The Ravagers

XI

I CUT A nice, straight little Christmas tree with my camp hatchet. While Genevieve watched, I trimmed off most of the branches, and chopped off the upper part of the trunk that was less than an inch in diameter, as well as the lower part that was greater than an inch and a half. This gave me a tough, serviceable club or nightstick somewhat shorter than three feet and rather sticky with pitch.

I looked regretfully at the hatchet as I slipped the leather sheath back on it and put it away in the car. I've done some tomahawk-type practice in my time, but a man with a couple of pounds of steel tossed into his head or chest is apt to die, and we'd given the Canadian authorities two bodies to worry about already, so I thought it would be well to keep the mayhem to a minimum.

Genevieve was regarding me dubiously. "Haven't you got a gun?" she asked. "I thought all detectives were simply weighted down with firearms till they could barely walk. And all secret agents, too. Whichever you are."

I had no intention of revealing the extent of my armaments unnecessarily. She might decide to use the knowledge against me later.

I said, "You've been watching TV, ma'am. In real life, guns are often more damn trouble than they're worth, particularly in a foreign country with pretty strict import laws. If I did have a pistol here, it would be illegal, and if I were to shoot somebody with it, even an escaped murderer, I'd have a lot of explaining to do." I hefted my club experimentally. "Don't worry about it, ma'am. One good man with a stick can handle half a dozen bad men with knives."

She said dryly, "I always did like modest people. Well, I hope you're as good as you think."

"Remember, one of them is almost sure to have a blade at Penny's throat," I said. "It's the obvious precaution. Wave a firearm at him and he's apt to get nervous. He might even do something hasty. But if I show myself practically unarmed…" I shrugged. "If you have a better idea, let's hear it."

She hesitated. "Well, there's the obvious suggestion. I'm surprised you haven't made it."

"What's that?"

"We left some husky members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police back there on the highway. The Mounties always get their man, don't they? Or men."

I said, "If you want them, why didn't you ask them for help when they stopped you?"

"I don't want them. You know perfectly well I can't afford to get mixed up with the police."

I glanced at her. "Not even to save your child's life, ma'am?"

She flushed, and defended herself quickly: "They'd be more concerned with catching their criminals. Penny would be just an afterthought to them. You're the one who's supposed to be hired to protect her. That's why I came to you."

I said, "I wish you'd make up your mind. Last I heard, you weren't falling for my private-eye act at all. Now you've got me all confused."

"That," she said grimly, "makes two of us."

"And if you don't want the police, why drag them into the conversation?"

She was watching me thoughtfully. "I was just wondering why you don't want them, Mr. Clevenger. Under the circumstances, wouldn't a respectable private detective charged with responsibility for a young girl's life insist on notifying the authorities?"

It was a good question, but she'd left me an out and I took it: "The adjective is yours, ma'am. I can't recall ever having claimed to be respectable, if that means liking cops. I've been a private investigator too long to want to get mixed up with them. Back home I've got to cooperate with them if I'm to stay in business. I've got to take their lip and keep smiling politely. That's back home. Up here, to hell with them. I've lost no damn Canadian policemen and I'm not about to find any I don't have to. Okay?"

She was still studying my face. "You've got an answer to everything, haven't you? So you're going to tackle two desperate, armed hoodlums single-handed, with nothing but a little pine stick. You're either a brave man or a damn phony, Mr. Clevenger. I wish I knew which."

I said, "There's an easy way to find out."

She regarded me a moment longer, shrugged minutely, and turned away toward the truck and trailer waiting nearby on the little dirt track through the woods. I noted that she had an easy, almost sexless way of walking: the way of a self-confident woman who felt no need to do tricks with her hips to call attention to her femininity.

I called after her: "Mrs. Drilling."

She stopped and glanced back. "Yes?"

"What was your maiden name?" I already knew, of course, but for some reason I wanted to make it official.

"O'Brien," she said after a momentary pause. "Why?"

"Nothing," I said. "I was just curious. Lead on, Jenny O'Brien."

She started to speak, maybe to protest the familiarity, but then she laughed instead, and climbed into the pickup. I tested my sticky club once more, glanced at the Volkswagen more or less hidden among the trees, and went over and climbed into the trailer and closed the door. I heard the big truck engine start, up forward, and we were off.

It was a rough ride in the swaying, bouncing house trailer. Some plastic dishes almost clobbered me, spilling out of a high cabinet above me; and I could hear various foods and spices rubbing elbows behind the little doors that remained closed. It occurred to me to wonder if there might not be a nasty chemical reagent in there, somewhere, perhaps disguised as cooking oil or pancake syrup. The empty acid bottle I'd seen in Elaine's room wasn't proof that the entire supply had been used up. If there had been some left over, after Greg's treatment, it could have been poured off and stored in a different container..

