Hiney Scrabble must have stood there in the middle of the Blue River pulling on that rope for close to half an hour. By the time, Sheriff Mac and Uncle Bill got down to the same stairway Rome Kowski had rolled down, Hiney was huffing and puffing like a forge billow. It was his brawn against the powerful pull of the river. And he was determined to win.

Mac and Bill borrowed a canoe from Les McAdams who owned the bait shop a block upriver. On such short notice, it was the best they could get to rescue us. A boat with a motor would have served the pur-pose better, but with the situation getting beyond desperate, the canoe would have to do.

“Hold on!” Mac called, as he paddled to get out to the middle of the river. “We’ll get you out of the drink in a mad minute!”

Hiney gave a loud laugh, his guffaws echoing across the water. “Speaking of drink,” he chuckled, “a shot and a pint be a good reward for saving these hooligans!”

The first thing to go into the canoe as Mac and Uncle Bill pulled alongside Hiney was the burlap bag he’d been holding onto all this time. He’d slung it around his thick neck as he fought the suck of the river, and he looked mighty relieved as he flung it aboard the canoe and it landed at Mac’s feet.

Dec took that old saying that a captain goes down with his ship literally because as Mac latched onto the side of the boat, he tossed Baxster over into Uncle Bill’s arms. Once his beagle was settled at Bill’s feet, he sent Cooper over the side and flying into the middle of the canoe. Turning to me, Dec said, “You’re next, Hawk. Don’t fall in the river!”

Thirty seconds after I launched myself over the side of Mose Hadley’s boat and landed in the canoe, Dec was safe beside me. Mac, in the stern of the canoe, paddled with firm and even strokes, turning us around and heading us back to the bank. “Hiney?” Mac called over one shoulder. “Hold on just a little longer! We’ll be back to get you!”

Looking all lonely like in the middle of those dark waters, Hiney called back, “Sheriff Mac, you better hurry! I’m getting awful tired!”

When we pulled up alongside the dock at the end of that stairway, Uncle Bill tossed me to Roman Kowski standing on the dock waiting for our arrival. Bill then flung Dec into Rome’s outstretched hands. Cooper leaped onto the dock and Uncle Bill gently handed Baxster over to us waiting to catch the smaller beagle.

It was just as Mac and Uncle Bill got that canoe turned around that we heard a mighty roar from the middle of the river. Unfortunately, the boat finally won out. Hiney lost his footing, and being attached to the boat by the rope wrapped so tightly around his one arm, he was drug behind the craft as it careened toward the dam thirty feet downstream. That current was too strong. The last we saw of Hiney before he went floundering and flailing over the dam, was him coming untangled from the rope and that rushing water carried him on over and dumping him in the madly churning waters six-feet below.

A second later, Mose Hadley’s boat shattered on the rocks below. Tears sprang to Dec’s eyes as he whispered, “We killed Hiney!”

Mac and Uncle Bill desperately searched for any sign of Hiney in that churning white water at the bottom of the dam. They only lasted for a minute or two, before they had to paddle backwards to keep from being swept over the dam, too. They then turned the canoe toward the far bank, so they could abandon it and search along the river for the giant man who had saved our lives. I was just standing on my tiptoes so I could see over the dam from the dock nearly sixty feet away, when Dec bumped into me as he tried to get away from the burlap sack that was moving at his feet. Cooper and Baxster growled at the sack.

“Here,” Roman Kowski said, reaching down to grab the burlap sack. “I’ll take care of that. They’re going in the river where they belong.”

Cooper suddenly took a protective stance, his hackles raised and a serious growl contorting the features of his face. My dog did not want Roman to touch that sack for some reason, and I had to step up to the plate and back him. Even if it meant slapping Roman’s big hands away as he reached out to snatch it up from the dock.

Roman’s look of surprise quickly turned into an ugly sneer. Snorting in disgust, his eyes strayed past us to the burlap sack now on the other side of Cooper. “Maybe you peckerwoods,” Roman snarled in a wicked whisper, “should have been drowned when you were little, too!”

