Circles in the Sand (3 page)

“Yeah,” Chet said. “What if that windbag Hichaire can’t stop the Air Force. What can you do then?”

“I’ll think of something. There’s more than one way to shoot down an Air Force, Haw!” He shoved his beer glass across the bar and stalked out.

Recovering his B-4 bag from the sheriff’s office, Clint decided to walk up to the hotel. Word from the sheriff must have got around about Clint’s mission. Out on the street Clint met several people who greeted him with a smile and hand shake. With each one Clint spent a few minutes getting to know them. When he reached McCune General Store, he sauntered in to look around. Ollie and Lilith McCune welcomed him to their town.  Clint thanked them and said he expected to be a good customer. Right now he just wanted to look around to get an idea of what they had available.

“If you don’t see what you need, we can get anything you want…anything…
you want.
” Lilith’s eyes glowed as her voice rose.

“I’ll see you again. Right now I’ve got to find a sack for the night.”

“If Gilman don’t have all the rooms you need. We could rent out a room or two at our place,” Ollie said. “Both kids away now, so we’re empty-nesting.”

“I don’t know how many guys I’m going to have here yet, but I’ll keep your offer in mind.” He walked across the street to the Gilman Restaurant. There were no customers inside this early. The same pretty teenager was listening to a radio. “Howdy Miss Lorena. Think I can get a room and a shower before supper?”

“Oh yes Sir. I’ll get Mom.”

Mrs. Gilman took him through a room behind the dinning room to a counter next to inside stairs. Lorena followed along.

She handed him a card to fill out. “You can call me Dorris, Sergeant, everyone does.” While she read over his information, Clint studied Dorris. Early thirties he guessed. Fairly attractive, nicely stacked, no make-up, he wondered if there was a Mr. Gilman. When she blushed, he realized she knew he was looking at her. He swung his head around to look at a poster.

“The rooms on the first floor have showers in the toilet. Those upstairs have a basin, but share a shower and toilet at each end of the hall. Downstairs, three dollars a night. Upstairs two.”

“A personal shower sounds good to me. Don’t have that in the barracks. Not important now, but do you have a weekly or monthly rate?”

She handed him a large towel, wash cloth and a bar of soap. “We didn’t have. Not enough customers staying long. She handed him a key attached by a small chain to a wood pad. “Number one at the end.” She pointed to the door beside the stairs.

Inside number one, Clint checked the place over. Clean enough. No phone. No bugs,  bed, one chair, a small table. The metal sided-shower he reckoned was a recent improvement.
It’s so narrow a man’ll have to stand in there twice to get wet. 

Dressed in casual civilian clothes, Clint entered the restaurant. He  sat near the window. “What’s for supper, Miss Lorena?”

Unasked, she brought him a glass of water. “We’re not expecting a lot of people, so its beef stew tonight. Coffee?”

“Sure. Black. Stew sounds good to me.”

When Lorena brought the coffee to  him, she stood nearby and smiled at him. “My, you’re a good looking man in civilian clothes too.”

“Huh? Why thank you, Miss Lorena. That’s a real complement coming from such a pretty young girl.” He swept his eyes away from her chest.

Unnecessarily, she wiped off a nearby table. “You don’t have to call me Miss every time. Do you think my Mom is pretty?”

Involuntarily, Clint’s eyebrows raised and fell.
Holy cow
. “Ah, why yes. Your Mom is the most attractive woman I’ve seen around here.”

“I don’t see any rings. Are you married?”

A third degree? Am I being set up? Caution, Sergeant.
“Well not now. I was, and I’ve got a girl friend back in Grand Eclipse.”

“Hunh. I’ll see if your stew is ready.”

After she returned with a generous sized bowl of stew and some biscuits, the girl hung around again. No one else had entered the restaurant yet. “There’s a lot of guys after my Mom.”

“What does your Daddy say about that?”

“Mom’s a widow. Dad was killed in the war.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure both you and your Mom miss him.”

“Sure. But that was a long time ago.”

Thankfully for Clint, two young men came in to order, and broke up Lorena’s  further interrogation. He met her at the counter to pay her, and then left.
Mom’s pretty all right. A widow. I wonder how hard up she is for a little casual romance. But Miriam is enough problems without me getting involved with another woman. Maybe I ought to check out the Boar Pen… sometime…but not tonight.

