And he had another idea going, maybe he ought to have a quiet little chat with Dorry Means. It was just possible that hot little piece had already found out from Shad where he had the money hid. Yeah, and she could do it, too. It was shore God's laughter the way some fellas let a little bit of fluff drag 'em around on a leash.
Shad went along the bank for a while, then abruptly darted left into the bush, going at it in a running crouch. He went ploughing through the brambles with catclaws picking after him vindictively, disputing his passage; held to his course for nearly one hundred yards, then cut left again, dodging among the paw-paws, and crossed back on his own trail, coming to light under a tupelo bush where he could see the glimmer of the backwater through the shrubbery.
He held his breath, listened. Something was rustling the dead leaves off to his right but there was the sweet, pungent scent of mink along with it, so that was nothing. He gave Sam another minute and then shook his head. Nope. If Sam's out here, then he's already swung around in back of me again. Son-o-bitch is harder to lose than a tick on a doe's butt.
Far off a night-running hound cut loose and fified the woods with round-note blues. Then a pack joined him, and in a moment all the hounds were wailing as if they were going to be paid for it. Shad decided to put the baying to good advantage, to cover his own noise. He shoved up and went humpbacked through the bush again.
He came out on the bank and approached the weir. The leading-off silver shoulder of falling water was spilling in monotonous, uniform splashing. Shad stepped onto the ankle-deep rocks and started picking his way across, not too carefully. Gaining the far shore he went at the bush as though he meant business, as though he meant to be long gone. But he wasn't. He went twenty-some feet into the leafy darkness and then cut back to the screened fringe of the bank.
But three-four minutes passed and there was no sign of Sam or anyone else. Don't it just beat all? The little bastard's skipped up-slough and crossed where she shallows. Bet my money he's sitting five yards off laughing at me right now. He stood up and started north.
He broke into a fast run, skimming through chokeberry, catclaw and smilax, cutting up his trail, first night, then left and straight on, and then left again, and brought up panting and stumbling just where he wanted to be, in a boulderdeep glen lorded over by an old lichen-skinned oak. The oak had a hollow hide-hole and Shad had known about it since boyhood. It was just possible that this was one hollow tree in the woods that Sam wasn't acquainted with. He doubted it though, but it didn't really matter. He dropped to his knees and shoved the denim-wrapped carbine and his boots inside the black opening. Then he pushed up and got out of there fast.
He made a wide swing back to the weir, necrossed it and ran down the line of woods past the shantyboat. He approached the lake carelessly, hoping now that Sam would spot him; trotted out onto the beach and entered the water; walked in up to his chest and then submerged himself and started swimming blind.
The first shock of it on his shouldenblades and the back of his neck seemed as cold to him as a well-digger in the Klondike, but he held at it, swimming fast and froglike underwater, aiming in the general direction of a distant hummock he'd spotted.
He swung around under water and surfaced on the far side of the mound. It was a stick and silt-built affair rising a yard high. He pulled himself along in the water touching the prongy, sticky heap gingerly, and eased his head over the tapering hump at the north end. Beyond his back – two hundred feet on – was a projecting tongue of woodland. If Sam was in the bush somewhere, he'd expect Shad to make for that tongue. Shad stayed where he was, scanning the shore.
Suddenly he saw what he wanted – a slow, searching glimmer-pale object poked above the bushes and panned left to right and slowly back to left again. Hayday! He knew it all the time. There was old Sam, wondering where he'd got off to.
The object he took for Sam's head pulled down and was swallowed in the dark shrubbery. And there was nothing else. Shad grinned. The old fox. And him hating water the way he does, he thinks to cut around on me like he done afone in the backwater, and try to pick me up again on the tongue.
Shad pulled himself along to the south end of the hummock, filled his lungs with air and submerged. He set out in the black murk for shore, hitch-kicking soundlessly.
He touched down in a maiden cane bed and crawled into the shadowy pool sink that was the mouth of the bridgecreek. After that he had no trouble getting away under the coven of night.
But his rambles were far from over. He slipped down to Sutt's Landing and found that his skiff was still where he'd left it. And that was a load off his mind. Moving the skiff to a hiding place was the only reason he'd gone through all that business with Sam. He had to have the skiff in a spot where he could get at it quick.
He stepped into the skiff, cast it loose and pushed the end of the stub pole down into the muck and shoved off. He followed along the shore where he could use the pole, where he had the protection of the shadows, and worked his way on down to Horseshoe Lake, just beyond the Culver place. There he rammed the boat into a need thicket, secured it to a breather with the painter, and slogged off into the woods again.
He had to go all the way down to the backwater and across the weir to get his gear and then return to the skiff before he could call it a night. He was really beginning to miss the shabby comfort of the shantyboat.
He was careful in the woods as he approached the old oak. He circled the glen twice before he deemed it safe to go on in. The glen waited cool, shadow-still. He squatted between two grotesque, moon-grey roots and rummaged around in the hide-hole for his gear. He pulled out boots and denim jacket.
For a moment he couldn't believe it. He clutched the jacket, twisting it, expecting to come up short against the ramrod feel of the carbine. Then he shook it, and then he felt along the left sleeve, and still not believing it, along the right. Nothing. He rooted in the hide-hole up to his shoulder and neck but all he could find were old mice skulls and bird feathers.
Shad squatted back on his haunches and shook his head. That Sam.
The new sun hung low over the swamp when Mrs. Taylor opened the door and stepped out on the porch. A saffron glare lay on the weed patch in front of the shanty and slanted on the road between the skinny trees. She could see Shad coming up from the landing, and heard Rival's insistent hiss right behind her, 'You git him on in here. Go on now, hear?' And a moment later she heard the other door close, but she didn't look back. She watched Shad coming and hated it.
'Hi, Shad!' she called suddenly. 'Where you going at this morning?'
The boy stopped short, startled, looking like he was ready to take off for the bush, and she wished he would. Then he grinned and came some into the yard.
'Just gitting up to Pa's place fer a spell. Got to see him about something.'
She nodded, fussing nervously with the hem of her apron. 'Bet you won't find much that goes fer a breakfast up there.'
'Bet I won't at that – less hit's some corn Pa had left in the jug when he drunked hisself blind last night.'
Well go on then, the top layer of her thoughts said, go to drink the blame corn. Don't make me bring you in here. She hesitated, a little trembly smile nearly lost in her beefy face and said, 'Well, I just got some fixings left from last night. You're kindly welcome to that.'
Shad said all right and thankee and came up the steps followed her into the shanty. Outside the morning had a touch of the chills and Shad, having slept the night in the skiff in his damp clothes, felt as brittle as glass. The room was rosy bright and glowing warm from the fire in the limestone fireplace, and something was perking in the big black pot hooked to the end of the long swivel bar
Mrs. Taylor put a plate down and said, 'Set, Shad.'
She didn't look at him and knew she should, but couldn't. She started mixing corn pone in the skillet watching what she was doing, wondering how to come at it, what to say exactly, and wishing Rival wasn't standing just ten feet away listening behind the door.
'When you going at that swamp again, Shad?' she asked suddenly.
Shad had just tilted back in his chair, giving himself a good stretch and yawn, and her question suspended him.
'Oh, I don't know. I ain't in no great hurry, I reckon.'
'No,' she said. 'I reckon not.'
And then they said nothing, and they both sensed that there was a great deal to be said, and neither of them wanted to come at it. Mrs. Taylor put the hot pone on his plate and said, 'I got some wild salat and sowbelly
