THE OLD Stillman cabin was nestled in a glade just over the crest of the mountain. I was aware of Vicky’s nearness and warmth as we entered the ramshackle house. I lighted a Coleman lantern I’d brought up with me. Its soft hissing quietly accented the sighing of the night breeze through the trees outside.
In the lantern glow, the interior of the cabin was revealed, the rough, worm-eaten logs, the hard dirt floor, the sagging timbers of the roof. A rusty iron bed and stove and a hand-hewn table still stood in the cabin, which had been unoccupied since the death of old man Stillman.
Vicky looked at the canned goods I’d dumped on the table. My car was hidden in a grove of trees below the cabin. I’d stopped here first with supplies before crossing the peak to intercept her and Oldham.
“Are you hungry, Wade?”
“I could eat. I’ll start a fire.”
While I set the stove to smoking, she took stuff out of the corrugated cardboard box on the table—canned meat, beans, coffee, bread, two pots and a skillet, a package of paper plates and another of wooden picnic spoons.
I lit a cigarette and watched Vicky open beans and Spam. She put the beans on to heat. Water was the only item I’d forgotten, and I picked up the second pot, went outside to the spring above the house.
I carried the water back and she put coffee on to boil. She moved about the stove as her mother would move, as countless generations of hill women had moved, not because hope was the mainspring, but only because the heart kept beating, the lungs kept breathing, and the hands, feet, and body went through the motions of living without knowing why.
After we ate, I said, “You can’t stay here long. Oldham will tell Kirk Hyder what happened and the sheriff will scour the hills around the spot where you were taken from Oldham’s car. You’ve got until daylight to rest. I want you out of here before dawn. Take the food with you. Don’t leave any sign that you’ve been here. You’ll have to hide all day and maybe do a lot of running to keep out of Hyder’s way. You will stay out of his reach, won’t you?”
She studied my face.
“Hyder,” I said, “won’t have a chance of catching you in these hills if you make up your mind not to let him.”
“All right, Wade, I’ll stay out of his reach.”
“Then return here tomorrow night. I’ll meet you. We’ll kiss these mountains good-bye forever, Vicky.” I took her hands in mine. “You see what that means? A new start. A brand new life.”
“You won’t get drunk or make any mistakes?”
“How many times do I have to tell you?” I gave her the Winchester, moved toward the door.
She followed me. I kissed her, and there was a faint warmth in her lips.
She stood in the cabin doorway, watching me go. Crickets skirled their mating cries and a night creature in the distance screamed at the new-risen moon. The mountain night Would have frightened a lot of women, but it had no power over her. Her fears were composed of different things. The rifle would protect her from things which held no fear, animate things.
I drove fast all the way back to Big Hominy. I flashed through a residential section where time had tiptoed past the hulking, gingerbread houses. The business district was lonely, deserted, with street lamps throwing pale yellow pools over the secretive streets.
I swung around the square where the monument to the county’s Confederate War dead stood. The courthouse was on the west side of the square, a decaying brick building with a dome copied from the capitol in Washington. The courthouse clock was tolling eleven-thirty, and there were lights on the ground floor where Kirk Hyder had his office.
I drove on out to the house, approaching it along the weed-grown driveway sheltered by tall poplar trees. The lights in Kirk’s office had made me think he was there. He wasn’t. He was here. Because of the trees I didn’t see the car parked before the house until I was right on it.
The car blocked the driveway, and Kirk Hyder was standing beside it.
I stopped the jalopy and got out. The light on our broad veranda flashed on, and my mother, a shawl around her shoulders, stepped to the driveway and came toward me.
Kirk Hyder said howdy. He had been sheriff ever since I could remember. He was as lean as a slab-sided hound and had a face about as attractive. His iron gray hair stood like a brush on his head, and his eyes, blue and calm, were forever unreadable.
“Where’s the girl, Wade?” Kirk asked.
“Which girl?”
“You know who I’m talking about. Vicky Hustin. Where’d you take her?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
My mother was standing close to us. “You see, Sheriff? You’ll have to look elsewhere. I told you Wade wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“Kirk,” I said, “I’m too tired for games. I’m going in to bed.”
He took two steps forward, which brought his face close to mine. “I’m a mite tired for games myself. Be a friend to yourself, Wade, and cut out the monkey business. I’m going to get that girl.”
“That’s your job.”
