miles from anyone.”

“You don’t order me anywhere, Fred Kyle, I won’t go. I’ve got my stock to look after and my work to do. Now get out, both of you!”

Kyle shrugged. “All right,” he said. “If you see anyone suspicious you let me know.”

“I’ll do better’n that. I’ll catch him for you and deliver your killer all tied up neat with pink ribbons.”

“If you see him, you call us, Miss Vadick. He’s tall and thin, has black hair and eyes, and as far as we know he’s still wearing the county’s blue shirt and jeans. And let me warn you again that he’s dangerous.”

Kyle got into the Jeep and drove rapidly out of the yard.

Luddy stood with her hands on her hips watching them until they were out of sight up the winding road across the hillside. She let her rigidly held body slump. “Fred Kyle always was a fool,” she said angrily.

She pulled her watch out of her pocket and looked at it. Five o’clock — time to start the chores. She rinsed her rough, greasy hands in stove oil and washed with soap at the hand pump in the yard. She fed the chickens and gathered the eggs. She got the two milk pails in the house and went to the barn. She drove the cows in from pasture and milked, she fed the calves and turned the cows out, and gave hay and water to the big white bull in his strong log pen.

She carried a pail of milk to the spring house and strained the foamy liquid into graniteware pans. She went to the field and fueled the engine that ran the pump and changed the water into three checks in the hayfield for the night. It was dark when she came into the house.

She lighted a lamp, set it on the table, opened a can of beans, fried a slab of bacon, and heated the coffee left in the pot from breakfast. She ale her supper, piled the dishes in the dish pan, poured a dipper of water over them, and wiped out the crusted frying pan with a piece of newspaper.

She picked up the lamp and paused to look around the kitchen. It was cluttered and dirty; cobwebs festooned the walls and the once white curtains were stiff with dust. She thought of Fred Kyle and his scrubbed pink neck and freshly ironed shirt. Eva — she’d been the most helpless little thing, squealing at bugs and looking up at Fred through her eyelashes—

“She got him, didn’t she?” Luddy said. She stumped down the hall to her bedroom, blew out the light, undressed in the dark and crawled into her bed.

Sleep with its welcome oblivion wouldn’t come. Outside in the dark the pump engine throbbed and crickets and frogs chorused. Her mind churned, her tortured thoughts like sparks from a fire that brightened and dimmed and twisted in bitter remembrance. She saw herself as a child always alone, always left out of the others’ games and parties, shy, painfully self-conscious of her homely face and plain ill-fitting clothing.

Memory was like a rasping of sharp fingers across a raw wound. She twisted in anguish remembering her cringing, her fawning, her begging — who wants the candy out of my lunch? — do you want my doll, I don’t want her anymore — I’ll do your homework for you — can’t I go too? — oh, Fred, why don’t you like me? — why don’t you like me?

She flung herself out of bed, lighted the lamp, and stared at herself in the mirror above the dresser. Her face peered back at her from the fly-specked dark, a gargoyle face, wrinkled, weathered, with hooded glaring eyes—

With a sudden moan she picked up her heavy shoe and beat it against the glass. The mirror shattered into a cascade of silvery fragments. Sobbing convulsively, she put out the light, threw herself back on the bed, and at last slept...

In the morning the torment of the night seemed like a dream. She dressed — careful not to look at the shattered mirror and did her morning chores. She changed the water, ate breakfast, and worked on the old truck. By noon she had it running. In the afternoon she cleaned out ditches, finished the irrigating, and built another calf corral.

That evening as she brought in the cows she thought she saw a movement in the willows along the creek that divided her farm from her nearest neighbor.

“A big dog,” she said, “or one of Milt’s calves. He better not say I stole it. I’ll take a club to him.”

She watched the willows furtively as she went about her chores. At sundown she saw with a quick surge of excitement the figure of a man standing just inside the brushy cover. He was tall and thin; his hair was dark and he was staring intently up toward the farm buildings.

“He’s hungry,” she said. “He’ll come.”

When she had finished the chores she went into the house and got her shotgun down from the bedroom shelf, wiped it with an oily rag, and loaded it with buckshot.

