The Ravagers

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IN THE morning it was drizzling again. The Drilling outfit broke camp much earlier today, shortly after seven. This might have caught me asleep, or at least breakfastless, if my evening visit to the trailer hadn't prepared me for a possible change in the behavior pattern.

The early start seemed to foreshadow a long day of hard driving, but here again there was a change. Genevieve wasn't her dashing, truck-driving self this morning. Even after we reached the open highway, she poked along cautiously, passing nobody who wasn't next to standing still, making life very easy for me-but I doubted it was my welfare she was thinking of. I noted that she seemed to be alone in the truck cab. Apparently Penny was in the trailer, and I didn't really think the kid was sitting back there by herself.

House trailers are not designed to be occupied in transit; in fact I believe it's illegal in many places to ride in one. Genevieve was driving as if she was afraid somebody might get seasick back there; she was also driving as if she didn't want to take the slightest chance of attracting the attention of a speed cop or becoming involved in an accident.

We were well into the province of Manitoba by now, and the prairie scenery of Saskatchewan was giving way to more rolling country with patches of woods. As we cruised through a stretch of piney forest, Genevieve suddenly pulled out onto the shoulder of the highway and brought her truck and trailer to a halt. I drove past, intending to park beyond the next curve and sneak back for a look, but right around the corner I ran into a police roadblock.

There was nothing to do but act natural and touristy, but as I rolled up the barricade I couldn't help wondering if Genevieve had stopped because of it, and if so, how she'd known it was there. A tall Mountie with a widebrimmed hat and a yellow cavalry stripe down his pants came up and looked into the Volkswagen with a murmured apology. He straightened up and waved me on, but something was be-ginning to stir inside my head-call it intelligence if you like-and I didn't drive off right away. Instead I put on a j look of busybody curiosity and leaned out the window.

"Are you fellows still looking for those escaped convicts around here?" I asked. "What makes you think they're still hanging around, with all the north woods to escape into? I should think they'd be halfway to Hudson Bay by now."

"One is a local lad, sir," the Mountie said. "We think he may have found somebody to hide him temporarily. At least there's a report that both men were seen in Brandon as late as last night."

"I see," I said. "You mean he's lived around the penitentiary all his life so he knows the routines you're apt to use? That makes it tough, I guess."

"Yes, sir."

I sent the car ahead. The idea that was germinating in my mind was so farfetched that I couldn't take it seriously. Still, something was definitely wrong with Genevieve-she'd behaved oddly both last night and this morning-and until I had a good explanation I couldn't afford to dismiss any possibilities.

I parked the Volkswagen around the next bend, got my binoculars out of the little trunk up front, and returned on foot to a spot among the trees from which I had a view of the roadblock. Presently the blue truck and the silver trailer rolled up to the waiting policeman and stopped obediently. Genevieve was at the wheel of the pickup. I couldn't see anybody in the cab with her.

The tall Mountie who'd inspected me looked in her window and straightened up, satisfied. His partner went back to the trailer and looked inside. Apparently he found nothing amiss, either, for he closed the door and waved Genevieve on. I let her drive past my hiding place without revealing myself, but when I got back to the place where I'd parked my car, she'd pulled off the road behind it. She was sitting in the pickup, hunched over the steering wheel as I'd seen her once before, with her face buried in her hands.

When she became aware of me at the window, she raised her head. She hadn't really been crying, I saw. Her eyes were dry, but they were big and desperate.

I said, in my Clevenger role, "Okay, ma'am, what's going on? Where's the girl? Where's Penny?"

Genevieve just stared at me. Her look was hostile, but it held a hint of speculation, as if she was wondering whether the situation was bad enough to justify taking a gamble on confiding in a creature like me. When she didn't speak at once, I shrugged and went back to the trailer, opened the door cautiously, and climbed inside. It occurred to me that if the woman in the truck should decide to take off, I'd be kidnapped, short of a flying leap to the hard pavement, but I couldn't see what she'd gain by it and neither, apparently, could she. We remained motionless. The trailer was empty. It had a neat, clean look, as if it had just been carefully tidied to hide all traces of the most recent occupant or occupants.

I checked the tiny combination john and shower, and the little plywood closet. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police should have been ashamed of themselves. There were enough teenage clothes around to raise the interesting question of where the owner had got to. I glanced through the various drawers, finding nothing but kitchen stuff, clothes, a wad of comic books and, cached away under the bed, a collection of old playthings that Miss Drilling would probably repudiate now that she was fifteen: everything to keep a kid entertained on a camping trip, from slingshots and water pistols to picture puzzles and pretty little dolls with fancy wardrobes. What I was looking for wasn't exactly clear in my mind, but it seemed a pity to pass up the opportunity.

