Conquering Kilmarni by Hugh Cave Page B

there again."
    "How'd your father know?" Peter asked.
    "Him was searching around for me and did find the food me have there. It nuh easy, hiding from me daddy. Not when him mean business."
    "So where did you sleep?"
    "In the fertilizer shed in field four."
    "Well," Peter said, "you'll have a real bed tonight. By the way, where's Mongoose?"
    Zackie's mouth dropped open. "Oh-oh, me did forget about him! Me did tell him to wait by the steps."
    "We ought to get him in, don't you think? He can't stay there."
    Sliding off the bed, Zackie hurried onto the veranda and called his dog. He didn't whistle or make any loud noise. All he did was say, "Hey, Mongoose" in his normal speaking voice, as if the animal were already sitting there at his feet.
    In response there was a scratchy sound on the steps, and a kind of fuzzy blur came speeding along the veranda. Mongoose skidded to a stop and looked up, first at one boy, then at the other. "Come on," Zackie said, and when the boys went back inside, the dog followed them.
    "You suppose he's hungry?" Peter said. "And what about you? I could get something from the kitchen."
    "Uh-uh. Me and him did share a tin of bully beef up in me garden."
    "You sure?"
    "We okay, both of us. Honest."
    "Well, let's talk some more before I show you your room, huh?"
    The boys returned to the bed, and Mongoose sat quietly in a corner of the room, watching them. Peter said, "What do you think of Corporal Buckley? The way he treated you, I mean."
    "Me really did try to steal some aspirin at the shop that day me did knock you over. What me saying, there was some money in the garden shed, but Daddy did have a terrible headache and for me to go up there would take too long."
    "We talked to the corporal for quite a while after you left," Peter said. "Dad and I, I mean. He seems okay."
    "Him a good man, but strict."
    "You're not sore at him, then?"
    "No. Him strict, like me say, but him treat people fair and everyone like him."
    "He said he knows your mother, Zackie. You suppose he knows her well?"
    Zackie did not answer.
    "Zackie?"
    Again, silence.
    Turning his head to see why his friend had not answered, Peter saw that the Jamaican boy's eyes were closed. "Hey," he whispered, "you asleep?"
    Zackie was.
    Peter reached down and pulled the blanket over both of them. He, too, was tired, he realized as he got comfortable and closed his eyes. It had been a long day.

NINE
     
    M r. Devon had bought two vehicles for use at Kilmarnie: the pickup truck he used in running the plantation, and a small Cortina sedan made in England. Jamaica had been an English colony until a few years earlier, and many of the cars on the island's roads were from that country.
    It was in the car, not the pickup, that Peter and Zackie rode to the island's capital the next day, with Mr. Devon at the wheel. Zackie's dog had been left in Miss Lorrie's care at the house. The rain had stopped altogether during the night, and the morning was so bright that Mr. Devon wore sunglasses.
    A trip to Kingston never failed to hold Peter's interest. Descending past the cooperative's coffee factory to Rainy Ridge, the road then climbed steeply past the police station to its highest point at Bethel Gap. From there it was nearly all downhill and winding, and, being unpaved, could be dangerous at times where it ran along the edge of space, high above a branch of the important Yallahs River. Mr. Devon had once been fond of pointing out, no doubt with a touch of pride, that a feeder stream of that branch, originating near the highest point in Jamaica, came down through the Kilmarnie property. He never said that now, though. It was in that same Stony Valley River that Mark had drowned.
    The road was even more interesting to Peter that morning because Zackie kept pointing out things neither he nor his father had known before. As they came to the sprawling village of Richmond Vale, Zackie said, "You see that steep side road there by the church? It go up to Richmond Gap, and