“… and stay out!” I cried.
“That’s right!” I jumped at Marie’s indignant wheeze. “I seen him go in your room without knocking and Shut the Door!” Her voice was capitalized horror. “You done right chasing him out and giving him What For!”
My inner laughter slid the barrier open a crack to meet his amusement.
“Yes, Marie,” I said soberly. “‘You warned me and I remembered.”
“Well, now, good!” Half of Marie’s face smirked, gratified.
“I knew you was a good girl. And, Low, I’m plumb ashamed of you. I thought you was a cut above these gaw-danged muckers around here and here you go wolfing around in broad daylight!” She tripped off down the creaky hall, her voice floating back up the lovely curved stairway. “In broad daylight! Supper’ll be ready in two jerks of a dead lamb’s tail Git washed.”
Low and I laughed together and went to “git washed.”
I paused over a double handful of cold water I had scooped up from my huge china washbowl, and watched it all trickle back as I glowed warmly with the realization that this was the first time in uncountable ages that I had laughed underneath. I looked long on my wavery reflection in the water. “And not alone,” one of me cried, erupting into astonishment, “not alone!”
The next morning I fled twenty-five miles into town and stayed at a hotel that had running water, right in the house, and even a private bath! And reveled in the unaccustomed luxury, soaking Kruper out of me-at least all of it except the glitter bits of loveliness or funniness or niceness that remained on the riffles of my soul after the dust, dirt, inconvenience and ugliness sluiced away.
I was lying there drowsing Sunday afternoon, postponing until the last possible moment the gathering of myself together for the bus trip back to Kruper. Then sudden, subtly, between one breath and the next, I was back into full wary armor, my attention twanged taut like a tightened wire and I sat up stiffly. Someone was here in the hotel. Had Low come into town? Was he here? I got up and finished dressing hastily.
I sat quietly on the edge of the bed, conscious of the deep ebb and flow of something. Finally I went down to the lobby. I stopped on the last step. Whatever it had been, it was gone. The lobby was just an ordinary lobby. Low was nowhere among the self-consciously ranch-style furnishings. But as I started toward the window to see again the lovely drop of the wooded canyon beyond the patio he walked in.
“Were you here a minute ago?” I asked him without preliminaries.
“No. Why?”
“I thought-” I broke off. Then gears shifted subtly back to the commonplace and I said, “Well! What are you doing here?”
“Old Charlie said you were in town and that I might as well pick you up and save you the bus trip hack.” He smiled faintly.
“Marie wasn’t quite sure I could be trusted after showing my true colors Friday, but she finally told me you were here at this hotel.”
“But I didn’t know myself where I was going to stay when I left Kruper!”
Low grinned engagingly. “My! You are new around here, aren’t you? Are you ready to go?”
“I hope you’re not in a hurry to get back to Kruper.” Low shifted gears deftly as we nosed down to Lynx Hill bridge and then abruptly headed on up Lynx Hill at a perilous angle. “I have a stop to make.”
I could feel his wary attention on me in spite of his absorption in the road.
“No,” I said, sighing inwardly, visualizing long hours waiting while he leaned, over the top fence rail exchanging long silences and succinct remarks with some mining acquaintance.
“I’m in no hurry, just so I’m at school by nine in the morning.”
“Fine.” His voice was amused, and, embarrassed, I tested again the barrier in my mind. It was still intact. “‘Matter of fact,” he went on, “this will be one for your collection, too.”
“My collection?” I echoed blankly.
“Your ghost-town collection. I’m driving over to Machron, or where it used to be. It’s up in a little box canyon above Bear Flat. It might be that it-” An intricate spot in the road-one small stone and a tiny pine branch-broke his sentence.
“Might be what?” I asked, deliberately holding onto the words he was trying to drop.
“Might be interesting to explore.” Aware amusement curved his mouth slightly.
“I’d like to find an unbroken piece of sun glass,” I said. “I have one old beautiful purple tumbler. It’s in pretty good condition except that it has a piece out of the rim.”
“I’ll show you my collection sometime,” Low said. “You’ll drool for sure.”
“How come you like ghost towns? What draws you to them? History? Treasure? Morbid curiosity?”
“Treasure-history-morbid curiosity-” He tasted the words slowly and approved each with a nod of his head. “I guess all three. I’m questing.”
“Questing?’”
“Questing.” The tone of his voice ended the conversation. With an effort I detached myself from my completely illogical up-gush of anger at being shut out, and lost myself in the wooded wonder of the hillsides that finally narrowed the road until it was barely wide enough for the car to scrape through.
Finally Low spun the wheel and, fanning sand out from our tires, came to a stop under a huge black-walnut tree.
“Got your walking shoes on? This far and no farther for wheels.”
Half an hour later we topped out on a small plateau above the rocky pass where our feet had slid and slithered on boulders grooved by high-wheeled ore wagons of half a century ago. The town had spread itself in its busiest days, up the slopes of the hills and along the dry creeks that spread fingerlike up from the small plateau. Concrete steps led abortively up to crumbled foundations, and sagging gates stood fenceless before shrub-shattered concrete walks.
There were a few buildings that were nearly intact, just stubbornly resisting dissolution. I had wandered up one faint street and down another before I realized that Low wasn’t wandering with me. Knowing the solitary ways of ghost-town devotees, I made no effort to locate him, but only wondered idly what he was questing for-carefully refraining from wondering again who he was and why he and I spoke together underneath as we did. But even unspoken the wonder was burning deep under my superficial scratching among the junk heaps of this vanished town.
I found a white button with only three holes in it and the top of a doll’s head with one eye still meltingly blue, and scrabbled, bare-handed, with delight when I thought I’d found a whole sun-purpled sugar bowl-only to find it was just a handle and half a curve held in the silt.
I was muttering over a broken fingernail when a sudden soundless cry crushed into me and left me gasping with the unexpected force. I stumbled down the bank and ran clattering down the rock-strewn road. I found Low down by the old town dump, cradling something preciously in the bend of his arm.
He lifted his eyes blindly to me.
“Maybe-!” he cried. “This might be some of it. It was never a part of this town’s life. Look! Look at the shaping of it! Look at the flow of lines!” His hands drank in the smooth beauty of the metal fragment. “And if this is part of it, it might not be far from here that-” He broke off abruptly, his thumb stilling on the underside of the object. He turned it over and looked closely.. Something died tragically as he looked. ” ‘General Electric,’ ” he said tonelessly. ” ‘Made in the USA.’ ” The piece of metal dropped from his stricken hands as be sagged to the ground. His fist pounded on the gravelly silt. “Dead end! Dead end! Dead-“
I caught his hands in mine and brushed the gravel off, pressing Kleenex to the ooze of blood below his little finger.
“What have you lost?” I asked softly.
“Myself,” he whispered. “I’m lost and I can’t find my way back.”