“I just must die, poor butterfly!”
Still holding me to him, he reached in his pocket and brought out a palmful of shiny dimes, and flung them in my face.
Then a shot went off outside in front of the house. It sounded like right in the area-way where the knifed cop was. Then five more in quick succession. The blare of the music must have brought the stabbed cop to. He must’ve got help.
He turned his head toward the boarded-up windows to listen. I tore myself out of his embrace, stumbled backwards, and the knife point seemed to leave a long circular scratch around my side, but he didn’t jam it in in time, let it trail off me.
I got out into the hall before he could grab me again, and the rest of it was just kind of a flight-nightmare. I don’t remember going down the stairs to the basement; I think I must have fallen down them without hurting myself — just like a drunk does.
Down there a headlight came at me from the tunnel-like passage. It must have been just a pocket-torch, but it got bigger and bigger, then went hurling on by. Behind it a long succession of serge-clothed figures brushed by me.
I kept trying to stop each one, saying: “Where’s Nick? Are you Nick?”
Then a shot sounded upstairs. I heard a terrible death cry: “Muriel!” and that was all.
When I next heard anything it was Nick’s voice. His arm was around me and he was kissing the cobwebs and tears off my face.
“How’s Ginger?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said, “and how’s Nick?”
Wild Onions
by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan
The rarest form of detective story — a humorous tale in dialect. This excellent one is about hillbillies.
Old Bushwhacker never does anything by halves. When it rains in Bushwhacker, medium-sized Indian Runner ducks perish in the gully washes; and when Bushwhacker gets a big dry, shorthorn steers are lost for weeks in the dust clouds. Hence I knew that when Doc Fraser, unterrified Pike County Democrat and Bushwhacker’s historian, announced there had been a murder mystery in Bushwhacker it must have been a humdinger.
“Humdinger? ’Twas, dern you!” said Doc. “My back hair still won’t lay right to the comb — an’ when I go to the root cellar these nights I alius carry two lanterns. A mouse squeak can start me a-shiverin’ and a-shakin’—”
“That scary, Doc?”
“Shet up, son,” said Doc, severely, taking a three-breath swig of sorghum beer to steady his nerves, “an’ be glad you wasn’t along with me the night I left old man Cunningham Yackey’s place. I’d been a-doctorin’ three colicky heifers till nigh on ter one in the morning. Them heifers all taken a notion to die on me. They didn’t pass on peaceable like a good veter’nary doctor like me has a right to expect — but with a powerful groaning and sighing.
Thet started the rats in the walls of Cunningham’s old barn to scuffling and squealing. And on top of thet the wind stirred up drafts in the barn — I dassn’t turn my head but whut a draft would go ‘Pooooh’ agin the back of my neck. Like a ghost a-whisperin’, son.
All of a sudden I remembered how Missus Otily Yackey had hanged herself up in the loft. And on top of thet a rusty hinge started a-screeching. I should have stopped long enough to snap shet the locks on my medicine satchel, but I knowed I wasn’t man enough.
I went away f’m thet barn, son, and dumb inter my car. An’ dern’ if I didn’t see two eyes looking at me in the rear-vision mirror. Whut say? Nope ’twasn’t nothing but a hoot owl thet had flew inter the back seat, but it give me right smart of a turn. I chased the hoot owl and whilst I was doin’ it I taken a look at the moon. Then I knowed.
Some human body was dead. Thet moon, son, looked like a big round platter of blood. Ongodliest moon you ever seed. I turned on my lights full-power an’ prayed she’d start. She started — on three cylinders. But I didn’t have no heart fer tinkerin’; I left Cunningham Yackey’s barnyard right then and there.
We-ell, I crossed Cuivre Crick at Dead Slaves’ Holler without hearin’ nothin’ but a few moans; and I made it over the ridge past the White Caps’ buryin’ ground without seeing nothing I could swear was a hant. But thet moon was a-riding on my left shoulder and when I turned inter the Louisville road I could feel a kind of bloody light acrosst my cheek. Yep. Fact.
Down in a deep, dark gully betwixt Bose Jenkins’ an’ Johnny Durvupp’s places, my headlights turned up this cross. It was a-stickin’ in a ditch alongside the road. Yep. A cross. Made outer fresh persimmon saplings. Whut say, son? Did I stop? Why, son, I didn’t have no choice exactly. My motor, she went plumb dead on me — jest sighed like one of Cunningham Yackey’s heifers, and quit. Fact.
Bein’ a releegious man, I taken comfort in The Sign. It give me courage to see whut I knowed I was a-going to see. Stretched out behind the cross was a long something covered with a piece of tarpaulin. My headlights still was a-burnin’ bright; and when I lifted up thet tarpaulin I was mighty grateful fer human light.
Speak well of the dead, but Ross Murphy Murdock wasn’t no good sight when he was alive, bein’ the meanest, oneriest cuss in the hull of Bushwhacker. Layin’ there dead hadn’t improved him none.
Yep. Thet’s whut I seed. Ross Murphy Murdock a-layin’ straight and respectful on his back. He had a mattress-ticking piller under his head and his hands was clasped undertaker-fashion with a big bunch of black-eyed Susans under ’em. His eyes had been shet with a couple of binder-bolt taps. There was a big Baptist hymnbook a-leanin’ agin the cross. A sight to caution this hell-bent, gone-gosling generation, son.
Whut say? Kilt? Sartainly he’d been kilt. The hull middle part of the pore feller had been wrapped in kitchen towels over his everyday clothes; but even in my sweating conniption I could see he’d been shot plumb in the back with a load of buckshot.
We-ell, arter the fust shock passed off, I found I could still holler. And arter I got out one good holler I found I could walk. And arter I walked a piece along the road I found I could run. But I didn’t feel real good until I had got Bose Jenkins and his hull family outer bed and the oil lamps in Bose’s parlor lighted up.
Bose and his missus wasn’t in no hurry to visit the scene; they allowed they was satisfied jest to hear me tell it. And thet give me time to reellize whut old Bushwhacker had on its hands — a fust-class murder meestery, son!
Whut say? Clues? Hold on — what sane man is a-goin’ to start pokin’ around fer clues on the loneliest stretch of Louisville road at one-thutty in the mornin’? Be reasonable, son.
I could tell thet Bose was in favor of callin’ the Pike County sheriff; but I had presence of mind enough to recollect thet Mitch Gullen, the Lincoln County sheriff, laid claim to G-man expeerience. In fact, the feller had got hisself elected on the strength of it. So I up and telephones to Mitch Gullen.
Mitch, he come right over with two deputies an’ one of these here submachine guns. Right there I seed I’d made a big mistake. Mitch was a wildeyed feller with a nervous Adam’s apple an’ jest too plumb quick on the trigger to solve a big murder meestery in Bushwhacker. His methods was all right fer them city folks around Troy; but Bushwhacker folks is peculiar.