No Second Wind (The Sheriff Chick Charleston Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  I could believe him. His hands and face—and the rest of him for all I knew—might have been made out of old harness leather. He had a sharp face and good eyes, bright blue in their leathery wrinkles.

  “Any wolves been howling around here?” I asked.

  “Wolves don’t worry me, except I aim to keep ’em away from my stock. Lots of scare stories about wolves, but hell, you got to show me a case where they ever tackled a man. That’s what I was tellin’ the Whitneys. They came by once, kind of skittish, after hearin’ the howling sort of faint-like.”

  “They were all right?”

  “And left feelin’ better.”

  “Anything you need? Anything we can do for you?”

  “Not a Lord’s thing. Not a Lord’s thing. But wait, now. Don’t go. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

  “Talk to” was right, I thought. I doubted I had said more than a dozen words.

  “A man alone gets to thinkin’,” he said, settling back. “Now some would say a man gets to be a slave to things, specially live things that he shelters and feeds. I don’t see it that way. It’s good to have critters depending on you. Gives you a worthwhile feeling. Take my dog. He knows he can count on me. Same with the cows and chickens. I’m the ace-high boss, and a boss sees to his own. Right? Take away responsibility, and what have you got? Nothin’. You might say I’m dependent on dependence, if you got to bobtail it. That suits me. See?”

  He fed the fire in the boiler and sat down again. “We get along, me and my stock. We get along, come hell or high water. Cozy, we are. Who needs help or has to have company? No, no, boy, I wasn’t talkin’ about you. Visit a while longer, can’t you?”

  I made my excuses, leaving a man alone and was again alone myself.

  This time the quirky engine started with the first revolution, though the headlights seemed feeble. Funny. The battery should have gained strength as the car ran. Driving, I blamed myself for not inquiring about the way to the Whitney’s house. I braked to a halt and searched my pockets for the map Charleston had drawn. No map. Damn the cumbersome wraps a man had to wear in this weather.

  I came to a fork in the road and, trying to remember, took the right-hand trail. It was no more than that, just wheel ruts, unfenced. Farther on, my lights picked up a hulk to the left. The hulk grew into a truck with a man standing beside it. I veered left and rolled to a stop. The man had a rifle in his hands. Before I recognized him, he called out, “Dowse those lights!”

  It was Chuck Cleaver, standing dark and hard to identify beside his dark truck. After I had greeted him, he asked, “You huntin’ wolves?”

  “Looking for them, anyway.”

  “You ought to know better. Huntin’ with lights on. Scare all the wolves back to Canada.”

  “How can you see them in the dark?”

  “By waitin’ for my eyes to adjust. That’s how.”

  “Howling again tonight?”

  “Tonight and near every night lately. Got to get rid of them. Calvin’ time’s comin’, and they would play hell.”

  I asked him where the Whitneys lived.

  “You took a wrong turn. Go back to the forks to the other road. You’ll have to look sharp for a turnoff. That’s to your right, five miles or so. What’s wrong with them?”

  “Nothing I know of. The sheriff wants me to say hello.”

  “They was all right last week.”

  I said, “Good hunting.”

  Before I could roll away, he answered, “I’m rackin’ up. Wolves see car lights, even on dim, they skeedaddle.”

  Look sharp, I thought as I turned around. Sure, look sharp with bum headlights. I came to the forks, and another trail angled in. It couldn’t be the turnoff. I hadn’t traveled that far.

  The headlights faded. They shrank to mere blinks. The engine sputtered and came to life and died. The starter clicked. That was all.

  Nothing to do but radio the office. Yes, Mr. Charleston, I know I’m a green officer, green as grass and about to freeze my tail off. It would serve me right, that’s true enough, but I’ll try to do better.

  My mistakes ran in my mind. I should have made sure about the car, and I hadn’t. I had lost the map and lost my way. I forgot to ask directions from Linderman. Anything else? Anything more in the way of incompetence?

  I tried to raise the office, tried and tried again. No answer and no wonder, not if you had sense enough to know the radio worked off the car battery. Add another item to the amateur list.

