Harriet Bushrow
This is Hattie Bushrow again taking up the story right where Lizzie Wheeler left it after we made our little review of all our facts and fancies. There was no question at all in my mind that one of the Drovers had, as they say, done it. But there was no putting a finger on any one of them.
So when I got home, I called Helen and we had quite a long—“conference,” I guess you would call it.
It just seemed that the one who killed Garcia would have to be a man. I’m not one to minimize what a woman can do when she puts her mind to it; but to beat a person’s face that way—I just couldn’t think why a woman would do it.
As for that poor old thing up in Hogg’s Gap—Raebon—pshaw, I bet I could beat him in a fistfight myself. Now, Hancock sounds like he would have the strength in his arms. But Garcia would have to lean over for Hancock to hit him in the face, and Garcia wasn’t going to do anything of the sort.
So that left young Duncan and Allen. Well, what about them?
Duncan is the only one I ever talked to—down there at his club, you know. And he let me bamboozle him, for that’s what it amounted to. I just don’t think he has the stuff in him to do what somebody did to Garcia.
Now, Allen might be different. I picked him out while we were watching Borderville Transfer from Margaret’s back porch. He is beefy. He could have done it. But I would think that either Allen or Duncan would use a gun if they wanted to kill someone. Or maybe they would have somebody else do it. I believe people in those illegal “enterprises” have somebody else “rub out” the folks they want to get rid of.
As I thought about it, the person we knew least about was Bettye VanDyne.
That stud farm—was it really a stud farm? Oh, I didn’t doubt that she had a business there. But so did Allen Comming over at Borderville Transfer, and that wasn’t just moving furniture around. And so did Duncan Yardley have a business, and that wasn’t just young men taking their clothes off.
So I decided I would go out there and look at the place.
“Now, Harriet, you’re not to go out there,” Helen said when I told her.
“I’d like to know why not,” I said. Then she went on about how that husband of hers said it was too dangerous for us girls to look into all that. Fiddlesticks!
The place wasn’t hard to find, although that narrow road is a regular corkscrew. But after a while I came around the bend and there it was: big sign—paint not very fresh. In fact nothing looked like it had been painted in a long time.
I pulled over near the gate—as far off the road as I could. I guess I should explain that the road is higher than Miss VanDyne’s place. The fence runs right along beside the road, and then there is this gate, and the lane just on the other side of the gate goes down quite a bit.
There was lots of gravel around. I imagine they have trouble with that slick clay when it rains. And the gravel was loose, so I had to be careful going down that steep slope.
But the gate was in good condition and did not sag. It was fastened by a big heavy chain—about two and a half feet of it. There was a padlock on the end of it to lock the gate at night or maybe when Bettye VanDyne went away. But just then the chain was holding the gate closed the way my grandfather’s gate was always closed. That is, the chain was looped through the gate and the links were caught on a big nail on the gatepost. That way the animals can’t get out, but anybody with business to do can get in and out without any trouble.
I unfastened the gate, went through, and then hooked it up behind me carefully.
The barn was down a little ways and over to the left, and that slope was a little difficult for an old lady that’s not too steady on her feet even when the ground is level.
I was making it along the best I could, no doubt resembling a bag of sawdust, when I looked up and saw this young woman coming up from the house toward me. She had her head down and hadn’t seen me yet. She had on a dirty old pair of blue jeans, sneakers, and a black blouse with the sleeves rolled up.
“Hello,” I said kind of loud.
She looked up and saw me and immediately commenced to roll her sleeves down.
“Oh, don’t roll down your sleeves. It’s too hot.” I said. She was standing there about twenty feet from me, and she just kept on rolling down her sleeves. So I knew why that poor thing was rolling those sleeves down.
Lizze Wheeler had said that Miss VanDyne was forty years old or more, but from the looks of her I would have guessed nearly sixty. Bad complexion—greasy hair that looked like it
had not been combed all week. To express it in line with the business she was in, she just hadn’t been curried yet. But it was her eyes that were really pitiful, great hollow things!
“I’m Harriet Gardner,” I said. And it wasn’t exactly a lie, because that was my maiden name. But at this late date it is as good an alias as any. “They tell me you sell horses.”
“Yes,” she said, but she didn’t look like she was eager to do so.
“Well, I promised my granddaughter that when she graduated from high school, I would buy her a horse; and now she is reminding me of it.”
