CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I wound up spending the night in the woods. It was cold and damp and lonely, and at times it was frightening. What more is there to say? All the stories I’d heard about panthers, which is what woodland cougars are called in that part of the world, came back to haunt me when I heard a large animal somewhere behind me in the underbrush lapping water with a feline intensity. I had Walsh’s .38 Police Positive, but I had little confidence in it being adequate for a varmint that size. At last the sky grew light in the east, and the day began to dawn foggy and gray. As soon as I could see a few yards I stood up. During the night I’d had to slit the side of my boot with my pocketknife where my foot was swelling horribly, and it was agony to get on my feet again. But I had no choice.

I was on a narrow dirt road. I had absolutely no desire to go back toward the car, so instead I went in the opposite direction. Each step sent a burning pain shooting up my leg. After a few hundred yards I became dizzy and almost passed out. I hadn’t had a thing since the peanut butter and crackers I’d eaten the evening before, and my blood sugar was getting low. I stood with my hand braced against the trunk of a tree until the dizziness passed, but still I felt weak. Nevertheless, I pressed on.

A quarter mile farther down the road I came to a mailbox that stood beside a lane that was really no more than a pair of well-worn car tracks. The mailbox was reasonably new, and the grass was worn away where the mail carrier had been driving off the road to get to it. That told me there had to be people who went with the mailbox.

The lane wound its way into the woods for maybe an eighth of a mile, then made a sharp bend to the left and opened into a clearing of about three acres. In the center of the clearing, surrounded by a half dozen mammoth oak trees, stood a large house with a roof of wood shingles. Perched at least three feet off the ground on brick piers, it had a long gallery across its front, an open dog-trot hallway, and brick chimneys at either end. Though it was void of paint and its wooden shingles were green with age, it was trim and square and its yard was neat. From one of the chimneys a wisp of wood smoke curled upward into the chilly air, and under a shed in back I could see a Ford pickup that looked no more than a year or so old.

I was about two-thirds of the way across the front yard when an ancient, liver-colored pit bull emerged from beneath the porch and made its way toward me, its golden eyes full of curiosity. Its tail wagged languidly, and its progress was slow and deliberate like that of an old gentleman with all the time in the world. Then a man came around the corner of the house. He appeared to be a few years older than me and wore a battered felt hat, khakis, and a denim coat. Like the dog, his eyes were more curious than hostile. When he saw me he stopped, but the dog sauntered on until it stood at my feet. Then it sat back on its haunches and looked up at me expectantly. I reached down and let it smell my hand. After a moment’s hesitation, it licked my fingers and thumped its tail on the ground. Thus encouraged, I scratched it carefully between its closely cropped ears. Its muzzle, head, and neck all showed masses of scars beneath its reddish coat. I examined it closely for a few moments, then asked, “Is this a Lightner dog, by any chance?”

The man nodded slowly. “Yes. It’s an Old Family Red Nose out of William Lightner’s stock. You know pits?” he asked.

“Some.”

“A fellow named Dan McCoy picked the sire for that animal. I’ve heard he’s dead now.”

“He is, but I knew him well,” I said.

“Really?”

“If we’re talking about the same man. The Dan McCoy I knew was an itinerant fry cook and full-time alcoholic who rode the rails all over this county. Had a talent for breeding bulldogs that’s never been equaled. McCoy’s eaten at my father’s table many a time.”

“That’s him,” he said and paused to reflect for a moment before he spoke, then tilted his head quizzically to one side. “Are you a dog fighter?” he finally asked.

I shook my head.

“Me neither. I’m too tenderhearted about dogs. But my daddy…” He smiled and shook his head ruefully.

“Mine too.”

He raised his hat and scratched his head for a moment, then asked, “Mister, I know it’s changing the subject, but you look a little peaked. Is there anything I can do for you?”

I straightened up from petting the old dog, and when I did, the world spun and reeled all around me once again. “I don’t know,” I muttered. “Something to eat before I pass out might help. I think I’m about to faint.”

*   *   *

Ten minutes later I was seated at a big pine table in a big clean kitchen, halfway through a stiff bourbon toddy, with my spirits beginning to lift. My host’s name turned out to be Frank Riddle and his wife was Nan. She was a small, sandy-haired woman with a ready smile and a good figure under a gingham dress and ruffled apron. They both had direct blue eyes and faces unsullied by either guile or suspicion.

I’d told them I was an officer in the middle of an investigation. My badge and ID lay on the table. I’d given Walsh’s Colt to Riddle outside because I didn’t like the idea of entering the man’s house armed. It now rested on a shelf near the door. In the far corner of the room loomed a large coal-oil cookstove where Nan Riddle busied herself with breakfast. Her husband sat across the table from me nursing a cup of coffee. After putting a cookie sheet full of biscuits in the oven, she sat a pan of hot steaming water in front of me, along with a washcloth, a towel, and a bar of soap.

“You’re an angel from heaven,” I told her. “I feel as nasty as a buzzard. This will help a lot.”

She gave me a quick smile and asked, “What’s wrong with your foot?”

“It’s broken,” I replied.

“Don’t it hurt?”

“Lord, yes, it hurts,” I replied and raised my toddy glass. “But this whiskey is helping.”

