Conquering Kilmarni (16 page)

Had Zackie really been at the garden shed the day before, or had Mongoose only been acting a little crazier than usual? Because if Zackie was not there, where else could he look with any real hope of finding him? And he had to find him now. He had promised Miss Grant.

Low clouds covered the top of the property that morning. When he reached the garden, the whole area was like a faded photograph and he could hardly see the shed. But suddenly Zackie's dog voiced a series of soft little cat sounds and took off at top speed.

With his heart beating wildly, Peter raced after him. The dog's loyalties must have suffered some kind of strain then. Halfway to the shed he stopped short, spun
himself around, and raced back to Peter. The two of them reached the shed at the same time.

Zackie kneeled at the edge of a hole in the floor, with the money box in his hands. He hadn't heard them, it seemed. Perhaps the heavy mist had muffled the sound of their approach, which had not been loud, anyway. Or he had been concentrating too fiercely on digging up the money—or maybe counting it. But now Mongoose actually barked, and a startled Zackie looked up as the dog leaped at him.

"Hey!" Struggling to his feet, he staggered backward while the dog jumped again and again in an attempt to reach his face. "Mongoose, quit that! Peter, how did you—"

"Never mind that. I have something to tell you." Peter stepped forward, trembling with relief. "Zackie, your mother is here!"

"What?"

"Your mother! She got the letter and came out on the bus. She's at Miss Lorrie's house, and she's going to stay. You have to come home with me."

Zackie backed away, shaking his head and looking scared. "Me can't. Corpie will arrest me."

"He can't prove you're the one."

"Him bound to arrest me, anyway."

"Look," Peter argued. "In case you don't know it, the corporal likes your mom a lot, and if you're not guilty, he'll probably help you prove it.
Are
you the thief, Zackie?"

"No."

"You wouldn't lie to me, would you?"

"Me never stole nothing 'cept that time me did try to take the aspirin for me daddy."

Peter believed him. He didn't blame Zackie for being scared, though. "But you'd better bury that money again," Peter said, "so it can't be used against you."

"Uh-uh." Zackie wagged his head violently. "You have to take it to me mother for me. Is why me did come here to get it. Me was going to carry it to Kingston. Here, Peter." He thrust the box forward. "Count it for me, please."

Lifting out a wad of bills secured with a rubber band, Peter removed the band and began to count the money. Finished, he replaced the band and said, "You have two hundred and four dollars here."

"Right." Zackie looked pleased.

"That's a whole lot of money. Your mom sure will be glad."

"Me did work a long time for it. And don't forget me did have to buy food for me daddy and meself all that same time." Zackie held the box out, and Peter started to put the money back into it. "Now what you must do, Peter, is take this and—"

Interrupting himself, Zackie turned to look out at the garden. The dog, too, suddenly became motionless, with his head cocked as though he were hearing something.

A few seconds later Peter heard something. The mist hid what was out there, but since coming to live in Ja
maica he had been around animals enough to guess what was making such a soggy, thumping sound in the garden's soft earth. It had to be a mule or a horse. And he remembered he had seen someone near the mule pen just after leaving the house. Had that someone also seen him, and followed him?

"Zackie, we have to get out of here! Run!"

But it was too late. A ghostly mule and rider suddenly loomed up in the mist, blocking any escape from the shed. And Merrick Leonard, leaning forward over the mule's head, was growling at them.

"Got you!" he yelled drunkenly. "Got you red-handed with the money that belong me for me pig! Gimme that box!"

Neither boy moved.

"Hand it over, me say!" Even though the man was thick tongued from drink or ganja, his voice was like thunder booming out of the mist.

Zackie took a step forward and held the box up to him. But Peter still had the packet of bills.

Leonard snatched the box and peered into it. "What you think you doin'?" he snarled. "This empty! You, there"—he leaned over the mule's shoulder to direct his anger at Peter—"gimme that money in you hand!"

Something in the snarl of his voice, perhaps, or some movement he made in his moment of triumph, caused Mr. Campbell's mule to look around at him. Maybe that was what gave Zackie the idea to do what he did next.

Without seeming to move at all, the boy put out a foot and nudged his dog. Then, "Go for him, Mongoose!" he cried. "Get him!"

The little dog launched himself at Merrick Leonard the way he had once attacked Corporal Buckley. But Leonard was sitting on a mule, not standing firmly on solid ground. And in trying to reach some vital part of him, Mongoose clawed his way up the mule's body like a cat climbing a wall.

No way was Mr. Campbell's ill-tempered beast going to stand for that. Tossing his head in a fury, he reared and flung himself sideways, then came down with an earth-shaking jolt and reared again.

Leonard had been riding him without a saddle. That was not a bright thing to do, but there hadn't been a saddle in the mule pen—only a rope bridle hanging on the fence. Without a saddle he was at Nasty's mercy. When the mule reared the second time, Leonard went flying.

"Come, Peter!" Trying to turn too swiftly on one foot, Zackie lost his balance and fell, but was up again in a second. A sudden look of pain twisted his face, though, as he gasped out, "Follow me!" and began running. Peter raced after him, still clutching the wad of money in one hand and grateful for the rubber band that held it together.

At the end of the garden Peter glanced back and saw Merrick Leonard just picking himself up off the ground. The mule pawed the earth only a yard or so away, as if waiting to butt him down again.

A moment later the garden was behind them and they were racing down through the coffee fields, avoiding all tracks and using the trees for cover.