But Cooper stopped the irate man dead in his tracks as he lunged at him. One part of me wished that my dog would bite Roman. The other part of me, however, knew that once a dog in our town bit someone they were considered vicious and needed to be put down. Fortunately, Cooper merely grazed the fly of Roman’s overalls with his teeth. Baxster tore into Roman’s booted feet, nipping and snarling and carrying on like he was a wild Bengal tiger. Dec and I had a hard time holding back our laughter as the big man literally danced a jig there on the dock. Rome cursed at us in some strange jabbering, then darted up the stairway and disappeared when he got to the top of the bank. Dropping to one knee to calm a still growling Baxster, Dec said, “He sure wanted that sack to go into the river.”

Kneeling down beside the burlap sack, I slowly opened it and looked down at three tiny furry faces peering back up at me. “Puppies?” I said. “Rome was trying to drown them! And Hiney was trying to save them!”

Dec said, “And we killed poor Hiney stealing that boat, Hawk.”

On the far bank, Mac shouted, “Bill, he’s coming to the surface!”

Uncle Bill’s words came across the water to us, “Is he dead or alive?”

“Haruff!” exploded into the air at the bottom of the dam. “Arrrrr!” came next, and finally, “Holy Jesus, this water is cold!”

And there, risen from the dead, was Hiney Scrabble, the hero of the day, truly still amongst the living.

Five minutes later, Dec steered us around the bend in the Blue, where we saw two men having a fight up on the riverbank ahead of us. “That’s Hiney!” I said, staring at the huge man going fisticuffs with Roman Kowski. Those two big brutes were wailing away at each other. Roman was wildly throwing haymakers, his fists barely landing on Hiney’s brawny body. Hiney wasn’t feeling those little bee stings either. For every fist that whizzed past his nose, he landed a meaty thwack that rocked Roman all the way to his toes.

It was Cooper and Baxster who spoiled the moment. The two dogs started barking anxiously at the two brawlers up on the river bank. Cooper ran back and forth on the deck of the boat, whining and barking, and carrying on like he was going to a fire. Baxster, true to his nature as a coon dog, started howling like he’d treed a big raccoon, his, “Arrooo! Arooo! Arooo!” carried all the way downriver.

Upon hearing the dogs, Hiney looked out at us cruising toward the fight zone, and took a fist to the eye. Another of Roman’s fists plowed into Hiney’s nose, and blood spurted through the air. I grabbed onto Cooper, clamping a hand over his mouth. Dec tried to catch Baxster, but the wily little dog dipped, dodged, and darted away like a scalded squirrel, leaving Dec’s outstretched hands empty.

And that’s when we suddenly had troubles of our own to deal with.

The boat engine spluttered and died. That old engine growled like a cornered badger and gave up the ghost. Dec looked at me. I looked back at him. There was bewilderment in his eyes. There was fear in my own. If we didn’t have a running engine when we reached the cut in the channel ahead of us, we would be swept right over the dam some two-hundred yards in front of us. It was a five-foot fall to the river below.

My little sister, Donna Hawkins, had once been catching frogs near the dam, when she fell into the river. She had been swept away by the rushing water and swept over the dam. In that black water she had been churned like weekday work clothes thrown into the Sunday wash. That terribly swift water had her bouncing like a cork, slammed to the river bottom, sucked back to the surface, twirled round and round, then sucked back underwater again. Yes, she lived, but my Uncle Bill nearly drowned pulling her out of the mad-dog suck of that river.

I could tell Dec knew how desperate our situation was. I could tell, too, that he was tempted to jump overboard and swim for the nearest shore. But I wasn’t about to go into those swift, deep waters. And I wasn’t risking the life of Cooper to have him follow me.

Dec said, “Either we abandon ship, or we take the rodeo river ride, down and over the dam!”

From the nearby bank, we heard Roman squawk, “You sum bitch!”

He then did almost a perfect cartwheel down the set of wooden stairs stretching from the upper bank and down to the shoreline of the river.
That poor fool must have made twenty clunking sounds as his head, his elbows, his butt, his knees, and his clod-hopper boots came in contact with the rotten boards of those steps. We didn’t see the mighty punch that sent Roman clumsily falling down the staircase, but we did see Hiney scoop up a large burlap bag the two men had been fighting over.

