The Shining Badge (34 page)

“What do we do then?”

“I’ll call out, and they’ll come out shootin’. They ain’t no other way, and them Jeters won’t be took alive.”

Clay nodded, and Hooey moved off, again making almost no sound. Slowly Clay tolled off the numbers, and when he reached two hundred, he lifted the shotgun into a ready position and moved through the woods. He climbed the slight rise and paused at the top. Down below in a valley an old weather-beaten house with a faded red barn in the back occupied a small clearing. Backed up to the barn was a truck, and Clay could see men moving things inside of it. Taking a deep breath, he started down the ridge, which was covered with second-growth timber. He was cautious, for he had learned his trade in a hard school. He would have felt safer in a big city with alleys and buildings somehow. Since he was not an outdoors man, he felt naked and exposed. Still, Hooey was there. He advanced down to the edge of the clearing and stood for a moment. Finally he saw movement, and then Hooey stepped out holding a shotgun. He waved Clay forward, and Clay at once advanced. As he walked, the truck seemed to grow larger, but his eyes were on the two men who stood alertly watching beside it. They were wearing suits
and overcoats and fedoras. He had seen men like them often enough in Chicago.

“All right, you fellas, hold it right there or I’ll salivate you!” Hooey shouted loudly.

Clay moved forward quickly and added his own call. “You’re surrounded! Drop your guns, and nobody will get hurt!”

Even as he spoke, he saw the two men both reach inside their coats, and at once the air was filled with the explosions of the shots.

Clay heard a bullet strike a tree over to his right. Lifting the shotgun, he aimed it as well as he could and pulled the trigger. The gun had a terrific kick and stunned him, turning him half around. At the same time, while he was still half turned, he felt something strike his chest. It was like a giant had hit him with his fist, and he fell heavily to the ground. He was conscious of the sound of shotguns and pistol fire and of Hooey shouting and other men crying aloud. He reached up to touch his chest, and a terrific pain struck him. He looked down at the red blood on his hand, and he thought,
I’m dying, and I’ve missed too much!
It was his last conscious thought, and he slid into a darkness, profound and bottomless.

****

Jenny picked up the phone and said matter-of-factly, “Sheriff’s office. This is the sheriff speaking.”

“Sheriff, get an ambulance. Clay’s been shot.”

A coldness gripped Jenny as she heard Hooey’s words. “Is he all right?”

“Bad hurt. He’s at the Jeter place. Get Billy to come and bring the ambulance. He knows the Jeter place.”

“I’ll come right out.”

“No, you go on to the hospital. We’ll get Clay there as quick as we can.”

The connection broke, and Jenny stood there gripping the receiver with all of her strength. Forcing herself to relax her
hold, she put the phone down and then dashed out of her office. “Where’s Billy?”

“He’s at the city hall.”

“Find him. Tell him to get an ambulance out to the Jeter place. Clay’s been shot. I’m going right to the hospital.”

Jenny left, and she felt numb, as if she herself had been shot.
How bad is he? He can’t die,
she thought.

****

The hospital was small and not equipped in the manner of a big city. Jenny paced the floor of the rather dingy waiting room for what seemed like hours until finally she heard the sound of the ambulance. She ran outside as the ambulance pulled up with the squad car beside it. Billy came at once to her. “He’s been shot in the chest. I don’t know how bad.”

“Is he conscious?”

“He come awake a little bit just as we put him in the ambulance, but then he passed out again.”

And then the attendants were there, and Jenny stood aside as they wheeled out the still, limp body of Clay Varek. The front of his shirt was stained with blood, and her heart seemed to contract. She went to him at once and bent over. “Clay . . . Clay, do you hear me?”

“He’s out,” the ambulance driver said, nudging her aside. “We’ve got to get him into the operating room now, miss.”

Jenny would have followed them into the operating room, but a heavyset nurse stopped her, saying, “You can’t come in here. The doctor will come out as soon as he knows something.”

Jenny went to the waiting room and found Billy there. “What happened, Billy?” she said.

“The way Hooey told it, they closed in on the Jeters. They had two men from Chicago there. They started shooting when Hooey and Clay closed in, and Clay got hit right off.”

“What about Hooey?”

