I squatted on the floor beside the saddle and my fingers itched to open up the bags, but I didn’t do it for a time. I squatted there and tried to fight down the thought that had popped into my head—not that I wanted to do away with it, to banish it, but rather to bring it down to proper perspective, carve it down in size a bit.
Now let’s be logical, I told myself. Let’s put down the facts we have. First there is a saddle and the saddle is a fact. It is something one can see and touch. It fell out of the sky and that is another fact—for I had seen it fall. It had fallen after the Galloping Goose had gone through a rather strange maneuver—and that probably could be better listed as an observation rather than a fact.
It all seemed clear to me. The saddle had been up there in the sky and the Galloping Goose had come along and collided with it. After the collision the saddle had fallen from the sky. But, I cautioned myself, I could not be sure of that. I could be sure the saddle had fallen from the sky, but I couldn’t be positively sure the plane had caused the fall. Fairly sure, of course, but not entirely so.
Questions rattled in my mind, and on the heel of questions, answers. I pushed both the questions and the answers back and stayed looking at the saddlebags. They lay quite flat, and there was no bulge to them. Although, I told myself, there might be something in them. It wouldn’t need to be too much. A clue was all I needed. A clue that would give some support to that one big answer roaring in my brain.
I hunkered down and opened up the first bag. There was nothing in it. I opened the second bag and there was nothing in it, either. Empty—as empty as Stefan’s pockets, as empty as the Lodge.
I got up and staggered to the chair and sat weakly in it. The saddle sprawled upon the porch floor and I tried not to look at it.
A time machine, I asked myself—a traveling time machine? You got into the saddle and rose up in the air, then you turned it on and went where you wished in time. But, hell, I told myself, it wouldn’t work. Even if you could blind yourself to the impossibility of time travel, there still were a dozen easy reasons why it wouldn’t work. I must be insane, I told myself, to even think about it. But tell me, said that mocking, illogical portion of my mind that I didn’t even know I had—tell me this, what would a saddle be doing up there in the sky?
I got down on the porch floor on all fours and looked the saddle over. I examined it inch by inch. Hoping, I suppose, for an impression somewhere in the leather which would read: TEXAS SADDLE AND LEATHER CORP., HOUSTON, or something of the sort, anything at all to take my imagination off the hook. I found nothing. There was no imprint or tag to tell the saddle’s origin. I felt cold feet walking on my spine. I picked up the saddle and took it in the cabin, tossed it on the floor of the closet off my bedroom and shut the door. Then, halfway back to the porch, I turned around and went back again and threw a pair of trousers and an old sweatshirt over the saddle so it would be hidden. I went back to the porch and sat there, thinking I should get at the book but knowing I’d have to wait for a while before I would get to it. I tried to watch the birds and chipmunks and the other creatures that skittered about the woods, but couldn’t seem to work up too much interest in them. I thought about going fishing but decided not to. After a while I cooked some eggs and bacon and, after eating, went out on the porch again.
About three o’clock the sheriff drove up, parked his car and came up on the porch to sit with me.
«I’m not getting anywhere,» he said. «I checked the records and the Lodge is owned by a legal firm down in Chicago. They hold the deed and pay the taxes and I suppose that’s owning it. So I phoned and got an answering service. At one thirty in the afternoon I got an answering service. And it took a while before they told me it was an answering service. Now, just why should a firm of lawyers be using an answering service at that hour of the day? They wouldn’t all of them be in court. They wouldn’t all of them be off on vacation, and even if they were, there’d be at least one secretary to take their calls.»
«Maybe,» I said, «it is a one-man operation.»
The sheriff grunted. «Doesn’t sound like it. Jackson, Smith, Dill, Hoen, and Ecklund. Took the answering service gal half a minute to get it out of her mouth. She sort of sang it. She had to sing it, I figured, or she’d never make it. Say, where is Piper?»
«He had to go back to the university.»
«He didn’t tell me he was going back.»
«He just failed to mention it,» I said. «He’d known for several days he had to go back today. Any reason he shouldn’t have?»
«No,» said the sheriff. «I guess not. No doubt at all what happened to Stefan. You wouldn’t remember, would you, what his last name was?»
«I never knew it,» I said.
«Well, so much for that,» the sheriff said. «A little embarrassing to have a corpse you don’t know the name of. Especially a man who had lived here as long as he had. Stopped at the Lodge on my way up and there’s still no one there.»
The sheriff stayed for an hour or more. He acted like a man who didn’t want to go back to town, who hated to get back to his office. We talked about the fishing, and he said that some day he’d come out and fish Killdeer Creek with me. We talked about grouse. I told him I’d seen a fair amount of them. We talked about the old days when people hunted ginseng in the hills and how you almost never found any ginseng now. Finally he got up and left.
I listened to the six o’clock radio news and again at ten and nothing was said about the Galloping Goose running into anything after it left Pine Bend. I went to bed after that, figuring that I wouldn’t sleep, for I was still too excited, but I did. It had been a trying day and I was all worn out.
After breakfast I decided to go fishing. When I got to the bridge over Killdeer Creek a woman was standing on the bridge. I had taken a good look at the Lodge when I drove past and it still seemed to be deserted. But the woman was someone I had never seen before, and for no good reason I immediately figured she was someone from the Lodge. She was a blonde, a skinny sort of woman. She wore vivid yellow shorts and a skimpy yellow bra, but the bra seemed quite adequate, for she hadn’t much to cover. Her hair was skinned back from her face and hung in a short ponytail down her back. She was leaning on the bridge railing, looking down into the pool.
When I pulled the car over on the shoulder of the road just short of the bridge and got out, she turned her face toward me. The face was as skinny as her body. The structure of the jaw and cheekbones stood out beneath the skin, and the face had a sharp, almost pointed look.
«Is this where you found him?» she asked.
«I was not the one who found him,» I said, «but, yes, this is where he was found. On the other side of the creek, just below the bridge.»
«Stefan was a fool,» she said.
«I didn’t know the man,» I said. I thought it strange that she should speak as she did of him. After all, the man was dead.
«Were you a friend of his?» I asked.
«He had no friends,» she said. «He had this silly hobby.»
«No hobby,» I said, «is really silly if the hobbyist gets something out of it. I know a man who collects matchbook covers.» I didn’t know anyone who collected matchbook covers. I just thought it was a good example of a rather pointless hobby.
«Did he have anything on him?» she asked. «Anything in his pockets?»
It seemed a rather strange question for her to ask, but I answered her.
«Nothing,» I said. «No identification. They don’t know who he was.»
«Why, of course they do,» she said. «They know he was Stefan. That’s all we ever knew of him. That’s all anyone needs to know.»