It didn't take me long to find it, since the container had to be a rather special one-the stuff would go right through metal or plastic. A nice little salad-dressing jug with a glass stopper caught my eye almost at once. A drop of the contents on my finger sent me hurrying to the sink to wash it off; it wasn't olive oil.

I looked at the deceptive little bottle grimly. I guess I was kind of disillusioned. Somehow I'd got to thinking that Genevieve Drilling might possibly be just a nice, misunderstood lady after all. I considered pouring the stuff out and replacing it with water, just in case it might be used against me some time, but that's the kind of tricky protective maneuver that's apt to backfire, warning the subject that you're hep at just the moment when you're finally getting somewhere.

I also considered just diluting the reagent so it wouldn't be quite so powerful, but my chemistry is sketchy. I did remember that if you went about mixing it with water the wrong way it would spatter all over you, but I couldn't remember which was the right way, so finally I just stuck the bottle back among the groceries where I'd found it, the way I'd found it. I had just got the cupboard doors closed when our motion stopped.

Cautiously, I peeked out the side window, between the slats of the venetian blind, and saw a blue lake lined with pines and firs. We seemed to be parked in a meadow that ran down to the shore. My pretty, freckled, truck-driving, acid lady had cut the switch, and the engine was silent. In accordance with my instructions, she didn't come back to keep me company, which was just as well. I might not have been able to resist the temptation to ask her to make me up a salad with her special dressing.

We just waited for visitors in our separate compartments, out there by the lake in the still Canadian forest, and after a while they came.

"In the truck, there! Hey, lady, wake up!" It was half a shout, half a hoarse, secretive whisper, from the edge of the nearby woods. I didn't risk showing myself at the window again. I just crouched near the trailer door, waiting. "All right, lady, now open both cab doors and get out so we can see what you've got in there… That's right. Just stand right there. One false move and the girl gets this knife right in the kidney. Okay, Mousie, go check the trailer."

I heard Genevieve's voice, with a nice edge of panic. "There isn't anybody in the trailer."

"There'd better not be. Go on, Mousie."

"Wait!" She sounded terrified. She was doing swell. I reminded myself that, where deceit was concerned, she'd had a professional instructor named Ruyter, and some practice along the way. "Wait!" she cried. "There is somebody! It's that private detective. I had to bring him! I couldn't help it. He stopped me and demanded to know where… where Penny was. I had to tell him. He was going to the police if I didn't tell him. He promised he wouldn't do anything to harm you as long as she was all right."

"He promised!" sneered the voice from the woods. "Now isn't that sweet!"

"You don't understand! He's just a private investigator, he doesn't care about you. He says the Canadian authorities can look after their own damn fugitives; he isn't being paid to do anything but look after Penny. Let him come out; let him talk to you. Don't hurt her just because… I couldn't help it, I tell you. I had to bring him. It was either him or the police."

There was a lengthy silence before the man out there spoke. "All right, tell him to come out with his hands in plain sight. If he flashes a gun, the kid is dead, understand?"

"Yes. Yes, of course. Come out, Mr. Clevenger. Please be careful. He's got a knife in Penny's back."

I opened the door and stepped down to the ground. "Drop the stick!" said the youth holding Penny.

I could see him now, and his companion, and the girl. She was still wearing yesterday's short divided skirt and grubby white shirt. She was kind of mussed and dirty, with mud on her sneakers and bobbysox. Her hairnet was missing and the rollers and curlers were coming unwound, snake-like, here and there. Nevertheless, she didn't look to be fundamentally damaged, although her face was pale and scared behind the big glasses.

The men were in dungarees and work shirts. They were a mean-looking pair: one handsome, murderous young delinquent, and one aging sneak-thief with obvious alcoholic predilections.

"Drop the stick!" the younger one snarled.

"Go to hell, punk," I said pleasantly. "What are you afraid of, that I'll point it at you and say bang-bang-you're-dead?" I took a couple of steps away from the trailer door. "You with the bloodshot eyes," I said. "Come over here and take a look through this mobile home. Make sure I didn't bring any cops before your friend wets his pants worrying."

The younger one tightened his arm across Penny's throat. "Watch your lip, Mister," he said. He hesitated, and said reluctantly, "All right, Mousie. Go ahead and look in there like I told you in the first place."

A signal passed between them that I guess I wasn't supposed to see or understand; then Mousie sidled past me. I heard him enter the trailer and come back out.

"Okay, Frankie. It's empty."

