isolated place would have put me instantly on guard. I would have been suspicious, at least, and careful. But she hadn’t done it that way at all. The tip was something else, and I had demanded this part of it. I’d talked her into it against her will. And then she’d warned me about being followed. While he was already waiting for me there in that loft with his shotgun.
These people were yokels?
7
Dr. Morley dropped the shot pellet onto the white enamel surface of the table, and grunted. “Humph. Goose load.” He was a large, florid man with either a naturally bluff and hearty attitude or a chameleon-like adaptability in suiting the bedside manner to the patient. I was big, healthy, and relatively unhurt, so I was getting the he-man-to-he-man treatment, with overtones of gallows humor. “Sure wasn’t a quail hunter, was he?”
“No,” I said. Maybe I would think of some funny stuff myself later on, when I quit hearing that gun go off just back of my head. “It was a double barrel,” I added, and winced a little as he swabbed the incision and started putting a dressing on it.
“Oh.” He grinned. “Not much he can do with it, then.”
Except make sure next time, I thought. I didn’t have any idea who he was or what he looked like. He could get behind me any time. The only thing I knew for certain was that I was no longer merely looking for an acid-throwing hoodlum who faced a few months in the County jail if he were caught. You didn’t treat a minor headache with brain surgery.
“Better give me a tetanus booster,” I said. “I can’t remember when I had the last one, and that place was paved with manure.”
“Oh, you’ve got to have a tetanus shot, all right,” he agreed with vast humor. “But first I want to do a little hem-stitching on that head. You’re not fussy about your hair-do, I hope?”
“No,” I said. “Just so it’s still up there and not sprayed across the side of some dirty barn.”
“Now you’re feeling better. I knew you would. You have any idea who he was or why he was after you?”
“No,” I said.
“I have to report it to the police, you know. Gunshot wound.”
“Sure.” And while we were at it we could report it to the Garden Club and the nearest chapter of the Literary Society. We needed all the help we could get.
I’d managed to get the bleeding pretty well stopped at the motel, and changed clothes before coming on into town in a cab. The receptionist in Dr. Graham’s office had said he was out on an emergency call, and recommended Morley, who was just down the hall. Their offices were in a sort of medical-dental warren occupying the second and third floors above a beauty shop and pharmacy near the east end of Springer. I looked at my watch and wished he’d hurry. It was almost four and I had to be back there to take Lane’s call at five. The local he’d shot into my scalp had taken effect now, and he started putting in stitches after shaving off part of my hair. He gave me a tetanus shot.
“You’re as good as new,” he said, and reached for his phone. “Wasn’t inside the city, was it?”
“No,” I said. “Sheriff’s jurisdiction.”
“Hmmm. Let’s see. Name . . . local address. Anything else I should tell them?”
“No,” I said. “Except you ought to make sure they’re not there alone before you tell them I’ve been shot.” I started out.
“You’ll be around, won’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m going over there now.”
I paid his receptionist, stopped in a store to buy a cheap straw hat to protect my head from the sun and from pop-eyed stares, and walked over to the courthouse. They were waiting for me, Magruder and the big red-haired Deputy whose name I didn’t quite catch because nobody ever bothered to tell me what it was. He had very pale gray eyes, a basaltic outcropping of jaw, and hairy red hands that had too many sunken and offset knuckles to be very reassuring. They took me into one of the back rooms, fanned me individually and then jointly, and shoved me into a chair while they stood over me barking questions. Apparently, being shot at was a felony. In spite of all the adroit interrogation I finally managed to tell them what happened.
“Where’s your gun?” Magruder snapped.
“I haven’t got one,” I said. “Nor a permit.”
“You