I made a quick examination of a miniature dresser built into the corner by the bed. Hearing footsteps on the gravel outside, I was just about to shove the last drawer closed when something white caught my eye and I picked it up: a left-handed white kid glove that looked familiar. There was no mate in the drawer. I guess it was what I'd been looking for. I'd recently flushed a similar right-hand glove down a toilet in Brandon. And doubts I might have about its ownership were no longer tenable. It was too big for the kid; it had to belong to the mother.

I dropped the glove back and closed the drawer as Genevieve stepped up to the doorway behind me, causing the trailer to sway on its springs.

"You're hardly likely to find my daughter hiding in there," she said tartly. "If it's Penny you're looking for."

I turned to face her. "Penny," I said, "or a clue to her whereabouts. We detectives are always looking for clues. Where is she, Mrs. Drilling?"

The woman faced me stiffly. "If I told you," she said, "you wouldn't believe me."

"Try me."

"She's out there, somewhere." Genevieve gestured toward the woods visible through the open trailer door. She hesitated briefly, then her words came with a rush: "You're the last man in the world I'd ask for help, but… but I have no choice. If I don't do exactly what they said, they'll kill her. If they even see me talking to you, they'll kill her."

"Who?"

She drew a long breath and said bitterly, "It's absolutely crazy. With… with everything else I've got working against me, I've got to run into a pair of escaped convicts! You can laugh any time, Mr. Clevenger. Laugh, why don't you? It's really very funny, isn't it? Oh, my God!"

It was what I'd begun to suspect, of course, but it wasn't a story a cynical private eye would be likely to buy right off the shelf. I stared at her hard-eyed, therefore, as if offended that she'd try such a silly yarn on me. The funny thing was that finding the glove in her dresser drawer seemed to make me capable of regarding her with greater tolerance than before. Now that I'd tracked down my solitary clue, I could stop thinking like a sleuth. I could remember that murder was really not my business. My job was to gain the confidence of this woman, not put her in the electric chair.

The sunshine striking through the doorway behind her brought out reddish lights in her thick hair. It occurred to me that with the red hair and the freckles and the general conformation of her face and figure-not to mention the maiden name of O'Brien-she was undoubtedly Irish. Well, they're a dark, unpredictable, high-tempered race, I'm told, but for some reason the thought disturbed me. What she was supposed to have done didn't really fit in with my notion of the behavior of a healthy Irish girl of reasonable intelligence and mental stability. Of course, some of the most normal-looking people I've known turned out to be real psychiatric specimens when the pressure came on, and there was no doubt this woman was under heavy pressure.

Still, she looked pretty strong and steady, standing there. She was wearing a dark, full-skirted cotton dress, which was a point in her favor. In my opinion, just about the only valid excuse for feminine pants is a horse or a pair of skis. Her legs were bare and she had on brown sneakers with white rubber soles. She was really a damn goodlooking woman. I couldn't help thinking it was a shame she was probably going to wind up dead or in jail-or in Russia, if that's where they were heading-just because she was a sucker for romance as represented by a slick undercover operator named Ruyter. When I didn't speak, she said, "I told you you wouldn't believe me."

I said, "It's pretty hard to accept, ma'am. Here you are, a lady on the lam, with an escort of at least two U.S. agents and one private op, and you want me to believe that a couple of cons just happened to pick your trailer to hide in? That's a pretty large coincidence."

She shook her head quickly. "Not as large as you'd think, Mr. Clevenger. One of the men, the younger one, had a girlfriend in Brandon who hid them out while they were figuring how to get through the police net. She looked over the trailers in camp and picked ours because it was the only one without a man around. A woman and a young girl alone would be easier to handle, they thought."

I moved my shoulders. "You make it sound real plausible, ma'am. When are these two miscreants supposed to have descended on you?"

She disregarded my cynicism. "They slipped in quite suddenly right after dark, and took me by surprise," she said. "As a matter of fact, when they knocked on the door, I thought it was you or one of those other two government men who've been following me. The next thing I knew, the younger one had a knife in my side." She indicated the place by rubbing it with her elbow. "He was rather rough. I'm not a heroine and.., and of course, I had Penny to think of. That was only a few minutes before your visit last night. You can understand why I didn't invite you inside!"

I studied her thoughtfully. "And they spent the night with you? Did they give you a bad time? Or the kid?"

Genevieve laughed shortly. "Not the way you probably mean, Mr. Clevenger. Oh, it wasn't fun, but the younger one had already seen his girl, remember, and the older one was just interested in a whiskey bottle I had in the cupboard. That's what he'd been missing behind bars."

