The Swamp Searchers

Chapter IV

He traveled with the sun at his left until it dipped behind the mountains and died its daily death. Darkness came, bringing a cool breath over the land. Barney rested under a tree, keeping in mind his direction, the location, and the distance he’d traveled. If he made a mistake in his calculations, or judged wrong, he’d get lost within thirty minutes, traveling in darkness. That would mean his last chance was gone for keeps.

Josie seemed to be alone in the house. He watched the place for ten or fifteen minutes after his furtive arrival. He saw no signs of any other human being — only Josie’s shadow passing the lighted window now and then.

He guessed Pa Calhoun was still busy at his logging.

Barney was still in no mood to take chances. He hung back close to the brush line and tossed a handful of pebbles against the side of the house. Josie was passing the window. He saw her stop. He threw more pebbles. She hesitated, disappeared from his line of vision. A few seconds later the front door opened, and she came out with Pa Calhoun’s rifle in her hands.

Barney tossed more pebbles. They rattled on the planking of the porch. Josie whirled around. “Barney?”

“Yeah. You alone?”

“So much alone I’ve been about to bust with it,” she said, coming from the porch to meet him in the yard. She stood with her head tilted, looking up at him. Suddenly she started crying. Barney couldn’t have that, and he folded his big arms about her. She seemed to like it, and wept against his chest.

“Tyne Conover was here,” she said. “Oh, he was mean-mad, Barney! He had a lump like a banty egg on his jaw and he swore he was going to take no more chances with you.”

“How long ago?”

“Just before nightfall. Said he was going back to the village and get a bunch of men together and deputize them. Barney, it’ll be awful. There’ll be white liquor sneaked along despite everything Conover can do. These men are all born hunters. They live it, breathe it, all of them swear by hunting. They’ll figure this a mighty thrilling hunt — only you’ll be the game! Barney, you can’t face it. I don’t care if you’ve got Cousin Bobo’s money. Let’s just get out of here...” She stopped speaking, looking stunned at what she had said. “I didn’t mean to put in that way. You... you didn’t ask me to go, did you?”

Barney was scared; but he was mad too. He might make an escape from these mountains. But always Bobo’s murder would be hanging over him. What kind of life would he have then? “I’m not going,” he said abruptly. “If I were, you would go with me. Instead, you’re going to take me some place else. You know a place called Cold Slough?”

“Sure. It’s a cove about six miles from here. Bobo’s uncle, Josh Hensley lives there. Uncle Josh raised Bobo, after his parents died. He’s a kindly, fine old man, Barney. He’s the reason Bobo grabbed the money.”

“Why would Bobo get it for Uncle Josh?”

She seemed on the point of explaining; then she said, “You’ll see when we get there. Come on. We’ll use Pa’s pickup and drive by the dirt road.”

Barney sensed sickness and despair the moment he entered the cabin nestled in Cold Slough Cove. The cabin was built low into the hillside against the blasts of winter and heat of summer. It was old and filled with the lingering odors of smoked ham, moist earth, and salt pork. A sparrow-like old woman was in the outer room, greeting Josie and acknowledging the introduction to Barney. Josie introduced Barney as Mr. Simpkins, and Barney knew it was because there was no telling how this old lady would react to the presence of the man accused of Bobo’s murder.

The old lady was Uncle Josh’s wife; she had reared Bobo.

Barney followed Josie into the next room. He was prepared for sickness, but the sight of the old man stunned him.

Paralyzed. No control at all. And in great pain.

Blast Bobo, anyhow, for sending me here, Barney thought. This was Bobo’s first thought, this old man, as he lay dying. He was counting on me wanting to do something about it.

Uncle Josh said, “You’re a friend of Bobo’s?”

“Yes,” Barney said softly.

“A fine boy, Bobo. Soon as he heard about my accident, he came right down.

“The trouble’s down there — in my back. Had a mean bull. He broke his chain. Nigh gored Ma. It was pretty frightful when that bull hit me.

“They want to send me off to a surgeon that fixes these kind of cases. That takes a whop of money. Course Bobo was going to take care of all that. Now Bobo is...” The old man stopped speaking. He touched a pale tongue to dry, cracked old lips. “Sheriff Conover was up here today. Says Bobo was murdered. Says Bobo stole the money from a fight manager.”

“Bobo never took anything that didn’t really belong to him,” Barney said.

He’s sure gonna feel lousy when he learns the truth for once and all, Barney thought. He felt dismal.

Barney and Josie finished their visit with the old man and went into the kitchen where the old lady invited them to a long table with benches on either side. Barney drank strong black coffee which had been ground in the coffee mill in the far comer of the kitchen. He ate biscuits, side meat, and a platter of eggs, touched up with golden butter and strawberry preserves.

After he and Josie visited with the old lady, they went out to Pa Calhoun’s pick-up.

