Me and Billy (14 page)

“Mighty lively place, isn’t it?” Billy said. “I shouldn’t wonder if there’s some kind of fair going on, from all the excitement around.”

“What do you expect they do for a living here?” I said. “Mostly doing business with people going up into the mountains to look for gold, I guess.”

We stood there looking around. “What do you want to do, Possum? Let’s put up at that hotel. I never stayed in a hotel before.”

I wondered what they’d say if a couple of kids walked in asking to be put up. “They might start asking us where our ma and pa were and where we were from. I don’t trust what might happen. We better sleep on the ground. Might as well save the money, anyway.”

“Well, let’s try that general store for some grub,” Billy said. “I’m hungry.”

We started along the wooden sidewalk, skirting around the snoozing dogs, just ambling along, when suddenly Billy grabbed my arm.

“Look, Possum.” He pointed. Tacked up on the side of a building was a familiar handbill:

NOTED PROFESSOR ALBERTO SANTINI, SAVANT OF THE HEALING ARTS
...

And it went in the usual way from there.

“See, I told you, Possum. They couldn’t kill him. He’s too tough.” He was pretty excited.

“Wait a minute, Billy. That could be an old poster left over from last year.”

Billy went up closer and peered at it. “It’s new. It’d be more faded if it was old.” He did a couple of little dance steps.

“What date does it say?”

“Just, ‘This Sunday.’”

“He could have come and gone. It could have been last week.”

“Don’t always look on the dark side, Possum. Look on the bright side, like Ma Singletary used to say.”

It was the worst luck. Here we’d got to within a half mile of the mountains, and this had to happen. I just couldn’t believe it. “Billy, forget about the blamed Prof. He near got us killed the last time, and he’s certain to get us in trouble again. You promised.”

“Now don’t get fired up, Possum. We’ll go for the gold lake. I just got to find Prof first to see if he’s all right.”

“He isn’t all right, Billy,” I shouted. “He never was all right and he never will be all right. He’s a crook.”

“Now, Possum, calm yourself down. I never saw you all riled up like this.”

“Well, I got a right to be riled up. That blame Prof hasn’t ever been anything but trouble. So far as that goes, neither have you.”

Right away I was sorry I’d said it, for a hurt look went across his face, like I’d hit him. “Possum, you don’t mean that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I hated hurting his feelings, even if he deserved it. “I spoke too quick. But blame it, Billy, you’d exasperate a watermelon.”

“I promise, Possum, we’ll go look for that lake. But just let me see Prof this one time. After that I’ll leave it alone.”

I didn’t trust that for a minute. But I could see where he’d never rest if he didn’t at least get a look at Prof. Chances were pretty good that Prof wasn’t around—had come and gone a month ago. “All right, Billy. But then we’re heading for the mountains.”

“We’ll find him,” Billy said. “He’s around here somewheres. I know it. Come on. Let’s go ask in that general store. They’re bound to know.” He trotted off, and I came along after him, trying to figure out a way
to talk him out of it, if it turned out the Professor was in town.

We went into the general store. Same as any general store—barrels of molasses, sugar and flour, cheese and bread in a glass cabinet, folded overalls stacked up on the floor, shoes hanging from the wall by the shoestrings, tins of food on the shelves, shovels and picks in a jumble in a corner. The fella behind the counter was mostly bald but made it up on his face, which hadn’t been shaved for five or six days. “What can I do for you boys,” he said. “Your pa sent you in for treats?”

“We don’t have any pa,” Billy said. “We got our own money.”

The less anyone knew about us the better, I figured. “How much is that chunk of cheese?”

But before the storekeeper could answer, Billy leaped in. “That fella on the poster out there—the medical professor? Did he give his show yet?”

“Who? The snakebite fella?”

“Snakebite?” Billy said. It was clear that the Professor had switched his game.

“Yup. He had this here stuff he said was good for snakebite.” He jerked his chin toward the mountains. “In case you was to go up into the mountains and run into snakes. He said it kept mosquitoes off, too, if you rubbed it on your face. And if you cut yourself you could pour it on and you’d heal overnight.”

“Are the snakes bad up there?” I said.

The storekeeper shrugged. “This here professor seemed to think they was.”