From the direction of their flight, Peter judged their destination must be the river. Not the stretch where the bridge was, but one higher up where the stream was a series of waterfalls crashing through a high-walled gorge.

"Hey!" he gasped as Zackie and Mongoose stopped at last to let him catch up. "Where are we going?"

"A place where him won't find us," Zackie said. He was holding onto his injured arm as if it hurt him, Peter noticed. "When him on ganja like that, him dangerous, Peter. We have to keep out of sight till him over it."

"We should make for the house!" Peter argued.

"Uh-uh. Him would hear us and catch us. That Mr. Campbell mule is strong enough to go anywhere we can go. And"—he winced with pain—"to tell the truth, me not feeling too much like running, Peter. Me hurt me arm again back there when me did fall."

They hurried on, with Mongoose racing back and forth between them as if it were a game they were playing. Then Peter found himself trudging through a seemingly endless sea of ferrel—the same prickly fern Zackie had covered the dead pig with, half a lifetime ago. Here it was knee high, and wading through it was pure torment. He had long since shoved Zackie's money into a pocket of his pants, and now he lifted Mongoose to one shoulder so the dog would not be entangled in the fern like a fly in a spider's web.

And again, as they struggled through the fern, Peter saw Zackie favoring his injured arm. For a long time now, he had not been able to get to the clinic to have it treated.

It was impossible to hurry through the ferrel. But there were no immediate sounds of pursuit, so Peter began to regain his confidence. Maybe, if Zackie's father was in bad enough shape, he would not be able to follow them. Then again, he knew the Kilmarnie property and might have guessed where Zackie would go—and might be trying to head them off somehow.

The fern ended at last, and Peter found himself in forest gloom for a time. Then that, too, ended, and he had to hang onto rocks and cliffside bushes while following his guide down into the river gorge. At times he caught glimpses of the stream itself, leaping from level to level below them.

With walls of the gorge amplifying the river's roar, normal conversation was impossible. When Zackie wanted to warn Peter about loose rocks, or about bushes that might tear loose if grabbed, he had to yell. Mongoose, though, had no trouble keeping his footing. Having four short legs instead of two long ones was a big help, Peter thought wryly. And having a mountain boy call out warnings was a big help to a tenderfoot.

T
he hideout Zackie had chosen was such a spooky kind of place, Peter had a hard time believing they were still on the Kilmamie property. Zackie assured him they were.

"Of course, you wouldn't have no reason to know the whole property unless you was hunting pigs or something," Zackie said with a shrug. "A lot of it is pretty wild."

Peter remembered an old Kilmamie map his father had discovered at the Institute of Jamaica in Kingston. Dad had asked the institute people to copy it for him, and the copy was now at the house. On it the surveyor had made notations such as "awful gully," "inaccessible precipices," "edge of great break," "tremendous hole," and "great overhanging rock" to indicate just how wild some parts of the property were. This place they were in now was probably noted on the map as one of the many falls on the river coming down from those "inaccessible precipices."

Winded from their flight and the hard descent, Zackie and Peter sat on a wide ledge beside a pool some twenty feet across, with their backs against a wall of black rock and Mongoose between them. In front of them the river fell from a height of about thirty feet into the pool, and then plunged again out of sight. Surprisingly, the noise was not as deafening as it had been higher up. There it must have bounced back and forth from one wall of the river gorge to the other, building up a confusion of echoes.

"What do we do now?" Peter asked.

Zackie looked at him. "You know what me think? We in a whole lot of trouble, Peter."

"I know that.
But
—
"

"Even
more than before. Don't it plain as day to you what me daddy will do next?"

"What will he do?"

"Him will go to Corporal Buckley and tell Corpie 'bout the money. By the way, does you still have the money?"

Peter took it from his pocket and handed it over. "I think you're wrong."

"Huh?"

"I think you're wrong. Look. You say your father will tell the corporal he saw you with the money, and the corporal will decide you're the thief they're looking for. Right? You think your father will do that to get even with you."

Zackie nodded.

"I disagree," Peter said. "He'd be dumb to do that. Because the police would take the money away from you,
and your father would never have another chance to get his hands on it. Don't you see?"

Zackie gave the matter some thought and finally nodded. "You right. Yes."

"So what do we do now?"

Zackie's dog walked to the edge of the pool at that moment and lapped up some water. Watching him, Zackie said, "Well, this the same water you would be drinking at the house, Peter. You thirsty?"

"No."

"Hungry?"

"We don't have anything to eat."

"Yes, we do, if you hungry enough. Me have matches, and there is crayfish in these pools. Me could catch some and make a fire. You supposed to boil them and we don't have nothing to boil them in, but me guess they would be okay roasted."

Peter tried to figure out what was wrong with what Zackie was saying. Nothing was, he finally decided. Each of them had a different way of looking at the trouble they were in, that was all. To Zackie, the number one problem was not that the police thought him a thief; it was just staying alive and free.

"Zackie—"

"Huh?"

"Have you forgotten about your mother? She came here so you and she could be together again."

All at once the look of self-assurance disappeared from Zackie's face. It was as though he suddenly saw the truth
as something huge and heavy that was trying to crush him, and knew he could no longer hold it off by being cocky. Even his voice seemed tired as he said, "Peter, what can me do? Me mother did come, but me daddy is still mad at me and making all kinds of trouble. The police is waiting to arrest me." Gazing forlornly at the pool, he shook his head in defeat. "Me in the biggest kind of trouble, Peter. Me nuh know what to do anymore."

"We have to think about this," Peter said.