Boys Life

because I recalled that Mr. Hargison had saved our skins from the Branlins. Still and all, the sheriff needed to know.
    We passed the Air Force base, its runways and barracks and buildings enclosed by a high mesh fence topped with barbed wire. We drove along the forest road, passing the turnoff to the house of bad girls. Dad slowed almost imperceptibly as we drove past Saxon’s Lake, but he didn’t look at it. The exact place where I’d seen the figure in the flapping coat was lost in summer growth. As soon as the lake was behind us, Dad picked up speed again.
    I was lavished with attention when I got home. I got a big bowl of chocolate ice cream and all the Oreos I could eat. Dad called me “pal” and “partner” with just about every breath. Even Rebel almost licked my face off. I had been delivered from the wilderness, and I was okay.
    Of course they wanted to hear about my adventure, and they pressed me to tell them more about the girl who had treated my thorn scrapes. I told them her name, that she was sixteen years old, and that she was as beautiful as Cinderella in that Walt Disney movie. “I do believe our pal’s got himself a crush on her,” Dad said to Mom, and he grinned. I said, “Awww, I don’t have time for any old girl!”
    But I fell asleep on the sofa with a dime in my hand.
    Before the sun set on Saturday afternoon, Sheriff Amory dropped by. He had been to see Davy Ray and Ben; now it was my turn to be questioned. We sat on the front porch, Rebel sprawled beside my chair and occasionally lifting his head to lick my hand, while in the distance thunder grumbled amid the darkening clouds. He listened to my story about the wooden box, and when I came to the part about the masked men being Mr. Dick Moultry and Mr. Gerald Hargison, he said, “Why do you think it was them, Cory, if you couldn’t see their faces?”
    “’Cause Biggun Blaylock called the fat one Dick and I saw the cheroot Mr. Hargison threw away and that’s what he smokes, the kind with the white plastic tip.”
    “I see.” He nodded, his long-jawed face betraying no emotion. “You know, there are probably a lot of fellas around here who smoke cheroots like that. And just ’cause Biggun Blaylock called a man by his first name doesn’t mean it was Dick Moultry.”
    “It was them,” I said. “Both of them.”
    “Davy Ray and Ben told me they didn’t know who the masked men were.”
    “Maybe they don’t, sir, but I do.”
    “All right, then, I’ll make sure I find out where Dick and Gerald were ’round about eleven last night. I asked Davy Ray and Ben if they could take me to where this thing happened, but they said they couldn’t find it again. Could you?”
    “No sir. It was near a trail, though.”
    “Uh-huh. Trouble is, there are an awful lot of old loggin’ roads and trails cut through those hills. You didn’t happen to see what was inside that box, did you?”
    “No sir. Whatever it was, Mr. Hargison said it was gonna make some people tap-dance in hell.”
    Sheriff Amory’s brow furrowed. His black eyes held a spark of renewed interest. “Now, why do you think he’d say somethin’ like that?”
    “I don’t know. But Biggun Blaylock would. He said he threw an extra one into the box.”
    “An extra what?”
    “I don’t know that, either.” I watched lightning flicker on the horizon from sky to earth. “Are you gonna find Biggun Blaylock and ask him?”
    “Biggun Blaylock,” the sheriff said, “is an invisible man. I hear about him, and I know the things he and his sons do, but I never see him. I think he’s got a hideout somewhere in the woods, probably pretty close to where you boys were.” He watched the lightning, too, and he wound the fingers of his big hands together and worked his knuckles. “If I could ever catch one of his sons at some mischief, maybe I could smoke Biggun out. But to tell you the truth, Cory, the sheriff’s office in Zephyr is pretty much a one-man operation. I don’t get a whole lot of money from the county. Heck,” he said, and he smiled thinly, “I only got this job ’cause nobody else would have it. My wife’s on me all the time to give it up, says I oughta go back into the house-paintin’ business.” He shrugged. “Well,” he said, dismissing those thoughts, “a whole lot of people around here are scared of the Blaylocks. Especially of Biggun. I doubt I could deputize more than five or six men to help me comb the woods for him. And by the time we