“What do you think?”

He shrugged again. “I reckon where you got rocks warm from the sun, you’ll have snakes.”

“Where’s he at now?” Billy said.

The storekeeper looked at him. “This here professor? That was a couple of days ago. He didn’t sell but two or three bottles of the stuff. I reckon he’s moved on to someplace where the pickings is more charitable.” He scratched his head. “Mighty popular fella, seems like. There was another fella in here just a little bit ago asking about him, too.”

My legs went weak, and my head went cold. “What sort-of-looking fella?” I said, trying to sound like I wasn’t much interested.

“Dressed up fancy. Don’t see many up here like that. Derby hat, gold watch chain across his coat.”

I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. “Well, thanks,” I said. “We’ll just take a loaf of bread and that chunk of cheese and won’t bother you further.”

He didn’t move. “Funny the way so many people is looking for that professor. How do you explain it?”

“To be honest, we don’t know this professor. He’s Pa’s cousin, and he said we was to look him up.”

The storekeeper squinted at me. “I thought you said you didn’t have no pa.”

“He said that,” I said, jerking my thumb at Billy. “We’re just cousins. I got a pa.” I took a dollar out of my pocket, which I figured would interest him. It did. He got us the bread and cheese and a jar of cider, and we skedaddled out of there. We went down an alley until we came to a patch of trees and sat down to eat the bread and cheese, talking all the while.

“We got to find him,” Billy said. “We got to warn him that Robinson’s around.”

“Billy, we oughtn’t to get within ten miles of him. Not with Robinson hunting him down.”

“Possum, we got to warn him.”

“Why? We don’t owe him anything. He cheated us on our money as much as he could and near got us shot in the bargain.”

“Still,” Billy said. “You don’t want to see him killed, do you? You’re the one always saying if you can help somebody, you got to do it.”

I gave that a little thought. “I think maybe I’m changing.”

Billy gave me a long look. “How come you’re changing all of a sudden? You don’t look any different.”

I was kind of interested in figuring it out myself. “It wasn’t any one thing,” I said. “Just everything together. It seems like everybody’s got a reason why their troubles is due to somebody else; but when you come down to it, they brought it on themselves. Look at Pa Singletary. Look at Prof.”

“Prof just made a mistake, is all, Possum. He meant to tell those folks to take their little girl to a doc, but they got away too fast. I don’t see where that was his fault.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t of been out skinning people in the first place.”

He thought for a minute. Then he said, “Even so, Possum, you wouldn’t want to see anybody get killed, would you? Especially when you could of saved him.”

That was a hard one to get around. Suppose the Professor got shot dead? We’d hear about it for certain, for nobody with a good story like that would rest until he’d told it sixteen or twenty times, and it’d get to us sooner or later. If I let the Professor get shot, I’d have to live with it the rest of my life, the way Pa Singletary had to with Betty Ann’s ma. “No, I guess not,” I said.

“We’ll just go see him for a minute,” Billy said. “Just to warn him.”

“We don’t know where he is, Billy.”

“I’ll go ask that fella in the general store. He seems to be keeping an eye on things around here.”

“I’ll go,” I said. I didn’t trust Billy. If the fella in the store said he didn’t know where the Professor was, Billy was likely to come back with some story about how he was over here, or over there, just so’s we could run around looking for him.

So I went back to the store, while Billy waited outside to keep a watch out for Robinson. There was
another customer in there, a fella taking his time deciding between a green shirt and a blue shirt. I stood there fidgeting from one foot to the next, looking over my shoulder through the window every minute, in case Robinson should turn up. Finally, just when I was deciding I couldn’t take it anymore, the customer said he’d have to think it over and left.

The storekeeper gave me a grumpy look. “I suppose you changed your mind about the cheese and want your money back. Well, you can’t have it.”

“No, no,” I said. “The cheese was perfect. What I wanted to ask, did you have any idea where that snakebite professor might have got off to?”

He shrugged. “If I’d known I’d of told you. In Wasted Gulch most strangers are either heading for the mountains or away from them as fast as they can travel.” He scratched his head. “I’ll tell you, though. The fella who was looking for him went by the door not five minutes ago. He’s striding along right quick. I’d ask him, if I was you.”

