Bitter Gold Hearts

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Breakfast with SHAGGOTH was an experience. He could eat. Three of him could lay waste to nations. No wonder the breed was so rare. If there were as many of them as there are of us, they would have to learn to eat rocks because there wouldn't be enough of anything else to go around.

He brought the buggy around front and put the horses into harness with an ease that awakened my envy. Those beasts trotted out docilely and cooperatively and stood there smirking because they knew I would be irked by their easy acquiescence.

Damn the whole equine tribe, anyway. The witch came out with a lunch she'd packed. I thanked her for that, for her hospitality, and for everything else. She ran through the instructions for using the spells she'd given me. Those instructions were as complicated and difficult to recall as instructions for dropping a rock. But specialists think the uninitiated incapable of falling without technical assistance.

I offered to pay for the help again. "Don't start up, Garrett. Let me do my little piece for justice in an unjust world. Somewhere out there, there is somebody with the soul of a crocodile. Somebody who ordered the murder of a pregnant woman. Find him. Balance the scales. If you don't think you can handle him alone—for whatever reason—come see me again."

She was quietly furious about Amiranda. And she hadn't even known the woman. It was curious that Amiranda could find so many allies by getting herself murdered. And a pity none of us had been around when she needed us most. Though Saucerhead had done everything he could.

I didn't argue anymore. "I'll let you know how it comes out. Thanks for everything." I exchanged glares with the horses, putting on a good enough snarl to get my bluff in.

"Watch yourself, Garrett. You're playing with rough people."

"I know. But so are they."

"They probably know who you are and might know you're poking around. You don't know who they are."

"I've had plenty of practice being paranoid." I swung up onto the seat, glanced back at the bundle I'd be taking home, and hollered at the horses to get going. Good old Shaggoth trudged through the woods ahead of the horses, showing them the easy way to get back to the road—the way I'd completely missed coming in. The beasts kept glancing back, silently accusing me of being a moron. I started with the first farm beyond the road to the place where Junior had been held. No, nobody there had seen a young man on foot the day Karl claimed to have started home. Certainly no one of any breed had come there looking to rent or buy a buggy or mount. It was what I expected to hear. He wouldn't have done it so close, but the chance had to be covered. It was donkey-work time, grasping for straws. I had nothing concrete to affirm or deny my suspicions.

I got the same response house after house. Some talked easily, some not, the way people will, but the end was always the same. Nobody had begged, bought, borrowed, rented, or stolen transportation of any sort. Lunch time came and went and I began to consider restructuring my assumptions.

Maybe Karl Junior had walked home. Barefoot. Or maybe he'd hitched a ride or had flagged down one of the day coaches running into the city. Or the ogres might have left him some way to get home. That seemed damned unlikely. Walking, stealing, flagging a coach presented difficulties, too, for reasons of character and obvious traceability. Coachmen remember people they pick up along the road. Hitching looked like the best and most logical alternative. It's the way I'd have gotten myself to town. But I doubted that a resort to the charity of strangers would even occur to a spoiled child off the Hill. But had he gotten home that way, my chances of discovering the people who had helped were even more remote than they were by my present, most-favored course. So I stuck to what I was doing. I reasoned that if he had hitched, he would have mentioned it. He'd been careful to mention such details.

I now had a strong attachment to the assumption that Junior had participated in his own kidnapping. I had to caution myself not to get so attached that I began discarding contrary evidence. The vision sent me back to wartime days. The farmer and his sons and a dozen other men were advancing through the hayfield in echelon, scythes rhythmically swinging. They looked like skirmishers cautiously advancing. I pulled up and watched for a few minutes. They saw me but pretended otherwise. The paterfamilias glanced at the sky, which was overcast, and decided to keep cutting.

All right. I could play it their way. I slid down, walked to the edge of the field where the hay was down already—just to show how thoughtful a fellow I am—and approached the crowd from the flank. The women and kids raking the hay into piles and getting it onto the backs of several pathetic donkeys were much more curious than their men folk. I gave them a "howdy" as I passed, and nothing more. Anything more would have been considered a heavy pass by many farm husbands. I parked myself a cautious distance from the guy who looked like he was the boss ape in these parts and said "howdy" again. He grunted and went on swinging, which was all right by me. I was trying to be accommodating.

"You might be able to help me."

This time his grunt was filled with the gravest of doubts.

"I'm looking for a man who passed this way four or five days back. He might have been looking to rent or buy a horse."

"Why?"

"On account of what he did to my woman."

He turned his head in rhythm and gave me a look saying I had no business going around asking for help if I was not man enough to rule my woman.

"He killed her. I just found out yesterday. Got her over in the buggy, taking her to her folks. Want to find that fellow when I get that done."

The farmer stopped swinging his scythe. He stared at me with squinty eyes that had looked into too many sunrises and sunsets. The other scythes came to rest and the men leaned upon them exactly like tired soldiers lean on their spears. The women and kids stopped raking and loading. Everybody stared at me. The boss farmer nodded once, curtly, put his scythe down gently, hiked over to the buggy. He leaned against the side, lifted the cover off Amiranda.

When he returned, he stood beside me instead of facing me. "Pretty little gal."

"She was. We had a young one coming, too."

"Looked like. Wadlow! Come here."

One of the older farmers came to us. He planted his scythe and leaned. He looked even more laconic than the first one.

"You sold that swayback mare to that smart-ass city boy what day?"

The second farmer considered the sky as though he might find the answer written there. "Five days ago today. About noon." He eyed me like he was suspicious I might want the money back.

I knew what I wanted to know but had to play the game out. "He say where he was headed?"

Wadlow looked to my companion, who told him, "You tell him what he wants to know."

"Said he was going into the city. Said his horse got stole. Didn't say much of nothing else."

"Hope you took him good. Was he wearing shoes?" It was an off-the-wall question but about the only thing left I had to ask. Except, "Was he alone?"

Wadlow said, "Didn't have no shoes. Boots. Pretty rich-boy boots. Wouldn't last a week out here. He was by his lonesome."

"That's that, then," I said. The older farmer asked, "That tell you what you need?"

"I reckon I know where to look now." And that was true. "Much obliged." I checked the sky. "Thank you, then." I turned to go.

"Luck to you. She was a pretty little thing."

My shoulders tightened and I shuddered in a sudden wash of emotion. I raised a hand and marched on. I had a man's work to do. Those farmers understood better than anybody I knew, except maybe Saucerhead Tharpe. By the time I settled on the buggy seat, the skirmishers were on the move again and the women and children were back to work. Maybe they would find the time to talk about me over supper.