The big, red-haired giant carefully slung that sack over one meaty shoulder. He laughed out loud, spraying blood from his smashed nose all down the front of his overalls as Roman somersaulted into the river.

“You shouldn’t have tried to kill the babies,” Hiney said. “Rome Kowski, you are a bad man! A cruel, bad man!”

Dec and I, however, had no more time to see what Hiney did next. Dec gave a mad twist on the steering wheel, trying to steer us over toward the bank to get us close enough to jump. Cussing and muttering, Dec cranked hard on the wheel, all his straining and pulling had little effect on the direction that boat was going. It was headed right toward the middle of the dam. Baxster and Cooper started barking. Cooper ran over to me, head-butting me gently. Baxster ran back and forth from bow to stern, whining, yipping, and growling.

Still cranking hard on the wheel, Dec looked ahead of us and his eyes got round as Aunt Betty’s silver-dollar pancakes! He cried, “Hawk, we’re going over in the next two minutes!”

My eyes closed as I said the first earnest prayer I had said in the last five years. I suddenly heard Dec say, “Oh, holy Jesus!”

We were then thrown forward on the deck, bumping heads with each other as the boat came to a complete stop right there in the middle of river. In total amazement, Dec and I looked over the stern of the boat to see Hiney Scrabble standing chest-deep in water in the middle of the river, and holding onto the tow rope of the boat with one hand. The big goliath still had the burlap bag slung over one shoulder and he was having one heck of a time juggling both the rope and the bag around to keep from losing his grip on either.

“Gotcha, boys!” Hiney said, acting as chipper as the collection priest on Easter Sunday. “Hiney won’t let you drown!”

Dec said, “How in the hell is he keeping us in place? That is the most incredible feat of strength I’ve ever seen! He must be strong as an ox! Maybe even stronger than Samson! Why, he’s a damned Viking!”

It was a miracle! The boat was not moving! It was being pulled down stream by the suck and flow of the river, but Hiney, with a big grin on his furry face, was keeping it in place by holding onto the tow rope with one hand, keeping us from going over the dam.

Part Seven: Beatrice 1963

He walked over to Jon Kennedy’s car and turned the key that had been left there in all the commotion back in town. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “Shouldn’t have been so damned greedy, Mary Kay. Now look at you? Deader than a door nail. And Jon is dead, too. Killed by King Henry over on Elk Street. And with him dead and you dead, that leaves me the only keeper. You know what they say? Finders keepers, losers weepers.”

Ty opened the lid of the trunk and let out a startled, “What the hell!”

Behind the Ford, the three of us looked worriedly at Mary Kay slump-ed against the side of the car, as if maybe in her groggy condition she might answer him. But she had fainted and was out for the count.

Big Ty hauled a large suitcase out of Kennedy’s Chevy. It must have been heavy, because even Ty had trouble carting that thing over to the trunk of his patrol car. Once he deposited it into the trunk, he slammed the lid closed. Our dogs, content to chase rabbits down by the Blue, came to check on us. We raised our heads and peeked through the win-dows of the Ford. As the three dogs ran up to give Ty a friendly greeting, he looked up, his eyes on the river. The field beyond the junkyard. The rows of rusty cars. And when he looked directly at the car we were hiding behind, Ty growled, “I got the sneaking suspicion, I got me some spies creeping about these rust buckets!”

My heart did flips flops as Big Ty drew out his pistol and shouted, “Okay, you hooky players! Show yourselves! I’ll count to three, then I’m gonna shoot me a dog! One! Two! Three!”

Dec and I were both rising to our feet, when the loud roar of a Harley filled the air, and a large, motley biker came thundering into the junkyard. He was a big Indian with long black hair, who reminded me of Will Sampson from the Charles Bronson Hickock movie. He rode toward Ty, a whirlwind of dust kicking up behind his motorcycle. He parked behind the Kennedy car, killed his engine, and lowered his mirror shades, revealing the greenest eyes I’d ever seen.

