Centennial (115 page)

So he left his hiding place and entered the room and automatically recited his line from that play, “Father, I know where you should hide it.”

His parents turned to look at him, a ten-year-old boy with ringlets, and they were so involved in their own drama that they saw nothing ridiculous in accepting advice from him.

“I know where you must hide it,” he repeated, and this slight change in words, warning them what they must do, moved them to action. Mervin reached for his coat and said, “Let’s go,” but Philip said, “No. Just Mother and me.” He knew that in this great crisis his father could not be trusted.

“I know where to put him,” he repeated calmly as he and his mother got a rope and went to the well. “They’ll never find him.”

At the well they hauled up the bucket, which showed dry, as Philip had expected. He climbed into it and allowed his mother to lower him, while he held on to the end of the extra rope. He felt the bucket strike a soft body, then slide off to gravel. Climbing down, he tied the rope tightly around the dead man’s chest and under the arms. Then he sat the corpse upright, so that when the rope was pulled from above, it would not slide down and off the legs.

Signaling his mother, he climbed into the bucket and waited for her to haul him aloft. When he joined her he said, “Now we must pull strong,” and together they hauled the body up and out of the well.

When it lay beside their feet, Mrs. Wendell asked, “Now what?” and Philip replied, “We must carry him to the creek,” and his mother cried in near-despair, “Dumire will look there!” and Philip assured her, “Not where I’m going.”

As they lugged the heavy body Philip warned his mother, “Don’t let it drag! Dumire will see the marks. He sees everything.”

When they had maneuvered the corpse to the point where Beaver Creek takes its big bend to the east, they stretched the body out and Philip undressed. Standing naked beside his mother, he told her, “Now we must get him into the creek,” and he jumped into the water, making a soft splash.

Working alone, his mother found it difficult to manipulate the dead weight, but her son directed from the stream, “Push him, Mother. Closer, so that I can grab his leg.”

Mother and son worked on the heavy burden and finally got it into the stream. “You’ll never be able to handle it,” Maude Wendell whispered in her first sign of panic, but her son reassured her with the kind of knowledge boys acquire: “Things weigh less in water.” And she watched in mute anxiety as her golden-haired son wrestled with the corpse and slowly dragged it beneath the surface.

He swam down to that opening in the limestone bank which a little beaver had discovered sixty thousand years ago, to the mouth of that mysterious cave she had loved so dearly and in which her babies had romped. It remained as she had left it, a secret place which only beavers had known until this exploring child, swimming alone, had found it, and occupied it, and christened it his underwater castle.

Guided by some instinct of self-preservation, as if he had perceived even then that one day this secret cave might be of value to him, he had told no one of its existence, not even Sheriff Dumire that day when he asked, “Was it fun, diving in the creek?” He had told no one, and now he held his breath as he brought the dead body to the entrance.

Fighting against his lack of oxygen, he used all his power to force the corpse into the cave, but failed. He had to surface for air, and as he did so he heard his mother ask desperately, “Did you hide it?” Before he could reply, his mother screamed, for the corpse, its lungs still filled with air, had floated up behind him. The dead man’s face stared accusingly from the water.

“I need more breath,” Philip said, grabbing the body as it floated away. “This time ...”

He dived again, dragging the buoyant body behind him, and by conserving his energy, he reached the entrance to the cave in good condition. Working with speed and precise knowledge of what he wanted to accomplish, he forced the body through the opening and found with satisfaction that it fitted in the cave nicely, and was so protected by the lip that it could never work itself free.

With bursting lungs he returned to the surface, and this time his mother saw with relief that no face followed in the waters.

“He’s hidden forever,” Philip announced, breathing deeply. His mother reached down to help pull him from the stream. Grasping her hands, he drew himself onto the bank and dressed, kicking bits of dirt over the area where the corpse had lain. “If it rains before Dumire starts searching,” he told her as they returned to the house, “everything will be washed clean. He’s gone to Greeley, and before he gets back the signs will disappear.”

