The Alpine Betrayal by Mary Daheim Page A

Medical and Dental Clinic, Milo suddenly whistled and leaned into the steering-wheel. “Look at that!”
    The pearl gray car cruising past us was unlike any automobile I’d ever seen, except on a visit to Beverly Hills six years earlier. I, too, stared. “What is it?” I asked in a breathless voice.
    “Damned if I know,” said Milo, shaking his head as the sleek two-door coupe disappeared past the hospital. “Custom job. Did you see who was driving it?”
    I’d gotten a glimpse of the profile behind the wheel. “Henry Bardeen said Matt Tabor brought a customized make to Alpine. But that wasn’t Matt driving.”
    Milo grinned at me before making his right-hand turn. “No, it sure wasn’t. That was Dani Marsh, right?”
    I gave a faint nod. “Along with Patti Marsh and somebody else.”
    Milo and I exchanged puzzled looks.
    Saturday should have been a day of rest, but journalists are never assured of having weekends off. Vida was going to cover the Miss Alpine pageant in the evening, Carla was assigned to the kiddy parade in the late morning, and I was taking on the timber sports competition in the afternoon.
    The event was scheduled for the high school football field, which is less than two blocks from my home. Carrying a camera and a notebook, I walked over under the noonday sun to find a large crowd gathered in the stands. At one end zone, ALPINE was spelled out in fresh white letters; at the other was BUCKERS , the team nickname, which referred to millworkers who specialized in the sawhorse. Or something to do with the old mill—I was never quite clear; but the mascot depicted a big lug with a big grin and an even bigger saw. It seemed to fit the town’s image, though there were grumbles that it was sexist. My feeling was that it was traditional, and at least the Bucker wasn’t using the saw to cut a woman in two.
    While Alpine’s annual event is not on the official Timber Sports circuit, a number of the regular professional competitors usually show up.
    Many of the Loggerama contests are not part of the usual circuit, but are steeped in local lore. One of these is Shoot the Duck, in which a decoy is perched high among the branches of a portable Douglas fir and the contestants attempt to hit the target with a catapult. Since I couldn’t figure out what this event had to do with timber, logging, and other woodsy work, I questioned Vida about the connection. She informed me that her father-in-law, Rufus Runkel, was responsible. Back in 1927, his wife had promised visitors from Seattle that they would have roast duck for dinner. Armed with a shotgun, Rufus had headed into thewoods, but after hiking for over three miles, he discovered he’d forgotten his buckshot. To ensure his honor as a hunter and his wife’s reputation as a cook, Rufus had used a rope and a rock to fling at the unsuspecting ducks. Somehow, he bagged three of them, proudly carried them home, and earned not only the thanks of his wife, but an epigram as well:
    “I figured Rufus has been shooting blanks for years, but I’m sure glad he still has rocks in his head,” said Mrs. Runkel. The trophy for the event was named in his memory.
    Due to my status as a member of the press, I was allowed on the sidelines. It was probably even warmer on the field than in the stands, and after the first two hours of sweating, heaving, grunting lumberjacks, I scoured the program in an effort to figure out how much longer I would have to stick around to write an adequate story. I had at least a half-dozen decent photos already and could always get the final results from Harvey Adcock, the hardware store owner who was one of the officials. There were probably close to six hundred people on hand, virtually filling both sides of the stadium. To my surprise, Dani Marsh arrived with Matt Tabor and Reid Hampton shortly after intermission. They were ushered to folding chairs just below the stands and a few yards away from my vantage point. Dani and Reid waved; Matt