Bitter Gold Hearts

I got the same response house after house. Some talked easily, some not, the way people will, but the end was always the same. Nobody had begged, bought, borrowed, rented, or stolen transportation of any sort. Lunch time came and went and I began to consider restructuring my assumptions.

Maybe Karl Junior had walked home. Barefoot. Or maybe he'd hitched a ride or had flagged down one of the day coaches running into the city. Or the ogres might have left him some way to get home. That seemed damned unlikely. Walking, stealing, flag­ging a coach presented difficulties, too, for reasons of character and obvious traceability. Coachmen remember people they pick up along the road. Hitching looked like the best and most logical alterna­tive. It's the way I'd have gotten myself to town. But I doubted that a resort to the charity of strangers would even occur to a spoiled child off the Hill. But had he gotten home that way, my chances of discovering the people who had helped were even more remote than they were by my present, most-favored course. So I stuck to what I was doing. I reasoned that if he had hitched, he would have mentioned it. He'd been careful to mention such details.

I now had a strong attachment to the assumption that Junior had participated in his own kidnapping. I had to caution myself not to get so attached that I began dis­carding contrary evidence. The vision sent me back to wartime days. The farmer and his sons and a dozen other men were advancing through the hayfield in echelon, scythes rhythmically swing­ing. They looked like skirmishers cautiously advancing. I pulled up and watched for a few minutes. They saw me but pretended otherwise. The paterfamilias glanced at the sky, which was overcast, and decided to keep cutting.

All right. I could play it their way. I slid down, walked to the edge of the field where the hay was down already—just to show how thoughtful a fellow I am—and approached the crowd from the flank. The women and kids raking the hay into piles and getting it onto the backs of several pathetic donkeys were much more curious than their men folk. I gave them a "howdy" as I passed, and nothing more. Anything more would have been considered a heavy pass by many farm husbands. I parked myself a cautious distance from the guy who looked like he was the boss ape in these parts and said "howdy" again. He grunted and went on swinging, which was all right by me. I was trying to be accommodating.

"You might be able to help me."

This time his grunt was filled with the gravest of doubts.

"I'm looking for a man who passed this way four or five days back. He might have been looking to rent or buy a horse."

"Why?"

"On account of what he did to my woman."

He turned his head in rhythm and gave me a look saying I had no business going around asking for help if I was not man enough to rule my woman.

"He killed her. I just found out yesterday. Got her over in the buggy, taking her to her folks. Want to find that fellow when I get that done."

The farmer stopped swinging his scythe. He stared at me with squinty eyes that had looked into too many sunrises and sunsets. The other scythes came to rest and the men leaned upon them exactly like tired soldiers lean on their spears. The women and kids stopped raking and loading. Everybody stared at me. The boss farmer nodded once, curtly, put his scythe down gently, hiked over to the buggy. He leaned against the side, lifted the cover off Amiranda.

When he returned, he stood beside me instead of fac­ing me. "Pretty little gal."

"She was. We had a young one coming, too."

"Looked like. Wadlow! Come here."

One of the older farmers came to us. He planted his scythe and leaned. He looked even more laconic than the first one.

"You sold that swayback mare to that smart-ass city boy what day?"

The second farmer considered the sky as though he might find the answer written there. "Five days ago to­day. About noon." He eyed me like he was suspicious I might want the money back.

I knew what I wanted to know but had to play the game out. "He say where he was headed?"

Wadlow looked to my companion, who told him, "You tell him what he wants to know."

"Said he was going into the city. Said his horse got stole. Didn't say much of nothing else."

"Hope you took him good. Was he wearing shoes?" It was an off-the-wall question but about the only thing left I had to ask. Except, "Was he alone?"

Wadlow said, "Didn't have no shoes. Boots. Pretty rich-boy boots. Wouldn't last a week out here. He was by his lonesome."

"That's that, then," I said. The older farmer asked, "That tell you what you need?"

"I reckon I know where to look now." And that was true. "Much obliged." I checked the sky. "Thank you, then." I turned to go.

"Luck to you. She was a pretty little thing."