“Oh, he’s fine. He put one of them Chicago fellows down
for keeps, and the other one took a shotgun in his knee. He won’t be running anywhere. He arrested three of the Jeters too.”

The two sat there talking about the arrest, and finally Hooey came in and gave his story. Hooey made little of his part in the raid, and Jenny said only, “You should have come and got more help.”

“I reckon you’re right, Miss Jenny, but we thought we might lose ’em.”

Jenny would much rather that they had missed an arrest, but she did not say so.

The three of them sat there for what seemed like a long time. Finally a tall man came out wearing hospital dress, the cloth mask dangling under his chin. Jenny rose at once. “How is he, Doctor?”

“He’s a lucky man. The bullet took him in the side and glanced off his ribs. It was a heavy bullet. It tore up a lot of flesh going in but luckily hit bone instead of organs.”

“Can I see him? Is he awake?”

“Still under sedation. You can sit with him, though. He might want somebody there when he comes around.”

Jenny went at once to the room where Clay had been placed. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw his pale face, but the regular rise and fall of his chest reassured her. She went to stand beside the bed and put her hand on his hair. He looked so helpless she wanted to cry. He had always been so strong and able, and now he was totally weak.

For a long time she stood there smoothing his hair, and then she suddenly leaned over and kissed him on the lips. He did not respond, but when she straightened up she knew she felt something for this man that went beyond friendship. Laying her hand lightly on his chest, she whispered, “Wrestle with that angel, Clay. You’ve got to be all right. You’ve got to be!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A Changed Heart

Clay watched out the window as the flakes of snow drifted out of a gray heaven to carpet the earth beneath. Snow had always been something to be endured in Chicago, part of the hardness and difficulty of winter in a big city. Somehow here in the hills of Georgia he found himself enjoying the sight. He had been at the Winslows for most of the morning and had watched the brown, dead earth transform into a glistening white world. The trees that had been bare and naked were now clothed with sparkling ermine, so it seemed, the sharp edges rounded and curved and beautiful. The hills were smoothly contoured and even the small lake had frozen over and now had its own coating of the snow that shone brightly under the December sun.

“It’s your move, Mr. Clay.”

Clay turned from the window and grinned across the table at Kat. The movement gave him a sharp stab, but the worst of the pain was over. He’d missed death by a fraction, and ever since getting wounded, he’d thought about what that meant. He had been playing checkers with Kat for over an hour and now he reached out and jumped one of her red pieces. It was obvious that he was stepping into a trap, but he enjoyed watching the youngster, who loved to win at anything.

“I’ll take
this
and
this
and
this!
” Kat announced, slamming her checker down on the board as she made her jumps. She raked off Clay’s black checkers and chortled. “There, I’ve got you beat now!”

“Not yet.” Clay shook his head and frowned. “I’ve still got three pieces left.”

“But I’ve got seven, and two of them are kings. You might as well give up.”

“Not me. It’s not my style.” Clay moved around, avoiding defeat for a time, but inevitably Kat made the last jump again, shaking the table with the violence of her move.

“There!” she crowed. “That makes three games in a row I’ve beaten you.”

“I can’t understand it.” Clay shook his head with mock solemnity. “I was one of the best checker players in Chicago, and here I’m letting a little kid beat me.”

“I’m not a little kid!” Kat flared up. Indeed, at fourteen she was passing through the stage of coltish adolescence, but already the signs of beauty were on her. The same beauty that Clay saw in Jennifer and in Hannah. “I beg your pardon, Miss Winslow. I didn’t mean to offend you.” Clay caught Kat by the nose and squeezed it.

“Ow!” Kat slapped at him and jerked her head back. She glared at him, saying, “You’re just mad because I won.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“I just won’t play with you anymore unless you can take losing a little bit better.”

“I’ll try,” Clay said, making his face into a serious mask. “How’s the Christmas pageant going?”

“Oh, fine! You’re going to love it, Mr. Clay.” All anger was erased from Kat’s smooth face, and she beamed at him, smiling broadly. “I wanted to play one of the shepherds, but Mrs. Simmons wouldn’t let me. She said shepherds were all men. I guess a girl could be a shepherd as good as a boy, don’t you reckon?”

“I don’t see why not. Maybe even better.”

“So I have to be Mary.”

“Why, that’s wonderful, Kat. I’ll bet you’ll be a beautiful Mary.”

