Go Home, Stranger

Fifteen

Reno cut the outboard motor and let the boat drift silently. They were nearly up to the second fork in the channel, where he had first heard the explosions the day before.

“We’ll take it the rest of the way on the oars,” he said. “No use advertising any more than we have to.”

She nodded, and they exchanged seats. It was midday now, hushed and stifling out in the dimness of the timber and glaring with malevolent brassiness along the channel where there was no protection from the sun. As the forward motion of the boat died, and with it the artificial breeze, they felt the heat close in on them with its weight.

Back at camp she had changed into darker slacks and shirt, at his insistence. “You can see white a mile through that timber,” he said. “And we don’t know what’s up there. Or who.”

He pulled with long, even strokes of the oars, skirting the brush along the bank, and when they spoke at all it was in lowered voices. They were tense, as if the very stillness of the place were somehow deceptive and they expected something to break it at any instant.

“You always have the feeling you’re being watched,” she said quietly.

Or about to be shot at, he thought without putting it into words. With a cold stirring of anger he remembered the shooting of the day before and the mysterious explosions he had heard. But there might be nothing at all up here now, he reminded himself. That was yesterday.

When they came up to the place where she had hidden the boat before, he pulled it in under the branches and tied it up. He helped her out, and they remained for a moment in the concealment of the foliage along the bank, staring out across the timbered bottom. It was as peaceful as eden. Yesterday’s violence was only a bad dream.

He walked ahead. They circled the bend of the channel and came out near the water again at the point where she had pulled him from the entangling limbs of the windfall. He looked out at it, thinking that but for her his body would be lying there now below the dark surface of the water.

“What is it?” she asked softly, behind him.

“I was thinking of something I read about the Chinese once. If you save somebody’s life he belongs to you and you have to take care of him as long as he lives.”

Just for a moment her eyes were very soft; then he saw the old faintly bantering smile come into them, and she said, “Aren’t you lucky this isn’t China? Think of having to live on a school teacher’s salary.”

Then, before he could reply, she went on, “The place where I found the lighter is just another hundred yards or so. Hadn’t we better go on?”

“Yes,” he said. She took the lead, and they moved ahead through the trees and low hanging underbrush along the bank, going toward the bend of the bayou above them. That was where the first shots had come from, and he was certain the explosions had been just beyond it. She slowed in a moment, searching the ground.

“It was right here,” she said. They stood in a small opening in the underbrush some twenty feet back from the bank. There was no trail, however, and the hard earth showed no tracks.

“You’re sure this is it?” he asked, gazing around.

“Yes.” She pointed. “The lighter was lying right there by that clump of grass. And I remember that dead tree, the one that’s leaning over and caught in that oak.”

He walked over and squatted down, examining the ground closely. Then he could see it, the faint outline where something had lain. It had rained since the lighter had been dropped there. But there was nothing else. He went over all the ground carefully. Then he walked out to the bank and examined the edge of the water for some distance, looking for any indication a boat had been pulled up there. He could see none.

He walked back to where she was standing, and shook his head at her questioning glance. Conscious of bitter disappointment, he wondered if this lead would evaporate into nothing the way all the others had. Counsel must have been here, but there was absolutely nothing to indicate why, or where he had been going. He took out two cigarettes and lit them. She sat down on a log and he squatted on his heels in front of her, watching as she took off the long-vizored cap and ran her fingers through her hair.

“I looked all around when I came back the next day,”

she said dispiritedly. “I couldn’t find anything either. Except that tree—the one somebody had cut down.”

“Oh.” He had forgotten about the tree. Again he was faintly puzzled; it was a stupid place to cut wood, this far from a road. “Which way was it?”

“Over there.” She turned and pointed away from the bayou. “You can’t see it from here.”

“O.K. We’ll have a look at it before we go back,” he said without much interest. “But right now let’s go up beyond that bend. Maybe we can find out what they were trying to blow up.”

It was only a short distance, cutting across the point. Almost unconsciously they began to hurry as they caught glimpses of open water through the trees ahead. They came out onto the bank at an opening in the trees and looked out across the flat and glaring expanse of water. Nothing moved anywhere; it was as desolate and uninhabited as all the other bayous.

They looked at each other, and he shook his head. “It’s crazy,” he said, baffled. “This whole country is crazy. I know this is where that dynamite was set off. But what in the name of God could they have been blowing here?”

She turned suddenly, and pointed toward the water close to shore. “What’s that white thing floating there? In the edge of those weeds.”

He walked over and looked. “Just a dead fish,” he called back. It was floating belly up.

“There’s another one,” she said, pointing off to the left. She was walking up the bank now. “And two more.”

He looked down the other way and in a moment had counted a half dozen. Picking up a long stick, he raked two of them ashore and turned them over. They were carp, not yet beginning to decompose, and there were no marks on them.

She came over and stood behind him. “That’s odd, isn’t it?” she said, puzzled. “Why do you suppose they all died?”

“Concussion,” he said succinctly.

“Oh. You mean the dynamite?”

“Right. We can quit wondering where those explosions were. They were right here, under water.”

She looked helplessly out across the desolate reach of the bayou. “But what for, Pete? What could anybody blow up here?”

