The Cat, The Devil, And Lee Fontana. The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

Tony grinned.“Haven’t had it long.” He picked up a rag and began to wipe down the roof and hood.

Lee ducked to look inside. A Saint Christopher medal dangled from the rearview mirror, but the interior was clean and uncluttered.“Don’t suppose I could talk you into driving me into town?”

Tony gave the hood a final swipe.“Sure can.” He wiped the rest of the car quickly and efficiently, then turned away from Lee, wringing out the rag. “I’m leaving, pronto. Five minutes.” He grinned at Lee again. “She doesn’t like me to be late.” Turning, he headed for his bunkhouse.

Waiting for him, Lee stood watching two men playing with a thin, mangy black dog, shaking a stick for it to grab. The radios were still dueling, metallic music against what sounded like a Spanish church service. When Tony emerged from his bunkhouse he was as clean and polished as his white car, a fresh white shirt with cuffs turned up once, open at his chest to show the silver cross against his brown skin, a pair of freshly creased blue slacks that made Lee guess the men must have an ironing board in the bunkhouse. Tony walked gingerly through the dust, trying to save the polish on his black boots. Easing into the clean Chevy he held out each foot and wiped off the dust with a rag.

Getting into the clean car, Lee held out his boots and brushed them with his hand, hiding a smile.“You better be careful, Tony. She’ll have you before the altar.”

“That’s okay by me. Maybe Delgado would give us one of the cabins, that would sure beat living in the bunkhouse.” He backed the Chevy around real slow so not to raise any dust, pulled out of the yard heading for the road into Blythe. Not until they were on the harder dirt road did he give it the gas, the car coming to life like a spurred bronco. They were rolling through the crossroads burg called Ripley when Lee spotted a FOR SALE sign on a rusty truck parked beside the gas station. “I’ll get out here,” he said quietly. “Something I need to do—catch a ride later.”

Tony pulled over, glancing at Lee with curiosity.“You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Lee said, swinging out. Tony sat a moment looking around the bare little crossroads, then put the car in gear. “See you tomorrow, then,” he said, easing away, looking at the gas station and the old truck with interest. When his car had disappeared, Lee walked back up the dustyroad to the filling station.

He circled the old pickup. There was a rusted hole in its bed, covered by a piece of plywood. The tires had little tread left. Years of use had worn the ridges on the running boards smooth and concave. Lee opened the driver’s door, studied the worn pedals and cracked leather seat. A few rusted tools, a hammer, a length of cotton rope, and a trenching tool were stuffed into the narrow space behind the seat. He got in, stepped on the clutch, moved the shift through the gears. They seemed all right. He stepped out, walked around the truck again. It had a spare tire, and it had a trailer hitch but no ball. As he turned toward the office a fat man in bib overalls came out through the screened door. “Like to hear it run?”

Lee nodded, and opened the hood. The man slid in, easing his belly under the steering wheel. He cranked the truck without any trouble. The straight six-cylinder engine idled smoothly, with a soft clatter. Lee reached in under the hood close to the carburetor and pushed the throttle forward. The racing engine sounded smooth, and when he released the rod it dropped back to a soft clattering idle. The man killed the engine and stepped out.

“It’s been a good old truck for me. I was just able to buy a newer model.”

“Are there any tools, in case of a flat?”

Grunting, the fat man lifted the seat cushion to show Lee a tire iron, a heavy lug wrench, and a screw jack.

“How much?”

He dropped the seat, stuck his thumbs under the straps of his overalls.“Two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“I’ll give you two hundred cash.”

“Two and a quarter and it’s yours.”

Lee pulled the money from his back pocket, counted it out. The owner reached into his bib pocket for the pink slip, signed the back of it, and handed it over.“Fill out the rest and mail it to Sacramento, you’ll get a new one in your name.”

Lee dropped the pink slip in his shirt pocket.“Know anyone who has a horse trailer for sale?”

“Not personally. I did see an ad in this morning’s paper. Let me get it.” He turned, heading for the office. Lee stepped into the truck, eased it around close to the screened door. The fat man returned, handed the folded paper through the truck window. “Keep the paper, I’ve read it. RiverRoad Ranch is about five miles south out of Blythe, next road to your right, you’ll see the sign.”

Lee found River Road with no trouble. About a quarter mile down, through dry desert, he turned up a long drive to an adobe ranch house. It was low and sprawling, but not too large. Pole construction supported the wide overhang of the roof, sheltering the long porch against the desert sun. A man sat on a rocker in its deep shade, his boot heels propped on a wooden box. Lee parked, watched him come down the steps: a thin man with sparse hair, his Levi’s and boots well worn. His walk was that of a horseman, a little stiff, a little bowlegged. From the truck, Lee said, “I saw your ad on the trailer.”

“Kendall, Rod Kendall. I still have it, pull around the side of the barn,” he said, stepping onto the running board.

“John Demons,” Lee said, not wanting his name remembered. Easing the truck around to the back of the barn, he pulled up beside a narrow, one-horse trailer, a homemade job of wood and angle iron with a sheet-metal roof. The tires looked good, though, and it had a ball hitch hanging from the tongue. “How much?”

“It’s yours for seventy-five dollars.”

Lee was going to dicker, but then he saw several horses move into view from behind some tamarisk trees in the fenced pasture.“You wouldn’t have a horse to put in it? Nothing special, just a good saddle horse.”

The man grinned.“You ever know a rancher that doesn’t have a horse or two to sell? Could let you have either one of those mares. The black’s seven, the buckskin about nine.”

This meant to Lee they were both fifteen or better. He was about to dicker for the black mare when a gray gelding followed the mares, ducking his head, edging them aside from the water trough. He moved well, and looked in good shape, a dark, steel gray.“What about the gelding?”

Kendall paused a moment, looking Lee over. As if maybe he cared more about the gelding, didn’t want him used badly; but he must have decided Lee looked like an honest horseman. Leaving the truck he stepped to the barn door, shouted into the dim alleyway. “Harry! Harry, bring the gray in, will you?”

Lee watched a young boy, maybe twelve or so, halter the gelding, lead him across the field and out through the gate. No lameness, no quirks to his walk. Stepping out of the truck, Lee rubbed the gray’s ears, slid his hand down his legs and lifted his feet. He seemed sound, and he was shod, his feet and shoes in good shape. Opening the gray’s mouth, he looked at his teeth. The gelding was about twelve. Well, that was all right, they wouldn’t be together for long.

He dickered for a saddle and saddlebags, a bridle with a heavy spade bit, a halter, four bales of hay, and a sack of oats. He got that, the horse and trailer for two hundred dollars. He pulled out of Kendall’s ranch with a balance of two hundred and forty dollars left in his pocket, and he hadn’t touched his savings account, which would alert Raygor.

Conscious of the weight of the trailer on the old truck, he took his time driving back into Blythe. The gray pulled well, he didn’t fuss. In Blythe there wasn’t much traffic. Lee moved along in second gear until he recognized the side street he wanted. He parked along the curb near the post office.

The main section of the post office was closed on Sunday, but the lobby that housed the P.O. boxes was open. He filled out the title transfer section on the truck’s pink slip, using the name James Dawson and the Furnace Creek Road address. Lee would never receive the pink slip, but it wasn’t likely he’d need it. As he sealed the envelope he looked with some interest at the wanted posters hanging above the narrow counter. The newness of one caught his eye, and the word “Blythe.”

“Luke Zigler. Age 33. Five feet, ten inches, 190 pounds. Swarthy complexion, muscular build. Under life sentence for armed robbery and murder. Escaped Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary, March 20, 1947. Zigler’s hometown: Twentynine Palms, California. May attempt to contact friends there. Subject should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Persons having any information are requested to contact the nearest office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or local law enforcement.”

Blythe wasn’t far from Twentynine Palms or from Palm Springs, the man could be anywhere in the area. Zigler’s eyes, vacant under bushy brows, stared coldly at Lee from the grainy black-and-white photograph. Lee had seen enough of his kind, in prison and out. But still, that look disturbed him. Haunted, half-crazy bastards, stick you in a minute for no reason.

He gave the poster a last look, dropped his envelope in the mail slot, and left the lobby. But all the way back to the ranch, among other thoughts he kept getting flashes of Zigler’s ugly face, and flashes of those he had known who were like Zigler, men he wouldn’t want to meet again. Driving and preoccupied, he was unaware of the ghost cat riding with him and that the yellow tom was as unsettled by Zigler as Lee had been, that the cat might be even more riveted than Leeby the evil in Zigler’s cold stare.

Lee drove onto the Delgado land by a narrow back road, keeping the tamarisk trees between him and the ranch yard, moving slowly to keep the dust down, turning at last onto a narrow trail he’d spotted days before, a track barely wide enough for the truck and trailer. The times he’d walked down here, he’d found no tire marks in the fine dust and no hoof prints as if Jake and Lucita might have ridden down this way. Usually they headed north, up between the planted fields. This trail led to the river, where mosquitoes could be bothersome.

Pulling in deep among the willows and tamarisk trees, he knew the truck and trailer were out of sight, tree limbs brushing the top of both, the strip of woods dim and sheltered until, farther in along the narrow track, he broke out into an open area of hard-packed earth some twenty feet across, the woods dense around it. He killed the engine and got out.

An overgrown footpath led down to the broad, turgid water of the Colorado. A circle of dead ashes shone dark in the clearing, tall weeds growing through the campfire of some forgotten hobo or migrant worker. Dropping the tailgate, he squeezed through to the gray’s head, and backed him out.

He tied the gelding to the side of the trailer, brushed off his back, and settled the faded saddle blanket in place. The gray swiveled an ear when he swung the saddle up, and filled his belly with air. Lee bridled him, led him out a few steps then tightened the cinch again. The gray looked around at him knowingly. Swinging into the saddle, Lee walked him around the clearing then moved him out toward the river at a jog. He cantered him, stopped him short, backed him, spun him a couple of times, let him jog out slow, and he felt himself grinning. He rode for maybe half an hour up along the river. It had been a long time since he’d felt a good horse under him. “You’ll do,” he told the gray. “I guess we both will.”

In the falling evening, as he unsaddled the gray and rubbed him down, his thoughts turned sharply back to the South Dakota prairie when he and Mae were kids, to the long summer days when, hurrying through his chores, they still had daylight to slip away while Ma and the girls were getting supper and his dad was maybe in town or busy with the cattle in a far field. He could see Mae’s smile so clearly, her dark eyes, her dimples deep as she stepped up onto her small cowhorse.

Why had he dreamed of Mae last night? And why had that other little girl, in town that day, stared up at him shocked, bringing Mae so alive for a moment? Why was his little sister, from half a century gone, suddenly so clear and real in his thoughts? Riding up along the river, he’d felt for a moment almost as if she rode behind him, her small arms around his waist, her head resting against his back as she used to do; the feeling had been so strong that near dark when he returned to the clearing he felt he ought to help Mae down off the gray before he stepped down, himself.

Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he tied the gelding to the trailer again, and then secured two five-gallon buckets to the side, one filled with water from the river, the other with a quart of oats. He heaved the hay from the pickup into the trailer, broke open one bale, pulled off two flakes of good oat hay, and dropped them on the ground where the gelding could reach them. He shut the tailgate so the gelding couldn’t get in at the rest. Leaving the quiet saddle horse with the truck and trailer, leaving him to sleep standing, he set out through the falling night on the two-mile hike back to his cabin, keeping his mind, now, on the job ahead.

28

Half an hour after Morgan was booked into the Rome jail, Jimson returned, moving in through the heavy outer door, looking in through the bars at Morgan.“Becky’s on her way. I couldn’t get her at home, she was at Caroline’s.” Morgan was surprised Jimson had bothered to call her. But he knew that wasn’t fair, Jimson was only doing his job, and when Morgan looked up at him now, some of the old warmth had returned.

“She’s been out all night looking for you,” Jimson said, “looking for your car. She started to cry when she knew you were all right, that you weren’t lying dead somewhere.” The officer paused, a frown touching his round, smooth face. “She said to tell you she wasn’t bringing Sammie,said Sammie has a cold, she’s left her with Caroline.” The officer colored a little. “She said to tell you she loves you.” Quickly he turned away again, locking the outer door behind him.

Morgan stared after him. Of course she wouldn’t bring Sammie, not here to see him locked behind bars just as in her nightmare. What had Becky told Sammie when he hadn’t come all night, when Sammie didn’t hear him get up and shower this morning, when he didn’t appear at the breakfast table?

What would she tell Sammie if he didn’t come home at all, if this couldn’t be straightened out, if he was kept in jail and was arraigned and even tried, a prisoner escorted back and forth to the courtroom? Thinking about what might lie ahead of him turned him shaky, cold and despondent again. How could he be charged with murder? He had killed no one. Not even if he’d been drugged would he kill a man—except in the war, he thought, bitterly.

There was only one explanation for his long lapse of memory, his long and debilitating sleep, and that was that Falon had given him some drug. Easy enough for Falon to get drugs, maybe some kind of prescription that was passed around among Falon’s sleazy friends. Opium, maybe, that was easy enough to get, it was prescribed for colds and the flu. Dover’s Powder, he thought it was called, something like that. He supposed, unless they found the Coke bottle, there was no way to tell. He doubted the Rome cops would go looking for Coke bottles, as surly as they’d been. And even then, could a chemist or pharmacist find such a thing?

Sitting on the sagging bunk, he put his face in his hands, sick and cold with fear. No matter what Becky told Sammie about why he wasn’t home, at some point Sammie would have to learn the truth, and what would that do to her? They’d tried never to lie to Sammie, even when she was very small; only those few times that, because she was so young, the truth would have been inexplicable to her. Now, this morning,would Becky lie, so that Sammie wouldn’t know so soon that her worst nightmare had come true? He couldn’t bear to think of his little girl’s terror. Or of Becky’s own pain, when she heard the inexplicable charge of murder. What could he have done last night—what could Falon have done—to make this happen, to hurt the two people in the world whom Morgan loved more than life itself?

He and Becky had been sweethearts since before high school, they had married the week after they graduated, just a small wedding in her mother’s garden. He lay thinking about their honeymoon at Carter Lake, how happy they had been, how perfect life had been then. They had stayed in a cabin borrowed from a friend of Becky’s mother’s, had spent most of that week in bed, a little of it walking the woods or in leisurely twilight swims.They didn’t give a damn that they had little money and would have to live with Becky’s mother at first, in the bedroom behind the bakery kitchen. He liked Caroline, had always liked her, though they had had their moments when, in high school, he still wouldn’t stop running with Falon. That week on Carter Lake they would lie in bed spent from loving each other, planning how soon they could buy their own business and maybe even buy a house, planning how many children they would have, planning the beginning of their real lives as if they had only just been born.

The next week after their honeymoon he went to work as a mechanic at one of the three local gas stations, and Becky found a job with an accountant. When she’d learned enough, she left to start her own freelance accounts, to build her own new business. She had the same drive and stamina that had helped her mother succeed alone in the bakery business after Becky’s father died.

Becky had taken only a little time out to have Sammie, balancing her customers’ books while caring for the baby. When war was declared, he’d joined the navy rather than being drafted. During his absence, their need for each other, their passion had built intolerably. All the time he’d been gone his dreams had been only of Becky and of their baby girl, of the business they would build together and the large family they planned, of a rich, long life together.

When he got home, they had saved enough for a nice down payment on the old abandoned gas station. His mother would have scraped to send him to college but he’d never wanted that, he had no use for that kind of learning. He loved machines, he loved cars and trucks, anything mechanical, and he had gotten further education for that, for the learning he really wanted, in the navy.

All the time he was gone, Becky sent him pictures of Sammie. She had his pale Irish coloring, but Becky’s dark eyes and turned-up nose, she was the spirit of their spirits, she was proof of the eternity of their union, her existence filled him with an even deeper love of being alive in God’s world. At six years old Sammie had handled her bicycle like a pro, she knew how to make her own bed and how to mix and cut out cookies for her mother—but the minute he got home she became Daddy’s helper, his gamin-faced grease monkey.

Becky had already taught her the names and uses of most of his automotive tools and where they belonged in the pocketed black cloth wrapper where he kept them, and Sammie soon loved working on cars. And why not? A little training in mechanics wouldn’t hurt; when she grew older, she could do anything she wanted with her life. Becky kept her dressed in jeans and hoped, just as Morgan did, that the child would develop some other loves besides pretty clothes. Becky said frills would come soon enough without encouragement. Sammie made her motherlaugh aloud when Morgan brought her home at night dirty faced, grease-stained clothes, dog tired, and so deeply happy with having helped her daddy.

Now, this morning, Sammie would be asking for him, she would want to know why he had left so early, even before he’d had breakfast. Maybe Becky would tell her he’d gotten home late and left early to work on a special car for one of his longtime customers. But Sammie was only a little girl. When she did at last learn the truth, how would she cope with this? How could she ever sleep again, knowing that any nightmare, any terrible dream, would be sure to come true?

He had turned away from the bars, was smearing tears away with the back of his hand, when the barred door clanged open behind him. Morgan turned, ashamed of crying, looking up at Jimson. The officer motioned Morgan out, walking behind him.“Becky’s in the visiting room.”

“She’s alone?” Morgan asked.

“She’s alone,” Jimson said. Sergeant Trevis met them halfway down the hall and the tall, lean officer gestured Morgan toward the little visiting room, standing behind him as he entered.

Becky stood on the far side of the table that occupied the center of the room, her knuckles white where she gripped its edge, her face drawn and pale. The room was hot and stuffy, the one small, barred window behind her was open but admitted only hot, humid air laced with gas fumes from the street, the traffic noise loud and distracting. Morgan approached the table, stopping at Trevis’s direction. He and Becky stood looking across at each other, separated as if they were strangers.

“Did they tellyou what happened?” Morgan said. “Do you know what the charges are about?”

Behind him, Trevis stepped on in and closed the door. When Morgan turned to look at him, Trevis looked politely away. Morgan wished they could be alone. He knew Trevis would record in memory their every stilted word. James Trevis, thin and rangy, had played basketball in high school two years ahead of Morgan, then had served a hitch in the marines, had returned home to continue with the law enforcement he had learned as a military policeman. Morgan glanced at him again, and moved on around the table. Trevis looked away, and didn’t stop him. Morgan put his arms around Becky, they stood for a long time in silence, desperately holding each other.

When Becky spoke at last, her voice was muffled against him.“They told me nothing. Sergeant Trevis only told me the charges.” She took a step back, her hands on his shoulders, looking up at him. He reached to gently touch the smudges under her eyes. The look in her dark eyes told him she knew more about what had happened than she wanted to say, that shedidn’t want to talk in front of Trevis. If a manhad been killed last night, no matter what the circumstances, by now it would be all over town.

She said,“I called Mama’s attorney. I know he’s an estate attorney, that he doesn’t do this kind of work, but he gave me a couple of names. I’ve made appointments with both.

“And they did tell me,” she said, “that you were drunk. When Sergeant Trevis told me that,” she said, glancing up, “I asked Dr. Bates if he would come and talk with you.I know you weren’t drinking, I thought maybe some kind of drug. Has he been here yet?”

Morgan shook his head. As for an attorney, Morgan had never had need of one, and there were only a few lawyers in their small town, two with reputations that he and Becky didn’t like. He couldn’t think who would handle charges like this, someone they could trust. Becky’s dark eyes hadn’t left him, she looked at him a long time then pressed against him again, holding him tight. “Someone has to tell you what happened,” she said. “It isn’t fair for you not to know.”

Trevis moved to the table beside them.“As soon as you’re questioned, Morgan, we’ll lay it out for you.”

Morgan nodded. That made sense, so he couldn’t make up some story to fit whatever had occurred. Trevis moved again, as if to separate them, but then he let them be.

“It’s some kind of mix-up,” Becky said. “We’ll find out the truth.” She looked up at Trevis. “The police will find out, they’re our friends, Morgan, they’ll find out, they’ll make it all right again.”

Morgan wished he could believe that.“You went looking for me last night, you borrowed a car, you and Sammie …”

“When you didn’t come home, I went to the shop, before I took Sammie to Mama’s, she wasn’t feeling well. The shop was locked up tight, the new mechanic was gone. I didn’t know where he lived, and the operator had no phone number for an Albert Weiss.”