  I took a flashlight from the jockey box, decided the carbine was just an encumbrance and locked the car. I stepped away from it and tried to find bearings. The outline of a mountain would have helped, or the shape of a butte, but the dark hid all profiles. There was nothing but dark, no star shine or moon shine or break in the black.

  Roads had to lead somewhere, I told myself, pushing aside the thought of dead ends. I would follow the road to hell or the pole, one or other, for there was no turning back, not at this distance from Linderman’s. I flicked on the flashlight. Its beam was dim. Tonight was the night for new batteries. I turned it off for emergency use.

  I followed the road more by foot feel than sight. I stumbled and fell down and got up and went stumbling on.

  I tried to shove from my mind that ours was a big county—2,294 square miles, the assessor had told me once. Not flat miles but square miles of plains, benches, foothills and mountains. Probably no man knew every county and wagon road, every coulee and gulch, every gouge the streams had made in the life of the land.

  The cold was getting to me. Cold was a creeping thing. It began with the fingers and toes, the nose and the cheeks, and moved in toward the center of life, toward the furnace of the heart, not to be satisfied until it got there. I slapped my arms around myself, I tramped my feet and tried to wiggle my toes. My fingers had lost feeling. It was a wonder they worked.

  A man’s mind plays tricks on him when he is lost in the dark. He imagines wolves on his trail, waiting for him to collapse. He imagines them ahead of him and around him, jaws dripping. He expects the dark to take hungry shape. I did and tried to shake the thoughts from me. I sang and yelled and whistled in my graveyard. And once I beamed the flashlight on my back trail. There weren’t any wolves there.

  A wild snort and thrashing sounded almost in my face, and a shape arose, blacker than black. It was darkness solidified. It was black night in person.

  It wasn’t, though. It was an old horse, as startled as I was. The flashlight told me that. I moved around him, saying, “Whoa, boy,” and heard his hooves following me. Better to be followed by an old horse than a wolf pack.

  The flash found the road for me and found a telephone pole at the side. Roads might lead to dead ends. Telephone lines didn’t, that was for sure.

  So step and step and stumble and stumble while frost worked into the bones. Another telephone pole. Good. Excellent. How far did the damn line run? Too far for help? A race, then. A plodding race between me and the cold. Distance uncertain. The old horse was following along.

  A line kept singing in my head, I am weary of days and hours. Yes, brother, weary of everything but sleep. Not quite, though. The cold was still a presence. I could feel it. It had brought tears to my eyes and frozen the tears, and my eyes were sticky. I rubbed them roughly. A light seemed to show far ahead. I rubbed them again. It was a light or my fancy or a crystal frozen on an eyelash. I squinted and fell down again and got up, my feet as heavy as anvils, and went on.

  I stumbled up a couple of steps and knocked at a door. A female opened it, and her voice said, “Good Lord, come in! I never saw such a sight.” A hand seized my arm. “Come along.”

  Something in me led me to say, “The ice man cometh.” It was relief or bravado or both. I wasn’t sure my stiff face let me smile.

  “Out of your head to boot,” she said, “making jokes while the bell tolls.”

  I felt a dim delight at that response. And I felt more than that. Even through frosted lids I recogniz
ed her. Here she was. Now we had met. I almost forgot I was cold.

  She was taking off my down coat. She pulled off my gloves and pushed me into a chair before a stove. It was an old round stove with isinglass windows. She fed it with blocks of wood.

  “Now,” she said, looking me over. She wore a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt.

  I said, “My name’s—” but she interrupted me. “Introductions later. Frostbite first.”

  She took a basin from a cabinet and poured water in it from a kettle that was purring on an electric stove. She found a towel in a drawer and wet it in the basin. “Hold this to your face,” she told me, handing me the towel, “hot as you can bear it. No, not ice or snow for frostbite. That’s for old wives. Heat’s the thing. Left cheek, please. It’s the white one. Put that hand in the water. Two fingers white there. Your feet next.”

  I managed to put in, “My name’s Jason Beard. I’m a deputy sheriff.”