Barney asked, “Skip Merrill live anywhere around here?”

“On down this road. The second cove. It’s about three miles.”

“You go on home,” Barney suggested. “I got an idea where Bobo’s money might be found.”

Josie’s face was grave in the moonlight. “Skip Merrill means trouble, Barney.”

“Who did Bobo stay with?”

“He lived alone, since his wife died two years ago. Barney...”

“I’ll be careful. I’ll see you at your house by dawn. You’ve still got Pa Calhoun’s gun” — he grinned — “so I won’t worry about you.”

He strode down the dirt road, his thoughts ticking along on the task ahead. The night promised to be a long one.

The second cove, Josie had said. About three miles. In years of road work, Barney had come into the ability to judge road distance with accuracy. That must be the house, the one just ahead. It was set thirty yards back from the road and looked like a weathered box with a gabled lid. Lamplight made yellow squares of the front windows, which were small and set high.

Barney walked up a path that yearned for the removal of weeds. He slipped Tyne Conover’s revolver out of the waistband of his trousers, rapped on the door. After a moment, footsteps sounded inside.

The door cracked a trifle, and Barney set his weight against it, slamming it open.

Merrill staggered to a stop in the center of the room. He looked at the gun and fright came into his eyes. He had taken off his shirt and his shoulders hunched under his dirty gray union suit top. He mustered enough brag to bring a sneer to life on his lips. “Pretty high and mighty with that gun, ain’t you?”

Barney ignored him. He moved closer to Skip, and sniffed. Skip glowered.

Barney said, “It’s the same sour stink I smelled when I was slugged in the doorway of that cabin on Little Sanloosa. You’re the boy who hit me, Skip, and I’m of the opinion that you’ve got Bobo’s money.”

“You aimin’ to shoot the truth out of me?”

Barney eyed Skip’s shoulders, patting the barrel of the gun in his other palm. With a sudden motion he slid the gun into the corner behind him.

Skip roared with the ferocity of an angry bull, and charged. Barney sidestepped and knocked out two of Skip’s snag teeth. Skip staggered back. Barney punched him in the stomach. Skip lost all his wind. Barney hit him on the nose, and it began bleeding. Skip threw one punch. It was feeble. Barney took it on his shoulder, measured Skip’s jaw. Skip, he remembered, had slugged him twice. Once with a gun in Josie’s, a second time on Little Sanloosa.

He hit Skip on the jaw. Skip staggered against the wall, and pots and pans crashed in the next room. Skip reeled away from the wall throwing wild haymakers.

Oh, cripes, this isn’t even fun, Barney decided.

He knocked out two more teeth, connected with the black-beard jaw again, and Skip fell to the floor. He lay groaning, and when he felt the touch of Barney’s hands as he tried to pull him to his feet, the groans became whimpers.

Barney allowed Skip to mouth broken, incoherent pleas for a moment; then he suggested flatly, “Shut up!”

Skip quieted.

“Where’s the dough?”

“I dunno.”

Barney worked his right hand into a fist, drew it back, and Skip amended, “In the loft.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs. Up that ladder. In a trunk.”

Then, as if he were hearing it in a dream, Barney heard Charlie Collins’ nasal voice say, “That’s nice to know.”

Barney stiffened; Skip raised his head; they both looked at the doorway. Charlie and Leah walked in. Charlie was smiling with his thin lips. His white flesh looked ghostly in the flickering lamplight. “Nice of you to make enough noise to cover the sound of our arrival and warn us a little party was going on,” Charlie said. “I believed your tale of getting slugged, Barney, and also your story about Bobo having a tough sidekick named Skip Merrill. It wasn’t too hard to find where pal Skip lived, and I waited for night to keep anyone from seeing me drive up here. Now it seems you’ve saved me a little trouble.”

Barney looked at Tyne Conover’s gun where it lay, far away in the corner. Strictly a sap, that’s me, he thought. He looked in Charlie’s eyes and began to feel the cold touch of fear.

Charlie said, “Leah, scoot up that ladder and start tearing apart any trunks you find. We’ll have the dough and be out of here by morning.”

“Just like that, huh?” Barney said. “And I take the rap for Bobo’s killing?”

“I’m sorry about that, Barney, but, for all I know, you did kill him.”

Barney watched Leah walk to the ladder that led up to the loft. He thought, Leah killed Bobo.

It fitted like a glove. Bobo had repeated his assertion at Josie’s that he could bring pressure on Charlie. He would force Charlie to lay off. But he didn’t have anything on Charlie, Barney was reasonably certain — or he would have used it before. Who else, then, was there to put the pressure on? Leah, of course. And she, Bobo had figured, could call Charlie off.