She held Morgan away, letting her anger center on the mechanic.“Yesterday when you left, when you weren’t back by closing time, did he just go on working? Didn’t he wonder where you were, didn’t he worry when you weren’t back to close out the cash register and lock up? Why didn’t he call the house? At five o’clock he just locked up and went home?How ironic. You hired Albert because he was calm and didn’t get ruffled, because he didn’t fuss about things. He was calm, all right,” she said bitterly. “He didn’t wonder—because he didn’t care.”

Morgan could say nothing. She was right. That was Albert’s way, he was a silent man, not the least interested in others’ business, focused solely on the cars he repaired.

“Where did he think you’d gone! And then this morning he just—he just opened the shop and got to work?” she said incredulously. “He might be a good mechanic, but his brain stops there. He could have come over to the house last night to see if you were all right, see if you’d come home.” Her voice broke, she took a minute to get control. “You could have died out there last night, died in the car, all alone.”

“You just kept driving,” he said, “driving around looking for me?”

“I drove all over Rome and then out around the farms, over on the Berry campus. At last I called the station, talked with Officer Regan. He told me the patrols would keep an eye out, he said he was sure you’d turn up, that it was too soon to file a missing report. I drove down every back road, some of them twice, but I didn’t see the car. Later, when Jimson found you, he said it was parked way back among the trees, that it was easy to miss.” The muscles in her jaw were clenched. “Parked out near lovers’ hollow,” she said, and it didn’t occur to him until that moment that she might have thought, last night, that he was with another woman.

But Becky knew there wasn’t anyone else, there was no woman in the world he’d look at except her. Holding her close to him, needing her steadiness, he tried to tell her what he could remember, tried to bring the fractured scenes from yesterday clearer, tried to make sense of them. Trevis stood intently listening. Morgan knew he would write it all down the moment Becky left, that Morgan’s words would be compared with the formal questioning that he would soon face. The police had to know, early last night, about the robbery and murder, but of course it would be policy not to mention it to Becky. Morgan had no idea whether they thought, at that point, the two events might be connected. Both cases were police business, and the officers kept conjecture to themselves.

Morgan told Becky how Falon had wanted him to look at his car, that he hadn’t wanted to go, told her what Falon had said about her mother’s property out on the Dixie Highway. Slowly, talking it out, he was able to put those moments together more clearly—until the moment when everything went hazy and the afternoon fell apart into a wavering and senseless haze.

“When Falon spilled his Coke, I wiped up the spill and then pulled into Robert’s gas station to get some wet paper towels. I came out, finished my Coke while I was cleaning the seat. I remember the Coke tasted kind of funny, but I didn’t pay much attention. When I had the seat pretty clean, and dried off, we headed for the Graystone Apartments, I remember that. I’d driven a couple of blocks when the street started to look fuzzy, the cars and buildings blurred, the distances all warped. I remember pulling over, dizzy and sick. After that, nothing’s very clear. Everything looked strange, twisted and unreal.”

“You drank all your Coke?”

He nodded.“Falon handed it to me, I drank what was left in the bottle, tucked the bottle in the side pocket so it wouldn’t drip on the floor. I drove until things began to reel, then I pulled over.”

Becky looked up at Sergeant Trevis.“Have you picked up Brad Falon?”

Trevis’s face went closed, his look ungiving. “We questioned him.” Trevis searched Morgan’s face, and turned to glance at the door. “I shouldn’t tell you this much, until after you’re interviewed.”

Morgan waited. He didn’t see what difference it could make, as long ashe told the truth.

“Falon said he was with his girlfriend from one-thirty yesterday afternoon until this morning.” Trevis looked more kindly, with perhaps a touch of regret. “We talked with her, she swore Falon was there in her apartment. At this point,” he said, “we haven’t enough to bring him in.”

“What girlfriend?” Becky said.

“That’s all I can say,” Trevis said.

Neither Becky nor Morgan had heard anything about what women Falon might be seeing; they’d had no reason to know or to care. But now, from the look in Becky’s eyes, Morgan knew she meant to find out. He wanted to say,Be careful.But she would do that, he let only his look warn her:Take care, Falon can be vicious. He said,“What did you tell Sammie?”

“That you worked late, got home late, had to get up real early to fix a special car.”

He smiled.“Did she believe you?”

“She might not have, except she was so disoriented herself. She has a cold or the flu, something … Dr. Bates came out, to Mother’s. He said the usual, keep Sammie warm, lots of liquids and rest, half an aspirin every four hours. She doesn’t have a fever, and she isn’t coughing, she’s just very dull, so sleepy she can hardly stay awake.”

“How long?” Morgan said. “How long has she been like that?”

“From around noon yesterday,” Becky said. “So sleepy she couldn’t stay awake. If I woke her, she’d just drift off again, she just wanted to lie there on the couch and sleep, she slept most of the afternoon.” Her description struck a chill of fear through Morgan.

“Once when I woke her, she said she felt dizzy, that every time she went to sleep she dropped down, deep down into darkness. So dark, she said, falling down into darkness.”

Morgan went ice-cold.“That … That’s how I felt, when I woke in the car. As if I were trapped deep down in some heavy darkness. Even in the patrol car, and here in the cell, moments when I could hardly keep awake, so dull, wiped out.”

They looked at each other, frightened. Filled with Sammie’s perceptions, with her sure and specific cognition. As if Sammie had experienced exactly what Morgan had felt, Morgan’s confusion and dullness, her daddy’s helpless lethargy. Becky shivered and clung to him, a coldness reaching deep inside her like an icy hand.

She said at last,“I called Dr. Bates again, though still Sammie had no fever, no pain. He wanted to put her in the hospital, but I didn’t want that. I wanted her with Mother, I knew she’d take her to the hospital if she needed to. Once she was settled at Mother’s and sound asleep, I went looking for you. I feel sick that I must have passed our car twice and never seen it. The last time, it was just getting light, I must have just missed the police.

“But then,” she said, “the strangest thing. When I got back to Mama’s, Sammie was awake, sitting up and more alert. Mama said she woke cranky, that Sammie complained that her head hurt. Mama gave her another aspirin and called the doctor again. She was ready to take her to the hospital whenSammie came awake, sat up, and looked around her, surprised she was at Mother’s.

“Mama got her to drink some juice and eat a little hot cereal.” Becky looked at him, frowning. “That was … That was when Jimson found you. Early this morning, just after sunup? That was when Sammie woke.”

“The sun was in my eyes,” Morgan said. “I thought it was sunset, but then figured out the sun was coming up, that I must have slept all night in the car, I was trying to figure that out when Jimson jerked the door open and dragged me out.”

Becky glanced at Sergeant Trevis. She didn’t like talking about Sammie in front of him, she had no notion what he would make of the conversation. Trevis let them stay close together, let them talk. He was more eager to listen, apparently, than to take Morgan back and separate them.

“By the time I got home to Mama’s and sat down to eat some breakfast, Sammie was brighter, she came to the table and shared some scrambled eggs and toast with me. When the station called to tell me you were here, that you were in jail, it was all I could do not to panic. I asked if you were allright, I didn’t want to say much in front of Sammie, but the minute I got my purse, ready to leave, she had pulled on her sweater and meant to go with me, she was so tense, fidgeting with impatience to be with you, so out of control, so determined and stubborn I had a hard time making her stay behind with Mama. She said she had to talk to you, she had to tell you what she’d dreamed while she was sick. You remember that old man she talked about when she was playing with the airplane she made? The man she called the cowboy.”

“Yes, she’s talked to me about him.”

“She said she had to tell you about him. Somehow, in her mind that dream was connected to your being here. As little as I said, she figured out where you were, she figured out that the prison dream had come true.” Becky looked at Morgan helplessly. “She said this dream of the cowboy was part of what was happening to you, said she had to tell you.” She looked uncomfortably at Sergeant Trevis then turned away, muffling her face against Morgan’s shoulder.

“When I left, she clung to me,” Becky said, “she tried to come with me, she wept and wept, and all I could do was hold her.” Becky was weeping, too. He held her as she had held their child, seeking to heal her, wondering if anything could ever heal her, or heal Sammie, if any power could heal the three of them.

Morgan was hardly aware when Trevis turned and nodded to him, letting him know he must go back to his cell. Becky stepped back, freeing Morgan, wiping at tears again.“Do you have our car keys?” But then she realized the booking officer would have taken everything from Morgan, everything in his pockets.

Trevis said,“We have them, we’ve impounded the car for evidence.”

“Oh. Of course.” She looked at Morgan. “I still have the Parkers’ car. If it’s very long, I’ll use Mama’s old Plymouth. I need to see the attorneys. I want to see Mama’s attorney, too, before I see the others, I want advice from someone we trust.”

“I didn’t rob any bank, Becky. You know I didn’t kill anyone.”

“I know that. But even if the police want to believe you, they have to do it their way.” She looked at Trevis. “I know you’ll find out what happened. Did you find the Coke bottles?”

“No Coke bottles in the car,” Trevis said. “McAffee’s out searching the woods.”

Morgan felt stupidly grateful that they would take the trouble. He’d felt so betrayed by the police, abandoned by the men who were supposed to be his friends. He knew that was foolish, that they had a job to do, but now those few kind words, knowing they were trying to help, lifted his spirits some. He prayed they’d find the bottles, both of them. Only one bottle would have a trace of drugs, if that was what had happened. He knew no other way to explain the yawning cavern of emptiness he’d experienced, that had left his whole being hollow.

“If you find the bottles,” Becky said, “you’ll fingerprint them?”

Trevis nodded, looking put out that she would ask such a dumb question. He cleared his throat, turned, and opened the closed door. Becky hugged Morgan once more, kissed him and then turned away. As Trevis ushered Morgan back to his cell, she was met in the hall by another officer and escorted on out to the front. Morgan glanced back at her once, then was through the door of the lockup, through his barred cell door and locked in again. He lay down on the bunk, sick and grieving. He’d gotten himself into a mess, out of pure stupidity, had brought their lives shattering down around them. Had left Becky to fight, alone, a battle that terrified and perplexed him.

And Becky, outside the courthouse getting in the borrowed car, left the Rome jail wondering how she could keep Sammie from coming with her on her next visit. The child was so stubbornly determined. What would it do to their little girl to see her daddy in jail, after the terror of her nightmare? Yet she knew she couldn’t keep Sammie away, not when she burned with such an urgent need to see Morgan, with what seemed, to Becky, might in fact be a critical part of the wall that fate had built around them.

29

On Lee’s last night at Delgado Ranch he didn’t stay in his cabin, he slept under the stars beneath the willows, near to the gray, his head on the saddle, the saddle blanket over him. He dreamed not of the robbery as he usually would, sorting out, in sleep, the last details; he dreamed of Lucita. He’d had dinner with her and Jake, a painful evening, only Lee knowing this was the last time they’d ever be together, the last time he’d be even this close to Lucita.

She had made chiles rellenos for dinner, she knew they were his favorite, and that, too, bothered him. Almost as if she knew he would be gone in the morning, though of course she couldn’t know. Sitting at the table in their cozy dining room, feeling guilty in his longing for her, and feeling ashamed that he was running out on Jake after Jake had gone to the trouble to get him the job, he told himself that at least he hadn’t turned on Jake—though even now, at this late hour,he felt a pang of greed for the fat Delgado payroll. All evening his conflicting emotions kept him on edge, his remorse, his painful, bittersweet farewell that only Lee himself was aware of—only Lee, and the big yellow tomcat.

The cat had made himself clearly visible tonight, had strolled in through the kitchen door before even Lee arrived. He lay stretched out now in the living room on the big leather couch, looking through to the dining room watching their last, sad gathering. He felt nearly as heavy with angst as Lee, at leaving the Ellsons’. He had come to like and respect Jake, and each day he was drawn more and more to gentle and beautiful Lucita, Lucita who baby-talked him and who stroked his neck and under his chin just the way he liked. As many lives as Misto had known over the centuries, and as many painful partings, tonighthe seemed filled with the deepest pain of all, at leaving this gentle lady.

But leave her Misto did, looking regretfully back, following Lee not long after dinner. The last cup of coffee was finished, the bowls of flan had been scraped clean. Lee thanked Lucita for dinner, a casual hug, a casual good-night and he was through the door, down the steps, and out into the night before he might fumble something that should be left unsaid, before he tangled himself in his own emotions, his own embarrassed dismay at leaving them.

Returning to his cabin he finished packing his saddlebags, made sure he had the roll of heavy tape handy in his pocket where he could reach it. He turned off his cabin lights as if he’d gone to bed, lay in the dark for nearly an hour, occasionally stepping to the window to look across at the bunkhouses and at the ranch house, watching until all the windows were dark. Still he didn’t leave the cabin until Jake and Lucita’s lights had been out for some time.

Carrying his saddlebags, silently he shut the door behind him and moved down the steps. Even the chickens slept, none woke to fuss at him as he crossed the ranch yard. Beneath the pale wash of stars he walked the two miles to the clearing and settled in for his last night at Delgado ranch, smiling as the gray nickered to him and then pawed at his hay, snorting softly.

Since he’d brought the gray here to the clearing, he had checked on him every day, had fed and watered him morning and night and brushed him down, all in the dark before breakfast or long after supper, walking across the black desert and among the willows and tamarisks that skirted the south field. He was surprised that Jake or one of the pickers hadn’t come down this way, hadn’t seen the truck and trailer here by the river and come to investigate. He was sure that hadn’t happened, or Jake would have said something. And in the evenings when Jake and Lucita rode, they headed north away from the river, avoiding the seclusion where hobos or migrants sometimes liked to camp. Lee had been wary about strangers, but there was no sign anyone had been around disturbing his hidden retreat.

Now, bedded down beneath the cool night sky he lay thinking about Lucita, her brief glances at him sometimes, a quick look that had held a suppressed longing that both knew wouldn’t go any further. Once when she was feeding her chickens and had knelt to examine a layer’s hurt leg, cuddling the fluffy red hen close to calm her as she fingered the small wound, she had looked up at him, the spark clearly there for a moment; but then abruptly she put the hen down, rose, andturned away.

It had been a stupid dream to think she’d ever leave Jake for him. And now, the minute the robbery was known and Lee had vanished, though Jake might understand his drive and his need, Lee would have lost Lucita’s respect forever, would have lost her as a friend as well as the lover she would never have been.

Twice during the previous week he had had supper with them, not a fancy meal like tonight, but more casual, tacos and beer one night, the other evening a bowl of green chili. Both times he had excused himself early, soon turned his cabin light off and waited for a while, then headed for the clearing, to quietly ride the gelding through the willows along the river, taking peace in the silent dark and in the companionship of the gray.

Lee’s parole officer had shown up this morning, and that had put him off, had left him edgy. But it was good luck, too. This monthly visit meant Raygor wouldn’t be around again for a while, it meant that he might not know, for some time, that Lee was gone. Jake would be obligated to tell him, to call the San Bernardino office, but Lee didn’t think he would. He thought, when Raygor contacted Jake, he’d make up some excuse. Jake would know, by then, that Lee was on the run, and would buy him what time he could. Rolling over, looking up at the stars one last time, Lee felt the cat slip in under the blanket beside him and immediately he felt easier, stroking the tomcat, smiling at his rocking purr. Maybe Lee thought, his PO wouldn’t approve of what he was about to undertake, but the ghost cat, purring and snuggling close, seemed fine with the plan.

The gelding woke Lee, pawing for breakfast. Lee gave him a quart of oats but they wouldn’t have time to fool around with hay, it was starting to get light. He stood in the coolness of the new day stretching, scratching, then walked to the river to relieve himself. He packed the truck, tucked a flake of hay into the manger of the trailer, led the gray in and tied him, and closed and fastened the tailgate.

He opened the cylinder of the heavy revolver, checked that it was fuly loaded. He had slept with it under the saddle blanket that was his pillow. Closing the cylinder, he slid the gun into its worn holster and laid it on the truck seat. He opened a can of beans from his pack, ate that with a plastic spoon wishing he had something hot, thinking about sausage and pancakes from the mess hall. He could smell the good, warm scents of breakfast drifting down to him, where the men would be crowding in, swilling coffee and filling their bellies.

Stashing the empty can in a paper bag in the truck cab, he made one last walk around the clearing. He picked up the fold of baling wire from the bale of hay, and scuffed away the chaff where the gelding had been feeding. Returning to the truck, he dropped the wire in the paper bag, stuffed the gloves he had bought into his back pocket, and slid behind the wheel.

He cranked the engine, listened to its soft clatter, and moved on out through the hanging branches onto the dirt track. Easing along, he had one more moment of unease over what he had begun. Was this the smart thing to do? Well, hell, he didn’t know about smart, but he was on his way, he’d started something that had felt right at the time, and he meant to finish it. In the slowly lightening morning he pushed the intruding shadows out of his mind; driving along the narrow dirt path, at the main road to Blythe he shifted from low to second, felt the trailer balk and then come on as he turned north.

Once he had gained the outskirts of Blythe he pulled into a truck stop, filled the pickup with gas, checked the oil and filled the ten-gallon barrel with water. In the little twenty-four-hour caf? he ordered two ham-and-cheese sandwiches to go. At the cash register there was a cardboard display of pocket watches, shoved in under the glass counter between boxes of candy and gum. He bought a watch, set it by the restaurant clock, wound it and tucked it into the watch pocket of his jeans. He’d have a long wait, he didn’t want to hit the post office too early, but he needed to be back at the remote airstrip no later than seven. He had all day to wait, but then at the last he’d have to hustle. It was a long pull from the post office up where he’d be headed. He hoped to hell he didn’t have a flat, on either the truck or the trailer. All these tires had seen better days. He’d have to unload the gray to change a tire, and that would slow him down more than he liked.

He traveled north out of Blythe on the same road he and Ellson had taken. The old truck rolled right along, though he didn’t push it, he let it go over thirty only on the gentle downgrades. He rode with both windows cranked down and the wind wings open. It was still cool but it wouldn’t be for long. Twice he slowed the truck thinking of turning back and chucking the whole plan. Then, angry at himself, he pushed onagain faster. It wasn’t like him to have second thoughts so late in the game, that made him impatient with himself; and when he remembered suddenly that he’d forgotten to fill the radiator, that turned him hot with anger.

Well, hell, he guessed the gray wouldn’t begrudge a quart or two from his water barrel. Lee told himself to settle down, he tried to bring back the old steady calm with which he always worked. His plan was to wait in or behind the old barn beyond the Jamesfarm cutoff, leave the gelding and the trailer there, go on into town in the truck late in the day, as evening settled in. Hit the back door of the post office late, when the ranch foremen started showing up for their money. He’d have a long wait, all through the middle of the day, and then a fast hustle. Thinking about the moves, and the last-minute timing, he began to sweat.

Maybe he shouldn’t wait all day at the cutoff and risk being seen, maybe he should move on up into the dry hills and lay up there. Return to the cutoff in late afternoon, leave the gray and the trailer there. Hit the post office, return to the cutoff until it started to get dark, leave the truck and trailer withDawson’s ID and then, as he’d planned, head for the mountains on horseback. That was where the timing grew critical. If he took too long or was delayed, he’d miss the last, crucial move. Thinking about that, his gut began to twitch. He had to get up into the mountains, bury the money, and be back down at the airstrip in time to meet Mark.

Well, hell, he could do that. Mark had said eight-thirty. That gave him two to three hours. That was the plan, the rest, the getaway itself, was a piece of cake. There might be a few weak spots, but there was risk in everything. He pulled off his straw hat, flipped it onto the dashboard, and headed past the cutoff up into the hills.

Hidden among the sand hills, he had a little nap and so did the gelding, sleeping on his feet. At three o’clock Lee loaded the gelding up again and headed back down for the Jamesfarm cutoff. He was halfway there when the truck dropped, jerking the steering wheel, and he felt the dead thump of the tire on the sand road. Swearing, he let the truck bump to a stop, set the brake, and stepped out.

At least it was on the truck, not the trailer. Front tire, and he thought maybe he could change it without unloading the gray. He kicked the bastard tire hard, kicked it again, and knew he had to cool down. There was plenty of time, he’d planned it to give himself time.

