Girl Out Back— 48
She wasn’t sure of anything now. Any of them over the
age of three can see through flattery the way you can
through a pane of glass—when they want to. But they can’t
cope with a change of pace. Destroy their frame of
reference just once and they never get oriented again,
especially if you keep crossing them up.
You could see her deciding things were getting out of
hand and that it was time to blow the whistle. “Well!” she
said. “I must say you’ve got a nerve.”
When retreat is indicated, attack. Toujours l’audace. It
can get you many a fat lip, but plenty of times it’ll work, if
you know precisely where to stop the offensive. I fastened
the slow stare on her, starting at her ankles and going
north across the long bare legs and the denim shorts, the
sucked-in waist, the curves at the front of her shirt, and
finally coming to rest on a white face and a blazing pair of
eyes. It was deliberate, and infuriatingly obvious. She drew
in a sharp breath.
“Oh,” I said in sudden confusion, as if it had just dawned
on me. “Please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way at all. It
was just the reverse, in fact. I was imagining you in an
evening gown.”
She circled this warily, looking for a place that wasn’t
loaded.
“Women who can wear clothes,” I said, “look so
wonderful wearing them.” I stared at her thoughtfully and
then went on,
“Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes”
“What’s that?” she asked wonderingly.
“Robert Herrick,” I said. I picked up the other bottle of
coke and walked casually over and put it in her hand. She
looked up at me a little cautiously, still trying to figure it
out. I left her standing there as I strolled over to the screen
door and stood gazing idly out at the sun-blasted clearing.
“This is a beautiful place here,” I said.
Girl Out Back— 49
There was no answer for a moment. Whoever it was in
that car, I thought, the one I’d heard as I came up to the
slip. But maybe there’d been somebody here before that.
“Why . . .?” she asked behind me. “I mean, what was that
you meant about my feet?”
“I wish you’d forget that,” I said. “It was nothing, really,
and I’m sorry.”
“But why did you say it? Most women walk with their
feet about that far apart. Don’t they?”
“That’s right,” I said. “And on most women it doesn’t
mean a thing.”
“Why?”
“Because they walk like pack animals to begin with.”
“Oh . . .”
I turned then and grinned at her. “I know you must think
I’m crazy. I’m sorry. I didn’t have any right to make
personal remarks like that. But it’s just—well, you’re
touchy about the things you’re sensitive to, that’s all. I
happen to think tall women are very beautiful to look at
when they move right, and too few of them do. So meeting
one who does is apt to be a little startling. You can put
your foot in your mouth before you think, if you’re not
careful.”
“Oh.” She thought about it for a moment, and then she
said, “Well, it really wasn’t anything to get mad about,
anyway. Was it?”
She made no move to return to the sweeping. The
sullenness had disappeared; there was something almost
pathetically wistful in the way her face was opening up and
in the tentative friendliness of her voice.
You’re a dirty son of a bitch, I thought.
* * *
Her name was Jewel Tennison before she was married, and
she was twenty-four. She had lived all her life in Exeter,
the county seat, except for one whole year with an aunt in
New Orleans when she was about twelve. Her mother and
father were both dead. She had a brother who lived in
California, in Barstow. No, the name wasn’t spelled like
Girl Out Back— 50
Lord Tennyson’s. She remembered about him. She’d had
him in high school. That was with a “y,” wasn’t it? They’d
had a house in Exeter, nearly half paid for, when he lost his
job in the sheriff’s department, and they’d sold it and
bought this camp. She had also put in twelve hundred
dollars her mother had left her. She had been a drum
majorette in high school and she missed television out
here. They could probably put up high enough an antenna
to get the two Sanport channels, but there wasn’t any
electricity. She liked I Love Lucy.
No, she’d never thought about her hands that way. It was
awful the way dishwater made them so rough, but she
hadn’t paid much attention to the way they were made
underneath. Did I really think they were expressive? Where
had I learned to notice things like that about women, little
things like their hands and the way they walked? Not that
way about the way they walked—she knew I didn’t mean it
like that. It was different, kind of, wasn’t it? Most men just
—well, you know.
No, she didn’t like fishing. The fish themselves gave you
the creeps. They felt cold, and scaly. You know. And they’d
fin you if you didn’t watch out. She swam a little, but there
were water moccasins in the lake. She’d played tennis
some, in high school, but she didn’t think women should
take athletics too seriously. They got muscles. Nobody
liked women with muscles. Especially in their legs.
Oh? Well, uh—I mean, thank you. It was funny, wasn’t it,
the way I could say things that should make you mad but
they didn’t really, somehow. They just didn’t seem fresh,
the way I said them. Oh, then maybe that was it. Just the
way you would admire any other work of art, like a poem,
or a symphony? She’d never thought of it that way. But I
was just teasing her now, of course. Work of art! But it was
nice, the way I said things.
