“I was a Queen’s Guide at school. I
could navigate my way to the Christmas Islands just by watching which side of
the fishes the moss grows on.”
She unfolded the detailed map of Ireland and
turned
the beam of light on it. The Saint had sped up along a
straight
stretch of road, and the other car was keeping
pace about two hundred
yards behind.
“You know where we are,” he said.
“See if you can find
a place where we can turn off and lose
them—and end
up somewhere except in a peat bog.”
Mildred bent close to the map and studied it.
The
short-lived directness of the highway degenerated into
a series
of snaky curves through a wooded section
marked by rocky
hillocks.
“There!” cried Mildred suddenly.
“Up by that stone
marker.”
The Saint jammed down the brake pedal and
swerved
into the side lane. It was no more than a pair of wagon
ruts made
semi-respectable by an old topping of gravel. The way abounded with holes and
humps, and Simon-
driving without lights—was forced to slow to fifteen
miles
an hour in order to hold the car on its higher leaps to any
thing below
treetop level. .
Luckily, the other automobile had been too far
behind
around a curve to see what its prey had done. It swept
by on the
main road, its headlamps sending flickers of
light through the
woods.
“We lost them,” Mildred said
jubilantly.
The Saint was less enthusiastic.
“For the moment. If they’ve got any
brains at all they’ll
see in a minute they’ve lost us and then
they’ll come
back. Are there any other side roads near here that might
confuse
them?”
“Only one I can make out, and it looks
like a dead
end.”
Simon stopped and turned off the engine. Then
he
listened closely to the receding sound of the car that had
been pursuing them. Before it
passed completely out of
earshot, the noise
of wailing tires on distant curves
came
to an abrupt halt. The Saint’s sensitive ears just barely
made out the gunning of the engine and a couple of
brief screeching spins of tires on
asphalt.
“I think they’ve caught on,” he
said. “They’re turning
around.”
He started his own car and continued down the
horrendous
trail, which was surely experiencing the
passage of the first
self-propelled vehicle in lifetime
that must have dated back at least to
Finn MacCool.
“Oh,” said Mildred in a low voice.
She was looking at the map, her face bouncing
in the pool of light just above it.
“What?” said Simon.
“You know that dead end road I mentioned?”
“Yes.”
“We re on it.”
The
Saint’s commentary was internal and sustained.
“I see,” he said finally, with
devastating quietness.
“Mildred Hitler, girl guide, has done it
again.”
At that point, the tortured car gave a sudden
lurch
and stopped, slumped at an angle toward Mildred’s side.
Mildred’s
head bumped the glass in front of her with a
lack of force which
the Saint found faintly disappointing.
He turned off the ignition.
“Well,” he remarked, “that’s
the second immobilized
auto you can chalk up to your record
today.”
Mildred rubbed her head gingerly and looked
even
more gingerly
at Simon.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Without checking on details, I should
say that we
have fallen into a hole.” He took a deep breath and
opened the
door. “So … let’s start walking. Under dif
ferent circumstances I
might stand and fight, but at the
moment I really can’t think of
anything worth fighting
for.”
He walked around the front of, the car and
looked
briefly at the damage. The wheel had slipped into a
deeply
eroded channel.
Mildred picked her way over the stones to
join
Simon.
“Can’t you reverse out?” she asked.
“No. And I think the axle’s bent
anyway.” He
looked
at her. “If your Papa Adolf’s superman theories
amounted to anything, you’d be able to lift up the whole mess and set it
straight again.”
Mildred did not answer, and Simon set off
down the
road in front of the car with swinging strides. Mildred
hobbled
and stumbled behind him in her high heels.
“Wait!” she cried finally. “I
can’t keep up.”
“Stay behind then. I’m afraid you’ve
used up your
allotment of my chivalry. If the wolves catch you, they
won’t
bother chasing me.”
She let out a despairing wail and hurried
after him up
a
moon-silvered hill, where the wagon track was thickly
hedged with trees.
“Or maybe,” Simon mused happily as
he trudged
along, hands in his pockets, “the little people will
get you.”
“Little people?” Mildred whimpered,
catching up a bit.
“Sure. Leprechauns. This is just the
spot for them. You
look a bit pixyish. They might take you for one of their
own.”
“Damn!”
Mildred’s exclamation had not been evoked by
fear
of Irish
fairies. She balanced on one foot and held out her
shoe for Simon to see. The stiletto heel had broken off.
“I can’t walk like this,” she
moaned.
“Let’s see the other shoe,” said
Simon.
She stood in her stocking feet and handed it
to him.
He grasped the remaining whole shoe firmly in both
hands and
snapped its heel off.
“There,” he said proudly, handing it
to her. “Now
you’re back on an even keel.”
She threw both shoes on the ground and
vigorously
recited a phrase which she most definitely had not
learned
either in a convent or as a Queen’s Guide.
“I’d advise you to wear those,” the
Saint said, starting
up the hill again. “They’re better than
nothing—and
your faithful followers may discover this road at any
minute.”
