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.
“She’s completely crazy,” Low said. “We can’t reach her at all.”
“Gaw-dang,” the sheriff said. “How we gonna get her out?”
No one had an answer, and we stood around awkwardly while the late-afternoon sun hummed against our backs and puddled softly in the mine entrance. There was a sudden flurry of rocks that rattled all about us, thudding on the bare ground and crackling in the brush-then a low guttural wail that hurt my bones and whitened the sheriff’s face.
“I’m gonna shoot,” he said, thinly. “I’m gonna shoot it daid” He hefted the shotgun and shuffled his feet.
“No!” I cried. “‘A child! A little girl!”
His eyes turned to me and his mouth twisted.
“That?” he asked and spat.
His deputy tugged at his sleeve and took him to one side and muttered rapidly. I looked uneasily at Low. He was groping for Lucine, his eyes closed, his face tense.
The two men set about gathering up a supply of small-sized rocks. They stacked them ready-to-hand near the mine entrance. Then, taking simultaneous deep breaths, they started a steady bombardment into the drift. For a while there was an answering shower from the mine, then an outraged squall that faded as Lucine retreated farther into the darkness.
“Gotter!” The two men redoubled their efforts, stepping closer to the entrance, and Low’s hand on my arm stopped me from following.
“There’s a drop-off in there,” he said. “They’re trying to drive her into it. I dropped a rock in it once and never heard it land.”
“It’s murder!” I cried, jerking away, grabbing the sheriff’s arm. “Stop it!”
“You can’t get her any other way,” the sheriff grunted, his muscles rippling under my restraining hand. “Better her dead than Petie and all the rest of us. She’s fixing to kill.”
“I’ll get her,” I cried, dropping to my knees and hiding my face in my hands. “I’ll get her. Give me a minute.” I