She didn’t talk about Nunn. I noticed it. From the depths
of that sullenness she was slowly drowning in she was
capable of making the crack about “being a trusty,” of
making it to a total stranger, but now it was different. It
wasn’t an act, really, I thought; when she was talking to
somebody who took the trouble to recognize her as a
human being, the hard shell of churlishness and defiance
softened and she was no longer bound by that Procrustean
Girl Out Back— 51
compulsion to trim all her utterances to fit it. I doubted
very much that she was any longer in love with Nunn, but
when she was opening her petals this way and feeling good
inside she realigned herself with the soap opera dogma
that you didn’t discuss your mate with outsiders, no matter
what kind of a sad bastard he was.
There was no difficulty in reading between the lines,
however. She was dying out here. She was going crazy
with loneliness. The trees were closing in over her and
burying her alive. She was starved—not love-starved, at
least in any physical sense, for you felt Nunn would collect
his marital accounts-receivable as they fell due even if he
probably did approach the bed with the subtlety and
finesse of Machine-gun Kelly looting a bank—but just
starved for companionship and understanding and perhaps
a little gentleness. One tender gesture, I thought, would
buy you a season pass. Not here, probably, and certainly
not now in broad daylight, but it could be arranged.
However, that was a matter to be shelved for possible
future consideration; right now all I was after was
information.
No, their business was mostly just fishermen. Some of
them came and stayed three or four days, and a few hired
George for a guide. The groceries were mostly for people
who liked to go on up the lake and camp out for a day or
two while they fished, but once in a while they did sell
some to the people who lived around in the bottom, mostly
when they ran short of something and they didn’t want to
make the long trip in to town. Like this morning. One of the
Hildebrand boys had driven over for a can of baking
powder and some evaporated milk. Yes, just before I came
in.
Keep going, honey.
Up on the road out of the bottom, and one of the boys
had a dog named Trixie? No, that wasn’t the Hildebrands.
Those people were named Sorensen. The Hildebrands
weren’t really boys, they were grown men, actually, twins,
about twenty-three or twenty-four years old, and meaner
than cat’s milk. Their names were Jack and Judson. Judson
had been in the penitentiary for cutting a man up in a fight.
They lived over on the west side of the lake with their
father and they raised ribbon cane that they made syrup
Girl Out Back— 52
out of in the fall, and lots of people thought they made
moonshine, too, all the year around. No women at all;
neither of the boys was married, and their mother was
dead. They did their own cooking, and it was probably
pretty bad. Maybe that was what made ‘em so mean. Did
they trade here much? No, very little. They didn’t get along
very well with George. They went to town every Saturday
and the old man made them buy the groceries and put
them in the car before they started getting liquored up and
looking for a dance where they could start a fight. . . .
The Hildebrands didn’t sound too promising. They
wouldn’t have spent as much here as those two twenties,
to begin with. And if they’d got hold of a lot of money
suddenly in some way, the F.B.I, wouldn’t have had any
trouble finding it out long before this. There’d have been a
steady stream of it being loosed on the countryside
through cat-houses, beer joints, and crap games, not to
mention large amounts through fines for disturbing the
peace. Granted, one of them had been in prison, but where
was the connection with Haig? Of course he d been in the
sneezer once himself, but that was two thousand miles
away in San Quentin.
But who was left? The man who had passed me on the
lake? No one else?
The upper end of the lake? Yes, there were a few people
living up there, mostly men, but you didn’t see much of
them. Except that weird one, of course. And he was gone.
But really gone. No, he hadn’t moved away; not that kind
of gone. In fact, he was down here this morning. I might
have seen him pass in his boat. What she meant was weird
gone. You know, not quite right. Oh, he was harmless, and
you felt sorry for him, but there just wasn’t any sense
trying to talk to him. Yes, he was around a lot. He came
down about twice a week after his groceries and his comic
books. . . .
Comic books? I remembered them then. So that was why
they were here. Well, you could certainly scratch him. But,
God, there must have been somebody else. I went on
listening; maybe she would come up with the right one
after awhile.
Girl Out Back— 53
George called him Two-Gun, but his real name was
Cliffords. She thought it was Walter Cliffords, or was it
Wilbur Cliffords. Well, it didn’t matter, anyway. Even to
him. About half the time he thought he was Sergeant
Friday and then for a while he’d be Wyatt Earp. When he
was Wyatt Earp he wore a big straw sombrero and a gunbelt
and holster with a six-shooter. . . . Yes, a real one.
