Her smile came, slow and liquid. She moved her lips close. “Even for me?”
“I think,” Barney said, “I’d better go fishing.”
Chapter III
That night a pale moon poured cream over the hills, threw shadows into the valleys and coves, and turned to silver reflections in the dark water of the lake. During the day Barney had recessed from his fishing long enough to cruise slowly from the boat dock to Little Sanloosa and back again. He wanted to make the trip by water and needed the certainty that he could navigate in the darkness. He had also spotted the tumbledown, deserted shack above Little Sanloosa. He hadn’t seen the house at first, but after he’d cruised into the cove he’d picked it out of the trees, an ivy covered mass of logs blending with the hillside.
Now, with the moonlight at his back, he cut the kicker and stood in the boat as it drifted toward the bank. It bumped gently. Barney went over the prow with the line in his hand. His feet slipped on the dark, slick mud. He snubbed the line about a stump just above the water line. Then he started up the hillside.
Frogs and crickets sang lullabies; but Barney’s nerves refused to be soothed. He struck the brush line and waded through brambles, muttering darkly. He was sweating by the time he came out of the brush into the clearing where the tumble-down cabin stood.
He paused a moment at the edge of the clearing. From his hip pocket he slipped the jack handle he’d picked up in an idle moment today. He wasn’t really anticipating trouble; but with twenty thousand dollars floating around he didn’t feel it wise to take too many chances.
The cabin was dark and seemed to be deserted. The front door was standing crookedly, hanging by one rusty hinge. There was a strong earthy smell inside the cabin.
Moonlight filtered feebly through the cracked window, touching a paleness over an old stone fireplace, a broken-down table and bench. Barney’s body was blocking a part of the moonlight; and when he shifted, he saw Bobo.
He caught his breath and the jack handle fell from his fingers. Bobo was sitting on the floor of the cabin, his shoulders sagging against the wall. A crimson well had been opened through a jagged wound in his hairy neck.
Barney fought about four impulses at once. To run. To yell for help. To shut his eyes, and tell himself this wasn’t true. To see if anything could be done for Bobo.
Given a second to steady himself, Barney knew there was really no decision to be made. He dropped on his knees at Bobo’s side. Bobo was his friend, and it lumped Barney’s throat and made him very mad to see him hurt like this. He was a big, dumb clunk, but he’d never done anything to deserve this.
Barney jerked out his handkerchief to make an effort at stemming the flow of blood. It was already becoming a coagulated mess on Bobo’s neck. It didn’t seem that he could help any. He already looked dead.
Then there was a twitch of Bobo’s lids, and his eyes opened. They were glazed, the pupils wide and dark with shock and fear.
“It’s me, Bobo,” Barney said gently. He saw some of the wild terror leave Bobo’s eyes.
“The money, Barney... Get Josie to take you to Cold Slough.”
The words were stretched out and took great effort. Bobo closed his eyes again and Barney decided to get him in a more comfortable position and run like crazy for help, a telephone, a doctor.
Before Barney could move him, Bobo coughed bloody froth. He opened his eyes once more; they were filled with some kind of message. And Barney knew that he couldn’t help him now. Neither could he fathom the message in his eyes.
“Murder, Barney,” Bobo gurgled. “Strictly murder...” He kept right on talking, but it was silent talk, just a movement of his lips. Maybe he thought he was shouting it. The message seemed to leave his eyes. But he wasn’t making a sound, and Barney couldn’t read lips. Then Bobo burped, like a baby, almost, and fresh blood spilled over his lips.
Bobo died. Barney saw the light go out of his eyes; then Barney sat back on his haunches and discovered a hot feeling in his eyes that might mean tears. He thought about the time he’d known Bobo and what a friendly lug he had always been. Then frustration began roiling in Barney as he realized that Bobo had not only labeled his death as murder but had gone ahead to tell the who, how, and why of it. Only it had been the silent talk of the dead, the talk of a man in whom the fighting instinct had tried to operate until the last.
Barney eased Bobo to a sitting position and folded the large, heavy hands across the great barrel structure of chest. Then Barney rose, slid the small flashlight out of his hip pocket and played it over the room.
Near Bobo he found the gun, a secondhand thirty-eight revolver. He decided he’d never seen the gun before. It could belong to anybody.
He stepped to the door of the cabin, switching off the flashlight. He smelled the odor of earthy perspiration before he heard the quick shuffle of a foot. He started his body about in a spin. Halfway around, the blow caught him on the side of the head. A great light bloomed in his brain, and he saw the large shadow moving out from its hiding spot outside the door jamb. Then the light went out, leaving nothing but a black void.
At last into the void began to filter sensation, which was anything but unpleasant. Barney had the grandfather of headaches. A hand was on his shoulder, shaking him.
He said, “Lemme alone!”
A light played like fire against his closed lids. The hand shook him again. He remembered Bobo, and he opened his eyes.
A Coleman lantern was hissing softly, throwing a glaring white light over the moss-grown interior of the cabin. Barney rolled his head. Charlie and Leah were here; and there stood Josie, looking down at him and biting her lip.
Barney had never seen the man who held the lantern. He was a huge individual with shoulders that sloped off into an elephantine stomach. He wore no coat, and his shirt sleeves were rolled halfway up his thick, hairy forearms. Barney saw the gleaming star pinned just over the shirt pocket. With a sinking sensation that almost overpowered his headache, he lifted his gaze to the man’s face. It was a heavy, cruel face with thick lips, sagging jowls, fleshy nose, cold gray eyes; the creased forehead slid off to become a bald pate.
Josie knelt at Barney’s side. She touched his sore head and managed a wan grin. “Looks like I need the turpentine bottle again. Barney, this is Sheriff Tyne Conover. Tell him what happened. He thinks you killed Bobo.”
“I was slugged,” Barney managed.
“Yeah?” Tyne Conover said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Right sure you didn’t get in a hurry to get out of the place, trip over that old stick of firewood there and slam your head against the door jamb?”
“I was slugged,” Barney repeated. “Period. By a creature on two legs I wouldn’t hardly call human.”
“And how about the money?” Conover demanded.
“What money?”
“Don’t play dumb.” Conover glanced at Charlie; then he wrapped Leah in a very appreciative gaze. “These folks say you was to meet Bobo here in regard to a little matter of some money he stole. When you became pretty long overdue, they set out to find a cousin of Bobo’s you’d mentioned. Josie, naturally, she being the only female cousin of Bobo’s living four or five miles from the boat dock where you said. They figured Josie might know where you and Bobo were to meet. She knew, all right. She heard Bobo tell you the spot, but she wouldn’t bring ’em here alone. She fetched me, and look what we found.”
Just look, Barney thought. I don’t want to. I never wanted in this setup in the first place.
“Barney,” Josie said, a sob in her voice, “I never reckoned on finding what we did. Or I’d never have brought Tyne into it. At least I’d have given you a chance to run.”