  From behind me a voice, strangled with years, said, “Law or no law, keep your hands off my daughter.” I couldn’t squirm far enough to make out the speaker.

  “Grandpa,” the girl answered, “I hate to tell you to shut up but shut up. And I’m not your daughter.”

  “I had a daughter once.” The old voice mumbled and went silent.

  The girl took the basin and towel from me. “Can you get off your boots? Oh, here now, I’ll do it. You’ll never get them unlaced.”

  She was stooping. Her fingers were nimble. I felt mortified but knew that at least there were no holes in my socks, Mother being Mother. She drew out a second basin, filled it with water and said, “Dip your feet. Just dip for a while. You don’t want to scald them. Our name is Dutton, in case you were wondering.”

  “I thought so.”

  She disappeared into what I supposed was a pantry and came out with a jelly glass one-third full. “Drink it,” she said. It was bourbon. “What made you think you knew who we were?”

  “Ike Doolittle.”

  I took a swallow of my drink. We were in a sort of combined living room and kitchen or, say, just a kitchen, for in ranch houses the kitchen is where you live. The furniture I saw looked old but comfortable.

  “Ike,” the old voice said. “Sure, Ike. I know. He’s the one that got fresh with you. Right?”

  “No. He didn’t. You just thought so.” The girl turned her head and said over my shoulder, her voice gentle, “It’s your bedtime, Grandpa. Please go ahead now. Don’t forget your medicine.”

  I put the basin down and squirmed in my chair. Grandpa was seated in a rocker. He got up nimbly, considering his age. “Have we had supper, Anita?”

  “Yes, Grandpa. Won’t you go on now?”

  He gave me a grin with a mouth the years had fined down. He said, “Bright and early in the morning, Doolittle.” Then he mumbled, “Oh, oh,” as if he had caught himself in a mistake, and disappeared.

  Anita said, “You must excuse him.”

  “I do, of course.”

  “Tell me, how is Ike?”

  “Fine. He’s a deputy sheriff, like me.”

  “He was a good man.”

  “And still is.”

  From the room the old man had entered, music swelled out, loud enough to please the deafened ears of teen-agers.

  Anita went to the door, knocked and said, “Please turn it down, Grandfather. You’ll get a headache.”

  I set the basin aside and began putting on my socks and boots. The music faded.

  The girl came back and sat by the fire, not speaking except to say, “Thawed out? Sure?”

  “Only tingles left. I meant to ask you, have you heard wolves howling around?”

  “Yes. Sometimes close, but they haven’t done any harm. They excite Grandfather, though. Then he forgets.”

  She put more wood in the stove and sat down again. “I’m glad Ike’s doing all right. He was a big help here until Grandfather fired him. I simply couldn’t change his mind. For once it was fixed. He’s the guardian of my morals, you know.”

  As if she had entered my mind, she went on, “I just can’t put him in a rest home. He’s been good to me.”

  It struck me all at once that the girl looked tired. The lines of fatigue and worry showed themselves in her young face. I was prompted to say, “How do you manage alone?”

  “As best I can, that’s all. Sometimes I want to give up, what with cows to feed and chickens to be looked after and the house to keep and meals to prepare.”

  “And Grandpa?”

  “There’s the garden in summer, too.”

  “And Grandpa?”

  “Please,” she said. Her eyes met mine. They were honest eyes, as honest as a silver dollar, as honest as one before it was made out of copper and junk and shrank to a dime in value. The beginning of tears showed in them. “I’m custodian, housekeeper, cook, stock tender, gardener and roundup rider.” She brushed at her eyes. “Forget it. I’m pitying myself.”

  “Are you looking for help?”

  “Who’s to help? We can’t pay very much. That’s one thing. But we eat well; that’s another. In one of his better moments Grandfather bought a deep freeze that we couldn’t afford. Then, because I let them hunt the place, some hunters gave me a deer, all dressed out and cut up. I raised some turkeys last summer and some garden stuff. All that is frozen or canned now, and we do keep a flock of chickens and get a few eggs in spite of the weather.” A smile erased the worry lines in her face. “How am I doing? You want a job?”