She clumped along beside him in the modified shoes,
panting and clinging to his sleeve for occasional
support.
Simon looked up at the stars.
“Now is the time for fortitude and inner
strength,” he
philosophized. “Keep the image of Rick firm in your
mind.
The course of true love never did run smooth.”
They went on for ten minutes, and then they
saw the
reddish glow of a fire through the trees at the base of the
hill.
Simon led the way and looked cautiously into
the small clearing.
Around a bonfire stood or sat five
people, as yet oblivious to Simon’s
and Mildred’s arrival.
There were a man and woman of late middle
years, and
a pair of girls and a boy ranging from about twelve to
eighteen. All of them were devoting their attention to a soot-blackened metal
pot which steamed over the fire,
suspended from a tripod. Nearby, a pair of
horses
grazed at the edge of a tiny brook. Like parts of a stage
backdrop
on the border of the circle of firelight stood two barrel-headed caravans—large
painted wooden
wagons like horizontal kegs on wheels—in which the
family
lived, and which it was the horses’ duty to
pull.
“Gypsies,” whispered Mildred.
“A tinker, I think,” Simon said.
“They’ve been travel
ling over Ireland like this since the
beginning of time.”
The older man, who was seated in a folding
canvas
chair—undoubtedly
a recent addition to the tinker’s inventory of household goods—waved his hand
toward the
pot and said to the boy,
“What’s it now?”
The boy pulled a large thermometer from the
liquid.
“Sixty-three.”
The older man turned to the adolescent girls.
“Put it in.”
The two girls each picked up a small sack and
dumped
its contents into the mixture while the boy stirred with a
long
wooden stick.
“Is that … potheen?” Mildred
asked Simon in a
hushed voice.
“It must be. The most potent stuff this
side of hell-fire and brimstone. Let’s go in quietly and peaceably,
but not as
if we’re trying to sneak up. People who make
illicit whiskey tend
to shoot first and find out later
whether their guests were revenue
agents.”
As he and Mildred first appeared in the
wavering,
golden light the boy looked up from the pot and
shouted,
“Hey!”
For a moment the whole tableau was absolutely
motionless. Even the heavy-necked horses seemed to sense
the drama
of the moment and froze in position. Then,
like a squad of American football players
shifting into a
defensive formation, the
whole family moved. The
three women
stood between the newcomers and the
bubbling
cauldron as the men stepped forward, the elder
first, the younger just behind. Simon and Mildred waited.
“They don’t look friendly at all,”
said Mildred out of
the corner of her mouth.
“They’re not,” the Saint said
simply. “Now’s a good
chance for you to use your greatest talent.
Think of some
lie to make them love us.”
Smiling pleasantly, he stepped forward toward
the
grim-visaged men.
“Good evening. Our car broke down on the
lane. We
saw your fire.”
The older man squinted at him for a long
moment,
chewing on a splinter of wood. A cap, which looked as
if it
might never have been removed since it was first
put on years before,
effectively de-emphasized his
cranium and eyes, and brought into full
prominence
the mushroom effulgence of his scarlet nose.
“Main road is behind ye,” he said
finally.
Mildred came to the rescue then. Her face
suddenly
went into contortions of pain, and she stood on one foot
and clasped
her arms around Simon’s neck, letting him
support her.
“I
…
was
hurt,” she gasped, “when our car went in the ditch.”
She tried bravely to get her breath and stand
straight
again. Sympathetic glances were exchanged by various
members of
the tinker’s party.
“What ye want, then?” the eldest
woman asked.
“Somewhere to stay the night,” Simon
answered.
“This is not a hotel, mister,” she
said.
Simon went forward another step.
“We’re nothing to do with the revenue, if
that’s what
worries
you,” he said.
The women closed ranks in front of the pot.
“We’re just fixin’ ourselves a bit o’
stew,” the eldest said.
“Shure and why would the revenue care
about that one
way or the other?”
“What are ye, then?” asked the
younger man.
Mildred took over again, bursting excitedly into rapid
speech.
“Please … we’re running away from my
stepfather to
get married! He’s a terrible man. He’s already wasted
away my
mother’s fortune, and he wants what little I
have left. If he
catches us he’ll … We need your
help—desperately!”
She broke off, sobbing violently.
“It’s the truth, is it?” asked the
elder man.
“She’s been under a terrible
strain,” Simon replied,
avoiding any direct commitment as to
Mildred’s veracity.
The lead man had begun shifting uncertainly
from foot
to foot.
“Hould on,” he said.
His entire group went into a huddle near the
fire.
“We’ll be glad to pay,” Simon
called, thus probably
cutting several minutes off the secret
discussion.
“Well now, ‘tis all agreed,” the man
said, straightening
up and turning. “Ye can stay with pleasure, if ye
don’t
mind the company of a tinker and his family.”
He held
out his calloused hand and Simon shook it.
“Delighted. And
thank you very much.”