Old Tin Sorrows

25

I shoved my head into the stables, didn't spot Peters. A couple of horses grinned at me like they thought their hour had come. "Think what you want," I told them. "Plot and plan and scheme. I've got an arrangement. The General can pay me in horseflesh. Horses that aggravate me are going to end up at the tannery."

I don't know why I said that. Pure bull, of course. They wouldn't believe it, anyway. Wish I understood why horses bring out the silliness in me.

"Peters? You here?" Not seeing him right away worried me. I'd had enough guys turn up dead.

"Here." From the far end.

It was dark in there. I moved warily, even assuming Peters wasn't one of the villains.

I found him at the nether end, all right, hard at it with a pitchfork. He grumbled, "That damned Snake must have been playing with his paint set all the time. He hadn't cleaned out in months. Look at this mess."

I looked. I wrinkled my nose. Peters was tossing manure and soiled straw into a spreader wagon. "I'm no expert but isn't this the wrong time of year to spread manure?"

"You got me. All I know is, it's got to be cleaned out and this's the wagon you haul it in." He mumbled some rakledly rikkenfratzes and colorful commentary on Snake Bradon's ancestors, then added, "I have enough to do without this. What's up, Garrett? And why don't you grab a fork and help while you're resting?"

I grabbed a fork but I wasn't much help. I was always lucky, even in the Marines, and never had to learn the practical side of keeping horses. "What's up is, I've found the fence who bought the stolen stuff. One of my associates will bring him out this afternoon."

He stopped pitching. He stared long enough to start me wondering if maybe he wasn't less than thrilled. He said, "So you are doing something after all. I was starting to think you were a drone. That the only effort you were putting out was trying to get Jennifer to put out."

"Nope. Not interested. Not my type." I guess there was an edge to my voice. He dropped it.

"You just wanted to give me the news?"

"No. I need your help. My associate is bringing a doctor, too."

"And you want me to distract the old man while this croaker gets a look at him?"

"I want you to go down the road and meet them, explain to the doc so he don't get himself booted before he gets a look. Not that I have any hopes he can tell much without laying hands on."

Peters grunted and started throwing horse hockey, "When are they coming?"

I tried guessing an optimum turnaround time. With Saucerhead there wouldn't be many delays. He'd just grab them by the collar and drag them. "I'd think two more hours. If we can, I'd like to get the fence in without anybody seeing him. So we can spring him on whoever."

He grunted again. "You're slacking." We tossed. He said, "I'll manage. I'll have to see the old man first. Always something around here."

I told him, "I have hopes for this."

"Yeah?"

"Maybe it'll start things unravelling. If it goes right, we could get it tied up by tonight."

"You always were too optimistic."

"You don't think so?"

"I don't. You're not dealing with your average idiots. These guys aren't going to rattle. They aren't going to panic. Watch your back."

"I intend to."

He put his fork down. "You go ahead. I'm going to go clean up."

I watched him walk toward the open doorway, grinned. Those ears stuck out like the handles of jugs.

I tossed about three more forksful and quit. Mama Garrett didn't raise her boy to be a stable hand.

I'd gone a dozen steps toward the house when I had a thought. I turned back and invited myself into Snake Bradon's den. I fiddled around for five minutes getting a lamp going. Snake wasn't there anymore. I wondered what they'd done with him. Nobody had done any digging in the cemetery.

Damn! I'd meant to ask Peters about Tyler and the draug!

I missed the Dead Man's nagging. I just wasn't alert enough. Getting too turned inward or something. Not paying close enough attention. I didn't do that when I had the Dead Man to tell me what to do. I went down the list, by the numbers.

All right. I would. I'd failed to meet Snake in time. That didn't mean Bradon couldn't still tell me something, as the Dead Man would remind me. They could all tell me things, want to or not, if I concentrated. So let's start here, now, Garrett.