She didn’t eat. Holding the cocked weapon she sat on the front porch and waited. The quartering moon made a faint light. After a while she saw a movement near the barn and a tall, thin figure came stealthily toward the house.

“Hold it!” she called. “I’ve got you covered!”

The man turned and leaped away. She fired both barrels at his wispy shadow, but he vanished without an outcry. She reloaded the shotgun and got a flashlight. There were tracks in the soft dust, but no drops of blood.

Luddy didn’t think of calling the Sheriff. She sat all night on the porch with the shotgun across her knees, but by the light of dawn he had not appeared again. She kept the weapon handy as she went about her work, but she saw no trace of the fugitive.

At noon, when she went into the house, he was sitting at her kitchen table with his hands quietly folded, looking up at her. She knew him instantly. He had Kings County Jail stenciled in black across the front of his worn blue shirt.

She felt a moment’s wild panic. Then she pointed the shotgun at him and he smiled.

“You don’t need that, Luddy,” he said. “I won’t hurt you. I’m your friend.”

His lips barely moved when he talked. It was as if his mind talked to her mind — but she could hear his voice as deep and clear as a great bronze bell. The voice soothed her and she was no longer afraid. Her knees felt as weak and wobbly as a newborn calf’s. She leaned the shotgun against the wall and sat down across the table from him.

He sat quietly, still smiling at her. His crisp dark hair curled on his high forehead; his eyes were large and as liquid and deep as the dark still pools beneath the willows along the creek; his skin was the silken gold of fall leaves; his features were perfectly molded and the perfection of his smiling mouth made her shiver. Even his hands, with their tracery of blue veins, were beautiful — with long tapering fingers and just a dusting of black hairs on the backs.

“You must be hungry,” she said breathlessly. “Let me get you something to eat.”

“Thank you, Luddy,” he said. “You are very kind.”

It wasn’t strange that he knew her name. Everything about him was as familiar and real as her own being. She heard herself babbling as she stoked the stove and got out her pots and pans.

“The Sheriff was here — did you know that? He said you were dangerous, that I should call him if I saw you.” She laughed, glancing at him, then pulled her lips down over her uneven teeth, knowing that she was especially hideous when she laughed; but his face did not turn from her. He watched her, smiling gently, his eyes warm and bright.

She put on fresh coffee to boil, sliced bacon, diced potatoes with onions for frying, brought cold fresh milk and a bowl of cream from the spring house, picked a colander of strawberries from the neglected garden. Each time she went out of the house she hurried back, her heart pounding, cold with the fear that he would be gone; but he remained at the table and watched her with his black liquid eyes.

When the food was ready they ate. Luddy kept right on talking. It was wonderful to have someone to talk to. She knew he must hate her, that she must sound like a fool, but still the words bubbled out of her mouth like an inexhaustible spring.

“It wasn’t always like this,” she said, gesturing at the dirt-encrusted room. “When Papa was alive and I kept house for him I had everything so neat and clean you wouldn’t believe it. I had everything so tidy.”

He nodded. “Of course you did, Luddy.”

“It’s different now,” she said. “I don’t have time. Something has to go.”

“You’re very wise, Luddy.”

When they had finished eating she fell silent as she stacked the dishes. He’d been hungry; he’d come to eat, and in a few moments he’d be gone.

She said, “They’re looking for you everywhere. They want to kill you.”

He nodded and his eyes looked sad.

“You could stay here,” she said. “You’d be safe. I’d look after you and hide you.”

He shook his head. “I must go.”

“No!” she cried, “I won’t let you! You don’t know how much they hate you — how much they want to kill you!”

“Dear Luddy,” he said sadly, “how good you are. But I must go.”

He stood up. He moved with a sinuous grace and ease that seemed effortless. He seemed to flow across the floor toward the door.

She snatched up the shotgun. “Don’t leave me!” she cried.

He stopped and looked at her with the faintest smile on his curved lips.

She held the shotgun steady. Where could she put him? It had to be a safe place, a strong place, one that he couldn’t get out of and where they’d never find him. The grain bin in the barn. It was built of two layers of tongue-and-groove siding, sheathed with tin and bolted to a concrete foundation. It had a heavy door and two small heavily screened windows for ventilation.