He looked up and down the empty road. Not a car in sight, the desert so quiet he heard a lizard scramble off a rock into some cactus. But he reached into the cab for the revolver and laid it on the floorboards. Then he lifted the seat cushion, pulled out the jack, the tire iron, and lug wrench, and dropped them beside the flat tire. Before he got to work, he blocked the truck and trailer wheels with rocks. By the time he got the wheel changed he was sweating, and breathing hard, was so tired that it seemed a huge effort even to tighten the lug nuts. He couldn’t get his lungs full of air, and there was a heaviness on his chest so he had to rest several times before he finished tightening the last lug. The emphysema hadn’t been this bad in a long time, he knew it was the stress. He struggled to get the blown tire and wheel up into the pickup, wondering why the hell he was keeping them. Too tired to lift the seat cushion, he threw the jack and lug wrench on the seat. He removed the rocks from under the wheels, beat the dust and sand off his pants, and crawled into the driver’s seat, sank behind the steering wheel feeling weak and old, swearingwith anger at his weakness.

Cranking the engine, he eased on slowly so as not to jerk the trailer. He rolled on, cursing old age, until he saw the Jamesfarm sign, saw the old barn among the scrawny tamarisk trees. He pulled in among them, backed the gray out under the low, salty-smelling branches. He tied the gelding to a tree, then checked out the barn.

It leaned a bit to the right, and half the roof shingles were missing, but when he shook the supporting timbers, nothing wobbled, the barn stood steady. There were four fenced stalls inside, four tie stalls, and an open space for a truck or tractor. He unloaded the gray then, backed the trailer in there, out of sight of the road. Before he unhitched it, he opened both truck doors to keep the cab cool, and unloaded the water barrel.

He led the gelding into one of the larger stalls, fed him, tied his water bucket to the rail. After filling that, he filled the truck’s radiator, then washed the grime and sweat off his face and hands. He had moved the saddle from the pickup bed into the trailer, had turned back to get the bridle, which had fallen to the ground, when the gelding jerked his head up, and Lee tensed.

The gelding snorted, looking back toward the big door, and Lee heard a faint noise, a dry snap. He spun around, grabbing the bridle as a blurred image flickered across the truck window. A man filled his vision, a crazed look in his eyes, a knife flashing in his hand. As he charged, Lee swung the bridle. The heavy bit hit him hard in the throat. He staggered but came at Lee again. Lee stumbled backward into the open truck, grabbed the lug wrench, and swung it at the man’s face.

The heavy wrench connected hard, the man fell, twisting away. Lee backed against the truck, looking around to see if there was another one. The gelding was rearing and snorting, white eyed, blowing like a stallion. Lee reached for the gun on the seat, watching the shadows around him. The man lay on the ground unmoving. What had he wanted? The truck? The horse? Or was he just some nutcase, out to hurt anyone who looked weaker? Lee remained still, watchful and tense until the gelding began to settle. When the horse had calmed and turned away, when Lee was sure there was no one else, he rolled the man over with his boot, holding his gun on him.

The body was limp. The face was a pulp of blood from the blow of the lug wrench. There was a bloody hole where his nose had been, as if the bones had been driven deep. Lee felt his breath coming hard. He palmed his revolver, glancing at the gray to see if anything else alerted him, but the good, sensible gelding had put his head down again and started to eat.

Lee eased himself down on the running board, sucking air. Where the hell had the guy come from? Had he been in the barn all the time? Sleeping, camping out in the old barn? Lee thought he’d looked around good. He had seen no sign of anything to alarm him, nothing in there that he’d noticed but some old gunny sacks, twists of bailing wire, a rusty bucket.

Rising from the running board, Lee studied what he could see of the dead man’s face, what was left of it. Dark eyes beneath the blood, bushy brows soaked with blood. Despite the gray’s quiet assurance, Lee still wasn’t certain the man had been alone. Nervously he circled the barn and then eased away into the trees beyond, looking back watching the barn, and watching behind him; the light was beginning to soften, but so far, by his watch, his timing was okay. Some twenty yards into the trees he found a small clearing and a makeshift camp. One dirty blanket, a backpack with some canned goods, an empty cook pot. A single metal plate lay beside a miniature fire, near an unopened can of beans, a can opener, and a spoon. As he turned back toward the barn, he could see again the man’s dark eyes under the bushy, bloodied brows. He stood over the body, looking more carefully. Despite the gaping wound he could see how close the eyes were together, the face long and thin. Zigler. Luke Zigler, peering out from the wanted poster hanging in the Blythe post office.

Zigler, serving life for murder and armed robbery, escaped from Terminal Island some two hundred miles to the north but born and raised in Twentynine Palms. If that was Zigler’s home, maybe he’d been waiting here for someone he knew, maybe had camped here to join up with a partner, and that made Lee nervous. He sure didn’t want to leave the gray here for some badass to find. But what other choice did he have? He sure couldn’t leave Zigler, either, for someone todiscover.

Double-timing back to the truck, he studied his watch, thought a minute, then dragged the body around the truck. He searched Zigler’s pockets but found no identification, false or otherwise. A few dollars, chump change. Lifting Zigler by the shoulders, breathing hard, he managed with a lot of grunting and straining to heave him up into the passenger seat. He rolled up the window halfway, closed the door, and pulled Zigler snugly against the doorframe. He slipped his own straw Stetson from the dashboard, jammed it on Zigler, settled it down over his battered face.

Before getting in the truck he ground Zigler’s blood into the dirt, scuffed it in good. He rubbed the gray behind the ears, talked to him a minute, gave him another flake of hay, and left him happily munching his early supper. If the gray grew alarmed, if some no-good approached and tried messing with him—or if Lee himself didn’t return—Lee figured the gray would jump the four-foot rail easy enough, would take off out of the barn running free.

Inside the truck he rolled up Zigler’s window, and settled the hat a little better. He pulled out with Zigler’s body riding easy beside him. Driving, he lifted the revolver out of its holster and pushed it into his belt at the small of his back. He made sure the bandana around his neck was knotted loosely, as he wanted it. The sun was disappearing in the west and, as he moved out from the stand of salty trees, a cooler breeze eased in from the desert.

30

The old truck entered town looking like many another farm vehicle, rusted and dirty, a ranch hand half asleep in the passenger seat, leaning against the window with his straw hat pulled down, maybe a little drunk, this late in the day. Several times Lee had slowed the truck to make sure no blood had seeped through the straw hat, and to wipe away trickles of the blood that crept down Zigler’s face, using a rag he’d found stuffed behind the seat. The blood had stopped now. As he drove carefully past the post office, a clerk inside was closing the venetian blinds, though lights still shone within as he locked up the front part for the night. Lee guessed the small business operatorsand the larger companies would pick up their cash from the back office. Two big pickups passed him and turned the corner heading around to the back, new vehicles marked with the names of two local ranches. He heard truck doors slam, heard a muffled knock and then voices, heard the back door open andclose. He hoped to hell his timing was right. When he heard the men leave, when no other trucks showed up, he turned left between the post office and the burned bank, left again to the little dirt alley behind, and parked beside the wooden storage building.

He took his hat from Zigler and turned the man’s body so his face was half hidden, propping Zigler’s arm up over the seat back to hide his smashed nose. He wiped Zigler’s blood off the hatband, jammed the hat on his own head, and made sure the red bandana around his neck was loose enough. He stepped out of the truck leaving the door ajar, moved quickly to the metal-sheathed door and thumped on it hard, feeling as edgy as if he trod on hot cinders.

“Yes? Who is it?”

Lee leaned close, speaking loudly but garbling the words.“Placer Mining,” he slurred. This was the weakest point in his plan, that Placer hadn’t already been here and gone, that he could get in and get out again before their legitimate messenger drove up.

“Placer?”

Lee grunted.

“You’re early today.”

Lee relaxed a little. He’d started to say something more when he heard the spring lock turn. He pulled the bandana up over his face and drew the revolver. The instant the door cracked open he hit it with all his weight jamming it hard in the face of the startled guard. The man staggered back snatching for his gun and grabbing at his glasses, but he was already staring into the barrel of Lee’s cocked forty-five.

“If you want to live, do exactly what I tell you.” Lee’s blood surged with excitement at the thought of killing the man, a sensation that shocked him. This poor fellow wasn’t Zigler, who had attacked him and who deserved to be taken out. This was just a soft young bank guard, probably hiredat the last minute and obviously not well trained at the job. The frail man gaped at him, his glasses flashing in the overhead light as Lee backed him deeper inside, pulled the door shut behind them, and slid the padlock into the hasp. He had no reason to want the man dead, to envision him bloodiedand dead. The sharp thought upset him, yet he found himself shoving the gun hard into the man’s terrified face, taking pleasure in seeing the little man tremble and gasp. This wasn’t Lee’s mode of operation, his robberies were coolheaded and precise, he didn’t set out to abuse the weak and frightened. This was nothis thinking, that had turned his blood hot with malice, he didn’t like where this was coming from. Angrily he eased off, pressed the barrel of the gun sideways instead, along the man’s cheek. “Get that empty mail sack, there on the desk. Take it in the vault and fill it,stuffall the money into it. I’m right behind you, you make one dicey move and you’re dead.”

Standing in the door to the vault, Lee watched the frightened clerk retrieve bundle after bundle of big bills from a set of metal drawers, watched him stuff the contents down in the bag. Two more bags stood on the floor against the wall, one full, one empty. Lee watched him fill the empty one, fight it closed at last, and pull the drawstring. The bag that was left, already bulging, was marked PLACER MINING.

“Is that all of it?”

“Yes, sir. You can see there’s nothing left.”

“Set the bags by the door, then bring the desk chair in here.”

Looking scared, the man did as he was told, wheeling the chair inside.

“Sit down, hands behind the back of the chair. Is the vault vented?”

“Yes, sir, but … The vent only works when the fan is on. That—that switch inside the vault door.”

“If it’s an alarm, you’re dead.”

“It’s the fan, I swear.”

Lee backed toward the door. He hesitated, watching the man. This was stupid, the damn thing had to be an alarm.

But a plain electric switch? Wouldn’t an alarm look different? Some kind of metal plate and handle or metal button? When he looked up where the clerk was looking, he could see the fan, through a dust-coated grate in the ceiling just above them. He reached for the switch, paused a moment waving the gun threateningly at the guard.

“It’s the fan switch, I swear. I’ve got a wife and two kids at home. Please …”

Lee flipped the switch. The fan started sluggishly,thump, thump, then took hold and began to whir. Lee backed out the door, eased to the desk while still holding the gun on his victim. He picked up a hole punch, returned to the vault fishing the roll of tape from his pants pocket. Working awkwardly, one-handed, he taped the clerk’s arms and legs to the chair. Only when the man was secure, did he slide his gun back in his belt.

With the punch he made holes in a long piece of tape, pressed this against the man’s mouth, wrapping it around to the back. That would smart when someone found him and pulled it off, but the little man looked relieved that he could breathe.

“You may be here for a spell,” Lee said. “You want me to take your glasses off?”

He grunted and shook his head.

Lee dragged the mail sacks out of the vault, looked the man over once, shut the heavy door and spun the dial. Turning, he eased the back door open, stood to the side looking up and down the alley. Dusk was falling fast, the sky deepening into gray, but the alley, the buildings and truck and Lee himself were still visible. When he didn’t hear another vehicle coming down the side street he moved on out. He carried the three bags to the truck, dropped them in back, and covered them with the saddle blanket.

Stepping into the cab, he pulled his bandana off and stuffed it in Zigler’s pocket. He resettled Zigler’s position a bit, took off the straw hat, put it back on Zigler, tilting it down again over the man’s bloody face.

He started the truck, pulled out onto the hard dirt alley, which he followed for several blocks before cutting back to the main street. Car lights were on, the windows of the stores that were still open were brightly lit. Driving slowly out of town, he was just another farm worker, his truck dirty and nondescript. Opening the wind wing, he let the thin evening breeze cool him, he hadn’t realized how bad he was sweating. But now, with Zigler beside him, he had to smile. The dead man made a nice change to his plans. Somehow, his dead companion made him feel steadier and more in control.

When he got back to the gray, everything was as it should be, the gray sleeping on his feet, not nervous or watchful as if anything had disturbed him. He saddled the gelding, fished a length of rope from the truck and tied the three canvas money bags on top of his saddlebags, tied the trenching tool across those. Putting on the gloves he’d brought, he wiped his prints off places on the trailer he’d touched. Lifting the tongue, he pushed the trailer deep inside the old barn, into the shadows. Last of all, he wiped any earlier fingerprints from the hitch.

He returned to the gelding, put him on a lead rope, and led him up close to the driver’s door. Stepping into the truck, he slipped the rope in through his open window and started the engine. Pulling out slowly, leading the gray, he eased away from the barn and up the incline to the little turnoff that led up into the hills. The gray followed willingly, trusting Lee, moving along at an easy jog. Lee drove until he found a deep embankment that was steep enough for what he wanted, an ancient, dry waterway, sheer and far to the bottom.

Pulling onto the shoulder and getting out, he led the gelding across the road out of the way and secured his rope among a scattering of boulders. In the dusk, the pale desert floor held the last of the light. He could see the old barn far below, and the airstrip. Off beyond the strip by several miles lay a ranch, the thin lines of fences, a barn, a windmill, a cluster of trees, and a glint of white that would be the ranch house.

Returning to the truck, still wearing the gloves, he got in and angled the truck facing the cliff. He set the hand brake, then wiped clean the steering wheel again for good measure, wiped the lug wrench, the jack, and the door handles. He slid Dawson’s driver’s license deep into the dead man’s back pocket, then, opening the driver’s door and stepping out, he pulled Zigler’s body across the seat and arranged it behind the steering wheel. He wiped the revolver good, pressed the dead man’s fingers to it, in the firing position, then laid it on the seat near Zigler’s right leg. Reaching in, with the hand brake still set, he started the truck, the gear in neutral, and let the engine idle. Along the edge of the canyon, the wind blew sharply up at him. He cranked the steering wheel toward the edge. If he wasn’t quick, he’d be as dead as Zigler. In one move he released the brake, forced the gearshift into low, and jumped clear, giving the truck a shove to get it moving.

It lurched over the bank and down the side with a hell of a rumble, kicking up rocks, plowing up dust that blew in his face. He listened to the truck fall bouncing against the cliff, sounded like it was turning over and over. He heard it hit a boulder and bounce, then a heavier sound, as if it had rolled. Warily he peered over but it was too dark to see down into the canyon, too black down there to see anything. He thought about climbing down and putting a match to the truck—if he could get down, in the dark, without breaking his neck. But what the hell? If the law found the truck, what did they have? An escaped convict gone over the cliff, false ID, a truck with false registration, and a dark revolver the bank teller might recognize with its six-inch barrel, woodengrip, and worn bluing.

Returning to the gray, he patted the canvas bags behind him as he stepped up into the saddle. He made sure the money rode steady and secure as he moved the gelding on up the western slope of the mountain. The gray moved out at a fast walk even climbing, but at last he tired at the uphill pull and wanted to slow. Lee let the willing mount take his own pace, he had enough time. His pocket watch said seven o’clock, straight up. He had an hour and a half, and that was plenty.

When the gray had rested, Lee urged him along again. They were high up on the northwestern slope at the base of a pinnacle rock when they stopped in the shadow of an overhang, and Lee stepped off. He untied one of the canvas bags, sat down against the bank with the bag between his knees and opened it. In the fading light, he counted roughly through the money, his heart pounding. Looked like, altogether, he might have around three to four hundred thousand. Hell, he could buy half of Mexico for that. The crisp green bills felt good in his hands. He managed to stuff two canvas bags in the saddlebags. Then, just below the cliff, he dug a deep hole in the dry desert. Even with the trenching tool, he was out of breath when he’d finished, and now time was getting close. Breathing raggedly, he dropped the saddlebags into the hole, laid the third bag between them, and covered them. He kept the trenching tool. Feeling pushed now, he stood for only a moment looking out over the valley, mentally marking his position. He could just see, down to his left, the airstrip like a small scratch next to the dirt road to Jamesfarm.

He let the gray pick his own way down the bare mountain, around boulders and across ravines. The land was dark now but the sky still silver. When they hit the road he pushed the gelding to a gallop. He could barely make out the emergency airstrip now, couldn’t see the faded orange windsock drooping or filling in the gusting wind. Descending fast, thankful the gray was sure-footed, he began to worry that Mark had been early, hadn’t seen him and had gone on, though he hadn’t heard a plane. Or maybe Mark had changed his mind and had made other plans.

Pulling the gray up near the old barn, in among a small cluster of scrubby willows, he dug a second hole. It was harder digging among the roots and in the dark, but then he hit a patch where ground squirrels had made tunnels, and it went faster. When he had a saddle-sized hole he laid the blanket in and laid the saddle on top, the skirts and cinch and stirrups folded in, hoping the rodents would leave it alone, hoping he’d buried it high enough above the wash so the hole wouldn’t flood. He didn’t cover the hole, but waited quietly beside the gray, his chest heaving. The sky above was darkening now, too, the far mountains humping in heavy, deep blackness. Alone and wondering if Mark would come, he was gettingfidgety when he heard the faint drone of the plane and saw its lights high above the mountains.

Only then did he remove the gray’s bridle, point him in the direction of the ranch on beyond, and slap him on the rump. The good gelding snorted and took off at a gallop, glancing back once at Lee. Lee laid the bridle in the hole with the saddle and trenching tool. With his boots he scraped sand and dirt into the hole, coveringthem well, stamped them down, then scuffed leaves and dry grass over the bare scar of earth. As the Stearman’s lights grew large and descended, he walked out, staying clear of the strip.

The plane bounced once on the wind and touched down. He waved both arms over his head as it taxied toward him, though he guessed Mark could see him against the lighter sand. Near him the plane paused, idling.

Walking on out, Lee had to grin. He’d done it. A third of a million bucks, hidden, and all his. Maybe in due time the losers would be reimbursed for some of it by the U.S. government. He didn’t know how this bank insurance worked, but as wasteful as Washington was, they wouldn’t miss the money. Feeling good, he stepped up on the Stearman’s wing walk and eased down into the hopper, where Mark had added a heavy blanket for his comfort. Lee fastened his seat belt, gave Mark a thumbs-up, and they were off, Mark heading clear across the country, for Wichita and then Florida, Lee choosing the shorter distance to establish his alibi. At the time the post office guard was first tied up and robbed, Lee would have had to be four hours or more away, hitching with an unknown trucker, heading for the roulette and blackjack tables of Vegas. And Mark, if anyone ever thought to make the connection, which wasn’t likely, would have been much farther away, gassing up the Stearman at small, country airports where the young pilot always paid cash, an unrecorded flight not likely to ever be traced.

31

Becky managed a visit with Morgan the next day while Sammie was in school but when she picked the child up, Sammie guessed at once where she’d been; she was so agitated at being left out again, at not seeing her daddy, was so completely focused on telling Morgan something deeply important to her, that Becky gave in at last; she knew that stubborn determination wouldn’t go away. When she looked into Sammie’s dark and grieving eyesshe was filled, herself, with Sammie’s same driving need to tell him whatever was so urgent, so very meaningful to her. Sammie might be only nine, but she was not like other children; her perceptions awed and frightened Becky, and Becky had to listen to her.

But there was one thing that Becky made her promise not to tell Morgan. Her daddy knew nothing about Falon’s breakin and his attack on them, he didn’t know about any of the trouble they’d had with Falon. She had always thought, long before Morgan was arrested and put in jail, that if Morgan knew how Falon had behaved he’d be so enraged he might kill Falon. She had kept silent to protect Morganand now, with Morgan locked up, what good would it do to tell him, it would only create more hurt, more desperate and helpless rage.

“Grandma made carrot cake today,” Becky said. “We’ll stop at her house for a little snack first, then we’ll go to see Daddy. On one condition,” she said, looking down at Sammie. “You remember to keep your promise not to tell Daddy about Falon coming to the house?”

Sammie looked up at her.“You mean, the last time?”

“I mean all the times, as we agreed. Clear back, long ago. Even that time when—”

“When he killed Misto,” Sammie said.

Becky nodded.“You know I’ve never told him, it would be too upsetting.”

“You were afraid of what Daddy would do.”

Becky nodded.“And right now, Daddy has enough to worry him without hearing about that ugliness.” She knew there’d be a police report from when Falon broke in the last time. She just hoped they hadn’t told Morgan about that.

Sammie looked up at her a long time, but said nothing. She was still quiet when they pulled into Caroline’s drive, she didn’t say a word as they went inside. Sitting at the big kitchen table as Caroline cut a piece of carrot cake for her and poured a glass of milk, Sammie hadn’t said a word.

“Can you promise that?” Becky said. “Will you promise—for Daddy’s sake?”