"Describe them."

"Don't tell me you're beginning to believe me!" Her voice was sharp. "The younger one is about twenty, tall, slim, and goodlooking, if you like punks. I believe that's the term. You know what I mean. I'm sure that in civilian life he had a ducktail haircut, or the Canadian equivalent. He had a big hunting knife his girl had found for him…"

"How big?"

"Oh, about six inches in the blade. He kept brandishing it like Cyrano de Bergerac. He told us proudly that he was a real bad boy with a knife, that's how he'd come to be in prison, for killing a man. The older convict was fifty-five or sixty, a mean little dried up weasel of a man with a terrible thirst. I don't know what crime he'd committed, but I'm sure he's capable of anything that doesn't require courage. He wanted to get another bottle somewhere this morning, but the boy said he'd cut his throat if he tried. They almost had a fight over it. The older one grabbed my big kitchen knife, but it was just a bluff, and he backed down whining. He's still got the knife, though. It's a nasty weapon, Mr. Clevenger, at least ten inches long. I keep it very sharp."

"Two knives," I said. "That's all? No guns?"

"You do believe me now?"

I moved my shoulders. "The question concerned firearms, Mrs. Drilling."

"No firearms. I know because they looked all over the trailer, hoping to find a rifle or pistol." She laughed wryly. "Everybody searches my trailer, from the government on down."

"And they've got your daughter," I said. I looked at a pair of cased spectacles lying on the formica counter, and slid them,out of the case, and looked through them, absently. The frames were much too small for me, and the prescription, as far as I could judge, checked with what I'd been told of the kid's eyesight: she was pretty myopic. Presumably she'd inherited it from her scientific papa, since mama seemed to get along quite well without glasses.

I thought of a small nearsighted girl with braces on her teeth, out in the woods with two criminals, at least one a murderer. I reminded myself that I wasn't here to look after children. On the other hand, my cover story did require me to show a certain concern for Penny's welfare, and it might be a way of improving my relations with the woman facing me.

I said, stalling, "Can she see without these? They're pretty strong."

"It's an old prescription. She has her glasses. She just brought those along for a spare."

"Why did you bring her along, Mrs. Drilling? Why didn't you leave her home where she'd be safe?"

Genevieve's gray-green eyes narrowed. "Safe? Alone in a big house with a father who'd rather watch his tame light rays or whatever they are? I didn't know I was going to run into a prison break, Mr. Clevenger."

I said, "Still, a woman leaving her husband for another man doesn't usually take her offspring with her."

"Oh, you know about Hans." She shrugged. "Doesn't she? Have you made a study of women and the way they leave their husbands? 1 simply told Hans he'd have to take both of us or neither."

"I don't suppose it's any use asking where you're planning to meet this Hans character."

She said, "No, and why would you care? You're just a private detective hired to take an interest in Penny's welfare. What do you care about Hans, or the scientific formulas I'm supposed to have stolen or any of that? I'm afraid your badge is showing, and it isn't a private badge. Well, you never were very convincing as a detective, and right now I don't care what you are. Just… just help me get Penny back safely, please."

I looked at her grimly. Maybe the question about Hans had been a mistake, but at least I had her asking a favor and saying please.

I said, "You're a stubborn lady, Mrs. Drilling. You're bound to tie me to a government job. Well, let's not waste time on that now. What instructions are these hypothetical convicts supposed to have given you?"

She snapped, "They're not hypothetical, damn you! Do you want me to show you where his knife drew blood?" I didn't say anything, and she went on in a different tone: "I'm supposed to meet them up a road just ahead. The younger one was riding in front with me, lying on the floor. I helped him slip into the cab just before daylight. After we got on the highway, he had me describe the landmarks we passed. He seemed to know there might be a roadblock around the curve back there. He made me pull out, and he got his friend out of the trailer, and Penny. He said for me to go through the police alone, if they were there, and then take the first dirt road to the right and drive to a lake about two miles back from the highway and wait. They'd join me there. If I wasn't there when they arrived, or if I warned the police…" She stopped.

I said, "I know. They'd kill Penny. Presumably with flourishes. Well, suppose we find this dirt road. You lead, I'll follow in the Volksie. Stop when you're out of sight of the highway."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'll tell you when we have this safari off the highway," I said. "Right now let's get out of sight before one of those policemen sees us and gets curious."

She regarded me for a moment, frowning. I suppose she was wondering just how big a mistake she was making in trusting me. Then she turned and climbed down into the daylight and walked forward to the truck without looking back, leaving me to close the trailer door.