hum was as usual. I had gone back on top when I suddenly dived back again. There was a sharp stinging buzz like an angry bee-a malicious angry buzz! Who was it? I met Lucine's smoldering eyes and I knew. I almost gasped under the sudden flood of hate-filled anger. And when I tried to reach her, down under, I was rebuffed-not knowingly but as though there had never been a contact between us. I wiped my trembling hands against my skirt, trying to clean them of what I had read. The recess bell came so shatteringly that I jumped convulsively and shared the children's laughter over it. As soon as I could I hurried to Mrs. Kanz's room. 'Lucine's going to have another spell,' I said without preface. 'What makes you think so?' Mrs. Kanz marked '46 1/2 %' on the top of a literature paper. 'I don't think so, I know so. And this time she won't be too slow. Someone will get hurt if we don't do something.' Mrs. Kanz laid down her pencil and folded her arms on the desk top, her lips tightening. 'You've been brooding too much over Lucine,' she said, none too pleased. 'If you're getting to the point where you think you can predict her behavior, you're pretty far gone. People are going to be talking about your being queer pretty soon. Why don't you just forget about her and concentrate on-on-well, on Low? He's more fun than she is anyway, I'll bet.' 'He'd know,' I cried. 'He'd tell you, too! He knows more about Lucine than anyone thinks.' 'So I've heard.' There was a nasty purr to her voice that I didn't know it possessed. 'They've been seen together out in the hills. Well, it's only her mind that's retarded. Remember, she's over twelve now, and some men-' I slapped the flat of my hand down on the desk top with a sharp crack. I could feel my eyes blazing, and she dodged back as though from a blow. She pressed the back of one hand defensively against her cheek. 'I-' she gasped, 'I was only kidding!' I breathed deeply to hold my rage down. 'Are you going to do anything about Lucine?' My voice was very soft. 'What can I do? What is there to do?' 'Skip it,' I said bitterly. 'Just skip it.' I tried all afternoon to reach Lucine, but she sat lumpish and unheeding-on top. Underneath violence and hatred were seething like lava, and once, without apparent provocation, she leaned across the aisle and pinched Petie's arm until he cried. She was sitting in isolation with her face to the wall when the last bell rang. 'You may go now, Lucine,' I said to the sullen stranger who had replaced the child I knew. I put my hand on her shoulder. She slipped out of my touch with one fluid quick motion. I caught a glimpse of her profile as she left. The jaw muscles were knotted and the cords in her neck were tensed. I hurried home and waited, almost wild from worry, for Low to get off shift. I paced the worn Oriental rug in the living room, circling the potbellied cast-iron heater. I peered ! a dozen times through the lace curtains, squinting through the dirty cracked window panes. I beat my fist softly into my palm as I paced, and I felt physical pain when the phone on the wall suddenly shrilled, I snatched down the receiver, 'Yes!' I cried. 'Hello!'' 'Marie. I want Marie.' The voice was far and crackling, 'You tell Marie I gotta talk to her.' I called Marie and left her to her conversation and went out on the porch. Back and forth, back and forth I paced, Marie's voice swelling and fading as I passed. '. . . well, I expected it a long time ago. A crazy girl like that-' 'Lucine!' I shouted and rushed indoors. 'What happened?' 'Lucine?' Marie frowned from the telephone. ''What's Lucine gotta do with it? Marson's daughter ran off last night with the hoistman at the Golden Turkey. He's fifty if he's a day and she's just turned sixteen.' She turned back to the phone. 'Yah, yah, yah?' Her eyes gleamed avidly. I just got back to the door in time to see the car stop at the gate. I grabbed my coat and was down the steps as the car door swung open. 'Lucine?' I gasped. 'Yes.' The sheriff opened the back door for me, his deputy goggle-eyed with the swiftness of events. 'Where is she?' 'I don't know,' I said. 'What happened?' 'She got mad on the way home.' The car spurted away from the hotel. 'She picked Petie up by the heels and bashed him against a boulder. She chased the other kids away with rocks and went back and started to work on Petie. He's still alive, but Doc lost count of the stitches and they're transfusing like crazy. Mrs. Kanz says you likely know where she is.' 'No.' I shut my eyes and swallowed. 'But we'll find her. Get Low first.' The shift bus was just pulling in at the service station. Low was out of it and into the sheriff's car before a word could be spoken. I saw my anxiety mirrored on his face before we clasped hands. For the next two hours we drove the roads around Kruper. We went to all the places we thought Lucine might have run to, but nowhere, nowhere in all the scrub-covered foothills or the pine-pointed mountains, could I sense Lucine. 'We'll take one more sweep-through Poland Canyon. Then if it's no dice we'll hafta get a posse and Claude's hounds.' The sheriff gunned for the steep rise at the canyon entrance. 'Beats me how a kid could get so gone so fast.' 'You haven't seen her really run,' Low said. 'She never can when she's around other people. She's just a little slower than a plane and she can run me into the ground any time. She just shifts her breathing into overdrive and takes off. She could beat Claude's hounds without trying, if it ever came to a run-down.' 'Stop!' I grabbed the back of the seat. 'Stop the car!' The car had brakes. We untangled ourselves and got out. 'Over there,' I said. 'She's over there somewhere.' We stared at the brush-matted hillside across the canyon. 'Gaw-dang!' the sheriff moaned. 'Not in Cleo II! That there hell hole's been nothing but a jinx since they sunk the first shaft. Water and gas and cave-in sand, every gaw-dang thing in the calendar. I've lugged my share of dead men out of there-me and my dad before me. What makes you think she's in there, Teacher? Yuh see something?' 'I know she's somewhere over there,' I evaded. 'Maybe not in the mine but she's there.' 'Let's get looking,' the sheriff sighed. 'I'd give a pretty to know how you saw her clear from the other side of the car.' He edged out of the car and lifted a shotgun after him. 'A gun?' I gasped. ''For Lucine?' 'You didn't see Petie, did you?' he said. 'I did. I go animal hunting with guns.' 'No!' I cried. 'She'll come for us.' 'Might be,' he spat reflectively. 'Or maybe not.' We crossed the road and plunged into the canyon before the climb. 'Are you sure, Dita?' Low whispered. 'I don't reach her at all. Only some predator-' 'That's Lucine,' I choked. 'That's Lucine.' I felt Low's recoil. 'That-that animal?' 'That animal. Did we do it? Maybe we should have left her alone.' 'I don't know.' I ached with his distress. 'God help me, I don't know.' She was in Cleo II. Over our tense silence we could hear the rattling of rocks inside as she moved. I was almost physically sick. 'Lucine,' I called into the darkness of the drift. 'Lucine, come on out. It's time to go home.' A fist-sized rock sent me reeling, and I nursed my bruised shoulder with my hand. 'Lucine!' Low's voice was commanding and spread all over the band. An inarticulate snarl answered him. 'Well?' The sheriff looked at us.