He made no objection as she ordered him across the yard to the big barn. He went quietly into the small, square, dark little room and he sat on the floor watching her with his faint little smile as she brought him bedding and a jar of water. She put a heavy padlock through the hasp of the door.

“It’s for your own good,” she called, “so’s you’ll be safe. They won’t find you here.”

She hung the key on a nail in the barn wall and leaned the shotgun in the corner beside the grain bin. She felt strange, almost dizzy and light-headed. The afternoon sunlight that poured in through the barn’s wide door seemed unbearably bright.

She went to the house and spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning it. By evening the floors shone, the windows were clean, the curtains washed. After the chores were done that evening, she fixed a tray of food and carried it out to the barn. She unlocked the grain bin in a sudden panic that he would be gone, but he was there sitting quietly in a corner on his bedding.

The next day she went into town and recklessly bought meats and vegetables and canned goods and even a carton of ice cream wrapped in newspapers to keep it cold. She went to a store and bought him a fancy shirt and a pair of slacks and a belt with a gold buckle.

When she got back to the farm she carried the clothes and the ice cream out to the barn and they ate the ice cream and while she turned her back he changed into the new clothes and flung his old ones into a corner.

The next few days were the happiest of Luddy’s life. She seemed to live for the times when she could sit on an old apple box in the grain bin talking to the stranger. She poured out her heart to him, telling him everything that had ever happened to her, and he listened sympathetically. He never scolded or seemed shocked or repulsed. He sat as still as a carved wax figurine, his head tilted a little forward, his bright dark eyes fixed on her face.

Her thoughts centered on her prisoner. What could she fix for him that he would like? What could she think to tell him that he would find amusing? What small comfort would he enjoy? But he asked for nothing. He seemed content.

A week after Luddy had locked the fugitive in the grain bin. Sheriff Fred Kyle drove into the farm yard. Luddy was carrying the milk pails out to the barn to start her evening chores. She stopped as Kyle swung down from his Jeep. He was alone this time. He looked fat and coarse, not handsome at all, in the reddish evening sunlight.

Luddy watched him coldly. “Well,” she called, “what do you want?”

He grinned and seemed pleased about something. “I just came in to tell you, Miss Vadick. We caught that killer, so you can relax.”

“You caught him?” she asked stupidly.

“Sure — that fellow I was telling you about — the one that killed those women.”

“Oh,” Luddy said.

“Caught him between here and town just this afternoon. Thought you’d want to know. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

Luddy screamed. Her limp fingers dropped the milk pails. She ran across the yard toward the barn. Kyle stared after her with a puzzled frown. Then he shrugged and followed her.

She ran to the grain bin, snatched the key from the nail, and fumbled with the padlock. Her fingers were so clumsy that it took her a long time to get the lock open and throw back the door.

He was there. He sat on the bed and smiled at her. His eyes were luminous in the gloom, like the eyes of a cat. The gold buckle on his belt glimmered in the faint light.

Then she understood. Fred Kyle had tricked her with his lies and she, like the poor stupid fool she was, had led him straight to the fugitive.

She turned blindly toward the door and, whimpering like a mortally wounded animal, seized the shotgun that leaned against the wall. As the Sheriff stood silhouetted against the light, peering into the dark barn from the wide doorway, she shot him. His heavy body jerked back as though he had been struck by a huge fist. He fell and twitched a little, then lay with his astonished face staring sightlessly up into the bright evening sky.

Luddy dropped the shotgun and ran back to the grain bin.

In the shadowy dark she called, “Come! Come quick! We gotta—”

He was gone. The bin was empty.

She dropped to her knees and lighted the lamp with shaking fingers. There was nothing in the tiny square room — nothing but a pile of neatly folded blankets, a gray plaid shirt still in its cellophane envelope, a pair of slacks with pristine creases, and a gold-buckled belt in an unbroken plastic holder. On the floor around the bedding were plates and bowls of food in varying stages of decay.

Luddy cried out wildly. She crawled across the floor to the corner where he had discarded his clothing. Only two ragged burlap sacks lay crumpled in the dust.