“My steppa, he shoots cats. Can’t abide ’em. Maybe he shot the one you’re lookin for.”
The two men blinked slowly, then got back in their car and went tearing back up to the bridge, where they turned east and kept going, raising more clouds of dust.
Bamber turned to me, and said, “Grandma, whoever sent those two sure didn’t intend anybody to look at them close.”
Glory said, “You mean the way they talk?”
“They talk like the machines talked in the place we were before my mom came here and left me with Abe.”
She cried, “Bamber, you just remembered something. You had a memory!”
His mouth dropped open. “I guess I did. That’s funny.”
He took a slow swallow of his drink, then shook his head. “You know that stuffed turkalope the sheriff hangs out in the trees at our place? Every year he hangs it there?”
Turkalopes are large Tercisian birds that run quite fast and don’t fly very well. Some people raise them for meat, though I’ve never cared for the taste.
“Why does he do that?” I asked through the screen door.
“Because it’s illegal to bother or kill the wild ones, so the sheriff hangs up this stuffed one, then he hides until some idjit tries to kill it, then he arrests them.”
“Why are we talking about stuffed birds?” asked Glory.
“Because those two guys are like that stuffed bird.”
I realized what he meant. “You mean a decoy! Hold the thought while you load that chicken feed, Bamber. Let me get the groceries.”
I picked up the few things we needed, paid Ms. McCollum for it and the sacks of feed the young ones were putting in the wagon, and we started for home. As soon as we were out of earshot, Bamber whispered, “If decoy’s the right word, then there’s somebody we can’t see watching those two decoys to see if anybody’s interested in what they’re saying or doing.”
That was more talk out of Bamber than I had heard if I had put his whole year’s conversations end to end.
“Because…” Glory whispered.
“Because,” he said, “if somebody takes an interest in those two men, that person may know something about the cat.” He turned that blackboard gaze of his toward me, a tiny smile on his lips. “But we’re onto them, aren’t we, Grandma!”
Bamber unhitched for us at Maybelle’s house. We left the chicken feed in the barn and carried the other stuff up the hill to my house. Falija wasn’t there, though Glory and Bamber said hi to Lou Ellen.
I made chicken sandwiches with pickles for them while Glory and Bamber discussed what the men might really be up to. As usual, Lou Ellen didn’t want all her sandwich, so Glory split what she didn’t eat with Bamber.
“Should we do something about those men?” Glory asked. “Or would that just get us arrested for shooting at the decoy?”
“The safest thing to do with bait is pretend you don’t notice it,” I told them. “Sniffing at it might be even more dangerous than trying to eat it. Glory, I do wish mightily we knew what this is all about.”
Bamber gave me a very straight look. “You can trust me to look out for Glory, ma’am.” Then he ducked his head as though he’d scared himself, speaking up that way.
“Well.” I grinned at Glory. “It seems we have an ally.”
“I’m glad,” said Falija, suddenly appearing on a chair nearby. “Allies are good things to have.”
That startled Bamber, and he stood gaping as though he’d lost his wits.
“Falija, what do you think about those men?” Glory asked.
“Grandma’s right. We should take no notice, not even if ten more of them arrive and dance across the bridge waving large tambourines.”
“Tambourines?” I said.
“Isn’t it a word? I learned it just this morning. A festive instrument to accompany dance. Can’t you visualize those two men with tambourines?”
This set Glory and Bamber to snickering, and even I had to laugh. When the children left, they stood for a while on the porch. Glory said, “I really don’t know that much about her, Bamber.”
“Her suddenly showing up that way! I seem to remember something about cat-people who do that,” he murmured. “They live on Thairy, and Chottem, and Fajnard, and they’re called the Gibbekot.”
They went on down the hill, their two dark heads almost level with one another, their long legs moving easily. Glory and Bamber Joy. Maybelle didn’t encourage the friendship because she felt Gloriana shouldn’t be particularly friendly with any boy until she was quite a bit older. Knowing what I knew about Gloriana, I thought friendship, boy, girl, or animal, was what she needed, and the two of them were good for one another.
A couple of days later The Valley grapevine spread the news that Dorothy Springer had been found murdered in her house. The sheriff had called the Rueful Public Safety officers for help, because there hadn’t been a murder in Remorseful in anybody’s memory. I wondered if this were another decoy. No one in Rueful would kill someone else to find out who cared or who didn’t, and I had to remind myself that Ned and Walter weren’t from anyplace as simple as Rueful.
“What are they saying at school?” I asked.
Glory stared at her feet. “Mary Beth Conover said it had to be a crazy person, but others said no, if the person was crazy they’d be in Schizo-ville, the Walled-Off for crazy people.”
“You didn’t take an unusual interest, did you?”
She shook her head no. “You think it’s another decoy?”
I told her I didn’t know. The presence of Ned and Walter here in Rueful, where they didn’t belong, had mostly annoyed me, but now, I felt frightened.
That night Glory and I hiked over to the cemetery and pretended to pull weeds along the fence—just in case someone was watching us—while she dug
