THIRTY
I awoke feeling tip-top. Tip-top and hungry. I sniffed the air, smelled no food; pretty much no other smells were in the air except for Peanut’s, crowding out all the others. No surprise there: when I looked around I saw she was lying right beside me, back to back, rising like a wall, crowding my space, too.
I rolled over, rose, and had a nice stretch, butt up high, front paws sticking way out; can’t tell you how good that feels. Then I took a good recoy or recon or whatever it was, very important in this line of work. I knew right away—from the reddish tinge in the sky and the long shadows—that the day was getting late. The hills topped by that giant saguaro, with home on the other side, still seemed far away. All around lay the flat plain, treeless except for the palo verde we were under, me and Peanut. Then, off to one side, I noticed a low dust cloud on the move, all red and gold. It was coming closer, but not exactly in our direction—a good thing, because Jeeps were raising all that dust, the sort of green Jeeps that Captain Panza and his guys rode in. I glanced over at Peanut, still sleeping in the shade of the palo verde. She made a few sounds, somewhere between moaning and snoring, but showed no signs of getting up—also a good thing, because spotting upright elephants was probably pretty easy, even from a distance. But then another thought came, hitting me hard: what if Bernie was in one of those Jeeps?
The next thing I knew I was charging across that flat plain with everything I had, not directly at the Jeeps but trying to cut them off somewhere up ahead. I ran and ran thinking, Bernie, Bernie, ran faster than I could ever remember, and soon made out the rough track the Jeeps were on. I scanned the track, spotted some low bushes they’d have to pass, and made them my target. What did Bernie call this? Heading them off at the pass, that was it: one of our best techniques at the Little Detective Agency. I dug in and found one more gear; loved when that happened. The wind whistled in my ears. It was saying Chet the Jet!
But even with me in that extra gear, and the wind urging me on, the Jeeps reached those low bushes first, close enough to me so I could see the shapes of the people inside, far enough so I couldn’t tell whether Bernie was one of them. I kept going, running on the track now, maybe eating dust, maybe feeling like I was bursting inside, but not caring. I just cared about Bernie.
After a while, I realized I was no longer eating dust; also not seeing the Jeeps and not even hearing them. I forgot all that and kept running. Then I remembered again and stopped. I stood on the track and panted. They were gone. I wanted to—I don’t know, maybe sink my teeth into the tires of those Jeeps. Humans and their machines: a big subject for later. Right now the big question was whether Bernie’s scent lingered in the air, very faint? I wasn’t sure. Maybe if I sniffed around a bit, I’d—
At that moment, I heard a trumpeting sound, somewhat distant but very clear. I looked back in the direction I’d come from. There was Peanut, a huge form standing beside the palo verde tree, and almost as big. Hard to be sure at that distance, but I thought she had her trunk raised up high, almost the way Bernie sometimes waved his arm when he wanted me to come. A crazy thought, but there it was. I turned and went back. Peanut was my responsibility.
By the time I reached her, Peanut was in the pool again, taking another shower. She took no notice of me, just kept scooping up water and dowsing herself, flapping sheets of water off her ears. It suddenly struck me, maybe kind of late, that Peanut was a performer. Oh, brother. I’d worked with other performers before—Weedy Willis, the country singer, for example, or Princess, the best-in-show champ—and they were trouble each and every time. Besides, I was hot and dusty, no longer in my best mood. I went to the edge of the pool and drank, felt a bit better—in fact, pretty close to tip-top.
Peanut sat down. Was she planning on a nice long pool session? I gazed at the hills, darkening in the late afternoon light. Did we have time for a nice long pool session? No. Why wasn’t Peanut getting that? I barked. She ignored me in that still and heavy way of hers, showing no reaction at all. How annoying was that? I waded into the pool, barged up to her, and gave her a nudge on the side, not the least bit gentle. And what was this? She got right up, so fast that a wave sprang up, sweeping me out of the pool. I rose, gave myself a good shake, and started off toward the hills. Peanut followed along, no problem. I didn’t have to look back, just felt the earth trembling under my paws.
Night fell. The moon, yellow but maybe not quite as big as before, like a piece was missing, rose over the hills. That missing piece bothered me—where did it go? That was the kind of thing Bernie knew. I thought about Bernie for a while. Then I thought about food, the ribs at Max’s Memphis Ribs, for example, the way the juicy meat comes right off the bone—and then you’ve still got the bone!—or a big biscuit the judge gave me one time when I went to court, Exhibit A in this case where Exhibit B was a .44 Magnum I’d dug up in a flower bed, the perp now breaking rocks in the hot sun, and then back to Bernie. Soon the ribs again, the whole time this light boom-boom happening in the earth, like drums. Have I mentioned Big Sid Catlett yet? Maybe some other time. But with all this thinking going on, presto: before I knew it the hills were right there, rising in front us, that single huge saguaro on top. Presto was a word Bernie sometimes used, like just before turning the key that time he was jump-starting the DA’s car. The DA had a fire extinguisher in the trunk, so there turned out to be no problem.