Sammie ate some cake, took a sip of milk.“I promise,” she said at last, but in a reluctant little voice. Becky looked sternly at her. Sammie blinked, and looked down. “I promise,” she said more boldly. Caroline watched them in silence. “I promise,” Sammie repeated, and then she tied into her milk and cake.

The evening light was softening as they pulled into the courthouse parking lot. Sammie was still quiet as they went inside, the child walking very determined, very straight in her light summer jacket, her chin up, her eyes straight ahead. Whateverwas on her mind, whatever she needed to tell Morgan, no matter how shaky Becky felt at the emotional disaster it might cause, this couldn’t be avoided. Whatever Sammie had to say, Becky half expected a meltdown that would leave Sammie tearful and leave Morgan intolerably shaken.

Maybe her mind was filled with a dream she hadn’t told Becky, a worse nightmare even than the last one where Morgan was thrown in jail—that trauma would stay with them for the rest of their lives, she couldn’t imagine what would be worse than that prediction.

For a moment, she wondered if this had to do with Morgan being drugged, wondered if Sammie had seen something in a dream where Falon was giving him a drug as well as alcohol?

She had already talked with their doctor about that. Dr. Bates had visited Morgan in jail, had questioned him, had done what small, simple tests there were to do, had looked at Morgan’s pupils, had checked his heart, even smelled Morgan’s breath.

He said whatever Morgan had been given could have been an overdose of some prescription medication. He said there wasn’t much in the way of testing, if they didn’t know what they were looking for, particularly this long after the dose had been given. Dr. Bates said that, because Morgan didn’t drink, a sufficient amount of bootleg whiskey could have knocked him out overnight, could have left him uncertain andgroggy, the way the police found him. But he didn’t see how Morgan could have been forced to drink so much without trying to refuse, without remembering. He did say that some bootleg whiskey contained additives to make it more potent, but usually that was found in the bigger cities, not in moonshine from these small, backwoods stills.

At the jail, Sergeant Trevis ushered them into the same small, ugly visiting room, Sammie holding Becky’s hand tight, her own hand cold and tense. Becky hardly noticed the scarred table and two metal chairs. The afternoon heat inside the small room was nearly intolerable, and the street noise added to their stress. Becky sat down with her back to the window. Sammie stood waiting near the door, tense and watchful, listening to footsteps coming down the hall.

Officer Jimson stood behind Morgan, and as her daddy entered, Sammie flew straight into his arms, clinging to him, pushing her face against his chest. Morgan pulled out the empty chair, sat down with Sammie on his lap. He kissed her cheek, buried his face in her pale, clean hair. At the other side of the table Becky sat quietly, trying not to send emotional vibes, wanting to let Sammie have her say without interference or distraction. Even Sergeant Trevis seemed tuned in to Sammie’s urgency, he stood back against the wall, looking at the floor, remaining very still and disconnected as if his attention were miles away.

When at last Sammie pulled away from her daddy’s hug, she took his face in her two small hands, looking deeply at him. Her words startled Becky, they were not what she’d expected. “I dreamed of the cowboy,” Sammie said. “He’s coming, Daddy.”

Becky looked down, trying to hide her frown, her hands clenched out of sight under the table. Whatwas this, what was this about the old man?

“He’s coming now, Daddy, he’s coming here to help you.”

Morgan looked at her, puzzled.

“I knew he’d come,” Sammie said sagely, looking deeply at him. “I dreamed before that he would, I dreamed about the airplane. That’s part of how he’s coming, he was so happy with escaping in the plane. He’s coming, Daddy. But not right away. There will be jail for him, too. I dreamed of prison walls around him, but not here. Far away from here.

“Prison walls around you both,” she said very low, glancing at Sergeant Trevis and then away. “But at first in different places.” She put her arms around Morgan, pressed her forehead against his chest, speaking half muffled against him. “You’ll be in prison, Daddy, a big prison right here near home. But then the cowboy will come there, you’ll be together then. You’ll both be there, inside that high wall. And then, Daddy—then the cowboy will help you.”

She looked at Morgan hard.“You’ll get away from there, Daddy. In the dark night the cowboy will help you get away. Only the cowboy can save you, he’ll help you prove the truth, he will help you, Daddy.”

Morgan looked at Sammie a long time, his expression stern and unchanging, but tears welled in his eyes. When he looked up at Becky, a long look over the child’s head, his gaze was filled with fear, with disbelief, with dismay at the thought of prison.

“How do you know?” Morgan whispered. “How can you know this?” But then from somewhere deep inside, Becky saw his calm certainty rise. She watched Morgan’s faith surface, his faith in Sammie, sure and trusting, his faith in a talent and knowledge that no ordinary human would possess. “How can you know?” he repeated.

“The cowboy,” Sammie said, looking deeply at him. “My dream,my cowboy. My dream told me. The cowboybelongs to us.He doesn’t know that, he doesn’t know about us, not yet. It will be a long time,” she said, “a long journey. I dreamed of snow and prisons and then he is sick, but then he will get better and he will come to us and he will help you.”

Sergeant Trevis seemed to be paying no attention, looking blankly away as if his mind were on something far distant, as he took in Sammie’s whispers.

Again Sammie took Morgan’s face in her hands. “You mustn’t lose hope, Daddy. You must take what comes, until the cowboy is here with us, until he comes to help us.”

Across from them, all Becky could do was wipe away her own tears, rise from her chair, come around the table and put her arms around them, holding them close, holding the two of them close to her, wondering, frightened but strangely hopeful.

32

As the Stearman lifted higher into the night wind, Lee pulled the blanket over his legs, looking down over the lower wing where the pale desert caught the last gleam of light. For a second just below them he saw the gray jogging free, the good gelding ducking his nose and switching his tail, smart and sassy at his own release. He’d have a fine taste of freedom and, when he got thirsty and hungry, he’d head for the one lone ranch off beyond the little dirt strip, he was already moving in that direction. No horseman, seeing the gray, would let him wander. As the plane passed over him he shied, bucked a little, and broke into a gallop.

When Mark banked sharply, lifting toward the mountains heading east, Lee leaned over scanning the foothills, but it was too dark among the massed rocks to see the higher pinnacle where he had buried the money. How long before he’d be back, to dig it up again? And what would happen to him, meantime? He began to worry about someone finding his stash, then he worried about the saddlebags and canvas bags rotting, or pack rats digging in and chewing up the money for nests. Sitting hunched under the blanket in the hopper of the front cockpit, he got himself all worked up worrying, like some little old woman.

Well, hell, the money was safe enough, it wasn’t going anywhere. He was too edgy, he’d been nervous ever since he accidentally killed Zigler. He didn’t like the thoughts he’d had, either, back there in the post office, wanting to hurt that young guard, he didn’t like that it had even crossed his mind to kill him. That young fellow wasn’t Zigler, he didn’t deserve to die, he wasn’t anything like that scum that Lee had wasted.

Mark had said they’d be following the Colorado River most of the way to Vegas but, looking out over the plane’s nose, Lee couldn’t see much but the night closing in on the deeper blackness of the low mountains, just their crowns catching the last gleam of daylight. Soon between the mountains they hit a patch of turbulence, the plane bucking, the wind so cold Lee pulled his jacket collar up, settled deeper in his seat, and pulled the blanket tighter. When he felt a tap on his shoulder, he looked back to see Mark shoving a wadded-up coat at him. He grabbed at it, the wind trying to tear it away. He got it into the cockpit and gladly pulled it on. Soon, bundled in the coat and blanket, he grew warmer—warm all but inside his chest where it felt like his breath had turned to ice. Hunching down in the coat collar like a turtle to warm his breath, he thought about the wagon trains that had crossed the desert and crossed those bare ranges below him, pioneers stubbornly heading west: a trip that took many months, where he and Mark were looking at just over an hour.

Some of the mountains those folks had crossed would take three teams of horses or oxen to pull one wagon up, with everyone pushing from behind. And on the other side, going down, trees had to be cut to use for drags to keep the wagons from getting away, from falling wheel over canvas, dragging their good teams with them. Those men and women, crossing a foreign land hauling their loaded wagons over the frozen mountains, they had had no idea what lay ahead, and they’d had only themselves to rely on. But they kept on, despite starvation, frozen limbs, despite sickness and death, despite the ultimate desperate measures that had kept some of them alive, that had shocked the generations who came after them, had shocked descendants who might not be here at all, if not for what they called, looking back, the most heinous of crimes.

Lee didn’t know how to judge what was not his to judge, all he knew right now was, if it was cold in this open hopper, the winters during those crossings had been a hundred times colder, down there among the wild mountains.

As a kid, growing up in South Dakota, he’d thought there’d never be an end to winter. Every chore seemed twice as hard, his hands froze to any metal he touched, ropes frozen stiff, even the flakes of hay froze hard. Barn doors stuck, latches wouldn’t work, ice had to be broken from water buckets several times a day and at night, too, so the animals could drink. He’d hated winter, andhe’d had a home to live in, they’d had a fire at night to warm them and where his mother cooked, they’d had plenty of food, good beef from their own cattle, grain and root stores, but still he’d grumbled. Grumbled about splitting the firewood, grumbled about dragging hay over the snow to the waiting cattle. He’d even complained when he had to slog through deep snow to the barn to do his chores where he’d be cozy and warm among the warm animals.

Now, hunched down in the little airplane traveling in a way he had never imagined as a boy, he felt strangely unreal. The land below the wings humped away in darkness, a glint from the river now and then, and above the upper wing a glint of stars; and then far ahead Lee saw a cluster of lights, warm and beckoning, and that would be Vegas, a glittering oasis appearing and then vanishing between the low hills.

But where, all this time, was the ghost cat? Why wasn’t he here beneath the blanket, warming Lee? Why had Lee not seen or sensed the cat during all his moves at the post office and then burying the money, turning the gray loose, getting in the plane and taking off—all without Misto?

Had the yellow cat abandoned him? Had even this crime of robbery, so removed from any betrayal of Jake Ellson, had even this transgression against the law turned the cat from him? Lee prayed not. He would feel a failure, he would feel betrayed if that were the case. To be abandoned so suddenly, without a word, without a last rub and purr, that couldn’t make any sense to Lee.

Beneath him, now, the little city took shape, the land below brightened by colored neon, by palaces of yellow lights as the Stearman dropped down over the last ridge into Vegas. Mark circled the city lights, then put her nose down toward the valley. Warmer air washed over Lee. He sat up straighter watching the lights come up at him in sweeps of raw neon, the windows of the tall buildings crowded together and bright, and then a dark and empty space delineated by long straight rows of airport lights picking out the runways.

Mark banked the Stearman, coming around for a straight shot, a long approach. He set her down lightly and taxied to the far end of the runway, where he moved off toward a row of small planes tied down, and a few small hangars. The night was pleasantly warm, Lee pulled off the heavy coat as Mark killed the engine.

He was stiff, getting out. And he was still wondering about the cat, he still had that empty feeling, without the companionship of the ghost cat. Even when he didn’t see Misto he could often sense him near, but now he sensed only emptiness. He felt lost, felt so alone suddenly that he might even welcome the goading presence of the dark spirit—if the cat would return, as well.

He helped Mark wheel the plane to a tie-down beside the hangars. Across the way, Lee could see the public terminal, and beyond that a parking lot, lines of cars reflecting the lights of the building. A commercial plane stood nearby, maybe from San Francisco or L.A. As Mark snugged the Stearman to the ground ties, looping the short lines through the metal rings, Lee fished a handful of bills from his pocket to pay for the gas.

“Hope you make a killing in Florida,” he said, handing Mark the money, clapping the younger man on the shoulder. “And good luck in Wichita. Take care getting there.”

Mark grinned.“Thanks, Fontana. I’ve enjoyed knowing you. Maybe someday we’ll see each other again.”

Lee nodded.“Maybe.” Turning away, feeling strangely lost, he swore softly at his sudden loneliness. Then he straightened his shoulders and made his way across to the terminal.

He took the front taxi of three that were parked at the curb. The driver was maybe fifty, a Latino man, short hair, smooth shaven, pictures of his pudgy wife and three handsome kids stuck around the edges of the windshield, a small silver Virgin fixed to the dashboard.

“Take me to the best Mexican restaurant you’ve got,” Lee told him. The driver smiled and took off, soon moving through a tangle of residential and small businesses, and then between the bright neon of casino signs that flashed along the street. At a small, noisy Mexican caf?, the man pulled over. Lee paid him and pushed in through the carved door to the good rich smell.

He found a small table in a corner away from the fancy-dressed tourists with their loud talk and laughter. He ordered dinner and two bottles of beer. He meant to take his time enjoying his meal. A few minutes wouldn’t make a difference, and who knew when he’d eat Mexican again? Not where he was headed. He watched the bleached-blond tourist women in their low-cut dresses, the soft-bodied greenhorn men dressed in fancy Western wear, the creases still showing in their pearl-buttoned shirts, their brand-new boots and Stetsons that had never been near a horse or steer, their loud tourist talk and brassy smiles, their feverish partying.

And then, when again he missed the cat, he wondered suddenly what he was doing here. Wasthis why the cat had vanished? Had Misto left him because he found this whole plan repugnant? Because even this last robbery had been against what the cat wanted or approved of?

Frowning, he thought about changing his mind and sliding back to Blythe, of staying innocently on the job there. But that would mean some bad loose ends, would put him in Blythe at the time of the robbery, would put him in immediate danger. He needed this alibi, or he’d have the feds wide awake, coming down on him like buzzards on an injured calf. A new parolee in the area, known for his train heists. A bank robbery in the small town, such as they may never have known before. What else would they do but close in on him?

Even as it stood, they’d want to know why he’d taken off, leaving the state against his parole, at the exact same time as the robbery. Hell, he thought, maybe he should have kept the gray, hauled the money out with him right then, and beat it straight for the border. Maybe he could have made it into Mexico free and clear, could have vanished now rather than later.

He was still feeling uncertain about what was ahead when his dinner came, steaming on the sizzling plate, enchiladas ranchero, beans and rice and chile relleno. He ate slowly, savoring each individual bite as he went over his next moves, letting the noise of the tourists fade around him. At last, wiping up his plate with the one remaining tortilla, he felt better, felt easy and at peace. This plan was all right, he had it set up just the way it should be, he knew for sure that the next steps were exactly what he needed to do.

When the feds were convinced he’d been in Vegas during the post office robbery, when they received the police report that he would soon set up for them, why would they question that kind of proof? What were they going to do? Stop and interrogate every trucker who had taken that route? Every tourist who might have picked up a hitchhiker? And how would they make the timing work out, for that long drive from Blythe up into Nevada? Smiling, he ordered a second side of corn tortillas and another beer. By the time he’d finished the third beer, a soft glow filled him. Feeling content, and full of good Mexican food, his worries evaporated. The plan ahead looked just fine. He paid his bill and left the caf?, smiling. Ducking into a liquor store at the next corner, he bought a pint of whiskey, and then found a deserted alley.

He broke the seal on the whiskey, took two swallows, swished it around and spat it out. He poured the rest of the cheap, dark booze over his shirt and pants, then tossed the empty bottle in a trash can, where it clanked comfortably against its brothers. Leaving the alley, he entered the first big casino he came to. At the main cage he bought a stack of chips with some of the money he’d carried in his boot.

He picked a roulette table, positioning himself across from the hard-eyed operator, bumping the player next to him, knocking some of the man’s chips on the floor. The tourist wrinkled his nose at the reek of whiskey, picked up his chips, and moved farther down the table. The operator glared at Lee, then spun the wheel. Lee placed a stack of chips on seventeen and as the wheel slowed he weaved back and forth, picking his nose. When the ball dropped into sixteen he reached over the table and shoved the operator hard. “You son of a bitch. I saw you drag your thumb on the wheel.”

The black-suited, hard-jowled operator slid around the table toward him, his pale brown eyes fixed on Lee. Lee stared at him, spat on the table, and threw the stack of chips in his face. He grabbed Lee, and Lee hit him hard in the stomach. People began shouting, dealers and security people came running, surrounding him. He grabbed up a stool, swung it hard, charging them, forcing customers to stumble over each other, getting out of his way. He glimpsed a man in Levi’s leaning over a gaming table grabbing up a stack of chips and then the place was filled with cops, cops storming in. Lee paused, waiting, weaving drunkenly, ready to light into the bastards the minute they touched him.

When two of them grabbed Lee, he raked the edge of his boot down a uniformed shin so hard the cop swore, swung his nightstick and hit him in the kidneys. As Lee doubled over they hit him again across the shoulders, pulled his wrists behind him, and snapped on the cuffs. He fought and kicked as they dragged him away, he swore at them slurred and drunkenly as they hauled him out through the crowd, the tourists backing away opening a path for him, as wary as if the cops were leading a wild man.

Outside on the street the uniforms pushed him into the backseat of a patrol car, behind the wire barrier. He cursed them loudly all the way to the station, calling them every name he could think of. In the station, while they booked him, he managed to knock the sergeant’s coffee cup off the desk and break it. He was booked for being drunk and disorderly, for fighting in a public place, for assaulting several officers, and destroying police property. When they searched him they found his parole officer’s card in his hip pocket, folded in with the address of Delgado Ranch, and Jake Ellson’s phone number. The booking officer, a short, heavyset sergeant, studied Lee.

“You’re under the feds?”

“That’s what they like to think. If I want to leave the damn district and have a little fun, that’s my business.”

“Where and when were you released?”

“McNeil. March eighth, this year.”

Sergeant Peterson raised an eyebrow.“Not long. Mr. Raygor will be interested to know how you feel about his supervision. Any message, when we call San Bernardino?”

Lee scowled at him, and said nothing. He watched Sergeant Peterson seal his pocketknife, his savings book, three hundred dollars in loose bills, and Mae’s picture into a brown envelope. “I want the picture back in good shape, not broken.”

Sergeant Peterson looked at the photo of the little girl.“Granddaughter?”

“My sister.”

Peterson studied the yellowed, faded photograph.“Long time ago. Where is she now?”

“I have no idea. Haven’t seen her since she was little.”

Peterson looked at him a long time.“No other family? Anyone you want us to contact?”

“If there was, my PO would do that.”

Peterson said nothing more. He nodded to a young, redheaded officer who ushered Lee on back to the tank, walking behind him, very likely his hand resting on his weapon. He unlocked the barred door, gave Lee a shove, and locked him in. The big cell was half full, mostly of drunks, the place smelled as sour as a cheap bar, that stink mixed with the invasive smell of the dirty latrine. Lee picked a top bunk at the far end of the long cell, stood with his back to the ladder glaring around him, looking for trouble, for any challenge to his chosen space.

There wasn’t any, most of the men were asleep or passed out. A sick young man lay curled on the floor in one corner, shivering. Lee climbed to the upper bunk and stretched out. He checked the ceiling for roaches, then rolled onto his side with his face to the wall. The mattress and thin blanket stunk of stale sweat. But in spite of the depressing atmosphere of another lockup, Lee lay smiling.

His moves had come off just as he’d planned. All he had to do now was wait. If he got lucky, he’d do his time right here in the Vegas jail, and he could think of worse places. Why would the feds bother to send him back to the federal pen just for drunk and disorderly? They sure wouldn’t send him back to McNeil for such a small infraction. Maybe they’d tack some extra time on his parole, but what was the difference? As soon as he was out again, he meant to jump parole anyway. No one would come looking for him in Mexico, or be likely to find him, if they did. The money was there in the desert waiting for him, and they sure wouldn’t get him on the post office charge. What court or jury could put him in Blythe when he was nearly three hundred miles away at the time, tearing up a Vegas casino?

Turning over, ignoring the stink of the cell, Lee drifted off toward sleep, quite content with his fate. Unaware, as yet, of the long, dangerous, and tangled route he had chosen, oblivious to the precipitous road he had embarked upon. He hadn’t a clue to the tangled connections he was yet to encounter and to the many long, dangerous months before he would return to Blythe to claim his bounty and head for the border. And if, three thousand miles away in Georgia, a young man waited, puzzled, for the old cowboy’s fate to play out, forthe cowboy’s future to join his own, Lee did not know that, either.

If Morgan Blake, sitting hunched on his sagging bunk in the Rome jail, waited with a desperate hope that indeed a miracle was in the making as predicted by Sammie’s dream, if he clung to his wild belief that his little girl had seen truly, who could blame him? He had nothing else to hang on to. If their attorney failed to free him, Sammie’s prediction was the only hope Morgan had.