George said it was a .36 or a .38 or something about that
size. He shot snakes with it. He’d been up there for years,
as far as she knew. Used to work for the Southern Pacific,
didn’t he, or something like that—anyway, he had a
disability pension and he didn’t do anything but hunt and
fish all the time, living alone like a hermit, and it was no
wonder he was a little, well, you know. It must be a pretty
good pension, too, because it was actually a fact he must
buy at least twenty or thirty dollars worth of comic books
and true detective magazines from them every month, to
say nothing about his groceries and the shotgun shells and
bullets for the thirty-six to shoot snakes with, and he
always paid for everything with a ten or twenty dollar bill.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that with plenty of money to live
on that way he’d want to be in town where he could have a
television set and civilized people to talk to. . . .
If you live out of your hat for a sufficient number of
years, you develop another sense. It’s a little like a built-in
Geiger counter that can trip itself and start clicking faintly
even when the rest of your mind is half asleep, and after a
while you learn to heed it. I heard it now.
. . . and somebody to look after him, the poor old man.
He really was nice, even if there was never any sense to
the way he talked, and she felt sorry for him. She always
tried to get him to drink a glass of fresh milk when he was
down here, if they happened to have any, that is, and if
George wasn’t around. George called him Two-Gun and
made fun of him. But when you thought about it, if he
wanted to live up there by himself, it was his business,
wasn’t it? She’d live in New Orleans, herself. It had
probably changed a lot since she was there when she was a
girl, but it was the most wonderful place. She remembered
she used to go down along the river and look at the ships
from all over the world with flags she didn’t even
recognize. Of course, being so young, she hadn’t been in
Girl Out Back— 54
any of the night clubs or the big restaurants, but she had
heard about them. . . .
Mr. Cliffords? Oh, sure; she could understand how a
strange case like that could intrigue you if you were
interested in people. No, she was sure he’d been up there
longer than just a year, or a year and a half. Of course,
they’d only been here a little less than a year themselves,
but she knew definitely he’d been living there three years
at least because it was about that long ago when George
had met him for the first time. He had come out here in the
swamp to arrest a Negro who’d killed another man for—
well, you know, running around with his wife. He’d come
across Mr. Cliffords then and he’d told her about it when
he got back to town, about the funny character who’d
wanted to go along and help him round up the Negro and
had used funny words like posse, and police cordon, and
apprehend the killer, and so on. It was a real scream,
George said. It was three years, all right; she knew
because it was just a few months after she and George
were married.
His age? Oh, he was pretty old. Forty-five or around
there. No, he hardly ever went to town. Maybe just once
every two or three months to cash his pension checks and
buy what few clothes he needed. No, he had never asked
them to cash one, but it seemed like the man who’d had
the place before did say something about cashing one for
him now and then if he had enough money on hand. His
mail? Oh, it came in care of the camp, at the rural mailbox
out on the county road. He never got anything, though,
except the checks. They came in a long envelope with the
name of the railroad on them. She thought it was the
Southern Pacific. He probably didn’t have any kinfolks at
all, the poor old thing.
When he did go to town he came down the lake in his
boat and hitched a ride with George. His cabin was a mile
or so above the road that came into the upper lake from
the highway, but the road wasn’t open except when it had
been dry for a long time, and he didn’t have a car anyway.
She poured two cups of the coffee she’d been making as
we talked, and came back and sat down again. We were
swung around, facing each other across the stool in the
Girl Out Back— 55
middle. I was on the left hand one, with my back to the
door.
She took a sip of the coffee and smiled. “I ought to get
back to work,” she said. “I don’t know when I’ve talked so
much.”
“I’ve enjoyed it,” I said. “Very much.”
I took out cigarettes, wondering how to get her started
on Cliffords again, and offered her one. We leaned toward
each other as I held the lighter. She was quite pretty, I
thought, the way she was now with that warm friendliness
in her eyes.
Then her face froze up as suddenly as if I’d hit her. She
was looking over my shoulder. I turned just as Nunn pulled
open the screen and stepped inside. He must move like a
cat, I thought; neither of us had heard him come up on the
porch.
I nodded, lit my own cigarette, and snapped off the
lighter. “How’s fishing?” I asked, wondering why he was
back this time of day. I hadn’t even heard the boat come
into the inlet.
He stared at me. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going
to answer. Then he said, “So-so. And how’s it been with
you? You catching a lot of fish?”
“I had a little luck at first, but it died out.”
“Maybe you just give up too easy. Or do you?”
She had said nothing at all, and I was conscious of the
tension in the room. There was ugly feeling about it, as if it
could blow up if anybody made a bad move.
He stared bleakly at the two of us and then at the coffee
cups. “I wonder if I could trouble you to go get that box of
shear-pins?” he said to her. “That is, if you think you could
spare the time.”
She got up from the stool without a word and
disappeared through the doorway behind the counter. The
silence she left behind her would have been awkward if it
had been two other people. We cared so little for each
other it didn’t seem to matter.
“You people do a fine job of overhauling motors,” he said.
I stared at him coldly. “What seems to be the trouble?”
Girl Out Back— 56
“Sheared a pin.”
“I gathered that,” I said. “But just what do you think
those pins are in there for?”
