“TWENTY-MINUTE STOP, FOLKS.”
The driver’s droning announcement that we could disembark if we so wished and take advantage of the conveniences of the Greyhound terminal jerked me out of a nightmare. It was one of those bad dreams where you try to hide but never get anywhere, in this case in some big awful building where Wendell Williamson was after me, but every time I ran down a long hallway or up a staircase, he would barge out of a room and demand, “Where’s that arrowhead? Hand it over or I’ll tell your folks.” Groggily I looked up and down the aisle of the bus, trying to come to grips with my surroundings. Then looked again, blinking, to see whether I still was in a dream, not a good one.
The Indians had vanished. Likewise the oil field crew. The passenger load was down to a precious few, myself and one of those tourist couples out to see the world on the cheap and a man in a gabardine suit of the kind county extension agents and livestock buyers wore. All the rest of the seats, including the one next to me, were empty.
I couldn’t get my bearings. The bus already had slowed to town speed, but this was no drop stop as Chinook or Fort Belknap would be. I whirled to see out the window to the street. A Stockman Bar, a Mint Bar, a Rexall Drug, a Buttrey’s grocery, those could be anywhere. Then I spotted a storefront window with the old-fashioned lettering GLASGOW TOGGERY—MEN’S WEAR AND MORE. Glasgow! I had slept away a sizable portion of Montana. The Indians, including my seatmate, must have got off long since, the oil roughnecks likewise. I felt ridiculously cheated, yet with no one to blame but myself. Staying awake on a once-in-a-lifetime journey should not be that hard a job, I could about hear Gram chiming in.
Kicking myself about all the unfulfilled pages of the autograph book and the lost chance to palaver about the black arrowhead, I scrambled off for the restroom the moment the bus door whished open, vowing to get the Kwik-Klik into action from here on, no matter what it took.
? ? ?
WHEN PASSENGERS FILED on again, things looked more promising, several fresh faces, although no obvious Indians. I was nothing if not determined, singling out seats I could pop in and out of as the autograph book and I made the rounds. Itching to start, I waited impatiently for the driver to finish some paperwork he was doing on his lap. All at once, I saw him look up in surprise, spring the bus door open, and address someone outside.
“Afternoon, Sheriff. Prize customer?”
“A steady one, for damn sure,” an irritated voice replied. “Returning him to the stony lonesome at Wolf Point again. He’s their prisoner. Supposed to be anyhow, if the escape artist didn’t keep showing up here. I’ll catch the local back after I dump him.”
Sheriff. Prisoner. The stony lonesome, which meant jail. I sat up sharply.
Sure enough, up into the bus stepped a rangy man with strong features and dark expressive eyebrows and a set mouth as if he were on a mission. He looked like he could carry a six-gun natural as anything, and know the right way to use it.
He, though, unfortunately was not the sheriff, according to the handcuffs on his wrists. Right behind him came a sawed-off guy not much more than half his size, wearing the biggest kind of crow-black Stetson and a star badge. “Here, Romeo,” the runty one directed. “Across from the kid will do.”
Oh man! Not only had my luck changed, the rush of it flattened me back against my seat as the pair of them settled in and the bus started into motion, the prisoner by the window and the sheriff on the aisle. The butt of a revolver protruded out of a well-worn holster on his hip like a place to hang his hat.
Noticing me gaping, the sheriff cackled a little. “Getting an eyeful of law enforcement, bucko?”
“Yeah! How come you take him by bus?”
The lawman grimaced as if he’d been asking himself that very question. “My deputy’s out on a domestic dispute call, and the jail’s full of rangutang drunks from Saturday night. Not the way I want, doing this by Hound.” He looked around the bus with distaste. “But it’d be just like the master criminal here to bail out of the patrol car if I drove him. Tried that last time, didn’t you.”
“We weren’t going that fast.”
The sheriff laughed nastily. “Not gonna be bailing out of the bus, are you.”
“To tell the truth, I don’t see how.”
“Damn right you don’t. You’re on a one-way ticket back to behind bars and that’s that.”