pulled up stakes after the valley got to overflowing with Mormons. I’ve just been waiting for the day the Brethren turn up to claim all the old homesteads. And when they do…”
His grin actually grew wider, though there was no amusement to be seen in it. It almost looked like he was a-baring his fangs.
“So what brings you two through these parts?”
I laid out a judiciously expurgated account of our travels, saying only that we were out-of-work drovers headed south in search of jobs. The truth of it—that we’d set out to become sleuths—tends to get folks eyeing you like you’re foaming at the mouth.
“Cowhands, are you?” Kennedy asked, seeming pleased. “So you’ve worked on ranches.”
“Ranches, cattle drives, farms,” I said. “We’ve had dealings with animals about every way you can without joining the circus.”
Old Red cleared his throat. He’d opted for his usual greeting when shaking hands—a grunt—but now he had something to say.
“Speakin’ of animals…”
He nodded down at the peculiar tracks leading into and out of the lake.
Kennedy nodded, his expression turning grim.
“Oh, yes. We’ll talk more about that.”
Then he brightened again—and I did too when I heard what he said next.
“Why not over breakfast? I can have the girls whip up hotcakes and bacon.”
Hotcakes, bacon…and girls? God had most definitely forgiven me.
I rubbed my hands together and tried to keep from drooling on my shirt.
“Lead the way, Mr. Kennedy.”
And so he did, cutting back through the woods to a spread no more than a quarter mile from the farmhouse we’d stayed in the night before. As we tromped past rows of summer-gold wheat, Kennedy and I chatted amiably about his daughters, Fiona and Eileen. (“Pretty as a picture, the pair of ’em,” he boasted. “If there was anything but Brethren around here, they would’ve been married off ages ago.”) Old Red remained silent, though, his gaze darting from side to side as if he might catch a glimpse of our giant, web-footed friend out for a morning stroll.
“Wait here for a minute while I run ahead,” Kennedy said as we approached a tidy little cottage. “The girls would never forgive me if I brought home gentlemen callers without giving ’em a chance to pretty up first!”
He scuttled on into the house, leaving me and my brother out front with the chickens strutting to and fro hunting for grubs.
“Mighty hospitable feller, once he decides not to kill you.” I eyed the henhouse nearby. “Say…when’s the last time we had us some eggs, anyway?”
“That all you can think about? Food?”
“Nope,” I said. “I’m mighty anxious to meet them gals too.”
Old Red rolled his eyes—then turned them back toward the forest.
“You’re wastin’ your time, Brother,” I said. “Bogeymen don’t get around much afore dusk.”
Yet I was feeling it too for all my tomfoolery. That presence again, lurking, watching, waiting.
There were patches back in those trees where the thicket and leaves left it black as night at highest noon. Who knows? Maybe that’d be darkness enough for a bogeyman to do his prowlings, even though the sun might still shine.
Neither Old Red nor myself were superstitious men. But, then again, it’s not a superstition if something’s real. And those tracks sure weren’t an old wives’ tale.
Something was out there. Something…
I forced myself to turn toward the henhouse again.
“Back to more important questions,” I said. “Such as ‘scrambled or fried?’”
“Scrambled, I reckon,” Old Red sighed. “Like your brains.”
“Oh, no, Brother—you’re the egghead of the two of us, remember?”
Kennedy stepped out of the house and gave us a pinwheeling wave of the arm.
“Come on in, boys! It’s time you met the best cooks in Kennedyville!”
Fiona and Eileen proved to be the prettiest girls too—and might have been even if they weren’t the only ones. Willowy, raven-haired, bright-eyed, and smiling, they were visions of loveliness such as a drover carries with him for a thousand miles. By the (alluring) look of them, they fell in age somewhere between myself and my brother—in their midtwenties—and though they teetered on the brink of what some would call old maidhood, their charms had not faded but rather deepened with time.
Then again, I always have been partial to older women.
And younger ones.
And skinny ones, plumps ones, and all the ones in between.
Oh, hell—let’s just face it. I’m gal crazy.
Old Red, on the other hand, is crazy about women in his own way, which is crazy-scared. I doubt if that whatever-it-was in the woods could spook him half as much as a wink from a pretty lady. The more Fiona and Eileen fawned over us—taking our hats, pouring us coffee, asking (huzzah!) how we’d like our eggs—the more Old Red lived up to his handle by blushing as scarlet as a pimpernel.
(I will admit to you here, Mr. Brackwell, that I don’t know what a “pimpernel” actually is. I gather from my readings that some come in scarlet, though.)
“You are a lucky man, Mr. Kennedy,” I said, slathering butter over a stack of flapjacks that stretched halfway to the roof. “Having two such daughters to look after you here.”
Kennedy nodded, his obvious pride slowly giving way to sadness.
“Lucky, I am…though I’d think myself luckier if their mother was still with us.”
Eileen was hurrying past with a pitcher of milk, and she stopped behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.
Kennedy reached up and smothered her fingers under his big paw.
“She died bringing my youngest into the world. It’s been just the three of us ever since.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Kennedy gave his daughter’s hand a squeeze, then let go.
“Oh, we get along fine. It’s only in the last few years things have turned lonely.”
“With the other families leavin’, you mean,” Old Red said. “So…there any reason they cleared out other than the Mormons movin’ in?”
Kennedy gave my brother a somber nod. “There’s another reason, all right. One I gather you two know about firsthand.”