“Forget it, forget it,” he growled. “You got your money,
what do you care?”
“If the pin didn’t go you’d tear up the propeller when you
hit something, or bend the shaft.”
He struck a match on his thumbnail and lit a cigarette.
“Yeah? They’re supposed to have a friction clutch that’ll
slip.”
“The new ones do,” I said. “Not the old models.”
“Sure. Sure. I knew you’d have all the answers. I’ve had
nothing but trouble with those motors since I bought ’em.”
I finished the coffee, put a dime on the counter, and
stood up. “Try taking care of them,” I said. “It helps.”
I started for the door. He moved aside grudgingly. You
could see he was looking for trouble, but he wanted me out
of here even more. It was all right with me; I had other
things to do myself.
“You don’t want anything else?” he said.
I stopped and turned, looking into the bleak hatchet face
from a distance of about two feet. “No,” I said. “I don’t
think so. Why?”
“I just wanted to be sure. That’s all right, ain’t it?”
“I guess so,” I said.
I went on out and crossed the sun-drenched clearing to
my cabin. The argument about the motors was a phony. He
probably hadn’t even sheared a pin, or if he had he’d done
it on purpose for an excuse to sneak back. He was spying
on her. Or on me.
I wondered why. Did it have something to do with the
thing that’d brought me out here? Or did he simply believe
she was the thing? It might figure that way, to a mind like
Nunn’s, and the way he’d acted all along seemed to bear it
out.
Well, if he wasn’t sure he was keeping her at home, that
was his hard luck, not mine. I had other things to think
about, such as the fact that while this whole thing might
Girl Out Back— 57
have appeared to be mildly goofy to begin with it was now
completely insane.
You had all these pieces of evidence. They interlocked.
You put them all together, and you had the answer. So
what was it?
One of the great police organizations of the world was
shaking down North America trying to find the loot from a
bank robbery, while some dreamy birdbrain in his second
childhood was serenely buying comic books with it.
Move over, Cliffords, I thought. I’ll bring up an armful
and we’ll trade. Dibs on Superman.
Girl Out Back— 58
Six
I cut the motor and came to rest beneath dense
overhanging foliage along the bank. It was a little after one
p.m. I had come over a mile, I thought, since entering the
mouth of the winding waterway up which Cliffords had
gone with his boat, and I could as well be lost in some
remote back country of the Amazon drainage. No sound
broke the stillness of midday. The channel, about a
hundred yards wide at this point, materialized out of the
timber a quarter of a mile behind me and disappeared
around another bend just ahead.
I opened the tackle box and unfolded the large map of
the county. Here was the channel I was on; it was the
easternmost arm of the lake, next to the highway and
roughly paralleling it at a distance varying from two to
three miles. I was about—say, at this point on it. Now.
There was the access road coming in from the highway. It
turned off the road a mile or so south of that tricky S-bend.
I sat still for a moment, frowning thoughtfully at the map
without actually seeing it. What the devil was it? I
shrugged, and lit a cigarette. It didn’t matter. Now, here.
The dirt road, merely a thin line on the map, dead-ended
on this channel. I glanced at the scale at the bottom of the
map and estimated the distance. Say another four miles.
And beyond it somewhere was the shack Cliffords lived in.
Girl Out Back— 59
She’d said a mile or two; I wondered if she had ever been
up there herself.
I put the map back in the box and took the ten-dollar bill
out of my wallet. It was an old one, creased and limp from
the thousands of hands it had been through and like any
one of a million others except for that narrow stain along
the edge at one end. I compared it with the twenty. The
stain was exactly the same color, a reddish shade of brown,
and it was on only that one place. Why never anywhere
else? There was one very good answer to that, I thought,
and the picture it brought to mind made my skin prickle
with excitement. Wherever it had been to pick up that
discoloration, there had been a lot of it, stacked in bundles
so that only this edge was exposed to the contaminating
agent. You didn’t need a doctorate in physics to realize
that a mere handful of banknotes, thrown loosely into a box
or something, seldom stood on end of their own volition or
stuck straight out from the side with no support. I
moistened a finger and rubbed it along the stain; it
smudged slightly and a faint trace of it came off. It was the
same stuff.
Then I snorted. Precise chemical analysis by the Godwin
laboratories. Millions of compounds were water soluble,
and the minute dried crystals of practically any substance
could be dispersed and spread with water. I was chasing
moonbeams, and when I caught a sackful I’d build an arc
light.
Cliffords was absurd. This entire thing was absurd. It
almost had to be Haig, or Haig’s ill-gotten swag, that they
were seeking, because he was the biggest crime story, and
the most baffling one, of the past decade, and because they
had shown me his picture. So where was the connection
between that coldly violent killer and this harmless old
pixie getting his kicks out of space ships and Peter Rabbit?
