The Devil You Know by P.N. Elrod Read Free Book Online Page B

of what must have been a flashy winter sunset. Barrett had needed to be led in, his head down as he focused on walking. He must have lost a lot more blood. His clothes were shredded worse than mine.
    He needed convincing and had a look, and it did not improve his mood. “How?” he wanted to know.
    I shrugged. “We’re injured, knocked cold, and surrounded by earth. Maybe by the time we recovered enough to come around the sun was up. This being your home soil it’s no surprise you were out for the count, but don’t ask me why I took that long a nap.”
    “Perhaps it’s earth alone that’s needed . . . but speculation later. We have been affronted. I demand retribution.”
    “If that means some ass-kicking, include me in. Let’s go find this Stannard bird.”
     
    * * * * * * *
     
    * * * * * * *
     
    We didn’t start right away; Barrett was resolute about feeding and watering his horses first, but it didn’t take long with two of us. I think he needed the exercise to work off the shock. Assuming me to be a city boy, he called unnecessary instructions. I saved effort and didn’t bother correcting him. I had my own dose of shock to sweat through and shoveled manure and threw down fresh straw without complaint. It had it all over digging up a corpse.
    Once finished with the livestock, I asked him to point out my window, then vanished and floated up and in.
    Hell, yes, I sieved through the cracks.
    I stripped and had a shower bath. Some memory of events came back while the hot water battered the top of my head. Like Barrett’s, it had to do with sound. I recalled the sharp, ugly, hammering of a machine gun. Vaguely—and just as well it was vague—I knew I’d been in terrible pain, falling, and helpless. At some point I began to rouse out of it, but not quickly enough. Unable to take in its meaning, I heard the grunt and rumble of a big engine firing to life, then a black avalanche of earth blotted out everything, even me.
    Yeah, I owed somebody some retribution, too, a whole lot of it.
    I pulled on my traveling suit, coat, hat, and gloves, and went downstairs. Barrett was pacing the entry hall, disgusted.
    “The cheek of them—they put my car back in the garage,” he said.
    “Count your blessings, it could have been stolen.”
    “Why bother?”
    “Out front and visible from the road, someone might get curious why you left it there.”
    “We were meant to mysteriously disappear?”
    “That’d be my guess.”
    “To blazes with that. By God, my poor horses would have starved to death before anyone came by to look in on me.”
    “Better hire more help and make new friends.”
    He gave a snort of annoyance.
    He drove again, stopping the Studie at the site. I wanted a look around.
    It must have been a clear, cold day. No new snow obliterated the tracks in the area, which were frozen and unchanged by melt. I’m no Boy Scout, but could figure out a few generalities.
    “They walked in from the main road.” I pointed out two sets of footprints that left the driveway and slogged along toward the dig. “They kept the machines between us and just stayed out of sight, maybe watching the whole time.”
    “While we did the work for them,” said Barrett. “We were doing a great deal of vanishing, what must they have made of that?”
    “There was no moon; they could have missed it. I’ll bet they wondered why we didn’t use flashlights, though.”
    “Both are men, do you think?”
    “Unless it’s a couple of dames in extra large galoshes. Those aren’t walking shoes or hunting boots, see how the ridges go crosswise with no break from toe to heel?”
    “Hm.”
    I followed one set of prints that led to where a pile of earth had been before being shoved back into the hole. The prints got lost in the mess. I did find what I’d been looking for; the trespassers been careful, but not painstaking.
    “What’s that?” he asked as I stooped and picked up a small, shiny thing mostly hidden in the crusty