The Indian put his kick stand down and dismounted. He bent down and scooped up Baxster, cradling him in his huge arms. Beside me, Dec grimaced and Kat reached out and patted him on the back. The three of us remained hidden behind the car, listening to the two men talking thirty feet in front of us. “Put your gun away, Deputy,” the Indian said, still holding Baxster and stroking him behind the ears.

Ty placed his pistol back in his holster. “You’re late, Ghost! We were supposed to cut that deal two days ago! I’ve got buyers!”

Ghost kneeled down, allowing Dum-Dum and Cooper to sniff at him. “It’s not your buyers you should worry about. It’s the two men from New Orleans. How many conspiracies can you juggle? This ledger? This gold? Twelve angry bikers known as Vandals?”

Big Ty said, “Does your offer still stand? If so, then the game is on.”

Ghost settled Baxster down beside Dum-Dum and Cooper. All three dogs appeared to like the Indian and wouldn’t leave him alone. He said. “You’ve been playing me. Been working out the deal for two months, and I’ve never once seen evidence that you are a serious player. These men from New Orleans? Give them what they came for, Deputy. Some-one already eliminated the first man they sent here. They’re not happy with that. That gold is going to take a lot of people down, unless it’s returned. You can’t outfox these guys. Give them the gold and walk away a rich man by landing me a buyer for that ledger.”

Ty laughed. “You saying it is worth more than—”

“Worth more than gold,” Ghost said, “that doesn’t belong to you.”

Ty said, “What are my odds? Two thugs. Twelve Vandals. A sleazy lawyer. A greedy bail bondsman. I’ve got an Ace in the hole, which keeps me in the game.”

Ghost said, “Aces and Eights is the hand Wild Bill held the night he got his head shot off up there in Deadwood. You’ve got a lot of Jokers running wild in your town. I’d throw in my hand if I was faced with those odds. Find a buyer for that ledger and be done with this deal.”

Minutes later, both the Indian biker and Big Ty drove out of Catlin’s junkyard, leaving in their wake swirling clouds of dust. After they drove off, Chris stepped outside. The tall, dark-haired Gypsy kid just stood there, staring at us still standing behind the Ford. Kat said, “Chris, we’ve got Mary Kay here! She’s been shot up with some kind of dope!”

“Sweet Jesus!” Chris said, running over to find her still slumped against the car. He hauled her to feet and walked her on into the house.

Kat said, “You two should return to town. This is something we must deal with on our own. We’ll take care of Mary Kay.”

As she joined Chris inside the house, the dogs and I followed Dec back to the Blue River and Mose Hadley’s boat. As we trudged across the field to the river, Dec and I were in a daze, not sure what we had stumbled upon. I said, “What if Ty saw us? What if he told Sheriff Mac we skipped school? What if when we get back to the docks there’s a Sheriff’s posse waiting for us? What about Mary Kay being stuffed in that trunk? What does Ty and Jon Kennedy have to do with each other? What if there are more shady people involved in this?”

Climbing into the boat, we both heard Chris Catlin let out the most sorrowful wail we’d ever heard from up near the house.

His pitiful cry tore through our hearts and would haunt us both for a long while to come.

Kat had once given Dec a bloody nose over Red Hots. Dec assumed that he had been a genious the day he discovered how to create his own brand of candy. He had combined a handful of those little Red Hot candies with cinnamon oil and tamale juice. The stuff was so hot, Dec had to use rubber gloves to mix the three ingredients together. He’d even cried during the process, with real tears running down his cheeks as he fiddled with the pot, the spoons, and the strainer he used to produce his creation.

As it turned out, Dec’s first guinea pig was his last.

