"We may as well," Lafayette replied. "We haven't finished our dinner. Maybe we can get a nice haunch of venison and a stoup of ale and a bath and a bed. Let's go."
Chapter Thirteen
For the next quarter hour, while Bother hallooed in the distance and villagers roamed at random carrying dim yellowish lanterns, the two fugitives waded as silently as possible in a wide arc around the right end, coming up to the fringe of huts on the outskirts of the settlement without raising a halloo.
"Wait," O'Leary said, as they paused in the lee of the first shack. "It's time for me to make another try at focusing the Psychical Energies. This is just like the time I had to take refuge in the slums of Artesia City: I found an unprepossessing shed and sort of rearranged things to make it cosier. Just a minute." Marv assented silently. Lafayette cleared his mind of preconceptions and pictured the interior of the little structure as it would be revealed when he opened the door—a rudely nailed-up affair slung on rotted leather hinges.
Nothing fancy, he specified. Just your standard Holiday Inn room, but with a counter-top fridge, well-stocked, and a hot plate. As he held the image confidently in mind, Marv nudged him impatiently ... Or did the world jiggle ever so slightly? He brushed aside Marv's importunities, unsure.
Where was he? He seemed to have lost his place, thanks to Marv's interruption. Oh, yes, it was the room: a first-class USA-style motel. He envisioned it clearly and in detail; then the image faded, became misty and gray, and Frumpkin was there, working frantically at his oversize control panel. Without pausing to consider, O'Leary leaped, knocking the Man in Black away from the array of switches and instrument faces.
FLIP! The grand ballroom at Artesia, crowded with gorgeously gowned or uniformed people, among whom Lafayette recognized Lord Archie, an old ally. He called out to him and, FLIP! he was watching haggard people in gray rags, picking objects out of rubble.
FLIP! A star exploded in blackness. As the shock wave struck he was thrown back, back, tumbling end-over-end. He grabbed for support, felt a soft squishy surface underfoot. He concentrated on deducing which way was up.
"Hey, Al!" Marv's voice boomed out. "Where ya got to? You was going to fix us up with a flop, remember?"
"Don't bother me when I'm concentrating, Marv!" O'Leary hissed in annoyance, still dizzy from his wild ride through delirium. "Well, here goes." He tugged at the leather strap which served as door-handle, and a blackened slat fell away to flop into the ankle-deep mud. Through the slit thus opened light gleamed. Squinting, Lafayette peered through, saw wall-to-wall carpeting, the corners of two double beds, and a table-lamp which shed its warm glow on the flowered wallpaper.
"We're in, Marv," he said exultantly, and tugged at the door. This time it yielded. Pausing only to kick off his mud-laden boots, O'Leary stepped inside.
"Hold it right there, feller!" the familiar hoarse voice of Sheriff "Hoppy" Tode growled. "Been settin' up ever night fer a week, waitin' on you, boy. What taken you so long?"
" 'What took you so long', O'Leary corrected at once.
"Me?" Tode yelled indignantly. "Didn't I get on the job jest as soon's I got things straight with that Clyde feller? Been right here ever since they carried me here and told me how you'd be showin' up soon—and yer sidekick, too," he finished as Marv poked a wondering expression through the doorway. "Said to keep a eye on him; tricky, they said."
"Whom, I?" Marv said in a tone of wonder, edging away.
"Inside, you," Tode barked. "Got the both of ye; old Cease'll be glad o' that, I betcha." The sheriff motioned with the nickle-plated frontier-model hog-leg he carried.
After the two adventurers had placed their hands behind their heads as ordered, Tode frowned at their muddy footprints.
"Dern shame to mess up these here rugs," he said. "Strip whur you're at, and get in yonder and take a bath," he ordered. Marv complied at once, disappearing into the tiled bathroom.
"Fine," O'Leary agreed. "And while we're cleaning up, perhaps you could rustle up some bacon and eggs, or whatever's in the icebox. By the way, Sheriff, how did you get in here without getting muddy?" He dropped his clothes on top of the black mound of Marv's discarded garments.
"Tole you they carried me here. Some kind of seat on wheels it was, only it, like, flew or sumpin'. Beats me. One minute I was back at Headquarters, the next one here I was."
At the door, Lafayette paused to say, "By the way, Marv here is an agent of Central, Sheriff. If you're working for Prime now, that makes you colleagues of a sort, doesn't it?"
"Ain't been tole nothing about no jailbird bein' my boss," Tode replied shortly.
"I was really surprised to see you here, Sheriff," O'Leary said. "The last I saw you, Clyde's boy Archie was pulling your arms off. Then I heard your voice in the fog, wherever that was."
"When you taken and slipped out," Tode explained, "they forgot me and run after you. I started to ast the gal back o' the desk whereat I was and what the heck was going down; but she taken to yellin' her fool head off, so I taken a quick powder out the side door, and my-oh-my, wasn't them fellers excited! Taken me for somebody named Alligator or like that. Started offerin' me bribes if n I'd let up. Couldn't figger it out. Then some other big officials come in and told 'em something, and next thing I knew I was on the way here. Thought that part about the fog and all was jest dreamin'. After a while they come for me, and here I am. Told me to nab you and I'd get a big ree-ward, and a gold medal and a stay of execution. So I'm holdin' you until somebody comes to take you off'n my hands."
"That sounds so dreary," Lafayette said sympathetically. "Why not put the revolver away and sit down? We're as innocent as yourself—and we have one advantage."
"Oh, yeah? What would that be?" Tode inquired cautiously.
"Would you like to go home?" O'Leary asked.
"Who, me?" the sheriff demanded, surprised. "Tell you the truth, I don't even know whereat Colby City is. Don't know nothin' about no mudflats noplace in the county. Sure, I'd like to go home. How?"
Steaming gently, Marv tugged at O'Leary's sleeve. "Next man," he said.
"Not now, Marv." Lafayette shook him off. "All we have to do," he told the sheriff, "is find my old pal the duke. He's from back home, or almost. We'll find out what he knows, and then I've got a couple of other ideas, too. Remember when I walked right through your jail wall?"
"I been kinda wonderin' about that," Tode conceded. "You tellin' me you sure-nuff done that? Wasn't no trick?"
"Right," Lafayette confirmed. "Now, put up the gun and we'll stick together and break out of this."
In the taut silence that followed his proposal, there was a quick tap at the door. Before anyone could respond, it opened and a mud-blackened figure stepped through.
"Hi, fellas," Mickey Jo's voice said. "Say, you got a shower-bath in here?" she cried in a delighted tone, looking past Lafayette into the pale-green tiled cubicle.
"Come on, I'll race ya." Her sodden garments fell to the floor with a heavy thump, revealing a slim but well-rounded girlbody with muddy face, hands, and ankles. She thrust past O'Leary and Marv, who tried in vain to preserve the conventions by wrapping himself in the shower curtain.
"Don't bother, honey," Mickey Jo said. "I reckon I seen it all before." She stepped into the stall and disappeared in a deluge of hot water and soapsuds.
"Who's the gal?" Sheriff Tode asked weakly.