Why, of course, I thought sarcastically; you could see the
tie-in almost immediately. Cliffords had at one time been
an employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and Haig
was born in California. Fool-proof, wasn’t it? And to narrow
it down even further, they each had one left hand. Or at
least, I supposed they did, or had.
Look at it, I thought. Cliffords was already living up here
alone in this isolated backwater before Haig had even
Girl Out Back— 60
begun his fantastic career. I’d established that. Haig would
be twenty-eight now; Cliffords was forty-five, or around
there. There could be no family relationship, or even
nodding acquaintance, between the two; anybody Haig had
even borrowed a match from in the past ten years had
been run down and checked out by the F.B.I.
So what did you have? You had nothing.
No-o. Not quite. No matter how fantastic it was, you still
had the almost dead certainty that this derailed leprechaun
was spending Haig’s money.
I cranked the motor.
Around each bend the next reach lay glaring and empty
under the sun, as devoid of any signs of life or human
habitation as the last. After about thirty minutes I began
watching the right-hand shore for the end of the road. I
spotted it shortly, an opening in the trees where the bank
had been cut down into a sloping ramp for launching boats
off trailers. There were the remains of several old
campfires, but no cars were visible. I slowed a little and
began keeping a lookout for the cabin or a boat landing. A
little over a mile ahead as I came around a bend the
channel spread out to some two hundred yards in width
and ran straight for almost a mile with an extensive bed of
pads along the left side. About half-way up it I saw what I
was looking for. A skiff was pulled up on a shelving bit of
beach in a small cove on the right. The motor was tilted up
on the stern. Cliffords wasn’t in sight, but as I went past I
had a glimpse of weather-beaten gray back among the
trees. That would be the cabin.
I went on without slowing. He would probably hear me,
but there would be nothing strange about an occasional
fisherman going by. I cleared the next bend and continued
another mile or two before I cut the motor and set up the
fly-rod again. An hour went by as I fished with indifferent
success, merely going through the motions. I refilled the
motor from the fuel can and started back. The skiff was
still in the cove. I didn’t see Cliffords anywhere. He
probably took a nap this time of the afternoon, or caught
up on his reading.
I wound on down the channel until I was sure he could
no longer hear the motor. The new models are a lot quieter
Girl Out Back— 61
than the old ones used to be. Just before rounding the last
bend approaching the camp-site and launching ramp at the
end of the road I cut the motor and swung into the bank
where the limbs of a large tree overhung the water.
Working the boat back under the screen of foliage, I made
it fast, and stepped out.
There was no trail. I kept open water in view from time
to time as I slipped through the underbrush and timber. It
was intensely still and very hot now, and my shirt became
soaked with perspiration. An outraged blue jay called me a
Sunday driver and expressed his doubts as to my
legitimacy, and once I flushed out a wild sow with a litter
of pigs. About twenty minutes later I swung to the left
again and eased back out to the lake shore. Not far
enough; I was still south of the last bend. I went on for
another two hundred yards and tried once more. This was
fine. I was just past the bend and I could see most of the
long reach spread out ahead of me and to the right. The
cove where his boat was beached was on this side, of
course, and hidden because of the angle, but it didn’t
matter. If he came out, I’d see him. I sat down in the shade
with my back against the trunk of a tree, and lit a
cigarette. It was ten minutes past three.
There was no guarantee, of course, that he would go out.
With 365 days a year in which to fish if he wanted, he
probably took a day off now and then. Well, if he didn’t
leave the place, there was nothing I could do about it; I’d
just have to try again tomorrow.
An hour dragged by. Mosquitoes buzzed around my face.
I smoked more cigarettes, being careful to throw the butts
in the water. This was an occupation for a grown man, I
thought with disgust; why didn’t I go on up there and join
him and we could take turns being Dick Tracy? Of all the
stupid. . . .
I heard his motor start. He came out of the cove and
headed this way. I stepped back a little further from the
bank. He cut his motor and came to rest almost opposite
me, near the beds of pads along the other shore. He set up
a casting outfit and began fishing, kicking the boat along
with the oars now and then. Good.
Girl Out Back— 62
I faded back and turned, hurrying now. In a few minutes
I came up in back of the clearing. I stopped short, studying
it intently as I remained motionless in the edge of the
timber. Nothing moved anywhere. The two unpainted old
buildings slumped dejectedly in an attitude of timeless and
perpetually arrested collapse, lying partly in shadow now
as the late afternoon sun slanted across the trees on my
right. The far one, and the larger of the two, was the cabin
itself, roofed with split oak shakes and sitting on round
foundation blocks sawn from logs. A section of rusting
stovepipe extended above the roof here at the rear and was
guyed with baling wire. The one small window I could see
was open. There was no door in back. The other building, a
small shed about the size of a one-car garage, was nearer
and to my right. Weeds were grown up around the rear of
it. I could see no window, but presumably the door would
be around in front. I went carefully back over the ground
again, searching for a dog or for any evidence of one.