“You know anything about horses?” Miss VanDyne said.
“Indeed I do. I used to ride in the shows when I was a girl.” And that was the truth.
“What kind of horse did you have in mind?”
“A bridle horse. With just a little spirit but not too much. My granddaughter hasn’t been riding long. She thinks she can ride anything, but I wouldn’t want to give her something that would throw her off.”
Miss VanDyne was looking me over from head to foot and back again.
“That sorrel mare with the colt,” I said, “she’s a pretty thing. Is she a walker?”
That must have been the right thing to say because Miss VanDyne smiled and said, “That’s my best mare, and isn’t the foal a beauty?”
Well, with that as a hint, I talked on about the sorrel mare, and I know a little something about horses that I was able to work into the conversation. And after a while she called her stable boy and had him bring several of the horses on a halter so I could see them close to the fence. I looked at their legs and looked at their mouths and mostly looked wise and made a pretty good facsimile of somebody who knows about horses.
All the time, I was more interested in Bettye VanDyne than I was in the horses. She was so nervous, and her eyes were funny.
I just talked along—trying to gain her confidence, you know.
Finally she asked me if I would care for a drink.
I said yes, and so we went down to the house, where I sat on the porch and she went in to mix the drinks. I had told her bourbon on the rocks would be fine.
I was glad for an interval to look around.
The chair I was sitting in was all right—a little rickety, but all right. The other chair was a little rattan porch chair with some of the rattan loose, but that happens in the best of families. The cushion, however, was ragged with some tornup foam rubber coming out.
The porch floor needed painting, and one of the posts showed signs of rot.
There were no flower beds—nothing to make the place look pretty. Either Bettye VanDyne had none of the family’s income, or she just didn’t care. I thought of her meager body and haggard face. It was enough to make me cry.
I don’t have a grandchild. That was all a lie. Lamar and I just had one son, and he was killed over Germany. That was the greatest sorrow I’ll ever know. So with Lamar gone, I am all alone. But if I had had a granddaughter, she would not have been graduating from high school. She would have been the age of Bettye VanDyne. And while thirty-five or forty is not young, still there ought to be many, many more years before a woman is old.
Well, I was sitting there waiting for my drink and happened to look over to the side down beyond a kind of shed; and there was a man coming around the corner of that shed.
My heart just stopped.
I would have known that fellow anywhere. Of all the
people I had been watching through that telescope on Margaret’s back porch, this was the one I could really identify—the one I said reminded me of a Confederate veteran. Well, he had the awfulest old mustache. And what was worse, he was the same one who was in Duncan Yardley’s office the night I went to that Gold Coast club down on Division Street. Of all the people connected with the Drover crowd, the only two who could recognize me were Duncan Yardley and this man.
Well, of course, after the show I made of myself that night at the club, I didn’t see how this fellow could help remembering me. And sure enough he did remember, as I soon found out.
Lord have mercy, what was I to do? My mother used to say, “Always be a lady”; and it’s usually a pretty good policy.
So I said, “Good afternoon! Do you work here?”
And that was a silly thing to say. Why else would he be there in work clothes and dirty old scuffed shoes?
He sort of grumbled something.
“I guess you love horses,” I said.
He pushed right on by me into the house banging the screen door behind him.
I was sure he had recognized me; so what on earth was I going to do? Keep your nerves steady, old girl, I told myself. If he smelled a rat when he saw me, what would he think if I ran away just because I saw him?
Then Miss VanDyne came out of the house and handed me a glass with a paper towel wrapped around it.
“I didn’t have any more paper napkins,” she said by way of excuse.
“Why, this is just fine!” I exclaimed. “It’s so kind of you to think of doing this. Do you carry on this business alone?”
“Yes.”
“And how did you happen to get into it?”
“Horses are the only things I really know.”
“I imagine your family must have been horse-lovers from way back.”
“I have no family. After my mother died in seventy-five, the farm was mine. So I began breeding horses then. Business has not been too good, but it’ll be better. I’m going to build the place up, put in a ring, do training—that kind of thing.”
She talked of the future, but in a voice that was so dreary—there was no dream.
“Do you not have any family at all?” I knew she had family, and I wanted her to talk about it.
“Only cousins.”
“Do they live near?” I waited for an answer, but none came. I saw that I could not go further with that subject. I sipped my whiskey slowly.
“My granddaughter will be here in August,” I said. “I want her to ride the horse before I buy it, you understand.”