I started by him, and he caught my arm. He had a grip like a steel trap.
“Somebody,” he said, “took Vicky Hustin out of Clarence Oldham’s car at gunpoint. I’ve questioned Oldham for the better part of an hour. He co-operated. In fact, he was burned up at being the victim of such highhandedness.”
“If somebody took Vicky, why aren’t you out trying to find her?”
“In this darkness? With her knowing the hills as well as a wild creature?”
“I don’t mean that. Maybe some of Rock Hustin’s people have got her. You ought to be checking that. You might have the start of a hill vendetta on your hands, while you’ve been here worrying my mother.”
“You know better than that, Wade,” he said in a voice thin with control. “I know you’re sweet on that girl. I know you inquired about her whereabouts at the hotel and a few more places. Then you disappeared, and you’ve been gone all day. Somehow or other you caught something I missed. You knew where she and Oldham had gone, and you waylaid them.”
He glanced at my mother. “Evalina, your boy is in serious trouble this time. Acting as accessory after the fact in a murder is something that can send him a long ways up the river.”
My mother trembled. Her hand caught my arm. “If you know anything, Wade, you’d better tell the sheriff.”
“I don’t know a thing. Why are you picking on me, Kirk?”
“I’m not picking on anybody! I just want that girl. There can’t be a single doubt that she killed her husband. Whatever kind of rat he was, she’s got to take what’s coming to her.”
“There is the chance she’s innocent.”
He made a noise in his throat. “She’ll have the opportunity to prove it. But it looks pretty open and shut to me.”
“You’re not paid to render opinions, Kirk.”
His face was white with anger. “You’d better tell me, Wade. Her only chance is to return and stand trial.”
He was a man with a one-track mind. The whole thing would be over as soon as he got Vicky and brought her to trial. No other suspects. No other directions for his bulldog mind to travel.
I took my mother by the arm and started toward the house. “Maybe Oldham hid her himself and lied to you, Kirk.”
“He’s not the man to take that chance. Anyhow, he didn’t know she was wanted until he charged into town to tell me about a kidnaping.”
“Well, I wish I could help. Good night, Kirk.”
I was almost at the veranda when he said, “Wait a minute, Wade!”
I stopped and looked back. He walked to my car, pulled a flashlight from his hip pocket, and flashed the light around inside the car. He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a pint bottle half full of whisky. He pitched the whisky in his own car and walked toward us.
“Wade, you ought to know better than to carry around that non-taxed ‘shine.”
I read the glint of triumph in his eyes. It tensed my muscles. “You’ve probably got a jug of your own around some place, Kirk.”
“But nobody’s arresting me for it,” he said. “And you’re arresting me?”
“I’m afraid I have to. As you said, I’m not paid to render opinions. It’s my opinion that the county is wrong in trying to stay dry. But as long as we have that law, it’s my job to enforce it.”
He pulled a pair of handcuffs from a black leather case hooked to his belt. One of the bracelets snapped closed on my left wrist. A cry caught in my mother’s throat.
Real pain showed on Hyder’s face. “Evalina, I’m sorry. More sorry than you’ll ever know. But I think he’d better spend the night in town.”
My mother’s face was pale and thin, in the cold moonlight. “Wade, she’s no good. She’s not worth it!”
“Take her advice,” Hyder urged.
“I don’t know a thing,” I said.
“All right, then,” Kirk said, giving the cuffs a tug that showed his anger. “Let’s go.”
“Kirk,” my mother said. “I really think—”
“I’m sorry, Evalina,” he said again. He had me in the car by that time and we swept around the rigid, shocked figure of the little gentlewoman whose life had been an attempted denial that the world is a violent place.
A few minutes later Kirk pulled up before the courthouse. He motioned me out of the car, sticking close behind me. “Inside,” he ordered.
The empty building echoed our footsteps. The old-fashioned, milky globes hanging in the corridor spilled pale light over a floor as warped and wavy as a lake.
Kirk pushed me into the elevator ahead of him. The cage of iron grillwork groaned, wobbled, and bumped its guides to the third, and top, floor of the courthouse. This whole floor was given over to the jail.
When the empty cell yawned before me, I became so mad I couldn’t speak. I wouldn’t move, either, until he had pulled his gun and prodded me in.
“Now, Wade,” he said mildly, “let’s see how much help you can give her from in there!”