He remembered something then, and he was beginning to understand. He stood up, feeling bitter disappointment again. “We’re wasting time, Pat,” he said wearily. “This hasn’t got anything to do with what we’re looking for.”

“What do you mean?” she asked wonderingly.

“Something that Talley girl told me about Max Easter’s being such a good fisherman. That’s all this is. He and some other man were dynamiting fish for the market. They shot at me to scare me off.”

“Well,” she said dispiritedly, “I guess we’d might as well go.”

“Yes. We’ve hit another dead end.”

When they reached the place she had found the lighter, she paused. “Do you want to look at that tree, anyway?”

He shrugged. They’d probably find nothing there either. It could have been coon hunters . . . “All right,” he said without interest. “It’ll only take a minute.”

She led the way. It was nearer a quarter mile than a hundred yards, but she went unerringly to it through the dense timber. The tree was a large red oak, and it had broken the tops out of two smaller ones as it crashed down. It had been felled with a saw, but no attempt had been made to cut it up.

“What do you suppose it was, Pete?” she asked.

Reno walked around the welter of limbs. It had been cut down sometime in the past month or two, for while the leaves were dead now none of them had fallen from the boughs. The trunk appeared to be sound, and had not been cut into anywhere, which ruled out the possibility of its having been a bee tree robbed of its wild honey.

“I don’t know,” he said curiously. “Doesn’t seem to be much point to it, does there?”

He had started to move on around to the other side when he halted suddenly, peering down into the screen of leaves. He dropped to his knees and pulled a few smaller branches aside, staring at the ground, his face puzzled.

“What is it, Pete?” she asked suddenly, standing behind him.

He reached in and scooped up something, and held his hand out. “Loose soil,” he said. “Not fresh, because it’s been rained on since it was dug up, but look.”

She saw it then. One clod of the heavy, black earth still bore the unmistakable flat mark of the spade.

She bent down beside him, excited again. “Then something, has been dug up here.”

“Dug up,” he said tersely. “Or planted.”

“What?”

“You’d better stand back, Pat. I’m going to see if I can break off some of these limbs.”

She stepped back and watched curiously as he began a furious assault on the brush. It was near the crown of the tree, and he was able to snap off most of the limbs by bending back on them with terrific bursts of energy. The ones that were too large to break had their smaller limbs broken off. He was sweating, and he began to pant with exertion.

In a few minutes he had a considerable area cleared. He could see it now, the thing he was looking for. It was a long, narrow, and just faintly outlined depression where the earth had settled. It ran back under the main stem of the tree, but some of it extended out into the area he had cleared.

Maybe I shouldn’t, with her here, he thought. Then he remembered the trailer. Evidence had a way of disappearing in this country. He stood up and took out his cigarettes. He gave her one and led her back to where she could sit on the log.

“I think you’d better stay here,” he said. “This may not be pretty.”

“I can stand it if you can,” she protested. He knew then he wasn’t fooling her any more. She was as aware as he was of what was under there.

He picked up one of the limbs he had broken off, cut a section about two feet long, and whittled the end of it flat. It wasn’t much, but it would do.

She remained where she was, but forgot to smoke the cigarette. It dropped, unnoticed from her fingers. He attacked the ground with his improvised digging instrument. The ground was soft, and came up easily. He threw it behind him with his hands, like a furiously digging terrier. In a few minutes the hole was a foot deep. Sweat ran off his face. Now he was nearly two feet down, bent forward with his hands in the hole, almost suffocated with the heat. He ran the stick into the soft earth again, pried up, and suddenly stopped. He backed away, feeling the sickness in his stomach.

Maybe she didn’t get the odor, he thought. There was no breeze at all. But she would soon. He had to get her away.

The thing to do was send her to camp to call the Sheriff’s office. Whatever was in here was going to be a job for identification experts anyway; he knew that now. It had to be done correctly, by men who knew what they were doing. And men with good stomachs too.

He turned and had started to rise out of the encircling brush when he heard her sudden, choked-off cry of terror. He swung fast, starting. She had her hand up over her mouth, and her eyes were wide with fear.

It was Max Easter. He had emerged from the brush twenty feet away and was watching them coldly, his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his trousers. And stuck in the same waistband, just in front of his right hand, was the black butt of a .45 automatic.

He removed the gun, caught the action in his other hand, slid it back and then forward, jacking a shell into the chamber, then shoved it back in his waistband.

“Just couldn’t leave things alone, could you?” he asked, without any emotion whatever. “Suppose you get over there with your lady friend and sit down. And throw away that stick.”

Reno had seen deadliness before, and he knew he was looking at it now. He let the stick slide from his fingers, and walked slowly over to Patricia. Easter watched them with the unwinking stare of a cat, saying nothing.

He could feel the sweat on his face and the tightness in his chest. Without looking around, he groped for one of her hands, and squeezed it. He could hear the shaky intake of her breath.

“All right,” he said at last. “Who is it?”

“Just have to know, do you?”

“That’s right,” Reno said. “And we will, as soon as they get him out.”

“No,” Easter said softly. “I don’t think anybody’s going to dig him up. But since there’s not much chance you’ll blab it around, I’ll tell you. His name was Robert Counsel.”