yelling.
Pop held up his hand for silence. The other hand was still waving the diamond thing, “...completely naked,” he was saying, “...nothing at all to protect her from the chill. And as for the reward—Listen, men! If the shurf’s office is going to try to weasel out of it, we’ll pay the reward ourself! Me an’ Sagamore will pay it. And not no measly five hundred dollars, neither. One thousand dollars to the man who finds that girl that saved my little boy’s life.”
The crowd let out another cheer. “Send that useless shurf home! We’ll find that girl without him.”
Uncle Sagamore came up on the stage then. They give him a cheer. “Men,” he says into the microphone, “I’m real proud to know you’re with us right to the end. And don’t feel too harsh against the shurf because he don’t want to bother to look for her an’ because he’s too cheap to pay the reward. Remember, he’s got other duties, like foreclosin’ mortgages, and arrestin’ people for crimes like shootin’ craps or takin’ a drink now and then, an’ he can’t spend a lot of time lookin’ around in a river bottom for a young girl just because she’s lost with no clothes on an’ so terrified she’ll probably throw herself right in the arms of the first man that finds her. Politicians is got a lot of other important things on their minds, and besides this girl can’t vote, nohow. She’s too young.”
There was another big roar from the crowd.
Uncle Sagamore went on, “Now, the daylight’s a-fadin’ out fast, an’ there ain’t no point in anybody goin’ back down there in the bottom now except the one’s that’s got flashlights and lanterns, but you stick around here until morning an’ we’ll find her. Somebody’ll get that thousand dollars. You can get a little sleep in your cars, an’ there’s refreshments an’ entertainment for all. I thank you kindly, men.”
I didn’t even see the sheriff on the stage now. He had left.
Uncle Sagamore got down, and the poor tired girls struggled back up on the stage once more. As the music started blaring again I saw Pop and Uncle Sagamore going down towards the house. I ran and caught up with them just as they got in the front yard.
And then the sheriff and all three of the deputies came charging down on us as fast as they could walk. We sat down on the porch and they stopped in front of us. I had seen the sheriff mad lots of times before, but never like this. He pulled out his gun.
But he was only handing it to Booger. “Hold onto it,” he says, with his voice so tight you could hardly hear him. “Don’t let me have it. I don’t trust myself. I ain’t never shot down an unarmed man in cold blood, and I don’t want it on my soul.”
Uncle Sagamore shifted his tobacco over into the other cheek and rubbed his bare feet together. He reached down and popped the knuckles in his big toe. “Why, shucks, Shurf,” he says. “Ain’t no call to get all het up.”
“Billy,” the sheriff says to me painfully, ignoring Uncle Sagamore, “you’re the only one I can get any truth out of. Was she in that car when they left here last night to scatter those hand bills?”
I didn’t know what he was driving at. “No,” I said. “Of course not. How could she be? She was already lost then.”
He shook his head. “All right,” he says to the deputies. “They didn’t take her away, and she couldn’t go anywhere afoot, so she’s still on this place somewhere. Let’s go. And you too, Sagamore. We’re going to search this place without no warrant. You want to make trouble?”
“Why, of course not, Shurf,” Uncle Sagamore says. “You know I’m always downright anxious to co-operate with the law.”
He got up.
I went along too. They searched everything. They went all through the house. They looked under the beds and in the closets. They looked through the barn and the corncrib and the hayloft up above it, and in the truck shed and an old tool shed that was down below the barn, and in Dr Severance’s trailer.
It was full dark by then and they was using flashlights. At last there wasn’t anything left but the ark. We all went down there. Uncle Finley had a lighted lantern hanging up on a plank and he was nailing away to beat the band, up