I paused at the base of the hills. Peanut stood beside me. The moon was high overhead now, pouring down this silvery light. It glinted on her tusks, and also on a hard-packed path that led up the mountain. Home lay on the other side. I started up. And after me: boom-boom in the earth.
The path cut back and forth in long, easy switchbacks, easy for me, anyway, and I heard no complaints from Peanut. Up and up we went, the air nice and fresh and every step a step closer to home. I was rounding a bend, thinking about my bowls beside the fridge at our place on Mesquite Road when the boom-booming stopped. I looked back. Peanut had gone still, all except for her trunk, raised up high and sort of feeling at the air, reminding me of those things submarines poke out of the water, the name escaping me at the moment; we love submarine movies, me and Bernie, but no time for that now because without any warning Peanut was off and running, and if you couldn’t call it running, there was no denying how fast she covered the ground. She bowled me over and rounded the bend.
I rolled down a steep slope and came to rest in a gully. I hopped right up, a bit annoyed. Had I had it up to here, wherever that is, with Peanut knocking me around? Pretty much. Plus this turned out to be a very deep gully with scratchy things growing all over the place. By the time I scrambled to the top, Peanut was out of sight. Nothing easier than following her smell, of course, which I did, around the bend, up and around another bend, and then onto a flat part: the very top, with the saguaro towering overhead. I knew this place: it was where we found—
And there was Peanut, lit almost white by the moon, standing at the edge of the shallow dip where we’d found DeLeath’s body. At first she was perfectly still; then her ears moved a bit and she stepped down into the dip, steps that seemed to me very careful, like not to disturb anything. At the bottom she paused again, then lowered her trunk and swept it gently back and forth over the ground. I sat down and watched, didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. The sweeping of the dirt—more like patting or stroking, really—went on for some time. Then Peanut picked up a rock, maybe the size of a basketball or a little smaller, and kind of . . . what was the word?—cradled it in the curve of her trunk. She cradled that rock and swung her head from side to side: it reminded me—kind of odd how the mind works, hard to explain—of this one night back when Charlie was smaller and he couldn’t sleep and Bernie had rocked him back and forth.
After a while, Peanut put down the rock, slow and careful, and then began raising lots of dust with her trunk, throwing it in the air, and stomping around, maybe even smacking herself with dust from time to time, dust that made silvery boiling clouds in the moonlight. Actually a bit frightening—not that I got frightened myself—and I was glad when all that came to an end and Peanut raised her trunk again and did some more trumpeting; by now I was used to the trumpeting, even starting to like it. Her eyes glistened, and so did a wet track under each one. Something was going on, but I hadn’t figured it out before lights shone, down on the plain we’d crossed.
I walked over to a ridge, took a gander. That’s an expression of Bernie’s, hard to understand, maybe something to do with wild goose chases, but I’ve never been on one even though it’s come up time after time, so I really couldn’t tell you. What did I see down on the desert floor? That’s the important point, and what I saw were two Jeeps moving our way. They came closer, then swung around a bit, headed toward a nearby rise, and when they swung around, sideways to me, I could make out uniformed guys in the first Jeep, Captain Panza—I could tell from all his shining gold braid—sitting beside the driver. There were uniformed guys in the second Jeep, too, two in the front, two in the back, and in between those two guys in the back, their rifle barrels glinting in the moonlight, sat one guy not in uniform.
My heart started beating fast immediately and I had one paw raised, all set for takeoff, when I remembered Peanut. She was my responsibility. I looked back. There she was, still down in the dip, back to stroking the ground again with her trunk. Was she going anywhere? Not to my way of thinking. I took off.
Tore off, was more like it, forgetting all about steepness and sharp or scratchy things underfoot, my eyes on those two Jeeps, especially on the non-uniformed guy in the backseat of the second one. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew the expression that would be on it: hard and calm at the same time. We didn’t scare easy, me and Bernie; that’s the calm-faced part. Also we didn’t take to getting pushed around; that’s the hard-faced part.
As I ran, the Jeeps reached the rise—kind of a low round hill, really, rising on the plain—and disappeared from my view. I flew down the last slope, raced across the plain, leaped right over a dry wash, darted around to the back side of the low round hill, pebbles scattering beneath my paws, and saw: nothing. The Jeeps were gone, and so were all the uniformed men, and Captain Panza, and Bernie.