“For now, anyway,” Dad answered. “How long do you want to stay there?” He asked questions, too.
“I was thinking till tomorrow night, if that's cool,” the trader from Speedro said. “That way, they won't jump up and down so much, you know what I mean? If I went and split tonight, they'd still be all uptight, like.”
'“Groovy,” Dad said, a small smile on his face. He enjoyed talking like a twentieth-century hippie. Liz was fried if she could see why. It made him sound like a jerk. She sure thought so, anyhow. “I brought you some goodies, then,” Dad went on. He handed up the water and the… honey bucket. Then, from the top of the ladder, he told Liz, “Why don't you get our friend some bread and a chunk of that chicken we had tonight?”
Because I don't want to. Because I'm not more than fifty-one percent convinced he is our friend. Because I’d rather give him a clout in the teeth than a drumstick. All of that went through Liz 's mind in a fraction of a second. None of it came out. The only thing that did was, “Sure, Dad.”
As she hurried away, Luke laughed softly. “Don't think your daughter trusts me for beans.”
“Don't be silly!” Dad played the good host. Well, of course he was a good host. If he weren't a good host, those bloodhounds would have been baying at Luke in here, pepper or no pepper.
How did he know? Liz wondered as she cut Luke a big chunk of bread and brought not a drumstick but a whole chicken leg back to the ladder. How could he tell? She was positive she'd been not just polite but even eager-sounding. But she hadn't fooled him-not even close. So what did she do wrong? She wanted to ask, but that would mean admitting she didn't trust him. She didn't want to do that-it would be too embarrassing.
“Thanks, dear,” Dad said when she brought him the food. He handed it up to Luke.
“Thanks is right!” Luke echoed. “These are better rats than I'd see at most of the inns around town. If your room up here was just a little less cramped, you could make good money renting it out.” He laughed again.
Thais not rat! It's chicken! was Liz ’s first indignant thought. But she was listening to this alternates English with ears from the home timeline. Rats came from military slang, not hippie talk. It had nothing to do with Mickey Mouse 's bigger cousins: it was short for rations.
“This is the kind of room where, if you start advertising it, nobody wants to stay in it anymore.” Dad said. He was bound to be right about that. II everybody knew about a hiding place, what good was it?
''Well, friend, in that case I'm going to pull my hole in after myself again,” Luke said. Dad took the ladder away. Luke put up the boards once more. As far as Liz could tell, the hidey-hole vanished completely.
Dad sighed. “Not the kind of game I like to play to settle my digestion.” He set a hand on Liz 's shoulder. “You did real well. Mow… Do you think you're up to going back to sleep?”
“Beats me.” she answered. “I sure aim to try. though.” To her surprise, she did it. She didn't know what that proved- probably how tired she was to begin with.
When Dan saw a Valley patrol with bloodhounds working its way toward the Santa Monica Freeway, he wondered what was going on. “You guys looking for Luke the trader?” he called to them.
That won him more attention than he really wanted. The whole patrol converged on him. He was used to attention from Sergeant Chuck. Now he had the undivided attention of two sergeants at once, and discovered it was at least four times as bad.
“How come you wanna know, kid?” demanded the one with the dogs.
“How'd you hear about Luke, anyway?” the other one growled. The bloodhounds didn't say anything, but in the torchlight their long, sad faces declared they were angry to have to pause in their search for even a minute.
“If it weren't for me, you guys wouldn't know about him.” Dan spoke to the sergeants. He hoped they'd make the bloodhounds understand. “Have you been to the trader's house on Glendon?”
“Yeah, we were there,” said the sergeant with the dogs. “You really do know too much, don't you? How'd you know about that house?”
“Well, it's the girl there.'' Now Dan knew he sounded a little sheepish. “Did you see her?”
“Oh. The girl.” That was the dog handler. All of a sudden, things seemed to make sense to him. “I might've known.” The other sergeant grunted. Even the bloodhounds seemed sniffy in a different way.
Dan wondered if his ears were on fire. They sure felt that way. “Don't you guys have girls?” he asked-not that he had Liz or anything. He just wished he did.
“We've got girls,” the sergeant with the dogs said.
“But we don't have Westside girls,” the other one added. “Not like that, we don't. For fun, yeah. Not for real.”
To Dan 's amazement, his ears got hotter yet. He hadn't thought they could. “How can you tell?” he asked. To make him feel like a complete idiot, his voice cracked in the middle of the question.
Both sergeants laughed themselves silly. Dan thought the dogs laughed, too, but maybe that was his imagination. The handler said, “You sound goofy when you talk about her, that's why.”
Now Dan was the one who said, “Oh.” Then he changed the subject as fast as he could: “What about Luke?”
“He was there, but he got away maybe three jumps ahead of us.” The dog handler frowned. “I'm not sure how fresh this trail is. though. The dogs aren't all that stoked about it, and we know he's been down this way before.”
“So why are you following it?” Dan asked. Yes, talking about Luke was a lot easier than talking about Liz.
'“Cause it's what we've got,” said the sergeant who didn't take care of dogs.
“And “cause that rotten villain messed up the trail before it got to the trader's house,” added the one who did. “He put down something that almost made 'em jump out of their skins.” That was saying something-the bloodhounds had a lot of skin to jump out of. The sergeant went on, “It was as bad as though somebody turned on an Old Time electric flashlight right in front of your face.”
“Wow,” Dan said. “Oh, wow.” Electric lights were supposed to be bright, all right. He didn't know exactly how bright, because he'd never seen one work. He didn't know anybody who had, either.
“Yeah,” the dog handler said. “So if we ever do catch this guy, we'll make him sorry. You bet we will.”
“I bet he's sneaky,” Dan said. “He looks sneaky. He sounds sneaky, too-I’ve talked with him.” Was that really fair? Dan remembered Luke teasing him. If that didn't exactly make the trader sneaky, it came close enough, didn't it?
“He must be, or he wouldn't have got away from us,” said the sergeant without the dogs.
“If we want to catch him, we'd better be sneaky, too,” said the one in charge of the bloodhounds.
“If he's still here for us to catch,” the other sergeant said. “If he got over the freeway line, he's a gone goose.”
“How could he do that?” Dan asked. “We have it plugged tight.”
Both sergeants looked at him as if he were still making messes in his drawers. “Kid, if he's that sneaky, chances are he can find a way,'“ the one without the dogs replied. His voice was surprisingly gentle. He might have been explaining that the Easter Bunny wasn't real.
“Well, maybe,” Dan admitted. The Valley soldiers were watching out for an attack from the south, not for one man trying to get past them and going that way.
“But if he is that sneaky…” the dog handler said.
“Yeah? What about it?” The other sergeant wasn't much impressed.
“Listen,” said the three-striper with the bloodhounds. They put their heads together and talked in low voices. Dan did his best to listen without seeming to. The sergeants must have noticed, because they moved a couple of steps farther away. Dan muttered under his breath. He hadn't caught much anyway.