Katheren had seen all she could bear.
She was on her feet, running. She remembers the light of the Palmyra filling station bobbing towards her, and a remote voice crying for help. Her own voice, she supposes.
How far she ran, she doesn’t know. Quite suddenly she was among men who were staring at her, holding a lantern before her face. Then her husband’s arms seized her and held her. She gladly surrendered all further responsibility for her future.
4
When the world came back into focus, she found herself in a barren, stuffy room clutching a glass full of fiery liquor. She was sitting on an iron bed. Her hair, she gathered, was a mess.
George made her drink a little more.
Staring at her from an open doorway, the naked boy and the drab woman who was obviously his mother, gaped at them. Woar ignored them. He kissed Katheren’s liquory lips, and held her with a trembling arm, and confessed, “I’m—I’m frightfully glad you—you’re here. Frightfully glad. Oh, frightfully glad.”
“It’s nice,” she said, “to know.”
He stopped trembling and kissing her then, and smiled wryly, and said, “Quite so.”
Alden Beardsley stepped briskly out of the darkness, carrying a suitcase which he gave to the boy.
“That goes in my car—the Chrysler. Feel up to a long ride, Katheren? That’s the girl. I wouldn’t drink any more of that stuff if you don’t like it.”
“What is it?”
“Strange you should ask. It’s a mystery. Our hostess here calls it desert brandy. She ought to know. She makes it. Eh, sister?”
The drab woman hid her hands in the folds of her faded gingham dress and looked sullen. Something about her reminded Katheren of the coyotes.
“We can trust her all right,” Alden resumed, apparently having read Katheren’s mind. “She won’t say anything if we don’t say anything. Crime doesn’t pay, sister. It’s bootleg,” he added for Katheren’s benefit, since she was sniffing the glass. “Distilled from fermented honey, I think. What they don’t think of, these desert people!”
“Where’s Smalnick? He—”
“Lefty is dead. Seems to have been attacked by a pack of coyotes. Rare occurrence, isn’t it, sister? Well, that’s what happened, anyhow. As far as we know, the Lagonda ran out of gas down the road a ways, and Lefty was walking back when—“ he shrugged, spread his hands in deprecation, and winked heavily.
“We’ll be getting along,” said Henry Tozer. He was brisk as a bird, and as serious, sticking his head round the corner of the door. “Taking Constance to Stanford, Ray Kemp thinks she can get in this year. College education never hurt a girl. See you again, Mrs. Brendan? See you again, Beardsley?”
“Oh. Yes, sure you will...” and there was quick hand-shaking, permeated by Alden’s patent, pious hope that he’d see none of these people again, ever.
“Hen-reee?” cried the voice of Agatha Tozer out of the distance and darkness.
“Get everybody in the car,” retorted Henry shortly. “You sit in the back. Connie and Ray sit up front with me.”
He, too, winked at Katheren, adding the ghost of a grin. Then he hurried off. He seemed to be stuffing a wad of money into his worn, flabby bill-old as he strode away, and straightening his shoulders bravely. The trailer money, of course! Smalnick, or Lefty or whoever he was, must have had that in his pocket.
Somebody started a motor. Katheren and Beardsley skirted the sulphurous puddle in time to see Mae kissing good-by to Ruth, who leaned out of Nick’s car.
“All the happiness in the world, dear!”
Nick murmured something. Mae drew back, blowing kisses. The wheels of the Mercury kicked impatiently at the sand, the car turned its tail on them and sped towards the highway. It swung eastward.
Mae sighed: “I’d love to be going with them. Arizona, you know. I did so want to be at the wedding. But Alden has to go into Mexico to look over some of his mining interests, you know how it is, don’t you, dear?”
The Tozer car pulled out with much waving of hands and subdued banter. Ray drove, Connie sat between him and her father...
Alden was softly telling someone, “Turn south into the desert before you hit Newberry. That way you miss the State Inspection Station at Daggett. I guarantee you’ll get through that way, George—”
George, raising his imperturbable face into the lantern-light, smiled crookedly.
“You should know, Beardsley. Good luck, then.”
He took Katheren’s arm, led her to the Packard, which inexplicably stood before the filling station. It had just been washed. The naked boy was putting in gas, and hitching up his wandering trunks with an elbow.
Caligula panted that he was glad to see them. Inexplicable was her husband’s sudden show of affection. He kissed Caligula between the eyes before he ordered him up to his place behind the seat.
“The seat’s wet,” said Katheren, as soon as she was in.
“Can’t be helped. Ought to dry soon in this heat, though.”
Woar paid for the gas and drove out into the highway. Mae and Alden waved farewells, and the boy waved at the swarming bugs. Katheren fluttered her hand out the window, then settled back against the coolness of the damp cushions.
“What,” she asked her husband, who was tucking the change in his pocket, “are you using for money these days?”
“I touched Beardsley for a hundred.”
“You’re amazing, George!”
The Packard swerved past the overloaded Nash. More waving of farewells. There was finality about it now, and Katheren knew she would see none of these people again. The adventure had come to its end.
An instant later, they passed the dark shape of the Lagonda at the side of the road. Katheren recognized the spot, and shuddered.
“Forget it, my dear,” her husband advised.
“That’s likely. George, you’ll have to tell me sooner or later. Everybody knows a coyote won’t attack a man.”
“So you know that too, do you?”
“Don’t evade. I must know what happened to Lefty.”
“My dear, he was killed. It isn’t a cheery subject, is it? He met his death through the agency of canine teeth. Bite in the neck. Jugular vein severed. Blood drained out of him before he could get help. You and the police can brood about it till doomsday without altering the simple facts. The Lagonda’s tank is dry. Presumably the man had to walk for gas. Alone, through the desert. He was attacked by coyotes and killed. May we leave it there?”
“George, I saw him fall from the running board. He wasn’t alive then. And you washed this car. Even the seat. I do hope you got all the stains out. And you did kiss Caligula, you can’t deny that. So if you won’t tell me—”
He groaned. She ignored him.
“—I shall tell you. Caligula saved my life. He bit Lefty, in the side of the neck. Of course, it’s nice of you to try to save my feelings, but I’m quite able to think things out for myself.”
After a few miles, George said, “As one who recently practiced that profession, I believe you’d make a fairly good detective.”
She had nothing to say about that for a few miles. She was thinking.
She said, “I’m thinking we’re lucky you were a detective, really. All of us. I suppose we won’t have to run from the police any more, after we reach San Francisco?”
“Right.”
“And I can get a bath and a permanent wave and so on?”
“Right.”
“That isn’t really what I was thinking, George. I was really thinking about that office next to mine where I store all the old manuscripts and stuff. It’s a nice office. With a desk and some chairs and a few pictures—and my secretary would probably do for both of us—and there’s a door to it that opens right on the corridor, so if you wanted to put your name on it—H. G. B. WOAR, Private Detective—we could work it out somehow...”
“Katheren!”
“It’s on my mind. I might as well get it off. I’m sorry.”
“I’m awfully sorry. It’s good for me to admit it. After all, there’s only one sensible way for you to make a living, and that’s the way you’ve been used to all your life, so—”
Without taking his eyes from the highway, George seized the nearest available part of Katheren—her hand, as it happened—and kissed it fervently.
From the feel of his lips against her fingers, he must have been indulging in another of his funny, crooked smiles.
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