Maybe only the cat, sitting unseen in Lee’s jail cell in Vegas, saw clearly the direction the two men were headed, saw how they were connected, saw how their futures were drawing together. Crouched invisibly at the foot of Lee’s bunk, so weightless now that Lee was unaware of him, Misto looked around at the human scum that occupied Lee’s cell—a worse lot, by far, than the men in the Rome lockup where Morgan waited. Though, in Rome, Morgan’s view of the future was far more agonizing than the future that Lee envisioned.

For Lee, the dark spirit seemed to have pulled back, his aura of evil to have thinned, easing off the pressure on Fontana. Perhaps, Misto thought, Satan had grown bored with Lee, maybe he was soured at the effort he’d made that had garnered no satisfying results. Whatever the cause, Misto sensed that, at least for the moment, the devil had stepped back, that all was well with the world; and the invisible cat twitched his tail with pleasure.

Lee and Morgan and his family would keep Misto tethered to this time, to the drama that was only now unfolding and that would lead ultimately to the cowboy’s final fate. One day, not far off, the cat must return to the world as a living part of it, as a mortal beast only, without the powers and the freedom and vision he presently enjoyed. But, the great powers willing, he meant to remain close to Lee, as spirit, until Lee broke Satan’s curse for good and forever, until Satan gave up the chase, admitted defeat, and turned to tormenting other men, weaker souls who would be more amenable to his wiles.

You are the loser, the ghost cat thought, sensing Lucifer watching now, curious and waiting.You are the loser, Misto thought, soonLee will drive you away and the child will drive you away, forever. You are wasting your time in this quest of Dobbs’s heirs, you will fail, you will finally and ultimately fail.And, smiling, the ghost cat rolled over across Lee’s feet, making himself heavy suddenly, purring mightily, jarring Lee awake. Lee looked down at him, and laughed. And in that moment Lee knew the cat would stay with him, that Misto wouldn’t leave him. In a rare instance of half-dreaming perception, Lee knew the ghost cat would remain beside him as Lee wove through a longer and more complicated tangle than he had imagined, as he fought through the encounters and trials that were laid out for him; as he was united with the child he had dreamed of and, surprised by the relationship, he discovered new partners and, with them, fought his way to his final and eternal freedom.

2. THE CAT, THE DEVIL, THE LAST ESCAPE

1

THE CAT PROWLED the prison rooftops invisible to human eyes, a ghost cat, a spirit cat unseen by anyone living. He could make himself visible when he chose but that wasn?t often. A big, rangy tomcat, long and lank, his golden ears ragged from past battles during his earthly lives. Now, floating free between those lives, his mission was keen as he searched for his quarry, for his dark and indestructible adversary.

Padding across the shingles he paused at a noise from the walk below, dropped to a predator?s stalk and slipped to the edge, to peer over.

But it was only a guard passing between the buildings with a pair of inmates, the men?s shadows cast tall by the lowering sun. The shadow that Misto sought was not among them. When, in the softening light, some unease made the men glance up to the roofline they saw only wind-scattered leaves dancing across the shingles.

The men moved on and so did the ghost cat, scanning the walks below him, alert for that errant shade, for the demon that, unlike the cat himself, harbored no trace of goodness. For the wraith that haunted his human companion, that tormented Lee Fontana. In the windows of the prison offices warped reflections moved about as prison staff finished up for the day. He heard the casual click of a door closing but not a stealthy sound. Across the roofs the prairie wind scudded, tickling through his fur, turning him suddenly so giddy that he ran in circles, tail lashing, his yellow eyes gleaming. He played and raced unseen until the light shifted, far clouds dimmed the dropping sun and, sobering, the cat turned steady again and watchful.

Away at the far reaches of the prison grounds the vegetable gardens shone bright green in the sun?s last rays. Ears sharp forward, he surveyed the dim corridors between the young fruit trees that the prisoners tended, but nothing stirred there, he saw no foreign presence. Tail twitching, he looked up past the gardens, out past the prison wall to the blowing wheat that rolled to the horizon. The ghost cat had, earlier in the day, sailed weightless on the wheat?s flowing crest, diving and somersaulting, giddy with play, forgetting his quarry as he reveled in his ghostly powers, in his weightless and windblown freedom. Now he could see nothing spectral waiting there within that golden pelt. Nor did anything unwelcome move among the farm buildings or within the fenced paddocks where the cows and sheep browsed, casting their own docile shadows. The animals remained content, nothing evil lingered among them. They would know, the animals always knew.

The scent of the farm beasts, carried on the wind, comforted the ghost cat. Their warmth and familiarity, their steady and incorruptible innocence were as balm to Misto?s restless nature. He turned away only when the stink of the prison pig farm reached him; he wheeled away then, his lips drawn back in a flehmen grin of disgust.

Galloping across the roofs, he paused to study the lighted factory windows where the inmates produced clothing and shoes and furniture. Nothing seemed amiss within those busy rooms, only the usual whine of machines, the pounding of hammers, and warped movement beyond the glass as the men went about their work. He watched for a few moments more, his ears down to keep out the wind, then headed for the roof of the hospital. There he settled on the shingles, his paws tucked under, to wait for his human cellmate, for crusty old Lee Fontana to finish his daily session with the prison doctor and return to his solitary cell.

But even here, peering down through the hospital windows, still Misto watched for the dark presence that had followed Lee these many years, intent on his destruction. Had followed Lee long before he was transferred here to Springfield Federal Prison. The dark spirit that had followed him across the country from California and, months earlier, had shadowed him as he departed McNeil Island Federal Prison on parole, had followed Lee down the coast of Washington State and Oregon, down into California?s southern desert. Tenacious and devious, hell?s spirit sought to possess and destroy the vulnerable old man, in a vendetta that ranged back three generations of Lee?s family. Back to the time of Lee?s grandpappy, when train robber Russell Dobbs, late in the last century, made a wager withthe devil and won it.

Satan didn?t take kindly to defeat, he hadn?t liked losing that bargain. Russell Dobbs, having miraculously bested the devil at his own game, had brashly stirred Lucifer?s rage. The curse Satan laid on Dobbs?s heirs led the dark spirit, long after Dobbs?s own death, to return again and again into Lee?slife attempting, with each visit, to suck away Lee?s soul, to establish final victory.

So far Lucifer had not won the battle. Often enough he had masterfully tempted Lee, but still he could not possess him. Always, one way or another, Lee resisted. When recently in the California desert Lee had outmaneuvered Satan so stubbornly in a clashing of wills that the devil had drawn back, the cat thought Lee had won at last, he thought that was the end of the devil?s harassment, that Lee would face the haunt no more.

This was not the case. Fairness means nothing to Satan, the devil keeps his own rules. Though there in the desert Lee had clearly bested Lucifer, the wraith wasn?t done with him. The ghost cat had fought beside Lee, as much as one small catcan defy hell?s forces; sometimes they had watched Satan falter, but the battle was far from ended.

The yellow tom had been with Lee for all this present ghostly interval between his earthbound lives, but he had known Lee far longer. Misto had known Lee Fontana before the cat?s previous life ended. The two of them, both loners, had been close at McNeil Island. Misto, the boldest of the motley collection of cats that roamed the prison grounds, had moved as he pleased within the compound, strolling the dining room, demanding food from the friendlier inmates, slipping inand out of the cells as he chose. Though most of the time he remained in Lee?s company, spending his days on the prison farm where Lee had worked as a trustee caring for the milk cows and chickens and sheep, a job Lee much preferred to working indoors in prison industries, where dust and sawdustfrom the machinery irritated his sick lungs.

When, at McNeil, Misto died from the quick but painful complications of old age, Lee, one of the guards, and a cortege of prisoners had buried him outside the prison wall. But even during the ceremony, before the first shovelful of earth tumbled down on his carefully wrapped body, Misto?s spirit had risen up from that somber grave light and free. Riding the breeze above two dozen mourners he had watched his own funeral and listened to his friends? rough eulogies, and the ghost cat had smiled, touched by the men?s awkward sentiment.

As ghost he had remained on McNeil with Lee until Lee was paroled. The old man might be a thief and a train robber, but Misto saw something more. He saw a vulnerability in Lee Fontana, a tenderness that Lee, all his life, had tried to conceal. The ghost cat saw qualities within the old convict that made him purr, that kept him close, determined to shield Lee from the fate the dark prince held in store for the crusty old train robber. When Lee was paroled, Misto followed him off the island. Balanced invisibly on the rail of the prison launch that carried them across Puget Sound, amused by the icy spray in his face, the ghost cat raced along the rail as the boat plied the rough, deep waters drawing near to the small town of Steilacoom, to the railway stop where Lee would board his train for California.

Once Lee was settled on the southbound train, claiming a long bench seat for himself, the ghost cat had moved invisibly through the rocking cars staring up at the passengers and nosing into their lunch bags. But soon enough he had returned to Lee to curl up beside him on the cracked leather seat. It was a long journey. Misto had napped close to Lee but then, when he grew bored, he would drift up through the iron roof to ride atop the train; galloping the length of the racing cars in the gusting wind, Misto was part of the wind. As ghost, the small spirit was far more frivolous than ever he had been as a living, earthbound tomcat.

That had been only a few months back, in early March, when Lee headed down the West Coast to take a job in the Coachella Valley at the parole board?s direction, working one of the vast vegetable farms that fed half of California. Leaving Steilacoom, their train had swayed along beside the sea through green pastures and through small cozy towns dwarfed by Washington?s snowcapped peaks. When, along the ever-changing coastline, flocks of birdsexploded away, the cat leaped after them into the wind, diving and banking, gulping the small, winged morsels as a hawk or eagle might feast.

Only near the end of their three-day journey did the land abruptly change. As they moved south through green miles of orange and avocado groves, suddenly the groves ended. They were racing across pale, dry desert. As they descended a rocky, parched mountain the ghost cat crowded between Lee and the window, watching the flat desert, dry as bone, stretching to the horizon.

But soon, startling them both, the sandy expanse was broken by green farms laid out in emerald squares on the pale bare desert. A patchwork of vegetable fields, each as lush as a jungle, where river water fed the land, water piped in from the great Colorado. They could see men with trucks and tractors working the fields, harvesting rich crops of beans, melons, strawberries, and produce Lee couldn?t name?but the ghost cat, ascending again to the top of the train for a wider look, was suddenly engulfed in blackness. Darkness hid the sun and from it a man-shape emerged towering over him, its eyes gleaming.

Hissing, the cat stood his ground, ears back, teeth bared.?What do you want?? He had no physical power over the wraith, he had only the power of the spirit?his will against Satan?s eternal and devious lust. ?You?ve done your work,? Misto growled, ?or tried to. You?ve made your pitch too many times over the years. Every time, you?ve failed. At none of the crimes you?ve laid out have you succeeded in corrupting Lee. Whatever robbery he undertook, he did it his way, not yours.?

His yellow eyes raked the devil.?You think the curse you laid on Lee?s family is still to be won? No,? the tomcat rumbled. ?You?ve failed in your vow to take down the heir of Russell Dobbs, you?re the loser. Go torture someone else, you have no business here.?

Satan?s smile made the cat?s fur stand rigid, but the next moment the wraith was gone, vanished, his lingering look of promise stirring a shiver along the tomcat?s spine.

It was only a few weeks later that Lucifer appeared on the farm where Lee was working. Again, after weeks of sparring, Lee refused to commit the crime Satan pressed on him. It was that refusal that had led Lee here to Springfield. Lee had chosen, against the devil?s seduction, a robbery that, instead of maiming and destroying lives, would harm no one. Scoffing at the devil, he had devised a foolproof alibi that would remove him from the crime scene but leave him with a wealth of stolen cash. And that would burden him with only a few months? prison time ona less serious misdemeanor.

But even then, the wraith continued to torment Lee. And, as well, to ply his evil on the little child back in Georgia who was the other half of the puzzle that so fascinated the ghost cat, the child about whom Lee knew nothing.

Though in a previous life Misto had lived with Sammie, had been her own cat, she was still a mystery to him. He knew only that there was, somehow, an inexplicable connection between nine-year-old Sammie Blake and Lee Fontana.

Lee, nearly all his life, had carried with him the small framed photograph of his little sister Mae, taken some sixty years ago on the Dakota ranch. Mae was eight then, and Lee was twelve. He carried the picture when he left the ranch, a boy of sixteen setting out to conquer the world. Setting out to learn, on his own, to rob the steam trains as skillfully as Russell Dobbs could ever do. Lee didn?t seek to join Dobbs or to find him, Dobbs would have had none of that. To him Lee was only a boy.

Lee hadn?t seen Mae since he?d left the ranch; he?d seen none of his family again and didn?t know if they were still alive, except for his granddaddy. The legends and stories he heard of Dobbs?s feats, and the newspaper headlines, were fodder to his young mind. But, like Dobbs, Lee was a loner. He hadgone his way, and the rest of his family had gone theirs. Still, he thought about Mae often and always carried the small tintype wrapped in cloth, bent from being stuffed into a saddlebag or in his pocket.

It was only the ghost cat who knew and worried over the likeness between Lee?s little sister of some sixty years gone, and the child now in Georgia, the child Misto loved and had so recently lived with. The mirror images shared by the two children teased at the tomcat. But even now, as a ghost with his wider vision, he was not all-seeing: The puzzle was as stubborn as a knot of tangled yarn.

Was there a connection between the two children? How could there not be when they were so alike, and when fate had put them both so close to Misto as he moved through time and space? It seemed to him that Lee, and present-day Sammie Blake, were being inexorably drawn together; he felt himself part of a drama that was only beginning to play out. A pattern was forming within the vastness of eternity, but he didn?t know why. Were these events driven by the will of the dark one? Or were they happening in defiance of Satan?s efforts? That was the heart of the question.

Misto?s short life in Georgia occurred between the moment he died at McNeil Island and the instant that he, moving back in time, rose from his own grave as a ghost cat. A whole life lived outside the linear view of time. He was given to Sammie when she was five, when her daddy first went in the navy. Now, as a spirit, he saw his various lives floating on the realm of eternity as fishing skiffs might float rocking and shifting on an endless sea.

Now, stepping off the hospital roof, Misto rode the wind, floating along peering in through the rows of windows, one window to the next until he found Lee in a small examining room. There he rested on the fitful breeze, watching.

The old convict looked so vulnerable sitting on the metal table with his shirt off, his thin, ropy shoulders, his chest ivory white and frail. But his lower arms, his neck and wrinkled face were hard-looking, tanned to leather. Dr. Donovan, stethoscope in hand, was listening to Lee?s lungs. Ed Donovan was young and lean, short blond hair, deep blue eyes. He was a runner, Misto would see him of an early morning circling the paths inside the prison complex, his pale hair mussed, his pace easy. He was patient with Lee, and at each visit he seemed to read precisely Lee?s stateof health, even before he examined the old man. He could tell by Lee?s expression, and the way he moved, how Lee felt, though he always did examine him, designing Lee?s treatments according to what he observed. Under Donovan?s guidance, Misto thought Lee would grow as healthy as he could ever expect to be, considering the debilitation caused by the emphysema.

The cat thought about Lee?s hope that within a few months, under the good care at Springfield, he would be pronounced healthy, would be discharged from the federal medical facility, would be back on parole heading for Blythe to retrieve the stolen money and then down to Mexico beyond easy reach of the feds.

Misto didn?t think so. Trying to see the future, he felt his fur crawl. He sensed a far longer journey ahead, a more complicated and dangerous tangle than Lee dreamed before he reached California again to claim the treasure. Misto?s fragmented glimpses into the future were often like the abandoned skiffsinhigh water, visible for only an instant: the shadow of a prow or of a coiled line obscured by engulfing waves. Now the yellow tom prayed for the old train robber in the journey that lay ahead; he prayed that Lee might find a new kind of treasure, more tender than Lee would ever imagine.

2

DRIFTING ON THE wind peering in through the hospital window at Lee and the doctor, the yellow tom soon grew bored with waiting. Lee had pulled on his shirt but the two men were deep in conversation. Lee laughed, the old man?s eyes sparkling at some joke the doc had told him. Misto rose to the roof again thinking about the long, circuitous journey that had brought them there to Springfield, wondering which way fate would push Lee now. The cat hissed softly, knowing that Lee?s crime in California might yet be discovered.

When, in Blythe, Lee committed the payroll robbery, he had, within an hour, surfaced two hundred miles away, drunk and disorderly in a Las Vegas casino. What better witnesses to his presence there than the cops who arrested him, booked and jailed him? No way he could have been in two places at once. By car, it was a four-hour drive, and little chance he could have flown. This was 1947; the few commercial airlines that had started up after the war flew only between the larger cities.

And a small plane? Few records were kept of the private planes in the area. That night, there was no record of a two-seat duster plane leaving the desert town of Blythe, winging above the Colorado River between the low mountains. The ghost cat had ridden with Lee, warmed by the old man?s success, by the stolen money that was Lee?s nest egg for the rest of his life, for whatever time he had left as he was dragged down by the emphysema.

In Vegas, Lee expected to do a few months? jail time, to be released with more federal time tacked on his parole and to be returned to his farm job in Blythe. He didn?t mean to stay on the job. He meant to dig up the money at once and head for Mexico, lose himself across the border. Why would the feds look for him when they already had the man who appeared to have committed the robbery, the escapee Lee had set up for the job? When they?d already found the dead convict in the wrecked truck with some of the stolen money?

Lee never thought that in the Vegas jail his lungs would turn so bad he?d be sent back to California, housed in the San Bernardino County jail and, a few days later, shipped off to the new federal medical facility in Missouri, a plan set up by his parole officer and the San Bernardino County medical officer, Dr. Lou Thomas. Misto had stretched out unseen on the bookcase in Thomas?s office, amused at the interview but concerned for Lee.

Dr. Thomas was a soft man with thinning hair, a high forehead above rimless glasses. Removing his glasses, he rubbed his eyes, looking quietly at Lee.?The emphysema is pretty severe, Fontana.? Thomas looked from Lee to the young parole officer, waiting for him to take the lead.

George Raygor was maybe thirty, healthier looking than the portly physician. Crisp brown hair cut short, a rangy body and a deep tan, dressed in his usual suit, white shirt, and tie.?That field work,? Raygor said, ?driving for the pickers, the dust didn?t help your condition. I feel partly responsible for that. I wish you?d said something, Lee, we could have found some other work. Didn?t you think to tie on a bandana to breathe through?? He looked at Lou Thomas. ?Can they do anything for him at Springfield??

?They can?t cure you,? Thomas told Lee, ?but they can treat the symptoms, the shortness of breath, the coughing. Teach you how to breathe differently, how to take in more oxygen. Springfield takes good care of the men, we?re sending federal patients there from all over the country.?

He glanced at Raygor.?I?ll make the recommendation, I?ll call the parole board this morning.? But then the two looked at Lee, their expressions changing in a way Lee didn?t much like.

?I stopped by the FBI office earlier,? Raygor said. ?You want to talk about the Blythe post office robbery??

Lee had looked at Raygor, puzzled.?I heard about that in Vegas. I heard they found the guy, that he?d wrecked his car in a ditch or something.?

Raygor said,?The bureau found a body in a wrecked truck, at the bottom of a canyon. Guy?s name was Luke Zigler. Did you know him??

Lee shook his head.?His picture was in the paper. No, I didn?t know him. The paper said he?d been in prison.?

?While you were being transported back to California,? Raygor said, ?I made a run down to Blythe and talked with your boss. Jake Ellson said you?d taken some time off, starting the day of the robbery. Said you hadn?t quit your job, said you just wanted a break, a few days? rest. He saidhe didn?t know where you went, said he didn?t babysit his employees.?

Among the bookshelves Misto had risen nervously and begun to pace. Lee didn?t need this, he didn?t need questioning. As he moved behind Dr. Thomas, he let the faintest breeze touch the man. Thomas flinched, distracted, and glanced around. When he saw nothing, he settled down again.

Across from him, Raygor leaned back in the metal chair, looking hard at Lee.?Jake covered for you, Fontana. He knew you weren?t allowed to leave the state. Andyou knew it.? He studied Lee, frowning. ?If you did pull that post office job, you?re better off telling us now. It will go easier for you.?

Lee looked at him blankly.?How could I rob the Blythe post office? I was in Vegas when that happened. I read the papers, the robbery was the same night I was arrested. And why, even if I?dbeen in Blythe, would I pull a federal job and blow my parole??