After he left the restaurant Lorena went back to her mother. “Did you know that good-looking Sergeant Greybull isn’t married.”

Dorris set aside her paperwork and looked at her daughter. “No, I didn’t know that. It’s not any of my business. Anyway, how do you know?”

Lorena fidgeted around the counter. “I asked him straight out.”

Dorris slapped her pencil down. “Lorena, why do you do things like that? You might embarrass people.”

“He wasn’t embarrassed. Besides he likes you.”

“Oh come on. He’s only been here a day…and only seen me twice.”

Lorena could see her mother trying to hide a smile. “I could tell from the way he looked at you…when you looked over his card.”

“That’s nonsense. Don’t you have something better to do in the diner?”

Lorena’s smile withered. “He was married though, and does have a girl friend back in Grand Eclipse.”

“See. There’s no use you getting all excited about my marriage prospects.”

Back at the sheriff’s office, Radecker was working on a report. Clint said, “I don’t see a pay phone anywhere around here, Sheriff. Did I miss it?”

“No. There ain’t one. You need to call your headquarters, or a girl friend?”

“Not calling any girls. Got enough problems. Need to call Air  Division Headquarters at Grand Eclipse in the morning. See when my ride comes back, and what else might be going on.”

“For official business, you can use my phone. I reckon we can afford that.”

“Great. If you got a minute, I could use some more information.”

“Why shore. Sit down. What’s on your mind?”

Clint settled in behind Kern’s desk. “Over in the saloon, I met a Fritz Deutsch. Seems like he and I might be at cross purposes. Anything you can tell me about him?”

“Well, yeah. Fritz is, what you could say, is the biggest frog in the pond around here. Got a big spread north of here. Mainly a wheat farmer, but got a lot of steers up there in the old gunnery range. I guess that’s where you two might knock heads. Got a lot of power around here. Several people work for him, and he swings some weight with politicians. He’s tough and he can be mean. If he were a problem for me, I’d watch my back. Apart from that, he’s good citizen. Donates money to the needy. Goes to church, and sponsors our town softball team.”

“Kind of a complex gent.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“Any family.”

“His mother and a ‘simple’ son live with him. Maybelle his wife, left him and hasn’t come back. There’s a girl he’s after. A strange situation. She’s the ward, or adopted daughter of Olivia Gomez. Olivia owns the Boar Pen. Rumor has it, to a select group of men, she auctioned off Olivia-Marie-Elena’s virginity when she was eighteen. Supposedly, Fritz won, for three thousand dollars. Even though his wife is gone, she won’t marry him. He is so burned up he’s threatened to castrate any other man who gets into her pants.”

“Wow! So what does she do now?”

“Mainly she goes to college in Missoula. Part time she’s a hooker for Olivia. Fee is one-hundred dollars. Between that and Fritz’s threat, I  don’t believe she’s getting rich off her pussy. Three thousand was for her college tuition.”

Seeing Radecker looking at his paperwork, Clint got up. At the door he said,  “So Fritz really throws some weight around here.”

Radecker put his pencil down. “You could say that. If I was you, I’d be mighty careful about crossing him.”

Outside, he thought,  information…and a warning? 
I wonder how neutral the Sheriff is? Maybe I ought to find another way to talk to Grand Eclipse…later.
He looked around for something to do. No picture show in town. He decided to walk around the town. Wasn’t much to it. Two streets paralleling Main and a couple of cross streets.

Walking up River Street he came across a large old house set back from the road. Except for a large open gate, cinder block walls extended across the front, and down both side of a large yard. He supposed it opened on the river side. Corner lights illuminated the front parking lot. He could see light through a curtain in a large front room. No sign advertised business. The parking lot stood empty. Clint walked on. Another time he’d look into the Boar Pen.

Early the next morning, Clint sauntered into the sheriff’s office. “Morning, Sheriff. Any chance I can use your phone now…to call Grand Eclipse?”

“You sure can try. Don’t know if you can get through, but give it a shot.”

Forty minutes later, Clint hung up the phone. “How many telephone systems between here and Grand Eclipse,” he asked the sheriff.

“Oh I reckon between three and five. Depending on which ones are working.”