There was none. Of course, he might be in the cabin.
I slipped noiselessly up to the rear window and peeped
in. There was only one room, and it was empty. Opposite
me was the door, which stood open. I could catch glimpses
of water beyond, through the trees. Hurrying around the
corner, I cased the terrain in front. The cove, where he
kept his boat, was about fifty yards away. I could see only
patches of the lake beyond, in the direction where he was
fishing, but it was all right. He should be good for an hour
or two, and I’d hear his motor if he started back. I stepped
inside.
It was not very large, perhaps fifteen by twenty feet, with
small windows on three sides and the one door here in
front. In the rear there was a wood-burning cookstove, a
woodbox, a pine table, two chairs, and a large wooden case
covered with oilcloth which presumably served as a
cooking table and sink because it was littered with dirty
dishes. Some shelves along the wall held a supply of staple
groceries and some dishes and cooking utensils. A fryingpan
and two large pots hung from nails driven into the wall
above the stove. At the right in the front part of the room
was an unmade bed, while on the left was an old chest of
drawers whose veneer was peeling, a table, and a trunk. A
Girl Out Back— 63
pump shotgun and a .22 rifle stood in the corner next to
the trunk.
Everywhere you looked, on the table and on the trunk,
under the bed, and piled on the floor around the sides of
the room, were stacks of old comic books and cheap true
crime magazines whose covers ran largely to toothsome
and improbable girls who had died violently in attitudes
calculated to display the optimum expanse of thigh. The
floor hadn’t been swept for some time. I looked around at
the dirty dishes and the rumpled bed. Well, I hadn’t come
out here to inspect him for a Good Housekeeping seal of
approval.
I started with the chest. On top of it there was nothing
except a folded towel and a pair of thick-lensed spectacles.
I slid out the top drawer. There were some handkerchiefs
in it and his shaving gear and a small mirror, and two
boxes of .38 caliber ammunition. Two envelopes bore the
printed return address of an office of the Southern Pacific
Railroad. They had been opened, but through the glassine
windows I could see there was something still inside.
Maybe the checks came with a voucher attached; I’d be
able to find out just how large the pension was. I was
reaching for one of them when I spied the corner of his
wallet sticking out from under the handkerchiefs. I
hurriedly slipped it out and flipped it open. It held seven
ten-dollar bills, a five, and four singles. But not one of them
had a stain along the edge. There was simply no trace of it
at all.
I felt suddenly let down and cheated. Taking the tens
over to the window, I turned them carefully in the light,
examining them all over. It was no use. They were just like
any of millions of others. I shrugged, and returned all the
money to the wallet. There was no identification in it
except an old New Mexico driver’s liscense that had
expired in 1953. It was made out to Walter E. Cliffords,
and gave an address in Lordsburg. He was five feet six
inches tall and weighed 152. Hair, br. Eyes, bl. He was
born in 1910.
I dropped the wallet back in the drawer and reached for
one of the envelopes. When I slid the voucher out, I gave a
little start of surprise. The check was still attached to it. It
was the same story in the other one. I rooted among the
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handkerchiefs and came up with one more. The checks
were all in the amount of $58.50, payable to Walter E.
Cliffords, and he hadn’t cashed one since May. He must be
popular with the accounting department, I thought. And
suffering from no shortage of money, in spite of the fact
she’d said he spent nearly half that amount on comic books
and magazines each month. Well, he might get something
from Social Security . . . no, you had to be sixty-five, didn’t
you? One thing was clear, however; his finances didn’t ring
true at all.
The other two drawers held nothing but clothing. I closed
them and turned to the trunk. It wasn’t locked. Lifting off
the stacks of magazines, I raised the lid, conscious of a
strong odor of moth crystals. The compartmented tray on
top held a hodge-podge of miscellaneous stuff, shotgun
shells, plastic boxes of bass flies and spinning lures, guncleaning
equipment, some bottles of old patent medicine,
and another pair of spectacles in a case. I lifted it out and
set it aside. The bottom was full of winter clothing. I
snatched it all out, feeling in the pockets of the jackets and
the raincoat. There was nothing else in it except some
magazines lying on the bottom.
Well, what now? I shook my head, still crouched on my
knees beside the trunk and staring musingly into its
emptiness. There should have been something. Something
besides you, honey, I thought.
The uppermost magazine was another of those true
detective things. On its cover a creamy-textured and
extremely loth maiden in a Place Pigalle outfit was trying
to stay at least one jump ahead of a hearty type with a
cleaver. Ah, youth. What mad pursuit? . . . What pipes and
timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Wait a minute . . . . I frowned thoughtfully. Why in the
trunk? He must have a half-ton of these things stacked
around the room; what was special about this one? I
grabbed it up. There were two more under it, another
crime magazine of a different brand and one of those
pocket-sized digests that can reduce Gibbon to four
hundred words. I felt the stirrings of an illogical
excitement; here I was going back into left field again. The
digest magazine displayed its table of contents on the
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cover. I ran my eye down it rapidly. Half-way down I
stopped.
