The taillights of Novak’s car became smaller and smaller, until they were tiny crimson dots that bobbed up and down on the horizon and then disappeared altogether into the darkness.
Ingram felt the cold rain driving into his face, and the wind molding the waiter’s jacket tight against his wet body. He began to shiver; he was chilled to the bone, and the wind cut his cheeks like a whip made of ice.
He went slowly back to the car, hugging his body with his arms. Earl stared at him, his eyes flat and expressionless.
“He ran out on us,” Ingram said helplessly. “Left us here.”
They stared at each other through the rain and darkness, enveloped in a silence that was as lonely and menacing as the night itself.
“All right, get in,” Earl said in a weary, bitter voice. “We got to keep moving. Just you and me, Sambo. Just you and me now.”
Chapter Eleven
They drove steadily for half an hour, burrowing deeper and deeper into a black countryside, following the narrow muddy roads that twisted like the coils of a net through the woods and meadows of the broad valley. Earl told Ingram where and when to turn without qualifying or explaining his orders. Outside of these clipped instructions, he paid no attention to him; he had rolled his window down, and was watching for the landmarks that were occasionally revealed by the crazily bouncing headlights of the car. He had remembered the lonely farmhouse he had seen while driving around these back roads, and he was trying to find his way back to it. Someone lived there, he knew; there had been smoke coming from the chimney. But they weren’t young people. Otherwise there would probably be a look of paint and fresh curtains about the place, and the doors of the barn would have been rehung and closed against the weather. Old people, probably waiting to die on their worn-out patch of land. Or just an old man all by himself...
It was what he needed for tonight, a place to go to ground. The rain would wash away the tracks of the car, and he would have a breathing spell in which to think and make his plans. They wouldn’t catch him tonight...
He wasn’t afraid, and he wasn’t even angry any more; he would pay off Novak someday, but dwelling on the ways and means was a luxury he couldn’t afford now. Everything had gone smash, and he accepted this calmly; they just hadn’t figured on the sheriff... Now his job was to stay alive, to stay free. He had been wounded and hunted before, and he had made out all right; he’d lick this, too.
To survive had become his goal, to live from minute to minute, hour to hour. His needs were basic and simple, a doctor, money, another car. I’ll get them, he thought, as he stared at the wet, black countryside. I’ll lick this thing. Get back to Lory. He was sustained by the essential simplicity of his problem. In other defeats he had been confused and infuriated by the complexity of his needs, and the anonymity of his enemies. He never knew what he wanted or who stood in his way of getting it. But now everything was coldly, transparently clear.
“Turn left here,” he cried; there was an exultant lift to his voice as he saw the crossroad. This was where he had met the old hound dog.
“Where we heading?” Ingram said, fighting the bouncing, sliding car.
“Just another hundred yards or so,” Earl said. “It’s a place we can stay for the night.”
Ingram drove on until the headlights picked out a rotting wooden gate that hung crookedly on rusty hinges. The entrance was partially blocked by a tall ragged hedge of lilac that grew along the fence line, but he saw a lane twisting back to an old stone farmhouse, and a single yellow light shining palely from a first-floor window.
Ingram pulled the gate open, drove the car beyond it and climbed out again to push the gate back into place.
“I got to get out of these clothes,” he muttered, as they approached the farmhouse, with the car plunging and plowing through the thick mud plastering the lane. “I got to get warm.”
Earl saw his lips were trembling. Couldn’t take a little cold... none of them could... “Without this rain we wouldn’t have a chance, Sambo. Remember that.”
“I just said I got to get warm.”
“I heard you. Now listen; you go up and knock on the door. Tell whoever answers that we need a place to sleep for the night. I’ll be right behind you, don’t forget.”
Ingram braked to a sliding stop in the muddy yard in front of the farmhouse. When he cut off the motor the sound of the rain became intensified; they could hear it hammering metallically on the roof of the car, and pounding with a muted but heavier effect on the soft, sodden earth. “Don’t forget one other thing,” Ingram said, looking at Earl. “We’re both in the same mess. I got a right to decide how to get out of it. Just remember that.”
Earl shifted his position, and removed the gun from the pocket of his overcoat. “You see this?” he said, watching Ingram steadily. “It means you don’t have any rights at all. Get this straight now; we aren’t partners in this deal. We don’t vote on things. You got a chance just as long as you jump when I tell you. You got that, Sambo?”
Ingram saw the dashboard light flickering along the blue barrel of the gun. “I got it,” he said, looking up into Earl’s dangerous eyes. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Start moving.”
Ingram climbed out and went quickly up a flight of sagging wooden steps to the porch of the farmhouse. Earl came around the car holding the gun in his overcoat pocket, and stepping carefully to avoid the deep cold puddles of water in the yard.
There was no sound for a few seconds after Ingram knocked but then they heard a shuffle of footsteps within the house. The door opened very slowly and a bar of widening yellow light fell across the rotting boards of the porch. A frail, gray-haired woman in a black shawl peered up at them, her birdlike eyes shining behind small, rimless glasses. One hand held the shawl tightly about her throat, while the other brushed ineffectually at erratic wisps of gray hair that fluttered in the cold wind. She wore black rubber boots, and a number of old shapeless sweaters, but the meagerness of her body seemed to be accentuated rather than concealed by the layers of bulky clothing. She took a step forward, peering up into Ingram’s face with an air of excitement and surprise. “You’ve come back, eh? Crawling back with your tail between your legs, like I said you would.” She began to laugh then, tilting her head to one side in a gesture of flirtatious derision; her manner was scornful and complacent at once, as if she were rebuking a child who had ignored her advice and gotten himself into trouble. “And who’s your friend? Who’s your fine friend?”
“He’s sick, I mean he’s hurt, ma’am,” Ingram said.
“Oh yes, indeed,” she said in a thin, self-satisfied voice. “You need things — oh, yes. They weren’t kind to you in the cities, were they? But I warned you, didn’t I?”
Earl realized she was half crazy. “We’re cold and tired,” he said, trying to manage a smile for her piercing little eyes. “Could we come in and get warm?”
“Papa will want to talk to you, of course,” she said. “I should send you around to the back door, but never mind. It’s blew down, I think. Come in, and mind you wipe your boots.”
They followed her into a drafty living room where an old man lay against the wall in a double bed. He worked himself up on one elbow as they came in, glaring at them with alert, suspicious eyes. It was impossible to guess at his height or weight; the shape of his body was lost under the mound of dirty quilts that covered his bed. But it was very obvious that he was aged; his wispy white hair floated grotesquely in the draft, and his whiskers gleamed like silvery moss on his sunken cheeks and throat.