The diamond bikini - By Charles Williams Page 0,54

toes like he was thinking. Pop told me all about it.

They heard the shooting, and went over there and found our clothes where we’d left them on the log, so they figured the men had shot us and we was lying on the bottom of the lake. They called the sheriff from Mr. Jimerson’s house. And when the sheriff’s men got there they found Dr Severance up near the head of the lake. He was dead. And right near him there was two other dead men with tommy guns. They was the ones that tried to shoot us. I felt bad about Dr Severance, but I figured the other ones got just what was coming to them.

“Hey, Pop,” I said then, “there must have been three of them.” I told him about the one we heard while we was hiding in the ferns.

“Hmmmmm,” Pop says. “Well, likely he’s already give up and left, unless he’s lost, too. Anyway, I reckon he didn’t find her, because there ain’t been no more shootin’.”

“Well, you reckon the sheriff’s men will find her all right?” I asked. I was worried about her.

“Sure,” Pop says.

Uncle Sagamore still looked like he was blinking. There was a little light coming out the window from the lamp inside, and I could see him working his tobacco around in his mouth, from one cheek to the other. He spit. “Reckon they will, at that. Likely there’s a good chance of it,” he says.

“I expect you’re right,” Pop says. He looked thoughtful too.

I could see the three lanterns the sheriff and his men was carrying start down towards the timber on the lower side of the lake. Pop and Uncle Sagamore stayed kind of quiet for a minute.

“By God,” Pop says then.

“Ain’t she a beauty?” Uncle Sagamore asked.

“She sure is,” I said. I thought they meant Miss Harrington. I told them how she looked all tanned like that with her diamond bathing suit glittering. They looked at each other.

Pop choked on his cigar smoke. “Hush,” he says.

“Yes sir, by God,” Uncle Sagamore says. “It’s what you would call a natural situation. You couldn’t even start out and build one like it.”

“Stacked, famous, nakid, and lost,” Pop says.

“She ain’t nekkid,” I says. “She’s got on her bathing suit.”

“Damn it, Billy,” Pop snaps at me. “Will you hush up for a minute? A man don’t live through many moments like this in his life, and he don’t want ‘em spoiled with noise.”

“Yes sir, just think of it,” Uncle Sagamore says.

“Kind of makes little cold chills run up your back, don’t it?” Pop asked. Then he went on kind of discouraged. “But like you say, they’ll likely find her before morning.”

“Gosh, I sure hope so,” I says. They didn’t let on like they even heard me.

“A man couldn’t hardly get started with nothin’ by that time,” Pop says.

“That’s right,” Uncle Sagamore said to him. “He’d have to give guarantees, to do any dickerin’ with anybody.”

I didn’t know what they was talking about. And then I suddenly remember I still hadn’t found out anything about Sig Freed.

“Where’s Sig Freed?” I asked Pop.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I thought he was around here.”

“Have you seen him lately?”

Pop thought about it. “No. I reckon we ain’t, now that you mention it. Mebbe he went off looking for you.”

“You don’t suppose those people would hurt him, do you?” I asked. “He was there where we was swimming.”

“No, ain’t no reason they’d do a thing like that,” Pop says. “Now stop worryin’. A dawg can find his way back all right.”

I got up. “Well, I’m going to take a look around.”

“Don’t you go far,” Pop says. “I don’t want you to git lost again.”

“I won’t,” I says.

I walked up towards the big house trailer, calling “Sig Freed! Here, Sig Freed!” It was awful dark and I couldn’t see much, but I knew if he heard me he’d bark and come running. I didn’t get any answer from him, though. I came back down past Uncle Finley’s ark, and then cut back up the hill towards the front yard, meaning to go down past the barn and yell in that direction. Pop and Uncle Sagamore was still sitting on the front porch, talking.

“I can’t find him,” I says.

“Hell, don’t worry,” Pop says. “You can’t lose a dawg.”

I wasn’t so sure, though. “But, Pop, he’s a city dog.”

I started to go on across the yard, and then doggone if I didn’t hear him. It sounded like he was down the