The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries

Young, sleek, hard, Hawkins looked at him a moment. “I don’t want it paid back. Now take it. Do what I say. Hop the first freight out of town.”

“All right, Hawkins, if you say so.”

“I’m saying so. So long, kid, and good luck.”

“Good luck to you,” Lonnie said, standing up.

He’d gone down to the freight yards and got into a box car without any trouble. Because things had happened fast, his mind felt confused and tired. He’d closed his eyes and gone to sleep, under some straw far back in the corner.

The train had been in motion when he’d awakened. A big, bearded guy had been bending over him, going through his pockets.

“Hey, you!” Lonnie had said.

The big hobo had hit him hard in the face, smashing the back of his head against the side of the car. From that point on there was no memory.

The door across the room opened, the sound bringing a movement of Lonnie’s head.

A girl was standing in the doorway. She looked to Lonnie to be about twenty to twenty five. She was slender and had a nice figure that swelled against her faded cotton print dress, pulled snug about her slim waist with a cracked patent leather belt. Her hair was dark blonde, uneven in its short cut as if she’d done the cutting herself. She wore no makeup, and her face was tanned, not pale like the faces of the girls on Lonnie’s street.

“Hello,” she said. “Feeling better, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Lonnie said. “But I got a awful headache.”

“I guessed as much,” she smiled. “I’ll fix you something.”

She went away and came back in a few seconds with a glass of water and a couple of pills. She crossed the room, stood beside the bed, and offered the pills on her open palm. “These’ll make you feel lots better.”

“Thanks,” Lonnie said. “You’re really a friend.” She smiled. She had even, white teeth. Lonnie forgot the pain, looking at the smile. She was sweet and wonderful and his friend, even if he didn’t know her name.

“Anybody would have done as much for you,” she said.

“I guess not,” Lonnie said. “You could have left me be. Some people would have.”

“The people where you came from?”

“Some of them.”

“Is that why you were going away?”

“Yeah.”

“We guessed you’d been on the freight. We found you in the gravel beside the roadbed.”

“We?”

“My husband and me. We run this place here.”

“It’s a nice place.”

“No, it ain’t much. A stinking little farm out in the middle of the desert.”

She didn’t look so bright talking about the farm and that gave Lonnie a moment of brief sadness. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Louise. What’s yours?”

He sipped the water to swallow the pills and said, “Lonnie Speare.”

“From L. A.?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d like to go there sometime. I never been in a city.”

“It’s all right,” Lonnie said.

She put her hand forward and wiped the fine hairs back from Lonnie’s brow. He closed his eyes. He wished she’d keep doing that for a long time. Her touch was cool and gentle. His heart swelled as he realized how kind she was being to him.

“You’re tired,” she said. “Rest now. I’ll look in on you again when supper’s ready.”

Lonnie heard her go out and close the door softly. He went to sleep without effort.

He felt much refreshed when he woke. He lay content, a big-framed, fleshy youth regenerating physical power quickly. He threw back the sheet and stood up. He was dressed in his dirty shorts. He padded to the chair near the bed and picked up his jeans. He put them on and stood scratching the matted brown hairs on his chest. He was dizzy for a few seconds; then it passed.

He moved to the washstand and looked at himself in the faded brown mirror that hung on the wall. Close cut brown hair was like a cap on his head fitted close about his protruding ears. The features of his face were heavy, without visible bone structure. There was a mottled yellow and purple discoloration on his left cheek where the big hobo had struck him.

He turned from the mirror and ran his hand in the pocket of his jeans. Sure enough, the fiver that Hawkins had given him was gone.

“Okay, big fellow,” Lonnie muttered under his breath. “I’ll remember you. I’ll fix you if I ever run across you again.”

Moving to the bed, he sat on the edge of it and put on his socks and shoes. He was getting into his shirt when the door opened and a man came into the room.

He was taller than Lonnie, but slender. Slender to the point of looking stooped and hollow-chested. His face was narrow with thin, sharp features, his skin rough, flaked from the sun and hot wind. The whites of his slate gray eyes were bloodshot and he brought the smell of whiskey into the room.

“You about ready to eat?”

“Yeah,” Lonnie said.

“Well, come on. Louise has got it waiting.”

Lonnie buttoned his shirt quickly. “I want to thank you...”

“Skip it,” the man said. “Louise found you. Wasn’t nothing else we could do, except leave you out there for buzzard bait.”