had gone gray as a cinder block.
We went until the bank became nothing more than mud and gravel and was hard to keep our footing on. We were about to turn back when I saw a great tree split wide from lightning, its blackened halves lying one on the bank, the other partially in the water.
I studied it.
'That used to be a big tree,' I said.
'Good, Kemosabe. Pale Face no miss fucking thing. Him know big trees from small trees. Pale Face one smart sumbitch.'
'It used to have an old tire swing hung from a chain. The swing was over the river.'
'You're saying you remember something?'
'We'd bail out of it into the water, then climb up and do it again.'
'We're near the Iron Bridge?'
'No, I just remember the tree and the swing.'
'But it's a landmark to help you find the bridge?'
'Probably not. I remember the tree, but can't put it into relationship with the Iron Bridge. I know we used to come here is all. The Iron Bridge is on the side of the river we're on, though. Bridge goes partway over a creek that shoots off the river on this side. The tree helped me remember that.'
'That's something,' Leonard said. 'You remember that much, means we can spend all our time looking on this bank.'
'It's not real close to the river, as I recall. It's down this creek I'm thinking about, and quite a ways.'
'Meaning the creek you can't find?'
'That's the one.'
'So, Dan'l, what do we do now?'
'Anymore beers?'
'Nope.'
'Guess we keep looking.'
Chapter 17
Back to work we went, driving those back roads and excuses for roads, and it was late afternoon, maybe two hours before dark, when we drove around this curve and I happened to look out and see this rusty metal pole, and, bam, there was an explosion in my memory centers. At first I couldn't place what had exploded, but around the curve we went, and the debris from the explosion rose to the top of my memory and began to tumble into something identifiable and I said more calmly than I felt, 'Stop the car.'
'You're smiling,' Leonard said. 'You got something, right?'
'Turn around.'
He had to drive a ways before we could find a wide enough place to get the car turned, and when we got back to the curve and the pole, I had him pull over. We got out, and I took a look. My smile got bigger.
'When we used to come down here this pole had a metal sign on it,' I said. 'Probably rusted off the bolts and's under all these leaves and pine needles, a few years of dirt. Sign said something about this piece of land belonging to some oil company or another. I don't remember exactly. But by the time we started going here, there were bullet holes in the sign and it was no longer valid. The oil company had long since lost its lease on the place, and it had reverted back to the county, or the State of Texas, or whoever owns it. But the little road for trucks and equipment was still here, worn down and grown up some, but still usable.'
'It's not here now,' Leonard said.
I looked where I remembered the little road being. The trees were scanty there, relatively young. In spots there were patches of dirt mixed with old hauled-in gravel, and neither trees or weeds had found support there. If you studied hard enough, you could see where the little narrow road had wound itself down into the woods toward the water.
'I think this was the road Softboy and his boys took after robbing the bank,' I said. 'They made all these pretty good plans, but the dumb suckers saw water and assumed they put their boat next to the Sabine.'
'But it was the broad part of the creek that flows under the Iron Bridge?'
'Yep.'
We pushed limbs aside, stepped through the browning winter grass, and followed the faint curves of the old road. When we came to water, we were at a spot as wide and deep as the Sabine at its best. It was easy to see how someone who didn't know the river could mistake this for it.
'If they had a car down here and ran it off in the water,' Leonard said, 'reckon Softboy would have done it right here, don't you think?'
'Yeah, but it might not be there now. Over the years, with floods and swellings, even something the size and weight of a car could move, if only an inch or a foot at a time.'
'Thank you, Mr. Wizard.'
We went walking along the bank. The undergrowth turned thick and grew out to the water. There was little room for footing. Sometimes we hung on to limbs and roots and dangled out over the creek, pulled ourselves along the steep bank like that until we found ground again. It was tough work, and even cold as it was we worked up a