When they reached the house they found Mervin sitting in the room where the murder had been committed, Mr. Sorenson’s black bag on his lap and a happy grin on his face.

“Guess what?” he cried maniacally as they entered the room. “Look at this bag!” And from it he allowed many five- and ten-dollar bills to filter through his fingers to the floor. “I’ve counted to three thousand, and there’s more.”

The bag contained fifty-five hundred dollars, the small fortune that Sorenson had brought to Colorado for the purchase of irrigated land, and now it belonged to the Wendells.

“What we must do,” Maude said quickly, grasping the situation, “is keep this hidden. We mustn’t spend even one dollar of it.” Philip was awed by his mother’s cool thinking, for when Mervin argued, “it can’t be marked,” she countered, “Probably not. But if we start spending lavishly, Dumire will become suspicious.”

And Philip listened with admiration as his mother spelled out the strategy her endangered family must follow. “Mervin, see if you can gradually get more work at the railway station. I’ll pass the word that I could take in a little washing. Philip, you must earn us some money by finding yards that need tending.”

The plan seemed too complicated for Mervin to follow, and he asked whiningly, “Why don’t we just leave this town? Find some safe place in South Dakota?”

“No!” his wife said with great firmness. “I will run no more. We have a very good thing in this town, and I intend to protect it.”

It was not till dawn that Mervin finally asked, “At least tell me what you did with the body.” But Maude and Philip just looked at each other and shook their heads. “It’s best that we tell no one,” Maude said.

Luck continued to smile on the Wendells, for on the third day of Sheriff Dumire’s absence a night rain fell, just enough to smooth away marks and wash down the sides of the well. When the sheriff did return, it was at least a week before anyone noticed the absence of Soren Sorenson. He had left luggage at the hotel, it is true, but he had warned the desk man that he might be absent for some days, looking for land.

But after several weeks an inquiry arrived from the Minnesota police, and Axel Dumire launched a formal investigation. The hotel staff remembered Sorenson, a middle-aged Swede with a pleasant disposition who tipped well. He carried the normal luggage plus a small black bag which he liked to keep near him.

This suggested to Dumire that the man might have brought a substantial amount of cash, and a telegram to the bank in Sorenson’s hometown established that he had withdrawn fifty-five hundred dollars, which he had taken with him in hopes of acquiring the best possible piece of land if he offered cash on the barrelhead, as he put it.

As bits of evidence began to coalesce, Sheriff Dumire assembled a fairly clear picture of what must have happened to Sorenson. He had come to Centennial, had tried to buy part of Potato Brumbaugh’s farm and failed, had gone to the Indian woman, Levi Zendt’s widow, to see if she wanted to sell off some of her dead husband’s holdings and had failed again.

He had gone to two other irrigation farmers and they had suggested that he try a little farther east toward Sterling. It was logical to think that he had gone to Sterling, but there was no evidence of this, absolutely none, and he began to wonder if Sorenson had made the acquaintance of the Wendells.

He watched the family carefully, and could detect no sign of misbehavior. Mervin was now working full time at the station, and Maude was doing laundry and a little sewing for local ladies. Even Philip was working at odd jobs, but he still found time to stop by the sheriff’s office.

“Your father unload any baggage for a Swede?” Dumire asked the boy one day.

“Maybe. He unloads a lot of stuff.”

“He ever mention any Swedes?”

“No.”

Despite all his questioning, Dumire could in no way establish that Sorenson had ever been acquainted with the Wendells. Accordingly, he telegraphed Minnesota that all leads in the Centennial area had proved futile and that Soren Sorenson had probably headed east for Sterling. In reply he received the startling news that Mrs. Sorenson had received a letter from her husband, postmarked Centennial, informing her that whereas he had found nothing yet, and whereas the local farmers were advising him to move east to Sterling, he was convinced Centennial was where they ought to settle and he would remain at the Railway Arms till he found something.

Dumire doubled his efforts, and the thought came to him that perhaps Sorenson had gone out on the prairies alone and had met with someone like Calendar, a renegade type who was already suspected of having gunned down the two Pettis boys. He saddled a horse and rode out to see Calendar, but he could tell him nothing.