“Which direction was he going in?”

“Thataway,” he said, pointing.

“Thanks,” I said, and dashed out of there. “Billy, Robinson just went down the street in a mighty rush. The storekeeper figures he’s onto where Prof is.”

“We got to save him, Possum. We got to.”

Of course we didn’t really have any idea where the Professor might be. As far as that went, we didn’t know whether Robinson knew, either, or was just looking around for him the way we were. But Billy had got it figured that since Robinson was walking toward the west, the Professor couldn’t be on the east side of town, for Robinson would have spotted him coming in.

“Unless he saw him out there and already shot him,” I said.

“Naw, if he did that, he’d of got himself out of town as quick as he could.”

So we set off, slipping through town as quick as we could, looking around all the while for Robinson. In ten minutes we’d got out of town and were getting into hilly countryside covered with scrub oaks and low pines.
Here and there we’d come across a piece of pastureland with a few scrawny cows standing around looking miserable, and once we saw in the distance a cabin with a tassel of smoke coming out of the chimney. But mostly it was just the foothills of the mountains.

The road wasn’t hardly more than a dusty trail winding along through the trees. The trail began to slant downward, and in a little bit we could see patches of silver through the trees. “There’s a creek there,” Billy said. “He’s camped by it. I guarantee it.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“How much you want to bet?” Billy said. He began to trot. There was just no holding him back, and I trotted after him. At the bottom of the slope, the road curved to follow along the creek. We came around the bend and, sure enough, parked in among the trees by the side of the road was the van. “I told you, Possum,” Billy said.

My heart sank. Plain bad luck again. “What if he wants his twenty-two dollars back?”

“He won’t. He was too busy getting shot at to count how much we skinned off him. Besides, we can always say we left it under the van for him when we ran.”

“You think he’ll believe that?”

“No. He’s not that much of a fool. But he can’t prove it.”

We trotted on, and then we saw him, crouched in front of a little fire, holding a frying pan over the
flames. Billy stopped. “Let’s surprise him,” he said. We slipped into the woods and came along through the trees, going easy. When we were about twenty feet away and could smell the ham and potatoes hot and tasty, we gave a shout: “Hey, Prof.”

He came near to dropping the frying pan. He swiveled around, his right hand flashing, and then he was pointing a pistol at us.

My heart jumped. “Don’t shoot,” I hollered. “It’s me and Billy.”

“I’ll be blowed,” he said. He shoved the pistol back into his pants pocket. “Where the devil did you two turn up from?”

“We’ve been wandering all over the place looking for you,” Billy said. “We were desperate to know if you got killed or not.”

He jabbed at the ham in the frying pan with his finger to see how it was coming along. “That would have been mighty kind of you if it was true.” He pulled out a fried potato and bit off a piece. “But seeing as it ain’t likely, I don’t know as I ought to feel over grateful.”

“It’s true,” Billy said. “We figured you were out here somewhere. We came to warn you. Robinson’s back there in Wasted Gulch asking people if they saw you.”

“Robinson? He’s here in Wasted Gulch?”

“Yep. Possum found out. He was asking the fella in the general store where you were.”

The Professor frowned and shook his head. “Blow it all. Why can’t he give it a rest?”

“What’re you going to do?”

“Well, I ain’t going to budge until I eat my lunch, that’s certain.” He hunkered down and shoved the frying pan over the flames, shaking it a little to keep the ham from burning.

Billy sniffed the air. “I don’t reckon you got a little extra of that ham.”

“Same old Billy,” the Professor said. “Well, take a look in that van and see if you can find a couple of more spuds.” So we got the potatoes, and he cut them into the frying pan. While they were frying, he told us about the shooting, all of us keeping our eyes down the road for the sight of anyone coming along.

“See, there was too many witnesses in that there square. If he’d killed me, they’d of had to put him in jail. Of course he might of got off in the end with that story of his, but he might of got hung, too. So he just winged me in the leg.” He reached down and gently touched the calf of his right leg. “It still ain’t healed. I’m limping. I’ll carry the scar of it to my grave.”

“Maybe it’s time you got into another business, Prof,” I said.