"All right, you," said Frankie. "What did you have to say to us?"

"Let the kid go and we'll forget we ever saw you," I said, pretending not to hear the old thief slipping up behind me. The clumsy way he moved, it was no wonder he'd wound up in jail. I kept talking to help him out: "What do you say, Frankie? Turn her loose and we won't bother you. You can go where you damn well please."

Frankie said, "Bother? Tall man, you don't bother me a bit." Apparently American gangster movies had formed a large part of his education: or maybe all prisons turn out the same product the world over-well, the English-speaking world over. He had that tough, lipless, convict way of talking. "You mean we should let you drive off and leave us here on foot? That would be a hell of a deal, now. We might as well have stayed in Brandon."

I said, "All right, take the damn truck. Take the trailer. Just turn the kid loose. I promise..

I pivoted on the word, and my timing was right. Mousie was right there, with the big kitchen knife raised as if to chip ice for a highball. I suppose he was really hoping to plant it between my shoulder blades. He might be a professional thief, but as a murderer he was strictly amateur talent.

The high-held knife was out of position for any kind of thrust or parry. I was perfectly safe as I lunged with the stick and drove it into him just below the ribs. He doubled up, offering me the back of his head, and I whipped my little pine tree across the base of his skull, not too hard, and he fell down unconscious.

I swung back and said casually, "Like I was saying, Frankie, turn her loose. Before I come over there and spank you.',

It had been a gamble, of course. I might not have tried it if Frankie had been holding a gun. Startled, he might have fired by mistake. But it's hard to do serious damage with a knife by mistake. The kid was still standing, biting her lip against the pain of the nervous knifepoint in her back.

"You shouldn't have done that, Mister!" Frankie's face was shiny. "Drop the stick! I won't tell you again. Drop it or I'll-,'

"You'll do what?" I said. "Kill her? What'll that get you?"

I spat on the ground between us. "I'll tell you what it'll get you, punk. It'll get very dead. I've got longer legs than you and I know the woods real good. You so much as break the skin with that knife you're holding and I'll run you down and kill you. Now make up your mind. Turn her loose and I won't hurt you. Make me wait any longer and I'll take you apart and throw the pieces in the lake. Come on, Junior, don't just stand there trying to look tough. You may be tough for here, but down around Denver where I come from, little boys like you don't go out without their mothers." I looked at him for a moment longer, and made a sound of disgust. I threw the stick away from me. "There. No stick. Now what are you going to do, Sonnyboy?"

It worked. Not only had I knocked his partner unconscious, I'd also hurt his pride. I'd belittled him in front of two females. Furthermore, even his limited brain was capable of understanding, at last, that nothing he did to Penny was going to help him get the truck he badly needed to get away. It was me he had to kill, and he stepped around her to do it.

He came in with the knife. Unlike Mousie, he knew enough to hold it like a sword, not an icepick, but that was about all he knew. He came in cautiously at first, but when I gave ground he gained courage and tried a rush. I did it strictly by the book, moving quickly to his right and using a circular karate kick to disarm him. It's better to use the feet when dealing with a knife, since feet generally have shoes on them-in this case a fairly heavy boot, since I was dressed for camping.

The knife flew out of his grasp. The force of the kick spun him away from me, grasping his bruised hand. I kicked again, since I was in the footwork groove, and cut his legs out from under him. Then I stepped up and kicked him carefully in the head. I went over and got his knife and threw it into the lake. It wasn't worth saving: one of those crude imitation Bowies sold to the kind of hunters who think they need a big knife for protection from deer and rabbits.

I picked up the instrument Mousie had dropped and went over to where Genevieve stood with her arms about her daughter.

"I guess this belongs to you, ma'am," I said, holding out the long-bladed kitchen knife.

She patted the little girl on the shoulder and came forward to face me. There was a funny little pause. I put out of my mind all thought of the jug of acid I'd discovered in the trailer. Like Greg's death, or Elaine's, it had no real bearing on my mission here, which was to gain this woman's respect and friendship, and help her get wherever she wanted to go.

I had time to think that it couldn't have worked out better. Running into a pair of escaped prisoners had been a wild coincidence, but it had given me a chance to do my stuff- and whether Genevieve Drilling thought me a private dick or a secret agent, she couldn't help but feel a certain sense of obligation, I reflected, that might form the basis of a very satisfactory relationship.

She said, "You're quite a hero, Mr. Clevenger. That was quite a performance." Her voice had an odd, strained sound, as if she was balanced between tears and hysterical laughter. I was completely unprepared when she swung her arm and slapped me hard across the face. "You damn phony!" she cried.