?Before I left Delgado Ranch,? Raygor said, ?I had a look in your cabin. No clothes in the drawers or in the closet. I talked with some of the pickers but I didn?t learn much.? Raygor?s gaze was stubborn; Lee didn?t think he?d turn loose of this.

?I stopped by the army airfield,? Raygor said, and that gave Lee a jolt. ?There aren?t many private planes in Blythe, to get you to Vegas. Not much action since the war ended and the army shut the field down. The postal authorities checked for small planes leaving that night but didn?t find anything. Maybe some duster pilot headed for an early job,? Raygor said, watching Lee. ?No one keeps records of those flights.? Raygor said no more, he didn?t push it any further.

Lee had thought maybe Raygor felt sorry for him, an insulting idea, but useful. There was something in Raygor that Lee liked; that made him hope the PO would back off, would let matters lie the way they looked. Hoped the feds would do the same. They had their case, and Zigler was a no-good, he had deserved to die. Lee had killed Zigler in self-defense to save his own life, and he didn?t feel bad about that. He?d known enough of Zigler?s kind, twisted killers more dangerous than a nest of rattlesnakes. If, in death, Zigler had helped Lee out, it might be the only favor he?d done in his coldhearted life.

But still, the bureau didn?t have the rest of the stolen money and Lee knew those guys would keep looking. Searching the desert for shovel marks, tire marks, for the place where he had buried the cash, and that made him some nervous.

Misto, seeing Lee?s restricted breathing, knew how shaky the old man felt. It was then the ghost cat became visible, prancing along the shelf behind the men?s backs, lashing his tail and clowning. He vanished again at once, but Lee knew he was there and found it hard to keep a straight face; the ghost cat made him feel stronger, filled him with an amused courage.

But the next day when Lee found himself in a big black car headed for the L.A. airport accompanied by two deputy U.S. marshals, he had no sense of the ghost cat. At the airport, getting out of the car handcuffed and leg chained to board their flight for Missouri, Lee still didn?t sense the cat?s presence and felt painfully alone.

Lee drew stares as they boarded, chained to the heavyset deputy. When they were settled, the other deputy, who?d been driving, left them. Lee?s companion took up most of their two seats, crushing Lee against the window. Weak and uncertain again after yesterday?s interview, Lee wished mightily for some awareness of the ghost cat. He wanted to hear the invisible cat?s purr; he wondered for a moment if Misto had left him for good, wondered if, with this trip, the yellow tom had ended their journey together.

But why would Misto do that, at this juncture in Lee?s life? Sick as he was, he didn?t relish all the prison hassle soon to come, the prodding and power plays of the established inmates; he longed for the cat?s steady support. He wanted to feel the ghost cat draped warm and unseen across his shoulder, lending him courage; he wanted that small andsteady spirit near, to share this new turn in his journey. The one soul in all the world that he could trust, could talk with in the privacy of his cot at night, the cat?s whisper hardly a sound at all beneath the prison blanket. Misto must know Lee needed him. Where was he, that was more urgent than easing the distress of his cellmate?

Seated beside the hard-faced deputy, wrenched with fits of coughing, avoiding the deputy?s scowl, Lee felt so miserable he wondered if he?d make it to the prison hospital before he gave out. The day seemed endless until they deplaned at Kansas City, Lee stumbling down the metal stairs in his leg chains, crossing the wide strip of tarmac to the small terminal. He was allowed to usethe men?s room, still chained to the deputy, then was ushered into the backseat of another black touring car driven by another deputy marshal who had joined them there. Heading south for Missouri beneath heavy gray clouds, the car had sped through miles of wheat fields stretching away flat as thesea.Trying to ignore the belly chain that dug into his backbone, he?d still had no sense of the ghost cat. He?d felt used up, empty, cold, and aching tired.

His companions hadn?t talked much. Both were silent, sour-faced men filled with the power of their own authority, and that had been fine with Lee. He didn?t like small talk and he didn?t have a damned thing to say to a deputy marshal. As night gathered, the clouds thickened; soon they raced through blackness. The deputies kept the interior of the car dimly lit by the overhead so they could watch him. But soon, far away across the wheat fields, a brighter light had appeared. Tiny at first, but slowly drawing nearer until it turned into an island of lights thrusting bright above the black wheat fields. As Lee took in his first sight of Springfield, suddenly the ghost cat returned. Lee sensed the yellow tom and felt his warmth stretched out across his shoulder, felt the tremble of Misto?s silent purr, and Lee?s interest in life revived.

?Times will be better at Springfield,? the tomcat whispered so softly the two men couldn?t hear. The cat didn?t say there would be bad times, too, but Lee knew that. That?s what life was about. As long as Misto was near, he knew they would prevail. In the dim car, Lee?s desolation dwindled away and he had to smile. The ghost cat had never meant to leave him.

?What areyou grinning about?? the deputy snapped, scowling at Lee.

?Hoping they?ll give me some supper,? Lee said. ?I could sure use it, that sandwich at lunch didn?t go far.?

The deputy just looked at him. What did he care that Lee had barely gotten down a ham sandwich while the deputies wolfed two hamburgers each. No one had asked if he wanted anything more.

The sky was full dark when they drew up to the massive federal prison, its security lights pushing back the night to reveal well-lit buildings and a manicured lawn. Lee could see a guard tower rising up, probably with rifles trained on the approaching car. All he could think about was a hot meal and a warm bed. Even with Misto near, it had been a long day, a long trip crowded by the damned deputy.

Within minutes of pulling up before the brightly lit prison Lee, still cuffed to his surly companion, was ushered up the steps into the vast, five-story main building. He was searched, all his personal possessions taken from him except the small framed photograph of his little sister. Pictures were the only item the men were allowed to keep. Stripped of his clothes, he luxuriated in the hot shower, getting warm for the first time all day, feeling his muscles ease.

He dressed in the clean prison clothes he was issued, shorts and socks, a blue shirt and a blue jumper with white pinstripes. He was allowed to wear his own boots. A trustee had led him to the dining room, where he?d joined the last dinner shift. The big bowl of hot beef stew tasted mighty good, and there was fresh, homemade bread, and coffee and apple pie. He?d left the table feeling good, was escorted to his quarters, which were not a cell, as he?d expected, but a small hospital room. It was larger thanany single cell he?d ever occupied, and far cleaner, freshly painted pale green, and the battleship-gray linoleum looked newly scrubbed. A decent-looking single bed stood in one corner, made up with real sheets and three rough, heavy blankets. There was even a small dresser for his clothes, and a real window, with glass outside the bars. This wasn?t a prison, it was a hotel. He?d looked at the young, wide-shouldered guard. ?How long will I stay here before I?m moved to a cell??

?No cells for hospital inmates, Fontana. The prison-camp men, they?re in a dorm, and some in a cellblock, in another building. They?re on loan, mostly. Trusties from other facilities. They do the heavy work of the plant, maintenance, heavy kitchen work.?

The young, freckle-faced guard had grinned at Lee?s look. ?Your job, at Springfield, is to get well. You?ll like the stay,? the guard said, smiling. ?Your door isn?t locked at night, but there?s a guard outside, always on duty. And where would you go if you walked out? In your condition, you want to wade through a hundred miles of wheat fields??

Lee laughed. This was a whole new game, a new kind of incarceration, and it was pretty nice. When at last he was alone he stripped, folded his clothes and laid them on the dresser. He crawled under the heavy blankets and lay floating in the warm comfort of the simple prison bed. He felt a little edgy at sleeping with an unlocked door, wondering what kind of guys might be roaming the halls, but he was too tired to think much about it. He might as well enjoy the freedom, he?d be out of here in a month or so, as soon as he was well enough. Would be back in California digging up the money and heading for Mexico, where the hot sun could bake away the last of the sickness, could ease comfort into his tired bones.

He?d find a small adobe cottage in one of the fishing villages along the Baja coast, he?d learn to speak enough Spanish to get by, he?d get to know the folks around him. If a Mexican liked you, he?d hide you. If he didn?t, you were done for. In just a few months from now he?d have his ownhome, have all the good food, all the chilies and tortillas he?d ever wanted, all the clams he could dig from the shore. It wouldn?t be hard to find a woman to cook for him, Lee thought, to keep his house and maybe warm his bed.

Smiling, Lee was nearly asleep when a fit of coughing jarred him awake again. He sat up, painfully sucking air, angered at the betrayal of his weakening body. He was so deep down tired that for one panicked moment he wondered if he would live long enough to retrieve the stolen money and luxuriate, for even a short time, in the hot, bright embrace of that Mexican village.

But then as he?d eased down into sleep once more he?d felt the ghost cat leap on the bed, heavy and purring. With the small spirit curled warm beside him, Lee had known he?d make it to Mexico. Had known for sure that no matter what lay ahead until he got back to the desert, the ghost cat would be with him.That his partner would stay close, traveling beside him.

3

MISTO, WAITING ON the roof for his prisonmate to leave the doctor?s office, was half asleep when he sensed Lee?s departure. He didn?t see Lee emerge from the building but he could hear his footsteps. The old convict had moved down the inner stairs into one of the subterranean passages that connected most of the buildings. His steady pace echoed along the tunnel from the hospital to the building that held the dining room, the kitchen, the big auditorium, and the prison library.

Lee had found, early on, that not only was the library a comfortable retreat but that librarian Nancy Trousdale, with her bobbed gray hair and laughing brown eyes, was nice to be around. She knew her collection, and the shelves held a surprising number of nonfiction books for inmates with a variety of interests, whether from their own professional backgrounds or prisoners planning to branch out into new endeavors. On Lee?s first visit Nancy had guided him to exactly the history section he wanted. She made Lee feel at home as he pursued information about the old train robbers of the last century, looking for mention of his grandpappy. She had helped him find a surprising number of volumes about Russell Dobbs?s time, many with a wealth of information on Russell himself. There were clear descriptions of Russell?s train robberies plus a number of tall tales about the old robber and the devil, stories that Lee knew were more than fiction.

As the ghost cat prowled the library, invisible to Nancy and to the inmates reading at the various tables, Lee moved to the desk to return four books. Nancy looked up at him, smiling as she retrieved three new books that she?d saved for him. ?You?re looking fine, Fontana. Our weather agrees with you??

?The weather,? Lee said, ?the good food?and the good company,? he said, giving her a wink.

?And you?re finding what you want about Russell Dobbs??

?Thanks to you,? Lee said.

?He was a colorful man. You have me reading about him, too. Colorful and bold, a good man to have onyour side,? she said shyly. ?According to the folktales about him, as well as his history, he was bold enough to face up to true evil.?

They exchanged the friendly look of a shared interest; Lee checked out his books, gave her a parting smile, and headed back to his room. Misto followed and passed Lee, a breath of warm wind brushing Lee?s face. The tomcat was crouched on the windowsill when Lee came in, but not until Lee shut the door did the cat materialize, first his furry yellow tail lashing against the barred pane, his whiskers curved in a sly smile, then the rest of him.

Lee laid his books on the small night table and stretched out on the bed. As he doubled the pillow behind him and selected a heavy volume, the cat leaped to the blanket and settled against his knee. Lee checked the index, found the sections on Dobbs, and marked them with some torn slips of paper that he kept on the nightstand. He knew well enough the more spectacular events of his grandpappy?s history, the tales that had been told over campfires or were in the local papers. What he was looking for were the periods in Russell?s life that, whenever he?d asked questions of his mother or Pa, they would ignore and abruptly change the subject to something more ?respectable.? Lee had wanted, even as a child, to understand better the long-standing curse on Russell. He hadn?t known, then, that this curse would spill over to harass him as well.

He?d been twelve years old that morning on their South Dakota ranch when he stood beside his grandpappy watching Satan?s shadow move across the open prairie.

No figure walked there, only the tall, drifting shadow where there should be no blemish against the pale ground and cloudless sky. The haunt had frightened Russell?s horse so he reared back where he was tied and broke his reins, and had made the steers in the pasture wheel away running. The shadow had frightened Lee?s grandpappy in a way Lee would never have guessed. It was the only time ever that he?d seen Russell Dobbs show fear

But Russell was his idol. Lee had put aside his grandpappy?s unease, had put aside the strangeness of that day. As Lee grew older he?d patterned his life on that of Russell Dobbs. Before he was twenty-one, most often working alone, he had taken down some nice hauls of cash?and spent most of the money as fast as he stole it, on women, cards, and whiskey.

Only when the old steam trains began to vanish, replaced by diesels too fast for any horseman, did Russell change his methods. He took on a few partners and moved into the new era. But Lee didn?t like the diesels; he stuck to the few steam trains remaining, on the smaller lines. He had stayed away from the large and vicious train gangs that Russell sometimes confronted. Detective Pinkerton had long ago become a whole army of Pinkertons, and for a long while Russell avoided them, too, ashe avoided the shadow that hounded him.

The cat looked down from the dresser at Lee so deeply lost in tales of the past century, then nosed with curiosity at the picture of Lee?s little sister that Lee had placed beside the lamp, the tintype of Mae taken some sixty years ago, the picture that could easily be of Misto?s own Sammie.

Sometimes in Misto?s spirit life distant events came to him clearly; other times they remained uncertain, endlessly frustrating. Lee knew nothing of Sammie Blake, but Misto felt clearly that the child and the old man would meet.

The ghost cat lost in speculation, and Lee lost in the past, were jerked back to the present when the noon whistle blasted.

Carefully closing the book, Lee rose, washed his hands and face, and headed out to the mess hall. Misto, leaping on the bed, knowing Lee would return to his room directly after lunch for the noon count, pawed out a warm nest among the covers and snuggled down, purring. A count was taken every morning, another after lunch, a third count before supper. Lee had no work detail at Springfield. It still amused Lee and amused Misto that the prison work, the gardening and kitchen, the farm work, the cleaning and maintenance was handled by trusties from other prisons. Men assigned from Leavenworth, from El Reno, or from the Atlanta Pen, first offenders chosen as the most responsible among their prison populations.

Once Lee had left for lunch, closing the door behind him, the cat?s thoughts turned back to Georgia where the murder trial of Sammie?s daddy was about to begin. The tomcat was well aware of Morgan Blake?s arrest. He knew Morgan hadn?t committed the murder he was charged with, he had suffered with Sammie when her daddy was jailed. He didn?t doubt this trial would herald a painful time in the lives of the Blake family; he didn?t like to think what life would be like if Morgan was found guilty and sent to federal prison on a life sentence. Bank robbery and murder weren?t looked upon kindly in rural Georgia. Morgan was just a young man, a clean-living, hardworking man who did not deserve the bad luck, the cold and deliberate evil that now surrounded him and his family.

The ghost cat, vanishing and reappearing as he pleased, visited Sammie often. He would snuggle into her dreams at night and into her arms to comfort her. Though he remained unseen, Sammie stroked and cuddled him, put out a finger to feel his soft paw or gently scratched his ragged ears the way she?d done when he was alive. She didn?t question that he was a ghost, she loved and needed him. But when, deep in the night, Sammie slept soundly, at peace again, Misto would return to Lee.

Often at night Misto was filled with Lee?s sickness; he could feel within his own body Lee?s struggle for breath, his fear of what lay ahead, his desperate bouts of depression. And often at night Misto puzzled mightily over the connection between Mae and Sammie. Always the future blurred, as undefined as if the dark spirit himself had stepped between the ghost cat and whatever beckoned, whatever waited for Lee.

4

LATE AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT shone in through the Blakes? living room windows, brightening the white wicker furniture and flowered cushions, the potted red geraniums on the sill, the hooked rug Becky?s mother had made. Slanting sunlight heightened the carved details of the antique pie safe that had belonged to a great-aunt Becky had never known. Allher treasures gathering the afternoon glow would normally comfort her, warm and welcoming; but now, at this moment, Becky?s beloved retreat seemed close and constricting, the colors too bright, the sunlight brassy. She sat stiffly on the edge of a chair like a stranger in her own house, holding her white purse awkwardly on her knees, her dark hair damp with perspiration. She had no idea how long she had sat there. Thinking too much and then not thinking at all, just sitting, numb and unfeeling, incapable of thought.

The trial was over. After a long and shattering three days in the hot, crowded courtroom, Morgan had been found guilty on one count of murder, three counts of assault and attempted murder, and one count of armed robbery, sentence to be pronounced after an extended noon break.

During the trial she hadn?t slept much at night, had lain awake staring into the dark, unable to deal with the concept of a death sentence. Praying,praying it would at least be a life sentence, but then wondering what that would do to Morgan. Wondering if all the rest of his life spent in prison was better than death, when he had done nothing? When he had not killed that man?

In court this afternoon waiting for the judge to pronounce sentence she had been so shaky and so terribly cold. She had attended all of the trial alone, unwilling to bring Sammie into the courtroom, make the child listen to the ugly accusations. Alone, she had listened as Morgan received sentence. Life plus twenty-five years.

She didn?t remember leaving the building. The last formalities of the trial had swirled around her without meaning. She had been allowed to embrace Morgan and kiss him awkwardly as he stood handcuffed and desolate between the two guards. He had been taken away to a cell, shackled and helpless. He would bedriven to Atlanta tomorrow morning, in a U.S. marshal?s car. She and Sammie must be there by eight if they were to say good-bye. A few minutes with him at the jail before he was taken away. After that she and Sammie would see him only when they drove down to Atlanta to visit with him like a stranger inside the prison walls.

She felt uncertain about taking Sammie to the jail in the morning to say good-bye. Sammie having to part with him there behind bars, part with him maybe forever. But how could she not take her? The child had a right to be there no matter how painful the parting. To be excluded would be far more heartbreaking.

She didn?t remember coming home after the sentencing. She remembered coming in the house, sitting down in the chair. She didn?t know how long she had sat there, but evening was falling, the sun slanting low. She had not gone to her mother?s, where she and Sammie were staying. She?d needed to pull herself together before she faced Sammie, before she went to tell Sammie.

Tell her they must begin now to live the rest of their lives without him.

Unless they could get an appeal, could win an appeal. That was the only chance they had. The only chance for Morgan to come home, to ever set foot inside his own house again, for him to live his life in freedom, the only chance for them to hold each other close, to be a family again.

Was he never again to play ball with Sammie, take her to the automotive shop to hand him his tools, as she so loved to do? Tomorrow he would leave Rome for the last time, to be locked in that vast concrete prison that rose on the south side of Atlanta, its high gray walls austere and forbidding, its guard towers catching light where loaded rifles shone in the hands of grim-faced guards. The world they had built together had ended. Their family?s carefully nurtured life, their gentle protection of one another against whatever chaos existed in the world, had all been for nothing. Morgan?s war years fighting against the tyranny of Japan and Germany, his safe return, had been for nothing.

But, she thought, Morgan?s contribution to his country, to America?s successful campaigns, had not been for nothing. And yet now, after all he had given, Morgan himself had been betrayed.

The jury of their own neighbors had believed?all of them believed?that Morgan had murdered the bank guard, had beaten those women and taken the bank money. The jury?s unanimous vote was beyond her comprehension. Such unfairness didn?t happen, not under the free government which, in the war, Morgan and so many men had fought to preserve. Morgan faced the rest of his life behind prison walls for crimes he?d had nothing to do with, to be harried by armed guards, harassed and maybe beaten by other prisoners, at the mercy of men as vicious as caged beasts. He didn?t belong in there, she didn?t want him in there; she wanted to scream and never stop screaming, wanted to put her fist through the window and smash it, hurt and bloody herself. She wanted to arm herself and find Brad Falon and kill him, wanted to destroy Falon just as he had destroyed Morgan and shattered the life of their little girl. Shewould kill him, except for Sammie, for what that would do to Sammie.

Falon had always been hateful. When they were kids in high school Morgan hadn?t seen how twisted Falon was, he?d seen Falon?s adventurous side, his boldness, had admired Brad Falon for the brash things he did that Morgan was reluctant to do. Though Morgan hadn?t wanted Falon hanging around her. She?d never told Morgan the extent of Falon?s unwanted attention when he found her alone; she?d tried never to be alone with him. Falon was possessed of a cruelty that she guessed some young men, with all that animal energy, found exciting. They were halfway through high school before Morgan realized how twisted Falon was and backed off, leaving Falon to pull his petty thefts alone. But after Morgan left for the navy, Falon started coming around, increasingly pushy, refusing to leave her alone. He had frightened her then. Now he terrified her.

