“What kind of news?” He turned the animal’s head.
“I don’t know.”
When they got back on the road, he said, “News?”
Chapter Thirty-one
WOODGULCH WAS A TOWN of seventy buildings, the hub of small farms and two mills that made window frames and nail kegs. There was a brick courthouse surrounded by graded red lanes and the usual small businesses. They rode down the main street to the station, Sam feeling dumb and disconnected from the rest of the world as he tied the mule to a catalpa. It was three-thirty. He was nobody here.
August went in and used the restroom for a long time and came out and looked at him as if to say, “Now what?” His face and neck were red where he had scrubbed off the dirt and sweat. “You don’t know a soul around here, do you?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Nobody we can trust.”
“A connection,” he said. “We need a connection. Time to talk to the connection man.”
He found the station agent copying waybills, a youngish fellow with an untrimmed mustache who was quick with his pencil. “Can I help you?” he said.
“What’s the name of the local sheriff?”
He came over to the window and looked at Sam’s clothes and unshaven face. “Kyle Tabors.”
“I might need to talk with him about something.”
“You might?” The agent narrowed his eyes.
“Is he a pretty good fella?”
“Who are you, bud? I saw you come through the other day, but I ain’t seen you around here before.”
He told him his name and where he was from as patiently as he could stand to do it.
The agent looked him over again. “If you want to find out about the sheriff, I recommend you walk down the street and ask him.” He returned to his desk and sat amid the clutter of hand stamps and bundles of paper stuck on hooks.
“I just need a little information.”
“Sorry. I don’t know you.”
He walked out on the platform and the boy was laid out on the bench. He looked down the street to where the old idlers of the town sat on the low retaining wall at the edge of the courthouse lawn. He looked down the tracks lined by telegraph wire drooping between poles as if weighted with information and commerce. The lines made him remember the Greenville telegrapher, and he went back in.
“Hey.”
The agent looked up from a desk. “Sir?” The word was strained.
“Do you know Morris Hightower?”
He rolled back in his chair and returned to the window. “Yep. Do you?”
“I do. And he knows I’m looking for a little kidnapped girl, helping out her parents. You could telegraph him about me.”
“We get some Greenville freight back in here from time to time, and he contacts me about it. Sends Morse like a mouse runnin’ on tin. I used to take train orders from him in Jackson.” He put a pad and pencil on the little counter. “Write your name here and come back in a few minutes.” The agent opened his telegraph key and began sending an even stream of dots and dashes.
Outside, the mule was rolling the bit with his great tongue, so he sent the boy down the street with Garde Ca in tow to find water, telling him to wait at the station when he returned. By the time Sam went back inside, the agent was waiting at the window.
“You’re a pretty lucky man.”
He glanced out the door after the boy. “I’ve been told that.”
“Lucky we found him on shift, and lucky the dispatcher handled the relay up to Greenville. Have you found the baby?”
“I have. But I need a good lawman to help me.”
“Well, you know how the law is.” The agent sucked a tooth and studied him. “I’d suggest you go talk to Sheriff Tabors. I don’t know him that well, but I think he’s all right.” He bobbed his head. “You don’t believe me?”
“Why’d he hire that drunk down at Zeneau?”
“What? Nelson Watty? Oh, he’s all right. Just sick is all. He don’t make thirty dollars a month but he stays in that little box of an office and collects taxes and signs permits for folks. It’s not like they’s a lot to choose from in Zeneau.”
Sam looked up at the Seth Thomas clock. “What time does the passenger train come in?”
“The tri-weekly you rode in on yourself comes in at two-thirty more or less. It goes back about three. Took off a few minutes early today.”
He looked out into the dusty street and saw August stop a gray-bearded gentleman, who pointed down a side lane. “You see that boy with me?”
“Yes.”
“When he comes back, will you keep an eye on him?”
“As much as I can.”
“Well, here I go.”
HE HAD TO WAIT for the sheriff. He stood in the hall and watched the lawyers clop in from the broiling street onto the hardwood and take the stairs to the courtroom. A policeman hauled in a handcuffed vagrant and brought him past Sam to a heavy door and shoved him through it. In the rear of the building he heard the clang of cell doors and drunken hollering. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake, that Tabors wasn’t a fat rummy who liked the taste of Skadlock whiskey. Or just a mean local who hated outlanders, or Catholics, or people from Louisiana, or Cajuns, or anybody not born inside the county.
The sheriff came in at four o’clock, and Sam stood up. He was in his early forties and wearing a suit and vest of no mean quality, a big star pinned under his right lapel. His blond hair was freshly trimmed, as was the mustache that ran straight across his face, as straight as his teeth.
“You look like you’re waiting for me.”
“I am.”
“Been rabbit hunting, have you?”
Sam looked down at his pants. “It’s a long story.”
“Well, come in, then, and have a seat.”
The walls of the office were cream-painted beaded board that ran floor to ceiling. A photograph of a woman unconscious of her good looks rested on the oak desk next to a box of pistol ammunition.
There are important starting points in serious conversations, and he paused a long moment to figure out the best way to begin. “Do you know Ralph Skadlock?”
The sheriff didn’t blink. “Who are you?”
He patiently explained who he was, where he was raised, why he’d lost his job as floorwalker in New Orleans, how he’d been looking for a child named Lily while working on an excursion boat.
When he finished, the sheriff nodded. “All right, Mr. Simoneaux. As for Skadlock, I know of him, but I can’t do a thing about him.”
“You say that as though five people a week ask you to.”
“That’s about right. Including my mother-in-law. That place he lives on is probably in Louisiana. We are presently, as you realize, in Mississippi.”
Sam looked down at his dusty shoes and then up at the sheriff, who’d gotten up to take off his coat. He wore
