“You really think somebody wants to kill her?”
“Well, if they don’t, they’re sure doing a good job of pretending they do.”
“I better not find out who it is. I’ll kill him myself if I do.” He touched the formidable knife shod in his leather holster.
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I paused a moment and said, “Tell me about the paper O’Brien took from you.”
“That’s between me and O’Brien.”
“I thought maybe we were becoming friends.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it. That paper’s a secret.” His face hardened, as did his gaze. “I’ll get it back from him one way or another.”
“He could hurt you.”
“I’m not afraid of him.”
“You’re not going to tell me about the paper?”
“No.”
“You don’t want me to help you?”
He shrugged. “O’Brien isn’t any more afraid of you than he is of me.”
“But still, the two of us—”
He smiled again. “Believe it or not, Mr. Hammett, there were a lot of people afraid of me back in Baltimore.”
“I believe it.”
“I may not be big or especially tough, but I’m determined.” He touched his knife again. “And when somebody pisses me oflF—’* He shrugged again. ” Well, I can be pretty relentless.”
“I’ll bet you can, kid, I’ll bet you can.”
And that’s where I left him, there on the trail.
I nodded good-bye and set oflF back the way I’d come. He gave me a minute or two and then started following me through the underbrush. I tried to shake him up a few times by breaking into a run. He got panicky and made too much noise in the undergrowth. If I hadn’t noticed him before, I sure would have now. But he was only ten, and for that age he was a regular Leatherstocking. When I was ten, I was living in my nice snug, middle-class home
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and hunting ducks with my father in the salt marsh along Chesapeake Bay.
I didn’t have to support and sustain myself the way poor little Robert did.
I lay for two hours in my hut listening to the rain. It brought back memories of San Francisco when I was still living with my wife and daughter, who as a baby always asked, “Wet, Daddy? Is wet, Daddy?” when she saw crystal raindrops bead on the windows of our small apartment.
I slept, too, at least for a time, but it was the troubled sleep of an unhappy man, and when I came awake I did so with a yelp, the rock cracking my knee where it landed.
In the gloom and sweat of the hut, I jerked upward and grabbed the rock. Somebody had wrapped a note around it and then wrapped twine around rock and paper alike.
The note read: THE CLEARING BY THE GRAILSTONE AT DUSK.
There was one inherent problem with the instructions. Given the rain and the gloom, how could I tell when dusk actually settled in?
I waited two hours in the top of a leafy tree by the clearing. A minty aroma of leaf filled my nostrils. The bark was as slimy as a dragon’s back.
Dark came. The rain continued. There is a melancholy that only cold rain can inspire in me, and it was with me there in that tree. I wanted to talk to my wife and daughter.
She wore cape and cowl, and at first I did not recog-
nize her as she ran across the clearing from one edge of the forest to the other.
Just as I realized that I was seeing Arda, a small shape in the shadows stepped forth and fired off an arrow.
I heard the dead chunking sound of arrowhead sinking into flesh.
Then she screamed, a strangled sound muffled by the fact that she was already pitching to the wet earth.
By now I knew who her assailant was, too. I wanted to go after Robert and slap him around to sate my rage, but I knew I’d better first attend to Arda.
She was light in my arms as I carried her upslope to the hut where she and Poe lived.
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