Wild Bill Haig, Enigma.
So?
I dropped it and began leafing frantically through one of
the crime books for its table of contents. There it was. I
gulped it at one devouring glance, and drew a blank. Was I
wrong again? I started back, more slowly. Girls in
Purgatory . . . Clue of the Bloodstained Something . . . Ice-
Cold Blonde . . . Nude Something Or Other . . . Is This Man
Among the Living? . . .
Hold it. Try page forty-three.
I found it, and then breathed softly. It was Haig, all right.
The next one was easy; it was the lead story. Will They
Ever Solve the Mystery of Bill Haig?
I don’t know, pal, but give me a little time; I’m working
on it. I closed the magazine and dropped it softly back into
the trunk.
I put everything back in the trunk the way it had been,
closed it, replaced the magazines on top, and went to work.
I tore the rumpled bed apart and turned and probed the
mattress and pillows. I pulled the drawers out of the chest
and looked under and in back of them. I looked in the
stove, and pulled the pots away from the wall to see behind
them. I tore the piles of magazines down and shuffled
them. Every few minutes I stepped to the door to check the
cove again, and then returned to the methodical
ransacking. I was careful to put everything back the way it
was, but I missed nothing. I even went through the
groceries and pried the lids off three one-gallon pails of
syrup. It was a complete blank. The only money in this
cabin was that in his wallet.
Of course it was too big to hide in a place like this. That
was obvious, but he should have some of it here where it
was convenient. If I could just find one of those twentydollar
bills—then I’d know. After all, the magazine articles
could be a coincidence. Maybe he idolized criminals, or
collected Haigiana the way some people collected data on
Sherlock Holmes. Hell, there could be half a dozen good
explanations for it. I had to find something more concrete.
Girl Out Back— 66
I went around back and entered the shed. There wasn’t
too much light, even with the door open, but my eyes
gradually became accustomed to the dimness. One side of
it was stacked with stove-wood. There was a bench on the
right that held the remains of an outboard motor, a fivegallon
can of fuel, and a dozen or so beat-up old duck
decoys. A pair of oars leaned against the rear wall. The
floor of hard-packed earth, under close scrutiny, showed
no indication of having ever been dug up. An old hunting
coat hung from the wall above the bench. I took it down
and went through all the pockets. I was working against
time now, beginning to feel jittery as I listened for his
motor. What about the wood? There wasn’t time to tear all
that down and get it piled back. I’d just have to return
tomorrow. Was there anywhere else? I looked swiftly
around. nothing remained except the underside of the
bench. Sitting, I slid back under it and looked up. The light
was too poor here to see much more than its general
outline. I fished the lighter from my pocket and flipped it,
holding it above the level of my eyes, and then the sudden
intake of my breath made a little gasping sound in the
stillness.
The framing of the bench was of two-by-sixes, a long one
across the front and shorter ones running from front to
back between it and the wall. To the bottom of a pair of
these, at the front of the bench, a short section of plank
had been nailed, forming a pocket that was accessible only
from down here. And sitting in the pocket was a small
cereal carton. I snatched it down and slid from under the
bench.
My lips pursed in a noiseless whistle as I lifted them out.
They still had the paper bands on them, two blocks of tens
and that sheaf of brand-new twenties. Intense excitement
was running along my nerves as I stepped quickly to the
door and shot a glance down toward the cove. I couldn’t
see it, because the cabin was in my line of sight. But hell,
I’d have heard the motor, wouldn’t I? I forgot him, having
eyes now only for these three bundles of currency. The
twenties and one pad of the tens were marked with that
telltale rusty stain along the bottom edge; the other block
of tens showed no trace of it. I smiled. I had everything
Girl Out Back— 67
now that I need to know, except where it was actually
hidden, and that I’d find out. But first I had to stop them.
I shoved the twenties in my pocket, put the tens back in
the carton, and replaced it under the bench. Just as I was
about to straighten, I heard him. And he wasn’t out on the
lake in his boat; he was in the cabin.
What I’d heard was the rattle of a stove lid. I cursed
myself for a fool; why hadn’t I had sense enough to realize
he might fish all the way back to the cove and not start his
motor at all? Could I get out? It would be risky, but still
possible. The door of the shed was in plain view of the rear
window of the cabin, but I could make it if I watched my
chance. I eased up to the door and peered out. Then icy
gooseflesh prickled across my back. He had come out of
the cabin and was just rounding the corner, headed this
way. He was coming to the shed for wood.
