Jerl thought he’d killed her then and there. He dragged her out put her in his car, got in and drove a ways across the mountain until he was off the estate, then shoved her out. He must have thought he was reasonably safe. Days, even weeks, might pass before anybody found Pretty’s body. By then, Jerl figured, it wouldn’t matter what folks suspected. Suspecting and proving are two different matters. He’d just deny that she ever had come to the lodge. Nobody, he reckoned, could prove that some hill renegade hadn’t seen her walking up the road and got passionate ideas.
Only thing, Jerl hadn’t figured on a situation which the Brownlees themselves had set up. For years the Brownlee estate had been posted and the old man, before his death, had kept a mean caretaker up there to enforce the rule. As a result, the thousand acres teemed with game, and a mountain farmer with a taste for fresh meat had set out that morning to do a little poaching, thinking Jerl’s drinking party had adjourned to the lowlands and wouldn’t bother him.
The farmer heard Jerl’s car booming around the curves on the gravel backroad, ducked into the timber, and his popping eyes witnessed Jerl’s final act. The minute Jerl got back in his car and rounded a curve, the farmer went sliding and tumbling into the thicketed ravine where Pretty’s body had come to rest.
A final flicker of life twitched through Pretty’s china blue eyes. Her silken mane of yellow hair was a bloody tangle about her face as she tried to speak. The farmer dropped his ear close to her lips and caught her final words. She told him what had happened, as if there was any doubt in his mind.
The farmer ran a shortcut to the lodge, broke a window to let himself in, and phoned the sheriffs office in Comfort. Sheriff Collie Loudermilk had flashed the word to the sheriffs of neighboring counties. Roadblocks were set up in minutes.
With Jerl Brownlee in the net, Collie had sent me, his deputy, to fetch down the body. I’d brought the poor broken thing to Doc Weatherly’s, gritted my teeth, and dragged my feet to Comfort’s only decent cafe, wishing it was just for a cup of Mom Roddenberry’s good coffee.
Mom didn’t interrupt my tale once. She had a good grip on herself now. She took my words like the seasoned willow takes the slashing sleet. Her suffering was too deep to show on the surface.
We stopped in the shadow of the porch that rambled across the front of Doc Weatherly’s place. Mom Roddenbery lifted a hand and touched my cheek. “You’re a good young man, Gaither Jones, and I’m beholden to you for telling me the straight of it.”
“She was a sweet, human girl, Mom. She was tempted. And she tried to overcome. You always remember that”
“Yes, Gaither, I will.”
“And be sure we’ll get Jerl Brownlee, Mom.”
She lifted her eyes slow-like, and they were the hoar frost that rimes distant peaks. “Yes, that is all that’s left now, Gaither, justice: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. If Pretty is to rest easy in her grave, Jerl Brownlee must reap his due.”
I didn’t need to answer that one. We were both hill people.
“Again, I’m obliged to you, Gaither. Now, I know you got work to do. I’ll just ease inside alone to spend a last minute with my daughter.”
I watched her creep up the porch steps. Each one added about ten years to her narrow, bony shoulders. The door of the undertaking parlor opened, swallowed her. I turned, jammed my hands in the pockets of my tan twill, kicked some hollyhocks growing alongside the walk, and cussed my way back up the street to the office.
The short-range walkie-talkie, which the taxpayers begrudged Collie and me out of the mail order catalogue, was crackling when I walked in.
“Gaither, where in dad-blasted thunderation you been?” Collie Loudermilk howled through the static, sounding like a banshee.
“Playing pool and drinking beer,” I said sourly, looking across the street at that “Closed” sign on the cafe door. “You bringing in Jerl Brownlee?”
The walkie-talkie like to have spit fire. “He spotted my car blocking Miden Falls road, skidded off the curve, turned over twice, straight down the mountainside.”
“He’s hurt? Maybe bleeding to death?” I inquired happily.
“He bounced out healthy as a jackrabbit and with the same ideas. I’ve lost him, Gaither, somewhere in the gorges above Cat Track Holler. If we don’t flush him out of this wild country before nightfall, we lose him. He’s got the whole compass to aim at, a good chance of making it out of these mountains. If he does that well heeled as he is, next thing we know he may be playing with them French girls in that Riviera place.”
“I reckon you need me and Red Runner and Old Bailey,” I said.
“Naw,” Collie growled, “I’m just fiddling with this gadget in hopes of communing with a braying jackass! Will you stop wasting time?”
“You’re doing all the talking,” I said, and cut him off.
I grabbed the two dog leashes off the wall peg, and skedaddled out of the office, around the old brick building to the dog lot behind the jail. Old Bailey and Red Runner heard me rattling the gate open. They snuffled out of their kennels, long ears nearly dragging in the dust. Their baggy, forlorn eyes spotted the leashes, and a quiver went through both dogs. They perked up quick. I swear those bloodhounds can even smell out the prospect of smelling out a man.
A setting sun threw streamers of golden fire across the peaks in the west and twilight was settling in the valleys when me and the two dogs homed in on Collie Loudermilk’s location.
Collie is a skinny, sandy man who looks like he couldn’t last out a mountain winter in front of the fireplace, but he’s the kind of gristle that can dull a knife.
