“I was tellin’ myself that sump’n’s gotta come our way. That guy we passed—I know him. He’ll use his head that we must be some place nearby an’ he’ll have a hunt started for us.”
“Yeah, but we’re a coupla hours’ ride from where the sawbones lives.”
“It’s called Hillbriar—I seen it on a sign.”
“Yeah, and this place—Devil’s Bog! That’s a swell monicker all right. It’s the right place for Devlin all right. If the n was out an’ the i put before the l they could call him The Devil of Devil’s Bog, hah? Say, the more I think the worse headache I get about that doctor business. He ain’t in on Devlin’s racket, that’s a cinch. If only Devlin didn’t pack that rod, kid, we coulda spilled things. But he was watchin’ us close, the dirty rat.”
“Yeah, an’ I wasn’t gonna take no chance neither. Gee whiz, Nickie, we’re better off waitin’ ’cause it’s better bein’ alive than go off the handle an’ have maybe three of us dead. Then he coulda skipped out an’ nobody woulda heard a shot.”
“Yeah, we didn’t have no chance without gettin’ blowed up. Even in the car, that rat wasn’t missin’ no tricks. A coupla times I was gonna give you a sign, ’cause I thought between us, we could land on him, but he had that silencer right in his mitt. He ain’t got no feelin’s, he makes me thinka rock with icy water tricklin’ down it.”
“Did you notice anythin’ just before we come to the creek, Nickie? I mean when he stopped an’ got out with his flash?”
Nickie lifted himself up on his elbow. “Say,” he whispered, “them footsteps? Say, I was wonderin’ too. What was in there that he was so nosey about, hah?”
“Wish I knew, believe me. That path I betcha goes through the woods an’ down to that bog. He said, didn’t he, that the creek an’ the bog both wound round that way, huh? Anyway, it’s a cinch that he was down that path Saturday night. We seen mud on his feet an’ tonight we could see his footsteps.”
“Then it looks like he took Timmy for ...” Nickie whispered fearfully.