There was no way out. I whirled, searching frantically for
a place to hide and knowing there was none except the
ridiculous and almost certainly futile gesture of crawling
under the bench. I dived under it and squeezed as far back
into the corner as I could go. He came in. I could see his
legs, almost to his hips, and I could see a little of the barrel
of that .38 sticking out of the holster swinging against his
thigh. He was Wyatt Earp. I held my breath, and prayed
that if he looked around under here I wouldn’t remind him
too much of one of the Clanton boys.
He was picking up wood and piling it into his arm. I
could have touched him. I stared with horrible fascination,
and then looked away and tried not even thinking. He
might feel the stare, or hear the thought.
He went out.
I was weak as the tension snapped, and I wanted to sit
there and rest. Instead, I forced myself to slide noiselessly
from under the bench and peer out at him. He was almost
to the corner. He was turning it. I moved. Two steps out
the door and a hard turn to the right and I was going
around the side of the shed that was away from the cabin. I
was in back of it and safe when I heard the wood fall into
the box as he threw it down. I sighed. There was nothing to
it now; all I had to do was fade back into the timber while
keeping the shed between me and that window.
Girl Out Back— 68
When I got back to the boat the sun was far down and
the waterway was in shadow. Squatting on the bank under
the trees, I hurriedly slipped the twenties from my pocket
and counted them. There were forty-seven. It was even
better than I’d dared hope. There was only one outstanding
and unaccounted for.
The percentages were in my favor. If he’d spent it in
town he’d done it more than three months ago, because he
hadn’t been there since. The Nunns didn’t have it. And if
they’d had it and spent it, there was a good chance the
continuity of ownership was showing a blank spot or two
somewhere along the line because otherwise the F.B.I,
would be here sitting right in my lap at this moment.
I slipped seven of them into my wallet with the one I
already had. Then, sliding over a little until I was right on
the edge of the bank where it dropped off into the water, I
began crumpling the rest and placing them in a little pile.
The last one I folded lengthwise, twice.
I’d always wanted to do this, just once. Putting a
cigarette in my mouth, I flipped the lighter, ignited the end
of the folded bill, and lit the smoke. Then I shoved the
torch into the pile and puffed contentedly as eight hundred
dollars flared up and burned to ash. I very carefully
brushed all the residue off into the lake, and then threw a
bailing can full of water over it to be sure. Cranking the
motor, I looked at my watch.
It was a quarter to six. With a little pushing, I should be
able to make it to Exeter before that north-bound bus went
through for Kansas City and Chicago.
Girl Out Back— 69
Seven
Nunn and his fisherman hadn’t come in yet, and I saw
nothing of her as I made fast to the float. I shaved and
changed clothes, and walked across to the lunch-room. It
was empty. “Mrs. Nunn,” I called.
She appeared in the doorway. There was something
withdrawn and distant in her face as she saw me. I had the
impression she wished I’d go away.
“I just wanted to tell you I was going into town for
dinner,” I said. “Is there anything I can get you?”
She shook her head. “Thanks, I guess not. Are you going
to fish tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I said. I started out.
“I . . .” she said. I turned. She tried again. “I’m
sorry. . . .”
I’d already forgotten the unpleasant scene at noon, but
no doubt it’d been a lot rougher on her. She had to live
with the surly bastard. I smiled at her. “Forget it. I
shouldn’t be hanging around here interfering with your
work, anyway.”
She made no reply. When I went out she was still looking
after me. I drove out of the bottom and over to State 41,
where I turned right. Exeter was about twenty miles to the
south. It was the largest town in the area, a county seat of
about twelve thousand. I bought a cheap money clip in a
Girl Out Back— 70
drug-and-sundries store that was still open, and drove over
and parked near the bus station. Folding the eight twentydollar
bills plus a five and a couple of singles of my own, I
clipped them together and shoved them in my pocket. It
was after dark now. When the north-bound bus came in I
walked through the waiting-room and out into the ramp. It
was a rest stop; the driver and most of the passengers got
out. I went aboard and sat down about two-thirds of the
way back. Easing the money from my pocket, I set it on the
floor and pushed it under the seat ahead of me with my
foot. Nobody was paying any attention to me. I sat there a
few minutes longer and then made the startling discovery
that I was out of cigarettes. I got off, went back through
the waiting-room, and returned to the station wagon. I was
sitting there smoking ten minutes later when the bus
pulled out. The chances were very good it wouldn’t be
discovered until the bus was serviced and cleaned at the
end of the run, either in Kansas City or Chicago. A hundred
and sixty-seven dollars with no identification attached
packed the court rather heavily in favor of Godwin’s Ruling
on Treasure-Trove, so it’d probably get back into
circulation without disturbing the lost-and-found
department. It couldn’t do any harm, and if it worked it
would materially ease the F.B.I, pressure around here. I
had to have time, and this was one way to buy it.
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