A clunk, that’s me, Barney thought. Bobo had practically told him what kind of goods he had on Leah. Murder, he had said as he died, strictly murder. He hadn’t been talking about his own death; anybody could see that it was murder in his case. Another death, then. And what death? Leah’s first husband, of course. Not suicide after all, but murder. It had to be that way. No other picture fitted the frame.

Barney could picture it in his mind. Bobo getting to Leah, telling her she’d better call Charlie off if she knew what was good for her, telling her that he was meeting Barney that night in the Little Sanloosa cabin, and Charlie had better be brought around so that Barney arrived with the right news. Leah getting that unregistered gun she or Charlie had picked up sometime in the past, going to the cabin, hearing the kicker as Barney came in over the lake.

She would have had plenty of time. The sound of the kicker in Barney’s ears would have kept him from hearing the shot. Then she’d made a quick exit, leaving Bobo for dead.

And waltzing in the shadows, lured on by the hopes that he could somehow get that dough for himself, had been Skip Merrill. Unknown to Leah. The joker in the deck.

Leah started up the ladder. Barney watched the swing of her legs and hips. He said, “Charlie, she’ll probably end up crossing you the way she’s crossing me right now.”

Leah stopped going up the ladder, and Charlie’s mouth tightened. “What do you mean by that?” he said.

“We had a little deal of our own, Leah and I — after Bobo told me about her killing her first husband.”

Leah gripped the braces of the ladder to keep from falling. Charlie shifted the gun toward her. “No, don’t believe him! It isn’t true! Bobo knew — he heard you in the Jersey training camp the night you came in drunk and threw it in my face, Charlie. It was your fault. Since that time, Bobo has known. But he didn’t tell Barney. And I didn’t make any deals! Honest. You got to believe me!”

“Then how does Barney know?”

“He’s guessing — only now does he know for sure. You were too quick to doubt me and throw that gun on me.”

“I don’t trust you,” Charlie said. “You had me alibi you that night — and later, when I guessed that it hadn’t been really suicide. I knew you’d play me for a sucker.”

“It was a drunken brawl, Charlie. I didn’t mean to kill him. I’ve told you a hundred times.”

Barney looked at them, each wary of the other, bound together by a bond so dark and evil it caused him to shudder. A pair of tramps... Gripes, what a complement!

Barney was edging toward that comer where the sheriff’s gun lay. Then Charlie seemed to jar to life again, and he centered his gun on Barney.

“Okay, Leah,” Charlie said, sounding suddenly almost tired. “What do we do with them now?”

“Make it look like they killed each other in a fight,” Leah suggested.

“No,” Charlie said.

“You haven’t much choice,” she pointed out. “You’re accessory after the fact in one murder. I’ll swear you killed Bobo yourself if you try to turn me in. You’ve got to pull the trigger, Charlie!”

Charlie was sweating. It stood out on his forehead in heavy drops. Then he was pulling the trigger. But the crash of the gun came from outside, and Charlie’s revolver flew from his hand.

Josie stood spread-legged in the doorway with Pa Calhoun’s rifle in her hands.

“Barney, my boy, Skip Merrill I reckoned you could handle. But when Charlie Collins’ car passed me, heading this way, I thought I ought to turn that pickup truck around. I parked down the road far enough to slip to the house here quietly. I almost took too long, didn’t I?”

“Cripes, yes,” Barney said.

Leah took a step toward Barney, her green eyes frantic. “Barney, I gave you a break. I helped you get out of the cell.”

“Yeah, in hopes that Conover would shoot as I made the break or hunt me down with a gun in the hills — which would have closed the case in a nice package. You wanted that, knowing I was going to keep on screaming until I got the right kind of lawyer. You wanted the case closed in a hurry, because you were guilty. You looked awfully disappointed when I slugged Conover so fast and put him out of action until I could get away.”

Her shoulders slumped, then straightened. “Okay, Barney. Maybe I’ll have more luck with a judge and jury.”

“Maybe. But I doubt it, if Skip saw you coming out of that cabin on Little Sanloosa.” He looked at Skip. “State’s evidence?”

“You’re dern tootin’!”

The next day just before noon, Barney beached his rented boat below Josie’s house. He found her in the living room. She asked, “How is it going?”

“Conover is clearing up details fast. Found one of her footprints to back up Skip’s statement. Charlie’s scared stiff. He and Leah both will be trying to outtalk each other before nightfall. The twenty thousand that started all this has been impounded.”

“And you, Barney?”

“Well—” He was thoughtful. “Bobo was my buddy. I’ve got a few grand salted away. Enough to help Uncle Josh some and still have a buck left over to pay down on a fishing camp around here some place.”

Josie squealed.

Barney grinned. “Been thinking I’d get out of the fight racket.”

“Cripes, looks like I’m hooked, don’t it?” He seemed very happy as he reached for her.

“Man,” Josie said, “never been a bass fish in the whole of Sanloosa hooked more firmly!”