My hostess said that was fine. I was at a loss to get more out of her. I asked her about her television reception, hoping that that would lead to something.
It turned out that she watched the serials, and we talked about that a little while. The one she liked especially was one that I do not watch. Apparently it has to do with glamorous people living in Florida.
“I lived in Florida,” she said. “It was wonderful down there, but I had to leave. Daddy had boats. He had three of them and took people tarpon fishing. Mother sold the business, and we stayed on down there after Daddy died. But when she died too, this was all that was left.”
Once more the conversation petered out. And as my drink was finished, I got up to leave.
She walked with me up the lane.
I felt so sorry for her, and I think she knew it. Of course, all along we had had this idea that whatever they were up to,
all those Drovers were probably in it together. And now with the “Confederate veteran” being there on Miss VanDyne’s horse farm, it was a sure thing.
At that thought I looked around; there was the “Confederate veteran” following us. I had the impression that he had made a sudden movement and thought maybe from the way he was holding his right hand behind his back that he might have a pistol. I said to myself, that’s just imagination, don’t pay any attention to it; but I was almost out of my mind.
All the same, I looked him in the eye and said, “It was nice meeting you. Take good care of that horse I’m going to buy for my granddaughter.”
I was about to go up that slope to the gate, when the thought came to me: What if this is the place where Mr. García was killed and they are going to kill me here too! You see, that was the state I was in.
Well, I had to watch where I put my feet on that loose gravel going up to the road. And Miss VanDyne had gone ahead to open the gate. I looked up and saw her above me, the heavy chain in her hand. It was that image and fear coming together in that way that suddenly galvanized my imagination. I turned my eyes once more to the ground to rid my mind of the thought that flashed there. I took a step—and another step. I was not through the gate, but my eyes were still on the ground. Then the way the sun was shining, I saw a little gleam.
My hand went to my throat. Pebbles rolled under my foot, and I sprawled on the ground as a strong jerk at my necklace broke the cord and scattered the crystal beads everywhere.
“Oh, my! Oh, my!” I gasped.
Immediately I looked up and saw Bettye leaning over me. She seemed to be quite frightened. “Are you hurt?” she gasped.
I got myself into a sitting position and looked as dazed as I could.
I heard her say to that man I told you about, “Go back. Can’t you see the poor thing is hurt?” And he did.
I said, “Oh, dear!” several times, partly because I had hurt myself. I had scraped my shin almost raw. “No, I’m all right,” I said after a quick inspection. “But my beads!” I exclaimed. “They are cut crystal, and my husband gave them to me on the day we were married.”
I scrambled to my poor old knees and began to pick up the gleaming bits of glass and put them into my handbag.
“Darling, help me find them,” I said as though I was heartbroken over the loss of even one bead.
Well, we picked around in that gravel; and I picked more carefully than you’d ever expect. It took more time than I liked, I can assure you. But I had to make it look like I was only picking up little crystal beads.
Finally I decided that I had found all I was going to find. I thanked Bettye for her help and told her I would see her in August. I got into my car and started up quick. I didn’t even turn around so as to go back the way I had come. No indeed. I just wanted to get shut of that place right away.
So I went fast as I could, although that road was just a snake the way it wiggled around.
About the time I commenced to relax, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw this old gray automobile behind me, coming fast. The thought struck me like a ton of bricks: What if it’s him?
And it was.
Something said to me: Drive in the middle of the road so he can’t come up beside you.
And that’s what I did.
He just stayed right there almost on my back bumper. I would step on the gas a little, and he would step on the gas
a little. I would slow down a little, and he would slow down a little. My old De Soto is thirty-five years old, but it hasn’t gone over fifty thousand miles, and I figured it could go pretty fast and I could get away if that dratted road just hadn’t been such a mass of curlicues.
Pretty soon I was relieved to see that the fellow was falling back. I was just delighted.
Then I heard a gun.
And I realized that the reason he was falling back was so he could shoot at me when I went around a bend in the road. I suppose he had to shoot with his left hand, and that was a blessing.
But what was I to do?
Then I saw this big old lumbering shape ahead of me. It was the garbage truck.
It was just blocking the road and going so slow. Well that’s it, I thought. That fellow will get me for sure.
I guess I didn’t tell you that all this time the road had been running through cutover timber where the new-growth pine was about fifteen feet or so high, and it was just thick everywhere on both sides. That meant you couldn’t see around a bend very far at all.
