Rawlins said, “Nothing would surprise me now,” and started down the road toward camp.
I stayed where I was. I thought that, after all, somebody responsible should stay with our three dead and the other dead man who’d been in the plot to kill them.
Though I’d have kept no death watch for him alone. If he’d been buried at that time I’d have danced on his grave.
The rest of the night passed quietly. It got cold along toward morning but I was wrapped in some extra blankets and didn’t mind. And Rawlins and Lieutenant Ward came with a truck and a dozen of the boys, just after breakfast time. They both looked as though they hadn’t slept a wink.
Rawlins said: “Mr. Bryant, please take the truck and a driver and go back to the camp. Send the truck back for us at once. Lieutenant Ward and I’ll straighten up things here. We can’t leave these bodies here until the coroner arrives, regardless of what the law is in the matter. I will take full responsibility for their removal.”
I said: “I could stay and help you.”
He said: “You will be in charge of the camp in my absence. Lieutenant Ward is now under technical arrest, though the three of us understand this is a formality. I’ve sent a crew of boys out to try and find where the telephone line is broken. They will report to you if they return before I get back. Use your own judgement if anything comes up.”
I said, “Yes, sir!” and went up the road to the truck.
The driver was a boy I’d not noticed before, and he said: “You’re Bryant, eh — the guy that tackled the hold-up man in the cook shanty?”
I said he’d guessed right, but that the less I heard about the hold-up in the cookhouse, the better I’d like it.
He grinned and said: “Sure! You only been here a couple of days but the guys think you’re O.K. Because of you going for that guy like that, I guess. They think the captain’s a big heel. It’s do this and do that and say ‘sir’ to him and all that. Like in the army. They like Ward though, and Comiskey was a good guy.”
I said: “Captain Rawlins is an old army man who’s never worked with raw recruits like you fellows. That’s all. You’ll find he’ll fight for you, if you’re in the right, just as fast as he’ll raise hell with you if you’re in the wrong.”
“Maybe so,” said the driver. He didn’t sound as though he believed me. “The guys say you killed a man down there last night. That right?”
I thought about how I’d shot the man who hadn’t done the shooting in the road — how the one I’d really wanted to kill had gotten away the night before. Twice.
I said: “Yeah! That’s right! The wrong man!”
“That’s what the looie did,” he said. “This guy Joe Biggers. Biggers had a pistol in his hand though, and he’d shot it three times at the looie. Or at least the looie thought Biggers was shooting at him, or he wouldn’t have shot back. It’s a hell of a note. What’ll they do to him?”
I said I didn’t know and we wheeled into the camp.
I got cleaned up and bummed a late breakfast from the cook, and then went over to the office just in case something came up where the boys would have to see whoever was in charge. None of the working parties had been sent out and the whole camp was standing around in little groups, talking. The flag was at half-mast, and that made the whole affair a little unreal to me. It didn’t seem possible that a thing like murder could happen like it had.
It was all crazy — none of it made sense. People aren’t killed for no reason at all — and I couldn’t think of any sensible reason.
And then Richard Deiss came in the office and said: “Can I talk to you a minute, mister?”
I said he could and he stood in front of the desk, as though he was on parade.
I said: “Sit down and be comfortable. I’m not an officer, Deiss. I don’t think you understand — they’re bound by rules and regulations. They can’t act as they’d often like to — they have to behave according to what’s in the book. It finally gets to be a habit with them.”
He growled, “They put on a show, is all,” but he sat down. He was a big kid, about twenty I thought, and he had a suspicious way of tilting his head and looking at you from the side.
I said: “What’s the matter? I’m supposed to be looking after things until the captain gets back, so you can talk to me, if you want. Or if you’d rather wait for the captain it’s all right with me.”
He said: “That heel! It’s you I wanted to see. Maybe you can make the guy see sense. I told the guys there was no use in talking to him.”
“Talking to him about what?”
“They going to move the camp now?”
“I wouldn’t know. I doubt it. I doubt if any man in the world could move Captain Rawlins away from here until the government told him to go.”
Deiss nodded, as though he’d expected to hear that. He said: “Well, I’m telling you. You won’t have no camp. It’ll just be you and the cook and the looie that’s still alive. And the captain. Maybe even the cook will go, too.”
“I don’t understand that, Deiss.”
He gave me a mean look and said: “There’s a hell of a lot going on here you don’t understand, mister. And us guys don’t either. All we know is there’s been three guys killed in a truck, and the truck was made to go over that bank on purpose. The road was fixed so the truck couldn’t miss. A pal of mine gets killed because the looie don’t know which way to shoot. Another guy gets shot in the ham, coming back from the truck. There’s a stick-up in the kitchen and you and the cook get bopped on the head. The telephone line is cut and it can’t get fixed because whoever cut it took a big chunk of wire along with him. Somebody’s trying to hole us up in here and kill us off. The next thing, they’ll dynamite the bunkhouses when we’re asleep. We’re going to get out, whether Rawlins likes it or not.”
I said: “It doesn’t do any good to tell me about it, Deiss. I just work here. I understand Joe Biggers, the boy Lieutenant Ward shot last night, was a pal of yours. That right?”
“Yeah! We run around together back East. He come along because I joined up. And then he gets killed because Ward don’t know nothing about a gun. Ward ought to get life for that play.”
I’d found out what I wanted to know — and what I’d been afraid of. I said: “How was it that you happened to tell me about this?”
“The guys picked me out.”
“It wouldn’t be because you’re back of all this talk about getting out, would it?”
“Hell, no!”
“Any idea of why anybody should be around that cookhouse last night? What was Biggers doing there?”
“Maybe he was planning on cracking a window and getting a little something extra to eat.”
“Listen, Deiss,” I said. “I know you think you’re a smart guy that knows all the answers. Now I’m going to do a little talking. In the first place, Biggers wasn’t trying to break into the cookhouse. The cook heard him fooling around there and caught him at it. He had a gun and he shot three times at Lieutenant Ward, before Lieutenant Ward shot and killed him.” And then I took a chance and added: “And you were seen there with Biggers, just before the trouble started. One of the other boys saw you and Biggers together.”
“Who seen us? Tell me that.”
I laughed and said: “That will all come out later, Deiss. You’re skating on thin ice, fellow. I’d stop this talk about leaving the camp if I were you. In other words, Deiss, I’d watch my step. Right now is no time for trouble-making.”
He said, “You go to hell!” and got up and sauntered out.
I wanted to lay Deiss across my lap and paddle him — which might have been a job because he was almost as big as I was — but I’d have welcomed the work right at that time. Then I remembered what he’d said about the telephone line and went out and over to the bunkhouse. The boy with the corporal’s stripes on his sleeve, who’d been in charge of the detail, was there, and he was talking to Deiss who hadn’t wasted a second in getting hold of him.