Sudden Country Read Online Free PDF Page B

good foot he nudged that item, which had collapsed when a leg had broken.
    "Very likely." Mr. Knox stood and deposited a small pistol in a pocket of his robe. "What about Flynn?"
    "Shot through the heart."
    Mother's fingers dug into my flesh.
    "They were after the gold," I said. "I heard them talking."
    Both men stared at me. I related what I had heard. "Did you see any of them clearly?" the Judge demanded.
    I shook my head. "The one with the pretty horse was called Beacher. He called the other one Pike, the one Mr. Knox shot."
    Mr. Knox said, "You saw him hit?"
    "I think so. He jerked in his saddle."
    "Charlie Beacher and Nazarene Pike. I thought it was Pike when I saw the whip." It lay on the ground near the Judge. "The Yankee scalps that pair took would reach from here to Gettysburg."
    "Really, Judge." But Mother's scolding lacked conviction in that place.
    "What about the fourth man?" Mr. Knox asked me.
    "He had a blaze-face horse. No one called him by name and I couldn't see or hear him well. I think he started to go through Mr. Flynn's pockets." In my excitement I had forgotten about the glass eye.
    "Looking for what, I wonder." Standing over Flynn now, Mr. Knox stroked his moustache. "I wonder as well what Flynn was doing out here with a lamp."
    "He wasn't looking for his flask," the Judge said. "He had that earlier."
    "I know what it was." I freed myself from Mother's grasp and turned inside.
    Mother was soothing Mayellen Fredrickson from next door on the front threshold when I came downstairs fully dressed minutes later. Mrs. Frederickson was wearing a lavender percale robe cut for a younger, less abundant Mrs. Frederickson and fanning herself with a lace handkerchief that was plainly inadequate for anything but fan-fling. Mother made sympathetic sounds and closed the door firmly in her visitor's face. The night's incidents would fuel conversation at Mrs. Frederickson's First Tuesday .At Home for years. Mr. Knox and Judge Blod were there as well. I held out the crumple of notes Flynn had given me that morning, less what I'd spent on the Navy Colt's and cartridges. The Judge grabbed it before Mr. Knox could move.
    "There are but a few dollars here," he said, disappointed.
    "He must have forgotten the errand he sent me on. I hadn't a chance to return what was left. Perhaps he thought he'd dropped them."
    "What's that yellow note?" Mr. Knox asked.
    "Mr. Sterner refused to accept it."
    The Judge separated it and studied it at arm's length. "A Confederate five. It must have been a keepsake. It's worthless."
    "It has writing on it." Mr. Knox took it from him.
    Mother and I crowded in for a look; or at least that was my purpose. She rested long fingers on Mr. Knox's sleeve. On one end of the note, next to the portrait of Jefferson Davis, a number of marks had been made with a pencil. They were blurred but still discernible, and resembled nothing so much as a child's game of tic-tac-toe.
    "It is a map of some kind," declared Mr. Knox.
    "Quantrill's gold!" I cried.
    "Balderdash. Mere doodles." Judge Blod snatched at the note, grasping only empty air as Mr. Knox turned toward me.
    "Did Flynn give you this in the backyard?" he asked. I nodded. He stroked the parchment thoughtfully. "Obviously a mistake, as he could not hope to purchase anything with a Confederate note. When he discovered it was missing he went out to see if he'd dropped it in the yard and found his old friends waiting for him."
    "Let us find the gold," I said.
    "Let us wire the authorities in Amarillo about the dead men behind the house. There is nothing here to tell us this will direct us to gold. Even if it did, where would we begin looking? What is this 'Harney' scribbled in here? It could be in Africa or China for all we know."
    "Or Argentina," said I, morosely.
    "It is a mountain in South Dakota."
    We all looked at Judge Blod, whose normally proud face and posture now presented a study in defeat.
    "I suppose we must be confidants," he said. "Orrin Peckler