situation. Now, if it was me—”
“If it was me,” Uncle Sagamore says, “I’d offer a reward.”
“Why, of course,” Pop went on. “And kinda let people know about it.”
“Natcherly. I’d distribute a few hand bills and mebbe call the papers. Sort of describe her, how she looks and how she was dressed the last time anybody saw her, so people’d know what to look for. I reckon we could get out a pretty good description of the girl, now couldn’t we?”
“Ho-ly hell. I mean, of course we could. We seen her around often enough, ain’t we?”
“Well sir, I’ll tell you,” Uncle Sagamore says. “I just ain’t satisfied with the way the shurf’s handlin’ this thing. That there girl’s a good friend of ours, an’ Billy sets all the store in the world by her, an’ here that shurf’s going to go a-piddlin’ around down here with a little old dab of men that couldn’t find a dead mouse in a glass of buttermilk, while she works herself up into a swivet and gets bit all to hell by the muskeeters. It just don’t seem right to me.”
“Well, then, what do you reckon we ort to do?” Pop asked.
“Now, mind you,” Uncle Sagamore says, “I’d be the last one in the world to want to interfere with the workin’s of the law, but it shore seems to me like it’s our duty to let the people know what’s goin’ on down here so we can get more help to look for her. People’d come a-runnin’ if they knew the facts, “specially when they heard about the reward.”
“Hmmmm!” Pop says. “Mebbe about two hundred?”
“Better make it five hundred,” Uncle Sagamore decided.
“Say, that’s fine,” I told them. “We’ll get lots of help. Who’ll pay it?”
“Shucks, ain’t no use worryin’ about that now,” Uncle Sagamore says. The thing to do now is find that there girl. Plenty of time later on to worry about piddlin’ little details.”
“Well, what are we waitin’ for?” Pop says.
He jumped up. “We got a printing press out there in the trailer, haven’t we? And hundreds of pounds of paper. Come on, Billy. Let’s get to work.”
“Sure,” I says.
We got a lantern and went out to the trailer, pop closed the door and sat down at the little desk with a sheet of paper and a pencil. “You start settin’ her up as fast as I get it wrote out,” he says. “We don’t want to lose no time.”
He opened the little dictionary and started looking up the words. Pop can’t spell anything without looking it up.
It was hot inside the trailer, but we was too busy to notice.
Pop got the lead-off blocked out the way he wanted it and I set it up in big type, and then he started with the rest of it, the description and how to find the place and everything.
While we was working there was a sound like a horse outside and we looked out.
Uncle Sagamore had saddled one of his mules, and he was setting on his back with something that looked like a bundle of clothes under his arm.
“How you makin’ out, Sam?” he asked.
“Fine,” Pop says. “We’ll be ready to start printing her in a few minutes. You goin’ down in the bottom?”
“That’s right,” Uncle Sagamore says. I figured I ort to help the boys out, seein’ as how I can’t do nothin’ here.”
“What’s that you got in your arms?” I asked Uncle Sagamore.
“Oh,” he says. “I went up to the trailer an’ found a suit of Miss Harrington’s clothes. We find her, she’ll want something to wear.”
I hadn’t thought of that. It was a good idea.
We closed the door and started to work again.
Pop was chewing on his pencil. “Hmmmmm! Twenty-two years old—” he says, talking to hisself. “No. Better make that nineteen. Get a sportier type of searcher. Now. Which bosom is that vine on?”
“The off one,” I says, reaching for more type. “And right in the center it’s got a little, pink—”
“Damn it, Billy—” He wiped the sweat off his face. “Never mind.” He sighed and went on muttering. “Climbing rose—golden suntan all over—hips—God, if I don’t stop reading this thing over while I’m writin’ it, I’ll be down there lookin’ for her myself.”
In a little while he had it all wrote out the way he wanted it, and I finished setting it up in type. I inked it and ran off one to see how it was.
Pop looked at it. “Well, that sure enough ought to fetch ‘em,”