P Deutermann - Spider mountain

“What about children?” Carrie asked. “I haven’t seen many children at all up here in our travels.”

Laurie May shook her head. “Mostly old folks up here these days,” she said. “Ain’t no work, no money ‘cept the welfare. Young’ns around here, they pack up to town or one of them cities back east.” She paused as if trying to remember something. “Folks do say they’s a lot of children who flat run off in these here parts. Cain’t blame ’em if they do. ‘Specially if you see some of them mamas. No-good sluts and hoors, the lot of’em. Go ‘round with hardly no clothes on, then act all s’prised when they get a baby stuck on ’em, like they don’t know wherever did it come from.”

She stopped talking when we heard a truck engine drop into a low gear at the foot of the valley and begin climbing the dirt lane that paralleled the creek. Then we heard a second vehicle do the same thing.

“Y’all be gettin’ inside, now,” she said urgently, rocking herself up and out of her chair. “And bring them dogs, mister.”

We went into the cabin, which was as neat and clean as the yard. I noted the antique double-barreled shotgun lodged near the front door. Its twin stood by the back door in the kitchen. Laurie May took us over to what turned out to be the pantry door and opened it. She motioned for me to get my fingers into a hole in the floor and then lift a five-foot-long trapdoor. She gave us a lantern and a match and told us to hide out down in the cellar until whoever it was went away. She passed the backdoor shotgun to me as Carrie went down the steps. Then she went back out onto the front porch.

I wedged the door open and lit the lantern. I pulled out the DEA radio, called Greenberg’s radioman up on the mountain, and told them we were going into hiding in case whoever was coming was the Creigh gang. I described the location of the cabin and then shut it down when Laurie May stepped back into the kitchen and said to hurry, they was almost here. We went down the wooden stairs and I lowered the trapdoor. We could hear her slithering a carpet over the trapdoor and then walking back toward the cabin’s front door, her cane counting time.

“There’s a reason they call it a trapdoor,” I said nervously. “If she’s one of them…”

“I don’t think so,” Carrie said. She took the lantern and looked around. The cellar walls were made of stone, and the floor was packed earth. The shelves along one wall were filled with Mason jars of preserved foods, sacks of flour and sugar, and store-bought canned goods. There were a dozen burlap sacks of lump coal stacked along another wall; a third wall held all kinds of antique kitchen implements, soap, candles, and three more lanterns. There was a kitchen table and three wooden chairs out in the middle of the cellar. The air smelled of chalky dust and old stone. It certainly could have been a trap-there was no other way out of the cellar other than those oak steps. The shepherds sat down next to the steps and watched the shadows being thrown along the walls by the kerosene lantern.

“Why did you ask her about children?” I asked, easing myself into one the chairs. A fine halo of dust rose from the table when I sat down. We couldn’t hear anything from the outside.

“We’ve seen a dozen or so places in two days, and exactly one two-year-old child,” she replied.

“There could have been more,” I said. “The people who didn’t come out, or the ones who told us to get gone-there could have been kids in those places.”

“Then there should have been toys, trikes, big-wheels, swings-kid clutter. I didn’t see any, except at that one place.”

“Well, like she said-there’s no future in these hills for young people, and it’s the young people who have kids. They go to town or just plain away. Makes sense.”

Carrie sat down. “That makes sense for teenagers-I’m talking kids. Four-to ten-year-olds. There’s one combined elementary and middle school and one high school in this county, all in Rocky Falls. They combined the elementary and the middle school three years ago because the elementary school didn’t have enough new accessions to warrant keeping it open.”

“The overall population dropping?”

“Not much change really, and that’s part of the mystery. Now, the county people do admit they have some ‘data holes’ in the higher elevations.”

“Probably more like bullet holes in their county vehicles,” I said. We heard a door close upstairs, and then Laurie May was tapping on the trapdoor with her cane. I went up the stairs and pushed the door open.

“They done gone,” she announced. “But they was a’lookin’ for ye, all right. Nathan and his boys. I told ’em you and the lady done been here. Told ’em you said y’all was headed for Spider Mountain. That put ’em right off they feed, that did.”

“They say what they were going to do?” I asked.

“Heard one say they was gonna go get the dogs, put a track on ye. Best leave now, and don’t go nowheres near Grinny Creigh.”

“We’re going to go right up to the top of this valley, and then we’ll probably head out,” I said. “I’ve seen that dog pack.”

“Ain’t we all,” Laurie May said. “But Mr. Samuel Colt works on dogs, same as men.”

“Thank you for speaking to us,” Carrie said.

“Most folks up here is decent folks,” the old lady said. “But not on Spider Mountain. Folks knows, but they skeered.”

“That’s why we’re here, Ms. Creigh,” Carrie said. “We want to fix that problem real bad.”

The old lady nodded. “ ‘Bout time,” she said. “Folks been a’wonderin’.”

Baby Greenberg took a sip of coffee from a metal cup, winced, and threw the remainder of the coffee into the fire. “Goddammit, Rupe,” he said, “if I wanted asphalt I’d have asked for some.”

Special Agent Rupert Jones shrugged his overlarge shoulders. “Never said I could make coffee,” he said. “Don’t drink that shit, myself.” Then he and one of the other agents left to take up their night watch positions on the slopes above Crown Lake. The other two agents had already rolled into their bags.

We were gathered around what was technically an illegal campfire on the edge of Crown Lake. The duty radioman had picked us up at the top of the valley after we’d left Laurie May’s and driven us down the firebreaks to the DEA campsite. Dinner had consisted of cold pizza from Marionburg, courtesy of the agent who’d driven the lower valley road to see about the logging-truck accident. The logs had all still been down in the creek, but there’d been no sign of the truck or trailer.

“If you were a truly special agent,” I said, “you’d have some scotch in one of those briefcases over there.”

“Why, is your flask empty?” Carrie asked innocently.

“Very,” I said, making a mental note to get her for that.

“Well,” Greenberg said. “In fact…”

He got up and returned with a bottle, which duly made the rounds. My shepherds were curled up close to the fire. Once the three of us had properly equipped ourselves against the rapidly cooling mountain air, Greenberg threw another log on the fire and asked the essential question. “So: Now what’re you gonna do?”

“I think we’ve established that this is definitely Injun country,” I said.

“Gosh, you think?” he asked.

“With a damned good intel and surveillance network,” Carrie said. “They knew we were up there and where we’d settled for the night. And they had no qualms about squashing their problem.”

“So we have grounds for taking action,” I said. “But even if you guys came in force, swept up all the black hats you could find, including Grinny and Nathan, would you have a case for court?”