'You know what I mean.' Ricky took a deep breath. 'Now I want your forgiveness in advance, because I am going to tell you the dream I had last night. Stella said I woke up screaming. In any case, it was the worst dream yet.' By a shift in the car's inner weather, Ricky knew that Sears was immediately more interested. 'I was in a vacant house, on an upper floor, and some mysterious beast was trying to find me. I'll skip the development, but the feeling of danger was overwhelming. At the end of the dream it came into the room where I was, but it wasn't a monster anymore. It was you and Lewis and John. All of you were dead.' Glancing sideways toward his passenger, he saw the curve of Sears's mottled cheek, the curve of the hatbrim.
'You saw the three of us?'
Ricky nodded.
Sears cleared his throat, and then cranked the window down a quarter of the way. Freezing air rushed into the car. Sears's chest expanded beneath the black coat: individual spiky hairs of the furry collar flattened in the rush of air. 'Extraordinary. You say there were the three of us?'
'Yes. Why?'
'Extraordinary. Because I had an identical dream. But when that dreadful thing burst into my room, I saw only two men. Lewis and John. You weren't there.'
Ricky heard a tone in the other's voice it took him a moment to identify, and when he had named it, the recognition carried enough surprise to silence him until they turned into Elmer Scales's long driveway. It was envy.
'Our Vergil,' Sears pronounced, to himself Ricky thought. As they went slowly up the drive toward the isolated two-story farmhouse, Ricky saw an obviously impatient Scales, dressed in a cap and a plaid jacket, waiting for them on the porch and saw also that the farmhouse resembled a building in an Andrew Wyeth painting. Scales himself looked like a Wyeth portrait; or, more accurately perhaps, a Norman Rockwell subject. His ears stuck redly out beneath the tied-up flaps of his cap. A gray Dodge sedan was pulled up in the cleared space beside the porch, and when Ricky parked next to it he saw the sheriff's seal on the door. 'Walt's here,' he said, and Sears nodded.
The two men got out of the car, pulling their coats in tightly around their necks. Scales, now flanked by two shivering children, did not move from the porch. He had the high hard look of excitement which accompanied his most passionate litigations. His reedy voice called to them. ' 'Bout time you two lawyers got here. Walt Hardesty's been here ten minutes.'
'He didn't have as far to come,' Sears grumbled. The brim of his hat curled in the unobstructed breeze cutting across the fields.
'Sears James, I don't suppose any man alive ever got in the last word with you. Hey, you kids! Get back in the house, you'll freeze your butts off.' He swatted one with each hand, and the two boys scuttled back inside the door. Scales stood above the two old men, smiling grimly.
'What is it, Elmer?' Ricky asked, holding his coat closed at his neck. His feet in his well-shined black shoes were already chilled.
'You'll just have to see. You two town boys aren't really dressed for a walk across the fields. Guess that's your hard luck. Hang on a second, I'll get Hardesty.' He disappeared for a moment into the house and emerged again with the sheriff, Walt Hardesty, who was wearing a loose sheepskin-lined denim coat and a Stetson. Alerted by Scales's remark, Ricky looked at the sheriff's feet: he wore heavy leather hiking boots. 'Mr. James, Mr. Hawthorne.' He nodded to them, steam pluming out over his mustache, which was larger and more ragged than Ricky's. In this cattleman's outfit, Hardesty looked fifteen years younger than his true age. 'Now that you're here, maybe Elmer will show us what this mystery's all about.'
'Damn right I will,' said the farmer, and clumped down the porch steps and began leading them away from the house, walking on the path toward the snow-dusted barn. 'Just you come this way, gentlemen, and see what I'm gonna show you.'
Hardesty fell in beside Ricky. Sears was walking alone, with immense dignity, behind them. 'Colder 'n a bitch,' the sheriff said. 'Looks like being a damn long winter.'
Ricky said, 'I hope not I'm too old for one of those.'
With exaggerated gestures and an expression like glee on his skinny face, Elmer Scales was unhooking a long rail fence which led into a side pasture. 'Now you pay attention, Walt' he called back. 'You see if you can spot any tracks.' He pointed to a line of splayed footprints. 'Them's mine from this morning, goin' and comin'.' The prints returning were widely spaced, as if Scales had been running. 'Where's your notebook? Ain't you gonna take notes?'
'Calm down, Elmer,' the sheriff said. 'I want to see what the problem is first.'
'You took notes fast enough when my oldest boy racked up his car.'
'Come on, Elmer. Show us what you want us to see.'
'You town boys gonna ruin your shoes,' Elmer said. 'Can't be helped. Follow me.'
Hardesty did as commanded and set off beside Elmer; his broad back in the bulky coat made the farmer look like a capering boy. Ricky glanced back at Sears, just now approaching the gate and regarding the snowy field with disgust 'He might have told us we'd need snowshoes.'
'He's enjoying himself,' Ricky said wonderingly.
'He'll enjoy himself when I get walking pneumonia and fire a lawsuit at
Gamely Sears put a well-shod foot down into the pasture, where it immediately sank into snow up to the laces. 'Ugh.' He retracted it; shook it. The others were already halfway across the field. 'I'm not going,' Sears said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his opulent coat. 'Damn it, he can come to the office.'
Ricky said, 'Well then, I'd better go at least,' and started after the other two. Walt Hardesty had turned around to look at them, stroking his ragged mustache, a frontier lawman translated to a snowy field in New York state. He appeared to be smiling. Elmer Scales plodded on oblivious. Ricky picked his way from one footprint to another. Behind him, he heard Sears emit enough air to fill a balloon and begin to follow.
Single file now, Elmer talking and gesticulating in front they went across the field. With an odd air of triumphant glee, Elmer stopped at the top of a ridge. Beside him, half-covered by snow, were piles of dirty washing. When Hardesty reached the low gray piles, he knelt and prodded; then he grunted, pushing, and Ricky saw four neat black feet roll stiffly into the air.
His shoes soaked and his feet wet, Ricky came up to them. Sears, holding his arms out for balance, was still threading toward them, his hat brim flattened by the wind.
'I didn't know you still kept any sheep,' he heard Hardesty say.
'I don't, now!' Scales yelled. 'I just had those four, and now they're all gone. Somebody killed 'em. Just kept 'em around for the sake of the old days. My daddy had a couple hundred, but there's no money in the stupid dang things anymore. The kids liked 'em, that's all.'
Ricky looked down at the four dead animals: flat on their sides, eyes glazed, snow in the matted wool. Innocent, he asked, 'What killed them?'
'Yeah! That's it, ain't it!' Elmer was working himself up into a tantrum. 'What! Well, you're the law around here, you tell me!'
Hardesty, kneeling beside the dirty-gray body of the sheep he had rolled over, looked up at Scales with distaste. 'You mean you don't even know if these animals died naturally, Elmer?'
'I know! I know!' Scales lifted his arms dramatically: a bat in flight.
'How do you know?'
'Because nothing can kill a damn sheep, that's how I know! And what the hell would kill four at once? Heart attacks? Boy!'
Sears now joined them, his frame making the kneeling Hardesty look small. 'Four dead sheep,' he said, looking down. 'I suppose you want to sue them.'
'What? You find the lunatic who did this and sue his ass off!'
'And who would that be?'
'Dunno. But…'
'Yeah?' Hardesty looked up again from the sheep huddled at his knees.
'I'll tell you inside. Meantime, Mr. Sheriff, you look 'em over good and take notes and find out what he did to 'em.'
'He?'