  “It’s a temptation.”

  “No perks.” She looked a little roguish. “Remember Grandpa.”

  “I might know a man,” I told her.

  “A good one?”

  “A little thick in the head.” I was thinking of a character named Omar Test. “But he’s energetic enough and can follow directions. No threat to your morals, either.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I wouldn’t kid you.”

  “Can you find out?”

  “I can.”

  “And would you?”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow morning. Phone working?”

  “It was earlier.”

  “I’ve got to call Ike and tell him to rescue me.”

  “You’ve been rescued once.” She was smiling.

  “And now I don’t want to be, but still—”

  She showed me where the phone was, and I called the office. Mrs. Carson said she would get word to Doolittle by radio. I assured her he knew where the Dutton place was.

  Anita made coffee, and for the better part of an hour we talked of this and that, making conversation but something else, too.

  Then a car showed up, and Ike knocked at the door. She greeted him warmly. He refused coffee, saying he had work to do. I heard the old man moving around.

  At the door she shook hands with me. She had a small, strong hand, roughened by work.

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  I said, “Tomorrow.”

  In the cruiser Ike said, faking authority, “Report, please.”

  “The car conked out. The battery just got weaker and weaker.”

  Ike had the dash lights on, and I could see his face clearly as he turned and said, “Generator went flooey.” The face smiled slyly. “But your own generator seems to be working full tilt.”

  13

  I rolled out of bed at eight o’clock, feeling frisky though I’d had little sleep, feeling frisky in spite of chilblains that would bother me more when I warmed up after being cold again. I shaved and bathed and got into clean clothes.

  When I entered the kitchen, the dog, Bipsie, pranced to me for a head rub. Mother and Marie Coletti were seated at the table, eating hot cakes. Mother said, “Goodness sake, Jase, you’re ’way early and all dressed up.”

  “Busy day ahead.”

  Mother rose and went to the stove and began ladling batter into the skillet. “Marie has made reservations for tomorrow,” she told me.

  “So soon?” I said. “One of us will drive you
to the city.”

  “I hate to ask that,” Marie said. “I’ve put you out enough as it is. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.” Only a fading streak or two showed where her bruises had been. She wore less make-up than usual. An improvement, I thought. She was a cute girl, one showing good courage now, and, if she broke down, a man would feel a wanting to comfort her. Yet she would never have the western look, the look of sun and wind and of distance in her eyes.

  “You just hush about that,” Mother said to her. “It all evens up. We’ve been glad to have you. Don’t just stand there, Jase. Sit down. These will be cooked in a minute.” She began turning the hot cakes.

  “I’ll be ready,” Marie was assuring us. “I’ve got my things from the trailer house.” Her hand went to the dog and her eyes dropped to him. “I’m afraid I have to ask one more favor.”

  “Ask away.”

  “It’s Bipsie. I simply can’t push him on my family.” Her gaze lifted to me. “Would it be too much? Could you find a good home for him?”

  “He’s a nice little pet,” Mother said, putting a plate before me. “I’m sure any number of people would be glad to have him. Don’t you think so, Jase?”

  “Of course. Any number of people.” I knew the way the wind blew, but I didn’t smile. Let them work their little conspiracy. “I’ll ask around.”

  “You must be sure they’re the right people,” Mother said.

  “Come to think of it,” I said, trying to speak as if the thought had just entered my mind, “I guess we could keep him. You’re too much alone, Mother.”

  “Do you really think so, Jase?”

  Marie put in, “I don’t want you to, just to be nice.”

  “That’s settled then,” I said, giving them their women’s victory without letting on that I knew all along. It pleased them and didn’t displease me. The idea was so good it hadn’t needed their strategy.

  I ate bacon and two helpings of hot cakes, drank my coffee and made my excuses.

  Omar Test lived alone in a shack on the south end of town. For want of a car I walked there and knocked on the flimsy door. It opened after a while and revealed Test. He had on a ragged outdoor coat.