Kat glowed, for Clay’s praises always pleased her. She did
not know how careful he had been to speak well of her when she did choose to dress up and retire her tattered overalls. Suddenly Stonewall rose up from where he had been dozing before the crackling fire in the huge fireplace and ambled over. He reared up, putting his paws on Kat’s lap and licking her face.

“Get away, Stonewall!” She shoved the huge animal aside and said, “He wants to go outside.”

“Well, let’s go with him. Jamie’s asleep. I like to make footprints in brand-new snow.”

“So do I,” Kat said. She jumped up, almost upsetting the table, and Clay rose to follow her. They plucked their heavy coats from the hall tree, and Kat pulled a toboggan cap down over her ears. Clay was wearing his uniform, so he simply put his deputy’s hat on. “I wish I could wear a cap like that,” he remarked.

“You can wear one of Daddy’s. It’s right there.”

“No, it’d look kind of funny with a uniform. Come along.”

The two left the house and walked down the snow-covered walk. The snow was still falling rather heavily. “I love snow,” Kat said. She looked up and blinked. “It bites at your face when you look at it.”

“Well, don’t look at it.”

“No, I like it,” Kat said. She reached out and took Clay’s hand, and the two left the yard and began walking toward the woods in the south. They reached the small lake, and Kat said, “I bet we could walk on it. It’s covered with ice.”

“Nothing doing. I don’t want to have to save your life. Too cold to plunge into freezing water.”

Kat grinned at him and pulled at his hand. “Come on. Let’s go into the woods.”

Clay allowed himself to be towed along, grimacing a bit at the mild pain in his side, and soon they were walking through the woods that bordered the fields of the farm. “It’s so quiet in here,” Kat said. “I come here sometimes and just lie down and look at the trees.”

“I expect you’ve got a lot of deep thoughts to think. I did when I was fourteen.”

The two walked on for twenty minutes and finally turned back slowly toward the house. Clay’s face was stiff with the cold, and he saw that Kat’s nose was reddened by the breeze. “Better go back,” he said.

“I guess so. I’m getting cold.”

They were less than halfway back to the house when Kat suddenly began firing questions at Clay, mostly about his past. She was as curious as a coon, always prying into everything, and he fended her questions off as well as he could. Finally she said, “Will you ever get married, Mr. Clay?”

“Hard to say. Maybe I’ll wait until you grow up.”

Kat gave him a startled glance and then said, “Let’s see. When I’m eighteen you’ll be thirty-five. No, you’ll be too old for me, I expect.”

“I expect so.”

“Don’t you ever want to get married?”

“Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a wife.”

“You ought to,” Kat said. “Get married, I mean. I mean, Jamie needs a mother. You’re a good dad to her, but she really needs a mama. I couldn’t stand it when my mom died, but when Dad married Missouri it was so wonderful. I can go to her now and tell her anything, and she always understands.”

“I think that’s fine, Kat.”

“I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve got three women that might be candidates.”

“Who are they?” Clay asked, grinning at her.

“Well, there’s Madine Thomas. She’s kind of an old maid, but she’s got lots of money, and she’s got a brand-new Buick automobile.”

“Well, that’s certainly in her favor. Is she pretty?”

“Well, not really, but she’s pleasant. And then another one I thought of is Helen Fritch. She’s real pretty. She’s twenty-two and had lots of chances to get married. Lots of men run after her. She doesn’t have any money, though.”

“Well, I’d have to balance that out, wouldn’t I? Who’s the other one?”

“Well, I thought for a while you might marry Agnes Courtney, but she got engaged to John Franklin last week. Of course, if you went after her, you might win her from him. He’s not much of a man, I don’t think.”

“Got it all planned out, have you?” Clay laid his hand on the girl’s shoulder and looked down at her fondly. “Well, you keep on planning, and maybe you’ll come up with the perfect wife for me.”

“I’ll do that. You really need a wife, and Jamie needs a mama.”

****

Missouri Ann had fixed a big noon meal as she always did. The whole family was there, and Clint, as usual, sat close to Hannah. From time to time he would tease her about expecting a baby, but Jenny saw that her sister was happier than she had ever been in her life. She took Clint’s mild teasing with a smile, and often she would reach over and touch him as if to reassure herself that he was real.