“I’ve got something better than that,” she said and went out the kitchen door. By the time I’d finished washing my face and hands, she reentered the room and set a prescription pill bottle beside my glass. “Half-grain codeine,” she said. “I broke my arm a couple of years ago, but I couldn’t take this stuff. It made me crazy. You’re welcome to it if you think you can handle it. There’s about twenty of ’em left.”

“Now I know you’re an angel,” I told her.

“Better start off with two,” she said and poured more bourbon into my glass.

A few minutes later I tore into a plateful of sausage and buttered biscuits and ribbon cane syrup, eating like a man who hadn’t been fed in a week. By the time I was halfway through my meal both the codeine and whiskey had started to kick in, and I felt better than I had since I heard about Madeline’s death. I looked across the table at my hosts. “This is so kind of you,” I said.

“Heck, we’re glad to have company,” Frank Riddle said. “It gets lonesome out here.”

“Where are we exactly?” I asked.

He grinned. “A little north of Batson and a couple of miles south of Kaiser’s Burnout. Does that mean anything to you?”

“No,” I said. “But I saw a sign last night that said we were five miles from Saratoga. I’ve been there. So we must be … what? About twenty miles west of U.S. Sixty-nine. Right?”

“That’s about it.” He sipped his coffee in silence for a few moments, then said, “You know, it truly surprised me that you recognized a Lightner dog a little while ago.”

“We had some of them,” I replied. “Some of John Colby’s stock, too.”

“You say your dad was a fighter?”

“In a small way. He had a few dogs and couple of Mexicans who took care of them for him. He was a rancher by occupation.”

“Where you from?” he asked.

“Matador County.”

He nodded thoughtfully and forked another piece of sausage onto his plate. “My daddy fought dogs all over Southeast Texas and southern Louisiana. Gamecocks, too. That old fellow outside is the last good pit dog he had. Won seven straight fights in record time, and killed one of Floyd Bedding’s best dogs in under five minutes. I don’t hold with it, though.”

“Me either,” I said. “I’d get real attached to one of the dogs, then Dad would take it off and get it killed. I’m still half mad about some of the animals I lost.”

“I understand,” he said with a nod.

“What do you do?” I asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“He hunts,” his wife chimed in with a grin.

He smiled at her easily. “I farm some. And like she said, I hunt a lot. You see, my family had some land in the Batson oil field, and we’ve got a little money. As long as we’re careful with the checkbook we do fine.”

“I see.”

“I guess you wonder why we don’t move into town where living would be easier.”

I shook my head and grinned. “It’s no mystery to me. I live way out in the country, too. We’ve only had electricity and running water at my ranch for a couple of years.”

We ate on in silence, and finally he pushed his plate aside and lighted a Camel. I dug around and came up with my Chesterfields and got one going.

“I know you’re bound to be curious about all this business,” I said. “I mean, what I’m doing out here in the woods in the early morning with a broke foot and torn-up clothes.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, but a little curiosity never killed a man.” He glanced at his wife and winked at her affectionately. “Or a woman either, though I’ve known some that thought it would.”

“I feel obliged to you,” I said. “And I think you have a right to know what you’ve gotten into by taking me in. Do you know who Milam Walsh is?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“How much do you know about him?”

“I know that he’s sorry, and that he’s a big-time crook who’s capable of just about anything.”

“He’s all of that,” I agreed with a nod. I went on to relate how Walsh and his goons had kidnapped me in front of Alma Copeland’s house, and how I’d rammed the car into the big gum tree, and how I’d held the muzzle of Walsh’s own Colt Police Positive ground into his belly with about three pounds of pressure on the trigger until he carefully unlocked my handcuffs. I told them how I’d fled, leaving the three Jefferson County lawmen in the wrecked Buick, and how I’d spent the night shivering in the cold darkness before stumbling onto their place.

“Why did they grab you?” Riddle asked.

“Because I’ve got evidence squirreled away that links Walsh up with some New Orleans gangsters, and he wants to get his hands on it.”

“So they were going to beat on you until you told them where it is…”

I nodded.

“You’re lucky you got loose from them. After they got what they wanted, they’d have left your carcass somewhere out in the bushes just as sure as taxes.”

“I know that,” I replied. “And you may be in danger, too. They could come here looking for me.”

He smiled wryly and shook his head. “No, they won’t. They might sneak up here by the dead of night and kill somebody, or throw a body out in a ditch, but you couldn’t pay him or any of his people enough money to come in the daytime and bother a man. Especially not me.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because this is Hardin County, and my uncle has been high sheriff here for nearly thirty years. He’d as soon kill Walsh as not.”

“Really?”

“You bet. My uncle John is a Campbellite elder with fixed ideas about how lawmen ought to act, and Walsh don’t measure up to his standards. In fact, the two of them done had one little head-butting incident.”

“What happened?”

“Walsh come up here trying to throw his weight around about an old boy from Port Arthur that Uncle John had locked up in the jail. He slapped the fire out of Walsh in front of about a dozen people, right there on the street in town.”

“What did Walsh do?” I asked.

“He tucked his tail between his legs and went on back to Beaumont. So you just relax and don’t worry. You’re as safe here as you’d be at home. My uncle ain’t got no more use for that man than he has for a cut dog, and Walsh knows it. Want another shot of this whiskey?”