“Who’s the boy?” Dumire asked when he saw a blond-haired boy of about eleven in the sheep wagon.

“Mine.”

“Your son?”

“Yep. Jake. Born in New Mexico.”

“When were you ever married?”

“Well, not exactly married.”

“How’d the boy get here?”

“With some cattlemen.”

Sheriff Dumire looked at the toughened little boy and thought, If any child could work his way north, this one could. He left the sheep range satisfied that Calendar had not done away with Sorenson.

But as he rode back to Centennial, the image of that boy lingered in his mind, and he thought of Philip, also mature beyond his years, and be began again to concentrate on Philip and something the child had said about tending yards led Dumire to a hasty calculation of the money the Wendells were earning. Mervin Wendell had started to work full time shortly after Soren Sorenson disappeared. Maude had begun asking for work at the same time. And young Philip had started doing odd jobs.

“It’s a scheme!” he cried aloud. “As sure as I’m alive, it’s a dirty scheme. That family got hold of the fifty-five hundred dollars, somehow, and they’ve all taken jobs to provide a way to ease the bills into circulation without causing comment.”

He made meticulous inquiries at all stores, but found to his disappointment that the Wendells had not accelerated their expenditures. Their joint wages more than justified their purchases. He discovered nothing but he did succeed in alerting Maude Wendell as to his suspicions, for when she went to the butcher to buy liver, one of the cheaper meats, he said, “You wouldn’t like some fine beef?” and she replied, “That’s a little expensive for us,” and he said, “That’s what I told Sheriff Dumire.”

She did not change expression, but she did say, “He can afford the higher cuts,” and the butcher agreed: “He gets a good salary. And he likes his beef.”

When she got home she said nothing to her husband, for if he learned that Dumire was interrogating people he might panic and do or say something stupid, but when Philip returned after weeding and running errands for Mrs. Zendt, she took him for a quiet walk on the open land near the well and warned him, “Sheriff Dumire suspects us,” and he said, “I know. He’s been asking me all sorts of strange questions, but I tell him nothing,” and she said, “You ought to stop seeing him,” and he told her, “That would make him more suspicious.”

So he continued visiting the sheriff. One day he said, “Do you notice how I’ve changed?” and Dumire studied the child, then slammed one hand onto his desk and cried, “You got your hair cut.”

“I wanted it short, like yours,” Philip said. And the more he was with Dumire, the more he respected him. The sheriff was not the kind of man to get mixed up in badger games, neither as perpetrator nor victim, and if he were by accident involved, he would not panic.

But much as he respected Dumire, he saw that the sheriff was playing a game, yet somehow it was not a game. His parents were participating in another play, but it was not a play. Real, terrible things were happening, like that tornado he had experienced in Kansas, and he knew that he was at the vortex. Ugly things had taken place, perhaps the ugliest, and only he could keep them in balance. He was no longer a child, nor a play-acting girl, nor a sissy with long hair. He was responsible for his family, and never, never would he reveal even the slightest clue that might endanger it.

The conflict in which he was embroiled—abiding respect for Dumire and the necessity to protect his parents—became almost unbearable. An adult would have been excused had he crumbled under such pressures; Philip was able to maintain his balance solely because of his childish ignorance of possible consequences.

So now he and the sheriff began to joust with each other on a much more serious level. The sheriff was convinced that this boy knew what had happened to Soren Sorenson, and the boy knew that Dumire must be kept from penetrating that secret.

The first break for Dumire came when a chambermaid at the hotel, who had already been questioned four times, told the sheriff, “Now stop suggestin’ that I stole that black bag. Mr. Sorenson had it himself when he stopped by the wedding.”

“He what?”

“You were there. I seen you. He looked in, just the way you did. He wasn’t invited, but the door was open and he heard the Wendells singin’ that beautiful song …”

Quietly Dumire asked the maid to go over what she had said, and he satisfied himself that on the night of the Gribben wedding, Soren Sorenson must have somehow got involved with the Wendells.