“At this rate, I might not know my ride is coming until he gets here. Since I’m not going anywhere in a hurry, can I borrow Tommy and his Jeep again. I’d like to drive over as much of the site as reasonably possible.”

On the way in Tommy’s Jeep, Clint said, “Do you know where any of the boundary markers are for the old range?”

“No. I was never out here when it was in operation. Never had any fences up that I know of.”

“Somebody around here must have some idea. Where are all the land records for this area kept?”

“I reckon that’d be in the county courthouse over in Glasgow.”

“Knew it couldn’t be anywhere close.”

“If Radecker says okay, I could run you over there.”

“Too soon for that. It appears to me the range was laid out along county grid lines. According to the map I’ve got, that east west dirt road we followed yesterday, must be close to the southern boundary of the range, and that north bound road about the center. If we drive up it for three miles, and then turn right for three miles, we ought to be about in the center of the first target. I’ve got a compass to keep us on heading. If you count the miles, I’ll concentrate on direction.”

When Tommy said three mile were up, Clint looked around the featureless terrain. “Not much out here is there?”

“Naw. If this is a target, how them airplanes gonna know how to drop their bombs here?”

“We’re going to lay out some circles with white wash around this spot. Near as I understand, the plane first will pick up the RADAR reflector out here in the center, then off set their bomb sight to which ever of the four impact targets has been selected.”

“How will they know if they hit the target?”

“We have to build three towers near each impact target. The man in each tower will take an angle on the smoke from the dummy bomb. When all three angles have been called into a control center, someone there lays them out on a grid map, and can tell the airplane how close they came to the center.”

“How big is this target circle?”

“Two circles. One at two hundred feet and the outer one at four hundred feet radius.”

“Yeah, what if they miss these circles all together…an’ hit one of them towers? Or drop it in town…or on some cows?”

“Don’t even think about it. Those bombers can aim at something as small as a car and hit it every time,” Clint lied. He had no idea how to answer Tommy’s question. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to answer it in the future. “Let’s head back into town.”

Tommy didn’t want to let go of stray bombs. “Say, supposing one of those bombers ain’t too sharp…an miss the target… wide. F’instance…turn a couple of Duetsch’s cows into barbeque?”

“I don’t think Deutsch is dumb enough to leave his cattle out here.”

“Don’t count on it. I don’t believe he’s going to move them. He expects he can stop you from settin’ up a bomb range.”

“Yeah? He’ll have to bring in some big power to stop the Air Force.”

“Don’t count on him waiting for help. When anyone crosses him, he’s one mean sonovabitch. If I was you…I’d be watchin’ my back.”

“I’ve all ready got a hint of that notion. Thanks for the tip.”

Clint ate steak, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and fresh tomatoes at the Gilman restaurant that evening. Lorena hung around him as much as she could without being apparent. As he finished his supper, smiling Dorris came over and said, “How was the food tonight, Sergeant.”

He smiled back “Great, Mrs., I mean Dorris. No complaints.”

“That’s good to hear. Has Lorena offered any of our homemade apple pie for desert?”

“Why no. Is that on the menu?”

On clue, Lorena appeared with it. “Its fresh green apple pie, Sergeant. Mom made it herself.”

The smell of the fresh pie teased Clint’s nose before Lorena got it to the table. “Wow. If it tastes as good as it smells, I might order seconds.”

Clint wished there were more than the few diners present to take the pressure off of him. The two females watched him tuck in. “Delicious. If there’s a fair around here, I bet you could take a prize with this.”

“Oh, I don’t have time for that. This place keeps us busy.”

A man and a woman at the other end watched. “Hey Dorris, what’s it take to get a piece of pie around here, joining the Army?”

“No, Walter, there’s plenty for you. Not often we get a stranger in here, and Sergeant Greybull is Air Force, not Army.”

As Lorena went off to serve the other customers, Clint quietly said, “I need to talk to you in private. I’ve got a problem that maybe you can help me with.”

“Sure Sergeant, when you get ready to go to your room we can talk.”

When Clint returned from another ramble around the outskirts of town, he met Dorris at the hotel counter. “I have a somewhat awkward situation. I need to be able to use a long distance telephone in private. Also, I need someone to receive messages when I’m out in the field. Can I arrange to use your phone here, and pay you for it?”