There was no doubt Falon had set Morgan up, had drugged him, left him unconscious in Morgan?s own car that afternoon. Had left him parked there in the woods overnight while Falon himself, disguised as Morgan, had walked into the bank, killed the guard, beaten the bank clerks, locked them in the vault and walked out with the money. Falon?s planted evidence, the scattered hundred-dollar bills and canvas bank bag in Morgan?s car, had incriminated Morgan well enough, coupled with Morgan?s inability to remember where he?d been all afternoon and night. Though it was Natalie Hooper?s testimony that, in the end, had sealed the conviction.

Anyone with common sense could see that the woman was lying, but the jury hadn?t seen it. Gullible and unthinking, they had bought Natalie?s story that Falon had spent the afternoon and all night with her, in her apartment. It was Natalie?s lies that the jury believed. That fact alone left Becky hating her neighbors.

Rome was a small town, everyone knew Morgan, knew he was a good man, knew how hard he worked at the automotive shop he had built. And everyone knew Brad Falon, knew he?d been in trouble all through school, had been in Juvenile Hall and later in prison. Everyone knew that Falon meant trouble, and that Natalie wasn?t much better. What dark and twisted leverage, what illusion, had been at work in the courtroom while that slovenly woman occupied the witness stand?That slattern with her wild black hair and tight skirts and jangling jewelry who had already gone through three husbands and a dozen lovers? What magnetism had been in play among the unseeing jury of townspeople, of six men and six women, to make them believe Natalie, to allow her to successfullyhoodwink them?

Becky didn?t know how she was going to tell Sammie that her daddy wasn?t coming home. She felt drained, wanted to be with her own mother, wanted Caroline to hold and comfort her as if she herself were a child again. Wanted Caroline to reassure and strengthen her as they must now support Sammie. She wanted to be the little girl again, to be held and soothed, to be told what to do, told how to live her life, now that they were alone.

After the verdict Becky had phoned Caroline from the glassed-in phone booth at the courthouse, trying not to cry. Later, after the sentencing, she had phoned her mother again, had stood with her back to the glass door that faced the courthouse hallway, avoiding the eyes of her neighbors as they crowded out of the courtroom glancing at her with righteous or with embarrassed stares. She had wanted only to be away from them, to remove herself even from the few awkward attempts at sympathy. She hated her neighbors, she hated the jury that was made up of her neighbors, she hated the courts, hated the judge, the police, hated the damned attorney who had lost for them.

Sitting rigid on the edge of the chair, she thought of making herself a cup of tea. She hadn?t eaten since last night, but she didn?t care enough to get up and put the kettle on or to rummage in the refrigerator for something she thought she could keep down. She needed to pull herself together, needed to go on over to her mother?s and tell Sammie. She didn?t know how to face Sammie, didn?t known how to present the truth to her. Even if she talked about an appeal, tried to say he might be coming home, that wouldn?t be straightforward, the hope was too slim. If one attorney couldn?t win for them, how could another? She and Morgan had always been honest with Sammie. With the perceptive dreams Sammie had, one couldn?t be otherwise, couldn?t sidestep the true facts even though they were painful.

Sammie knew as well as she did that Brad Falon had set Morgan up, that the child feared and hated Falon and with good cause. While Morgan was overseas Falon broke into their house, terrified them both, and killed Sammie?s cat: Sammie knew too well what he was. The fact thatthis man had destroyed her daddy made the blow all the more frightening. That night when he broke in, Sammie?s yellow tomcat had leaped on Falon and done considerable damage before Falon killed him with a shard of broken glass. Sammie had never gotten over Misto?s death, she still dreamed of him. Sometimes she imagined he was there in bed snuggled close to her, she imagined that Misto?s ghost had come back to her. But lots of children had imaginary companions. The dreams comforted Sammie, and they hurt no one.

It was Sammie?s dreams of future events that were upsetting. Powerful predictions that, days or weeks later, would turn out to come true: the courthouse fire that Sammie dreamed in surprising detail exactly as it would later happen, its fallen brick walls, every detail occurring just as she?d seen.

There were happy dreams, too, the birth of the neighbor?s kittens, each with the same exact coloring that Sammie saw in her dream. But then had come the terrifying nightmare that brought Sammie up screaming that her daddy had been arrested and shoved behind bars, that he had been locked in a cell by the very officers who had been Morgan?s friends. That was the beginning. It had all happened, the robbery, Morgan?s arrest, Morgan locked in jail just as she?d dreamed.

On the witness stand, Falon told the jury that, originally, Morgan had driven over to look at Falon?s stalled Ford coupe, which was parked in front of Natalie?s apartment building. He said Morgan had noted the parts he must order and then had left, saying he was going back to the shop. Morgan?s mechanic testified that Morgan had never returned there, that at closing time he?d locked the shopup himself and gone home.

Falon said when Morgan came to look at his car he had acted nervous and seemed anxious to get away. He said he?d gone back upstairs to Natalie?s after Morgan left. Said he?d come down again shortly before three, walked across the street to the corner store and bought some candy and gum. The shopkeeper had testified to that, he said he?d seen Falon go back to the apartment building and in the front door. Falon testified that he had been with Natalie the rest of the afternoon and all night. When Natalie took the stand to corroborate his testimony she had blushed and tried to act shy that they had spent the night together. Right, Becky had thought angrily, and how many dozen other men over the years.

The court had allowed Becky to sit at the table with Morgan and Sed Williams, their attorney. She?d had a hard time avoiding the stares of the packed gallery. She had listened to the bank tellers identify Morgan?s voice, identify his hands with the thin lines of grease that clung in deep creases and around his nails, from his work in the auto shop when he forgot to wear gloves. The empty bootleg whiskey bottle the police found in Morgan?s car had Morgan?s fingerprints on it. Everyone in town knew that Morgan and she didn?t drink. A shopkeeper across the street from the bank had heard the shots, had seen Morgan?s car pull away, and had written down the license number.

Why couldn?t the jury see that Falon had planted it all? Why couldn?t they see that? Her helplessness there in the courtroom, her inability to speak up and correct this evil, had made her physically ill.

Now, when she rose from the wicker chair to go into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, her stomach twisted so hard that she ran for the bathroom. She threw up in the sink, angrily cleaned the sink and scrubbed it with cleanser, then began to pace the house, living room to the two small bedrooms to kitchen, then back again, aimless and lost, desperate with rage.

An appeal was the only chance they had, was all they had to cling to. She had to think about that. How to get the money together? The best way to find a more competent attorney. She shouldn?t have hired Williams; he was too quiet, too low-key. She had thought he was a family friend, that he really cared about Morgan and would work hard for him. She?d thought that his quiet, professional manner in the courtroom would help them get to the truth. But when he had a witness on the standshe?d seen how weak he was, with no ability to defend his client.

She didn?t know how to start an appeal. She didn?t know if there was a waiting period, didn?t know how appeals worked. She?d been so sure Morgan would be acquitted that she hadn?t bothered to find out. She had to find a new attorney and figure out how to pay him. They?d bought the house after Morgan went in the navy, with the smallest payments they could obtain. Maybe she could get a second mortgage or borrow money on the shop. She wanted an attorney who would dig harder, a man strong enough to make a new jury see the truth. She tried to cheer herself that an appeal would end the nightmare, that Morgan would be out soon, that it wouldn?t be long and he?d be home again. Meantime she could run the shop just fine. Albert, the new mechanic, was a skilled worker even if he was dull about everything else. She knew she could take on more bookkeeping jobs, she always had a waiting list.Sammie would be in school, and she?d have plenty of time to work. Long empty nights in which to work. Long, empty weekends.

She supposed, if they were to get a new trial, there would have to be new evidence. Where and how would she, or even a new attorney, find evidence after the police had been over everything, had collected and presented in court all the evidence to be found? She stood in the middle of the living room frantic with fear, her mind circling like a caged animal searching for a way to escape.

At last she picked up her purse and headed for Mama?s, to tell Sammie what must be told. Try to explain to her nine-year-old child that the law, which was meant to protect them, had turned against them. That the grown-ups on the jury whom Sammie knew and trusted, did not believe her daddy, that the whole town had betrayed him.

5

IN THE VISITING room of the Rome jail, Morgan stiffened as two deputy U.S. marshals pulled him away from Becky and Sammie. It took all the resolve he had not to fight them as they jerked his arms behind him, snapped on handcuffs and forced him toward the door. The time was eight-fifteen, the morning after he was sentenced in Rome?s U.S. courthouse by the town?s one federal judge. He and Becky and Sammie had been allowed only a few moments to say good-bye, the three of them clinging together. As if they might form an unbreakable chain that could never be wrenched apart. Sammie, when she looked up at him, was so vulnerableand perplexed. He knew Becky had debated a long time whether to bring her this morning. But the pain Sammie was experiencing now was preferable to his being taken away without seeing her, to Sammie learning later that Morgan was gone for good, that he might never come home again.

From the hall, he looked back for as long as he could see them, Sammie biting her lip, the tears streaming down. Becky stone-faced, holding the child close, trying not to cry. Then he couldn?t see them anymore, he was forced down the hall, through the jail?s back door and into the backseat of a U.S. marshal?s car. A heavy metal grid separated him from the front seat as if, despite handcuffs and a belly chain, they thought he would attack the driver from the rear.

In the backseat of the official vehicle, handcuffed to a second deputy, he watched the driver get settled, listened to the engine of the heavy Packard start up smooth and powerful. As the black car headed through Rome in the direction of Atlanta, he imagined Becky and Sammie getting in their car, holding each other, comforting each other. Imagined them driving the few blocks to Caroline?s, and he was mighty glad for Becky?s strong and caring mother.

Becky had been so still during the trial, sitting near him at the attorney?s table, never moving, and so very pale. After the verdict, when he was back in his cell he kept reliving that moment: ?Life and twenty-five years, life and twenty-five years.? He kept seeing her face, closed and still, trying to hide the pain. Kept seeing the faces of his neighbors, membersof his church, his automotive customers?the hard faces of strangers. In less than four weeks from the day Falon walked into the shop asking Morgan to come look at his car, nearly the whole town had turned against them. Their lives had been blown away as thoroughly as a landing craft sunk by a destroyer.

During the two-hour ride to Atlanta, handcuffed to the deputy marshal, he experienced every bitter emotion, desolation, helplessness, a violent rage that he had no way to act upon. He had always viewed the U.S. legal system as carefully designed to protect honest men, to confine those who threatened ordered society. How dumb was that?

If a federal jury could do this to an innocent man, what other destruction might the courts be capable of?

He and Becky had made their marriage vows for life; they had joined as a team not to be parted. Now Morgan himself, in one moment of bad judgment, had wrenched their family apart. In going with Falon to look at his car, he had broken all his promises to Becky and had shattered their little girl?s life. Now, if he hadn?t been chained he would have tried to grab the deputy?s weapon, would have done his best to break away and get the hell out of there. Watching the thin, scowling deputy, he grew increasingly restive. Only when the deputy?s hand edged toward his gun did Morgan try tosit easier. These men didn?t know him, they didn?t know what he might try. He was dealing with a different world now. He had no rights anymore. He would soon be surrounded by guards like these who lived by power, and by inmates just as power hungry, and he?d sure have to watch himself.

After the trial he had suggested to Becky that she file for divorce, that she try to make a new life for herself and Sammie. Her face had gone red with anger, her eyes blazing, then she had clung to him, weeping. Not since a mortar shell had ripped through the hull of his ship in the Pacific, the water gushing in through splintered metal, had he realized how frail and precious life was. Falon?s deliberate destruction of their lives had been as brutal as any enemy attack.

They entered the outskirts of Atlanta, passed the Fox Theater and then the hotel where he and Becky had had dinner before he left with the navy. She?d ended up crying halfway through the meal. The future then, as he went off to war, had seemed irrevocably black and empty.

He?d come home from that one?but maybe he?d had better odds, even in war, than he had now.

South of Atlanta the modest little houses gave way to mottled fields and then the Federal Pen loomed, tall and gray and cold, its fortress face and guard towers challenging all comers. Parking their black limo before the front door, the deputies pulled him out, forced him up the steps and inside.

He was booked and told to strip. His clothes were taken away, and a guard searched the cavities of his body, stirring his rage. He showered as he was told. He dressed in the prison blues he was issued, then moved into the cellblock followed by a guard. The cells stood five tiers high. He climbed the narrow metal stairs to the third level, walked ahead of the guard along the steel catwalk. He was locked into a single cell, and was grateful for that. He hoped he wouldn?t be moved later into one of the bigger cells with multiple cots and with unrestrained roommates. Sitting down on his narrow bunk, he didn?t look at the men in the cells across the way, didn?t make eye contact. Some of them watched him idly; others stared directly at him, caged predators assessing new prey.

6

THE NIGHT BEFORE Sammie said good-bye to Daddy she dreamed she was there in the police station. Sleeping next to Mama, Misto close in her arms, she saw their good-bye there in the jail and she hugged Misto tight, trying not to cry and wake Mama.

?It will be all right,? Misto murmured, his whiskers tickling her ear. ?It isn?t over, Sammie. Your daddy will be all right.?

?The cowboy will come?? Sammie whispered. ?He will help Daddy??

?You dreamed he would,? Misto said.

She hadn?t answered, she?d hugged the big cat tight and he pressed his cool nose against her cheek. ?You are my Sammie, you will endure.? He purred against her so hard she thought his rumble would wake Mama, but it didn?t, she was too tired from the courtroom trial.

?It must have been ugly and mean,? she whispered, ?if Mama wouldn?t take me.?

?It was ugly. But your daddy will prevail, and so will you.? And Misto had leaped from her arms, raced around the night-dim room, raced up the curtains never moving them and making no sound, only delighting Sammie. He sailed from the curtain rod to the dresser with not a stir of air, then to the top of the open closet door and back to the bed, then up, up to the ceiling. His joy and wildness, his cat-madness made her want to race and fly with him, and maybe that would make the pain go away. He sailed around the room twice, then pounced down again and snuggled close, still and warm againsther, purring and purring. Misto was with her all the rest of the night, snuggled in her arms. In the morning when she and Mama drove to the jail she knew he was near; sometimes she could feel his whiskers on her cheek or feel a brush of fur, and that helped her to be strong for Daddy.

At the jail when they said good-bye she clung to Daddy and so did Mama but that cop pulled him away and forced him from the room. She could see Daddy?s anger, she knew he wanted to fight them but what good would it do? They?d hardly had time to hug each other and then he was gone, was marched away down the hall. He glanced back once, then she and Mama were alone. Everything was empty, the whole world empty. She felt Misto?s warmth againsthercheek, but now even her loving cat couldn?t help.

?You know we?ll visit him at the prison,? Mama said. ?They have visiting hours, we?ll be with him then.?

?In a cage,? Sammie said. ?We can?tbe with him at home. We have tovisit Daddy, like a stranger in acage.?

Another cop walked them out to the front door. They crossed the parking lot, got in their car and sat holding each other. Mama tried to stop crying but she couldn?t. Sammie pressed so close that when Mama started the car she could hardly drive; she drove one-handed, her arm tight around Sammie. Sammie was nine but she felt like a tiny child, pressing her face against Mama. Now, without Daddy, they weren?t a family, they needed to be together to be a real family. When Daddy went overseas, when she was little, he told her he was going to fight for freedom. Freedom for their world, he said. Freedom for their country and for every person in it. But instead of freedom for all, like the history books said, those people in the federal court and even their own neighbors had stolen her daddy?s freedom from him, and Daddy had done nothing wrong.

Ever since the trial began, she and Mama had stayed with Grandma, and Sammie had been with Grandma every day. Mama didn?t want her in school, when Brad Falon with the narrow eyes might still be in town, might follow her. And where the kids would bully her and say her daddy was guilty.

During the trial Grandma had gone right on running her baking business; she said the money she made was even more important now, and you couldn?t just tell longtime customers there would be no more pies and cakes until the trial was over. Grandma said that would lose all her good customers and she had already lost some of them because of what people thought Daddy had done. Grandma was up every morning at three; the smell of baking alwayswoke Sammie. A lady came in to help her, and once the cakes and pies and bread were out and cooling they would stop long enough to make breakfast, but Sammie could never eat very much. Later when the cakes were iced and everything was boxed and ready, Sammie would ride with Grandma in the van to deliver them to the local restaurants. And every night, during the trial, Misto was with her.

Now, after saying good-bye to Daddy they came in the house, through the closed-in porch, and straight into Grandma Caroline?s arms. They stood in the middle of the living room clinging together hugging each other, needing each other, hurting and lost.

The whole house smelled of sausage biscuits. In the kitchen, Grandma had already poured a cup of hot tea for Mama and milk for Sammie. Grandma always wore jeans, and this morning a faded plaid shirt covered by a bright apron of patchwork, one of the aprons she liked to sew late at night when she couldn?t sleep. She must be awake a lot because she sure had a lot of aprons, all as bright as picture books.

CAROLINETANNERWORE no makeup, her high coloring and short, dark hair needing no enhancement. She set a tray of sausage biscuits on the table beside a strawberry shortcake. Comfort food, Becky thought, watching her mother, never ceasing to wonder at her calm strength. Becky had been seven when her father was killed in a tractor accident. Two weeks after the funeral Caroline began baking and selling her goods. She was a Rome girl, and the town had given her its support. They had lived on what she made, Becky and her two brothers helping all they could.

Becky was ten, her brother Ron twelve and James fifteen when Caroline got a loan from the bank and extended the kitchen of their little house into a bigger and more efficient bakery and storeroom. Becky and her brothers had helped the carpenter after school and on weekends, as he built and dried in the new walls, then tore out the original walls. The children had learned how to paint properly, how to clean their tools, and her brothers had learned how to plaster. After the stainless steel counters were installed, and the two big commercial refrigerators and two sinks, they had taken the bakery van into Atlanta and brought home the new ovens, the big stovetop, and the smaller commercial appliances. The big window over the sink looked out on the side yard beneath a pair of live oak trees.

Before the remodel, Caroline had done all her baking in their small, inadequate kitchen, her equipment and trays of baked goods spilling over into the dining room, where cookies and breads and cakes cooled on racks, along with those already boxed and ready for delivery. The two iceboxes never had enough space for the salads and casseroles for the parties that Caroline catered. Their own simple meals had been eaten in the living room, worked around the urgent business of making a living. When the new bakery was finished, they?d had a little party, just the four of them, to celebrate the new and more accommodating kitchen, to reclaim their own house.

Within three years Caroline had paid off the van and equipment and could hire more help for the catered weddings and parties, though still, the whole family pitched in for those. All the years Becky was growing up, her mother would be out of bed and dressed by three in the morning, rolling out pie crusts, baking cakes. Becky?s brothers made breakfast until Becky was old enough to cook. Her brothers, as soon as they could drive legally, had done the bakery deliveries before school.

Becky missed her brothers. Even after Ron was killed in the Pacific, she still felt often that he was near her. And though their older brother, James, was still in Japan he was close to them, he liked to write home of that very different part of the world. She looked forward to his return next year when his tour of duty ended.

By the time Becky turned sixteen and got her driver?s license, her brothers had moved on with their lives. She had felt very grown-up, handling the deliveries herself, before and after school. She had helped with them after she and Morgan were married, until Sammie was born. Even during the war years Caroline made an adequate living, using specialrecipes that took little of the precious rationed sugar but were still delicious.

Now, at forty-eight, Caroline was as energetic and slim as ever, a tall, strong woman whom Becky, at this time in her life, deeply envied. She wished she had half her mother?s resilience, wished she could follow better Caroline?s hardheaded approach to life. Caroline Tanner had always tackled problems head-on, stubbornly weighing each possible solution, choosing the most viable one, then plunging ahead with no holds barred. If Caroline had tears during those hard years, she cried them in private.

They were halfway through supper when Caroline said,?The next thing is to go for an appeal. You need a better lawyer.? She looked steadily at Becky. ?I plan to help with his fees. I want Falon taken down, I want to seehim in prison. I want Morgan out of that place.?

?Mama, I don?t??

?It?s family money. Half of it will be yours one day and you need it now. If it bothers you to take it, you can pay me back after Morgan gets out.?

?If he gets out.?

Caroline stared at her.?When he gets out. Morgan is in prison unjustly. We keep at it until we find a better lawyer, get an appeal and a new trial. A fair trial. But not in Rome,? she said bitterly.