Well, I got around one of those curves, and what do you think? That garbage truck was turning off. We had come to the dump.
You can bet I followed that garbage truck right into the dump. And there were three other trucks there and a man with one of those bulldozer things. I sailed right into the midst of them and just sat tight.
The fellow in that gray car didn’t know what to do. I saw him drive by that entrance. And in a few minutes he drove back the other way. Then he went by again. But he didn’t dare come in because there were all those garbagemen there.
I can tell you they were the handsomest garbagemen I ever expect to see. I just loved them.
As you might expect, the trucks were there to dump garbage and not to sit around. So one of them pulled out and then another. That left one truck and the bulldozer man. I supposed some more trucks might come along, but there was no assurance of that.
It was getting on past three o’clock, and I knew they would all be gone—including the bulldozer man—at five or maybe even four. And there I would be, back in a pickle again.
So I drove my car up next to the one garbage truck that was still there and said to the driver, nice young man—looked like he might be twenty-five or thirty—I said, “Can you tell me if there is another way to get out of this dump except the way I came in?”
He had that machinery going that dumps the garbage and didn’t hear. So I asked him again.
“Yes ma’am,” he said. “Hit’s right through thataway.” He was just a good old Tennessee boy. And he was pointing—it looked like—to a big pile of garbage that the man with the bulldozer thing hadn’t flattened out yet.
I pulled around in that direction, and sure enough, there was a way out over there.
Believe me, I took it and did not spare the horses!
After about ten minutes I was at Hogan’s Tank. And I knew how to get back to Borderville from there. I guess my Confederate veteran was still back there watching the entrance of that dump like a cat waiting for the mouse to come out of her hole—no, “his” hole. This women’s lib thing has got me so mixed up I don’t know what to say anymore. But I think the cat is female and the mouse is male, although it was the other way around with me and that Confederate fellow.
I have a very fine man who takes care of my eyes—Dr. Thomason. I absolutely think the world of him. He can do
just about anything that can be done in the line of eyeglasses. He has an office on Division Street, and there was a parking place only three doors down from where he is.
Earlene Hawkes, the office girl, looked up when I came in and of course knew me immediately—she should—I’ve been going to Dr. Thomason for thirty years. “Why, I don’t believe we have an appointment for you today, Mrs. Bushrow,” she said.
“No, honey, you sure don’t,” I said. “This is something different and something special. I’ve got a little job for Dr. Thomason to do for me and it won’t take two minutes for me to explain it to him.”
He had a patient having his eyes examined, which meant I had to wait a little bit. And that was just as well because I had to dig around in my purse to find the evidence I had been collecting. By the time Dr. Thomason’s patient was out of the office, I had got together four pretty good pieces of lens and two tiny slivers.
“Can you tell me what the formula for a lens is by looking at broken pieces?” I asked after Dr. Thomason had greeted me.
“Perhaps,” he said. “It depends on the condition and size of the pieces.”
“All right, then,” I said. “Here are the pieces.”
“But Mrs. Bushrow,” he objected, “we have your prescription on file. We would not have to reconstruct it from these pieces.”
I looked at him and laughed. “Who said these are from my prescription?”
He looked at me in a quizzical sort of way.
“Now, don’t ask questions,” I said. “Ladies have their secrets.” And I gave him such a look that it would have melted his heart if I had been sixty years younger. It doesn’t have the same effect when you are eighty-six, but at least Dr.
Thomason took the little pieces of glass and said he would let me know by Thursday.
Between my adventure and the whiskey Bettye VanDyne had given me, I was revved up. I hardly noticed the pain in my shin as I drove home, and it really wasn’t all that bad. I put a little salve on it, and went straight to the telephone to call Helen Delaporte.
“I want you to find out something for me from those folks out in California,” I said. And then I told her what I wanted. And of course I had to tell all about my adventure. Helen was horrified, but that was all right.
I don’t know when I have been so excited about anything. But, then, if I was all wrong, what a fool I would look!
I made myself a little supper and tried to watch TV. I got ready for bed and turned out the light. In the darkness I could imagine Bettye VanDyne holding a length of chain about two feet long with a heavy padlock hanging from the end. It was an eerie picture like the posters that used to advertise horror movies. Poor little Bettye! The stuff that had made a monster of her would make a monster of anybody.