I did the things I'd done when we'd found Snake. I didn't learn anything this time, either. But I did pay attention to the paint-splashed worktable. I hadn't before. I hadn't considered that side of Snake at all.

Cook said he'd had tremendous artistic talent. Someone else said he might have painted the sorceress Invisible Black. Here, there, there'd been remarks to the effect that he remained an active artist. That side of the man didn't fit the rest of the Bradon image, to my mind. Artists sponge off the lords of the Hill. However good they are, they can't make a living doing what they do. I hadn't considered Bradon an artist because he hadn't fallen into the groove.

That table was evidence he'd worked plenty. But where were the results? The table wasn't his product.

I started a thorough search, working outward from the center of Snake Bradon's life. I found nothing interesting in his room except squirreled stuff for making paints. I recalled that he'd been messy when we were checking what had happened to Hawkes. He'd been working on something recently.

There was a fifteen-by-twenty tack room next to Snake's hole. The place had been torn apart.

I just stood there, surprised. Somebody was worried about Snake after he was gone? My, my. And Garrett hadn't been smart enough to get to it first.

If the searcher found something, he did a fine job of getting rid of it. There was nothing there now but a scatter of brushes, some broken underfoot. I wondered if Bradon's hobby had been a secret. One of those kind everybody knows but nobody mentions. Painting pictures wasn't a manly, Marine sort of thing to do. He might not have shared with the others.

I was having a little trouble making sense of these people. Again. Still.

I paused to wonder where I'd have hidden something if I'd been Snake. As the searcher probably had, knowing him better.

Brilliant thinker that I am, I came up with a big nothing.

Nothing for it, then. A general search. Every nook and cranny. Whoever had gone before me wouldn't have had a lot of time. He'd have to be seen places when he was supposed to be. Hell. Maybe he'd done his hunting before Morley and I came along last night. Or maybe while he was supposed to be loading manure?

Whatever, there was a chance he hadn't found anything.

If anything existed.

I did a quick tour of the ground level. Nothing caught my eye. I felt the imminence of the confrontation with the thief and kept getting more hurried, somehow hoping to have an extra dart when the showdown came.

I climbed into the hayloft, perched on a bale and muttered, "What the hell am I looking for, anyway?" Paintings? He'd painted, obviously. And the product wasn't in evidence. But what could paintings tell me if I found them?

I shrugged, got up, looked around. Snake had gotten a damned good hay supply in, considering. All neatly bailed, too. From what I recalled the country boys saying back when, that wasn't common. Ordinary folks filled their lofts with loose hay.

"Ha!" A story recalled. A guy in the outfit, Tulsa something, hell of an archer, did our sniping. Farm kid. Poor background. Died on that island. But he used to laugh about games he'd played with the daughters of the lord of a nearby manor. They'd done it in a secret room they'd built in the hayloft of the lord's main barn.

I raised my lamp high and stared at all that hay, too much for the state of the place. Might that pile be hollow? I muttered, "That has to be it."

I poked around the outside, trying to guess how Bradon would have gotten inside. Elimination left me three good spots to find entrances. I set the lamp on a beam and went to work.

I moved maybe ten bales before I decided I'd tried the wrong place first. I went to the next spot, moved another ten bales and felt foolish. Looked like I'd outfoxed myself again.

My activities drew the attention of the natives. Three ugly cats joined me, including an evil old calico. Me moving the bales got the mice stirring. The cats were snacking. They worked as a team, not something cats usually do, as far as I know. When I'd turn a bale, one would jump into the vacated spot to scare mice toward the others. At one point the calico had one mouse under each forepaw and another in her mouth.

"See?" I told them. "I'm not all bad."

One more try.

Third time was the charm, as they say. I tipped a few bales. Cats flew around. And, behold! A three-foot-high, eighteen-inch-wide hollow, black as a priest's heart, ran back into the pile. I got the lamp. I asked the cats, "One of you want to run in there and let me know what's up? No? I didn't think so."

I got down on hands and knees and crawled.