Becky laid her hand over Caroline?s. ?You make it sound so simple.?

?There?s no other way. First thing is to find an attorney.?

?I?ve already made some inquiries,? Becky said. ?There are several lawyers in Atlanta I want to see. But, Mama, we need new evidence, stronger evidence, for an appeal. I want to talk with the tellers, with Mrs. Herron and Betty Holmes, and the younger teller. I want to talk with the bank manager, and the witness who saw Morgan?s car leave the bank.? She sighed. ?I mean to talk with Natalie Hooper, though I don?t look forward to facing that piece of trash.?

Caroline gave Becky a long look.?That?s not the way to go.? She rose to cut the shortcake and lathered on whipped cream. ?Let the lawyer do that. You could compromise the case.?

Watching her mother, Becky thought about that. She watched Sammie, too. Though the child made quick work of her dessert she was too quiet, hurting so bad inside, missing her daddy.

Still, though, after the good meal Sammie seemed steadier. Her color brightened; she seemed more alive, less subdued than when they?d left the jail. ?Can I go outside and play??

Becky and Caroline looked at each other.?In the front yard,? Becky said. ?Stay in front of the big window where we can see you.?

Sammie nodded. She walked quietly through the house and out the front door, not running as she normally would. Becky and Caroline moved into the living room to sit on the couch looking out the bay window, watching her.

?The new attorney should talk to the witnesses,? Caroline repeated. ?Particularly Falon?s girlfriend, his key witness. What if Falon found out you?d questioned her? Don?t you think he?d make trouble??

?Mama, I .†.†. tried to speak to her yesterday, in the parking lot after the sentencing. He probably knows that. She was still nervous, even more upset than she showed on the witness stand. I thought if I could get her to say something incriminating .†.†.?

Watching her mother, Becky wilted.?I guess that was foolish. I approached her as she was getting in her car. She scowled and turned away, said she couldn?t talk to me. But,? she said, her hand on Caroline?s, ?it gave me satisfaction that she was so shaky. I .†.†. hoped to scare her, make her think about what she?d done.?

?Leave her alone, Becky. That?s your attorney?s job.? Caroline was quiet for a moment, then her look softened. ?When you?re the most determined, the most set on something, I see your father in you.?

Becky grinned.?You don?t see yourself??

Caroline laughed.

?I didn?t understand until I got older,? Becky said, ?how hard it was for you, raising us alone.?

?We did it together,? Caroline said, ?the four of us. It was our life and it?s been a good one. It?s still a good life,? she said. ?We?ll get through this hard part, this isn?t forever.?

Becky hoped it wasn?t forever, hoped her mother was right. ?No one could have had a better childhood,? she said, ?or a closer, stronger family.?

Watching Sammie out the window, where she was petting the neighbors? collie, Becky smiled as Sammie tried to push the dog into the bushes as if in some new game. When he wouldn?t go, and Sammie herself crept in beneath the shrubs, a chill touched Becky.

Rising, she moved quickly to the window. Sammie was out of sight. A sleek black convertible came slowly down the street, the top up. As Falon?s Ford coupe eased to a crawl they raced for the front door. As they crossed the glassed porch, Falon was in the yard. Behind him the driver?s door stood open, they could hear the engine running. They lost sight of him beyond the porch blinds. When they burst out to the walk the car door slammedand the car sped away.

The yard was empty. They couldn?t see Sammie, and couldn?t see if she was in the car. Becky parted the bushes, peering in, but saw only shadows. The dog had disappeared, too. She screamed for Sammie, then ran, chasing the car, ran until she heard Caroline shout.

?She?s here?she?s all right.?

Becky turned, saw Caroline kneeling, hugging Sammie. The dog was there, too, pressing against them. Becky knelt beside them, holding Sammie close, the dog licking their faces. Picking Sammie up, Becky carried her in the house like a very small child. They locked the door, and as Caroline checked the back door, Becky sat at the table holding Sammie.?What did he say? What did he do, what did he say to you??

?He came to the bushes and looked in. We were down at the end. When Brownie growled, Falon backed away. But he kept looking.? She shivered against Becky. ?He told me to come out. Brownie growled again and he turned away. I heard his door slam, heard him drive away.?

Caroline had picked up the phone to call the police. At Becky?s look she put the receiver down.

?What good,? Becky said, ?after the way we were treated in court? The Rome cops don?t like us. They?ll write it up as grandstanding, trying to get attention. Who knows what the report would say?? She stared over Sammie?s head at Caroline. Could Falon have come in retaliation because she?d talked to Natalie? She should have left the woman alone. She cuddled Sammie, kissing her, terrified for her.

Caroline sat down at the table.?I think you can?t stay in Rome. You?ll have to get out, move where he won?t find you.?

?Where, Mama? I can?t afford to rent somewhere. And my work, my bookkeeping accounts are all here.?

Caroline?s look was conflicted. ?There?s my sister, Anne. I doubt many people know where she is or even know I have a sister. I never talk about her, she never comes to see us.?

?I couldn?t go there. I haven?t seen her since I was in high school. She wouldn?t want me and Sammie, she doesn?t even like children.? The only time they heard from Anne was an occasional phone call, a familiar duty in which she?d ask after everyone?s health but didn?t seem to really care.She would send a stiff little card at Christmas, cool and impersonal.

Caroline and Anne, even when they were young children, had been at odds, Anne an austere and withdrawn little girl, disdaining the small pleasures that brought joy to Caroline and her friends. She didn?t care to climb trees, play ball, compose and act out complicated stage plays with wildly fancy costumes. Aloof and judgmental, Anne had seemed caught in her own solemn world. As if, Caroline said, Anne had neverbeen a child, not in the normal sense. Over the years, after Becky?s father died, their family had visited Anne twice in Atlanta. They weren?t comfortable in her big, elegant home, with her formal ways. She had never come up to Rome, though Caroline had invited her many times.

Anne had left Rome very young to work as a secretary in Atlanta. She had married young, and some years later was divorced. She had remained in Atlanta in her Morningside home, comfortable with the money her philandering husband had settled on her. Becky thought that asking to move in with Anne, begging to be taken in like a charity case, was not something she could handle.

But she had to get away from Falon, she had to get Sammie away.

?I?ll call her,? Caroline said. ?Let me see what I can do.?

?Mama, she won?t want us. She certainly won?t want a little girl in the house. And to know she?d be harboring a convict?s family .†.†. No, I don?t want to go there.?

?We have to try. Sammie can?t stay here, it?s too dangerous.? She put her hand over Becky?s. ?Only a few people in town would remember Anne. I doubt they?d know where she went or that she married and later divorced. I doubt anyone would know what her name is now.?

Becky wasn?t so sure. In a small town, everyone knew your business. And this small town had turned vicious; people might dredge up anything they could find.

?You have to get Sammie out of Rome, she?s the one vulnerable weapon Falon has. He?ll use her if he can, to make you stop going for an appeal. He has to be terrified of an appeal, of a new trial.?

Becky watched her mother.?I?ll look for a room in Atlanta, I can find a job there. You can keep Sammie close for a few days, keep her inside with you. Once we?re settled she?ll be in school. Maybe I can get a job with short hours, or take work home as I do here.?

?If Anne will invite you, she won?t want rent. Let me try. You?d be better off there, among other people, if you mean to keep Sammie safe.?

IT WAS LATE that night, Becky and Sammie asleep tucked up in Caroline?s guest bed, when Sammie woke shivering, clinging to Becky, her body sticky with sweat. When Becky gathered her up, holding her tight, the child said nothing, but lay against Becky in silence. Becky would never force Sammie to tell a dream, that could make her reluctant to reveal any others in the future. Silently she held Sammie until at last the child dozed again, but restlessly, as if still trying to drive away whatever vision haunted her. Only in the small hours did Sammie sleep soundly. Becky slept then, exhausted, holding Sammie close.

INSAMMIE?S DREAM Daddy was inside the bars and the man with the cold eyes and the narrow head was looking in at him but then he turned and looked hard at her, too. When he reached out for her she woke up. In the dark room she could hear her own heart pounding. Mama held her and kissed her, she clung to Mama for a long time but she was still afraid.

But then when she slept again her dream was nice. She was with the old man, the cowboy, his thin, tanned face, his gray eyes that seemed to see everything. He was in a big airplane looking out the window down at the world laid out below him, the green hills, the tall mountains. Then he was in a big black car with two men in uniform. He was coming now. Soon he would be with Daddy. And in sleep Sammie smiled, snuggling easier against Mama.

BECKY WOKE AT dawn, her eyes dry and grainy, her body aching. Whatever Sammie had experienced last night had left Becky herself uncertain and distraught. She rose, pulled on her robe, stood looking down at the sleeping child, wanting to touch her soft, innocent cheek but not wanting to wake her.

But when Becky left the room, Misto did wake Sammie. His purr rumbled, his fur was thick and warm, his whiskers tickled her face. In the dim, early light, as she recalled her dream of the cowboy she hugged Misto so tight he wriggled. The cowboy was coming now, and she didn?t feel afraid anymore. When she slept again, cocooned with the invisible tomcat, it was a sleep filled with hope that her daddy would come home. That he would come home again, safe.

7

WITH THE SUMMER heat soaking into Lee?s bones, with plenty of good food and rest and with the help of the prison doc, Lee?s condition slowly improved. As he grew stronger and wanted something to do, he was assigned light work on the prison farm. Feeding and caring for the four plow horses suited him just fine; they were placid, loving animals and he liked to baby them, to groom them, bring them carrots from the kitchen, trim their hooves when they grew too long. As fall approached, Lee settled comfortably into the pleasant routine of morning work in the stable, then breathing and gym exercises, and late afternoons on his cotwith a stack of library books. He was in Dr. Donovan?s examining room when the blow struck, when his cozy life changed abruptly and not for the better.

Donovan, finished examining him, paused beside the table, his look solemn, his eyes way too serious. Lee waited uneasily. Were his lungs worse, even though he felt better? But then Donovan smiled, running a hand through his short, pale hair.

?I know you like it here, Lee. I hate to tell you this, but it looks like you?re being transferred.?

?What the hell? I?m just starting to get better. Transferred where? Why would??

?Down to Atlanta,? Donovan said. ?We?re receiving two dozen incoming patients, men from a number of states. They?re all pretty sick, we need every space we can muster.?

No one had asked what Lee wanted. His choices weren?t a concern of the U.S. prison system. Scowling at Donovan, he finished buttoning his shirt.

?You?re fit enough to move on, Lee. It?ll be cold here pretty soon, but should still be warm down south. Atlanta will be good for you.?

?Sure it will,? Lee said. ?Thrown in a cage of felons again where every minute I have to watch my back.?

Donovan looked apologetic. Lee knew there was nothing the man could do. They said their good-byes, and early the next morning Lee was out of there, handcuffed, belly-chained, and shoved in the back of another big limo by two surly deputy marshals.

The deputy in the backseat took up most of the space and stunk of cigar smoke. The early morning road was empty, the yellow wheat towering tall on both sides of the two-lane. In the distance Lee could see a row of combines working, cutting wheat just as they would soon be doing outside the prison walls. Crowded into the small space, he couldn?t get comfortable, couldn?t move his arms much, and the belly chain was already digging in. Did they have to leave him chained like a mass killer?

His temper eased only when he felt a breeze behind him where there was no wind, then felt a soft paw press slyly against his cheek. He imagined the ghost cat stretched out on the wide shelf, enjoying the view through the back window?enjoying a little game, Lee realized when the deputy began to scratch a tickle along his neck. Lee hid a smile as the deputy scratched his ear, then his jaw. When the portly man slapped at his balding head, Lee had trouble not laughing out loud. When he scowled at Lee as if his prisoner was causing the trouble, Lee glanced sternly toward the shelf behind him?kitty-play was all right, but the cranky deputy looked like he wanted to pound someone, and Lee was the only one visible.

MISTO STOPPED THE teasing when Lee frowned. He rolled over away from the deputy, hissing softly at the way the heavy lawman hogged the seat, squeezing Lee against the door, deliberately crowding him in the hot car. When Lee?s companion lit up a cigar Misto wanted to snake out his paw again and slap the stogie from the fat man?s face.

And wouldn?tthat make trouble, when the unpredictable lawman felt his burning cigar jerked from his mouth and saw it flying across the car?an armed and unpredictable lawman. Smiling, Misto guessed he wouldn?t try the man?s temper that far.

LEE SAID NOTHING about the cigar smoke, but sat trying not to cough. Neither deputy had said much to him and he didn?t want to get them started; he?d take the smoke and the silence. He looked out the window at the yellow wheat fields stretching away; he stared at the back of the driver?s head until the thin deputy met Lee?s eyes in the rearview mirror, his glance cold and ungiving. Soon the car was so thick with smoke that Lee couldn?t help coughing.

?Can I crack open the window? The emphysema?s getting to me.?

The fat deputy scowled, but grunted.

Taking that as a yes, Lee managed, despite the handcuffs, to roll down his window, and sat sucking in the fresh breeze. The warm wind made him think of the desert, of Blythe, of the buried post office money and the simple pleasures it would buy.

?What?re you smiling about, Fontana?? the fat deputy said. ?You know something we don?t??

Lee shrugged.?Hungering for a good Mexican meal. They ever serve Mexican in the Atlanta pen??

In the front seat, the thin deputy drawled,?Atlanta, you?ll get Brunswick stew. That can be as hot as you?ll want to try.? When Lee began to cough hard despite the open window, the driver glanced back at his partner. ?The doc at Springfield told you, Ray, no smoking in the car. That cough gets bad, he keeps it up, we?ll have to turn around and take him back.?

Scowling, Ray opened his window and threw the burning cigar out on the shoulder of the highway. Lee hoped to hell he didn?t set the wheat afire. This wasn?t going to improve the man?s temper, if he couldn?t smoke. And it was a two-day drive to Atlanta.

Soon, with the cigar smoke sucked away by the wind, Lee was able to breathe again. As he settled back, easing pressure off the belly chain, trying to get comfortable, he felt the weight of the ghost cat stretch out along his shoulder. Felt the insolent tickle of bold whiskers, and again he tried not to smile. Lee wished they were flying instead of driving, he liked looking down at the world below, the patterns of farms and cities, the snaking rivers. He?d been startled when, during the flight out from L.A. to Springfield, they?d passed right over the country he had known as a boy. He?d pressed his forehead to the plane?s tiny window seeing, in a new way, the wrinkled face of Arizona, the great plains broken by dry, ragged mountains. He saw Flagstaff, the San Francisco peaks rising behind. Where the highway moved north of Winslow, and the Little Colorado River made a sharp turn, a lonely feeling had clutched at him. Off to his left, three fields formed a triangle with trees marking their borders. Those had to be the north fields of the ranch where they?d moved when they left South Dakota, when his dad sold out, sold all the stock, hoping for a better living.

The ranch his father had bought was no better for grass except in early spring, and that new green grass had been without much substance to put any fat on a steer. Sparse grazing land again, hot as hell in the summers, and the well water tasted bitterly of iron. He?d worked long hours, as a boy, doctoring and branding their scruffy cattle. He could still smell the dust, could still feel his favorite bay gelding under him, could still bring back the sweet smell of new grass bruised by a horse?s hooves. He could taste the vinegar-soaked beefsteak his mother would cook for breakfast, for the few neighbors who helped each other during roundup, moving from one ranch to the next. Fresh-killed range beef was tough as hell if you didn?t soak it overnight in vinegar.

He?d been fourteen when they moved west to Winslow. His brother Howard was fifteen but as useless in Arizona as he?d been in South Dakota, making more work for others than if you did the job yourself. Ma had kept the girls busy tending the garden and chickens, and canning what she could from their pitiful garden. His two older sisters didn?t want to work with the cattle, but Mae had yearned after horses. She rode whenever she could sneak away, she would have grown into a good ranch hand if Ma had let her.

The year they moved to the Flagstaff land, Russell Dobbs had followed them all the way out from the Dakotas. Lee had been thrilled when his grandpappy showed up, but his mother was cold with rage. She?d been so relieved to come west to get away from her renegade, train-robbing father.

Grandpappy would be with them for a few days, then gone for a few. Shortly after he arrived, the Flagstaff paper reported a train robbery just north of Prescott. Two weeks later a second train was held up, east of Flagstaff. That was the start of a dozen successful jobs, all at night when Russell might have been there at the ranch, asleep in his bed. Russell knew, if the feds came looking, his daughter would lie for him despite her disapproval. It was at that time that Lee?s mother turned inward. She didn?t speak to her father much when he was at the ranch and she didn?t smile often. After Russell left them for good and moved on again, she lived the rest of her life blaming him for everything that went wrong in the family. It was his influence, she said, that hadsoured their lives.

As a boy, Lee had known exactly how his grandpappy felt, had known the wild need that kept Dobbs robbing the trains and moving on to rob again. On the ranch, even when Lee stood on a knoll looking across emptiness as far as he could see in every direction, he felt the same trapped need to move on. He could still see that look in Dobbs?s eyes, the intensity in Dobbs?s movements and in his impatient ways.

Lee, with his own hunger for the fast trains, would do anything as a kid to get into town to see the train pull in, to watch that thin line of smoke curling up from the bell-mouthed stack, the black engine belching steam, steam sighing from the big pistons and drive wheels. His father always wanted Lee to go with him to the stockyard, to take an interest in the cattle trading. But the minute their buggy hit town Lee would sneak off to the station and beg the engineer to let him aboard. He could still feel the warm iron floor under his bare feet as he stood inside the engineer?s cab looking at the bright brass gauges and levers, drinking in the power of the engine, a power that filled him right up like a dipper of water on a hot day.

But then his eyes would turn to the engineer?s heavy thirty-thirty hanging beside the seat in its scarred leather scabbard, and he would imagine that weapon turned on his grandpappy during a robbery, imagine his grandpappy shot, twisting and falling, and Lee?s excitement would turn to fear.

When the engineer shooed him off the train again he would wait beside the track feeling the ground rumble as the engine got moving, would stand there caught in the scream of the whistle and the jolt of the drive wheels as she gathered speed. Would stare up, entranced, at the big pistons pushing to a gallop and the rocking cars heaving past him.

Now, remembering that day flying from the West Coast to Kansas City looking down from the airliner at his old home, he had that same sense of living in two times. As if part of him was still a young man back on the prairie sixty years in the past, while part of him stumbled along toward the end of his life?s journey.

In the end, what was it all about? What did it all add up to?

But when he paid attention to the ghost cat draped over his shoulder, one paw resting playfully against Lee?s neck, to the frisky, small ghost, he knew what it all added up to: If Misto had transcended from earthly life into a vast and more complicated dimension, why would humans be different?

Lee felt uncomfortable thinking about such matters, but Mistowas the living?more than living?example that something more lay ahead, after this life. Not just the dark weight of evil, that was only part of it. Something more, so bright it shamed the golden wheat fields through which the car sped. Crushed in the limo beside the cigar-stinking deputy, Lee was embarrassedbysuch thoughts, but the proof of a better life was right there, draped over his shoulder, warm, heavy, invisible.

IT WAS A long pull, a two-day trip moving south, crowded against the sweaty deputy. And the layover in Tennessee was no picnic. Lee was lodged in Jackson?s dirty county jail while the two deputies went off to a hotel and a steak dinner. Lee?s meal, shoved through the cell bars, was some kind of watery stew that had been around too long. The coffee was the color of dishwater and tasted like it. He ached from sitting in the car and his back was sore where the belly chain gouged him. He lay on the jail?s dirty cot thinking there wasn?t one damned person in the world who cared whether he made it to Atlanta or dropped dead before he got there. But then the ghost cat nudged him, and Lee smiled; and soon, eased by the insistent presence of the ghost cat, Lee slept.

The next day?s travel was worse than the first. The weather grew hot and humid, and Lee?s seat partner, without his smokes, grew increasingly cranky. They made half a dozen extra stops, pulling over at some turnout or campground so Ray could light up a stogy. Afterward he would heave himself back in the car stinking all the worse. At seven that evening when they pulled into Atlanta, Lee was done in. He wanted only to fall into a prison cot, to stretch out with no chains binding him, and ease into sleep. Moving through the city he could see, off to the right, a fancy section of big, beautiful homes withtheir spreading shade streets. ?Buckhead,? the driver said when he saw Lee looking. ?Too fancy for you, or me neither.?