He’d made a fifty-cent bet with little Bobby Brazer that he could not keep a mouthful of his new candy in his mouth for more than two minutes. Bobby and Dec shook on it, and out came the candy stored in one of those metal cigar holders. Dec had Bobby pour those little babies into his mouth, so that neither of them got the scalding juices on their hands. Be as it may, Kat happened to be riding over to Bobby’s house to babysit him while his mom worked second shift at the five and dime. She took one look at Bobby retching, bawling, and going into cat-fight crazy mode, as those little pellets of extreme fire exploded in his mouth. Kat turned on the garden hose. She practically shoved that sucker down little Bobby’s throat as she crammed it into his mouth. A second later, a strange gurgling sound came burbling up from the depths of his stomach. Dec sniggered at little Bobby thrashing around like a mad loon, and Kat launched herself directly at him.

Dec took up a boxer’s stance, like a pro fighter all set to take Kat out with a one-two punch. But his one-two was trumped by her first, second, and third fast and furious punch to Dec’s left eye, his chin, and a blow to his nose. A bright red explosion of blood burst from his nose as he sailed backwards and landed hard on his butt. Kat had been brutal, and delivered those punches with all the swiftness of a tiger attack. After that tromping he took from the Gypsy girl, Dec asked her older brother to teach him how to box so that no girl ever tromped him again. After a four-month training session, Chris made him square off with Kat in their ring in their old barn. I laughed at the horrified look on Dec’s face. However, had nothing to fear. Kat took it easy on him. It was because both the Catlins had a sense of honor about them. Chris would not allow his sister to show-off in front of us, and Kat was too kind-hearted to beat Dec a second time.

“Keys?” Kat said, quite suddenly. “Keys in the trunk of that Chevy!”

Dec and I followed her over to the Kennedy car, now determined to find out what Ty had discovered in there when he took a peek back in town. Kat let out an angry hiss when she saw the dark-haired girl crumpled in the trunk. She looked to be asleep as she lay sprawled there, her head propped up by the spare tire taking up the rest of the space in the trunk. The three of us were in shock that Mary Kay Sebastian’s life had ended so tragically. Someone had killed her and dumped her in that trunk. I felt the loss more than those two, for Mary Kay was Lakota like me, and had always seemed to be more like family than friend, Mary Sebastian, the sweet and personable girl who worked the concession stand at the Holly Theater. One time, during a movie, I got up to get me some candy corn. I did not have an extra nickel to cover the cost, and Mary simply slid that box of candy corn across the counter, and kindly said, “I got you covered, Hawk. Go and enjoy the show.”

That’s just the kind of person she was, good-hearted and beautiful, with her long, black hair and her amazingly green eyes. She was always smiling, too, and when she did that I just had to smile back at her, like maybe it had inspired me. Dec liked her, too, and he didn’t much care for most people, claiming he had a Second Sense about most. He had a gut-level detector to alert him to the BS most people were full of. Dec was a good people reader. He claimed it was a gift from his dad, a special trait Mac had as the town sheriff.

And Dec’s meter never sounded a peep around Mary Kay Sebastian.

“My brother,” Kat whispered, “loved her. Christian and Mary were getting married . . .”

She stopped, her words trailing off. And although her eyes were filled with tears, a crease appeared on her brow. Dec and I took a step back away from her. At that moment in time, Kat looked like that a fierce Celtic battle-maiden my dad once told me about: The Morrigan, for with her raven hair flowing over her shoulders and the angry glare in her eyes, Kat looked like some Irish spirit had spiraled down through her Gypsy blood-line and taken over her.

“Mary Kay,” she said in a harsh whisper, “did not deserve this!”

And that’s when Mary Kay opened her eyes and hoarsely whispered, “Where am I?”

Kat reached down into the trunk and grabbed onto Mary Kay’s wrist. It took all three of us to help her climb out of the trunk, for she was really woozy. “Someone drugged her!” Kat snapped, angrily.

At the sound of gravel crunching beneath car tires, we looked out to the road some distance away from the junkyard.

“A patrol car!” Dec said. “We best hide!”

Kat closed the trunk lid, then helped us lead Mary Kay to the row of junked cars at the edge of the junkyard. As we settled Mary Kay down on the far side of a red Ford station wagon, we watched Big Ty drive through the gates of Catlin’s. He parked behind the Kennedy car, killed his engine and climbed out. Ty looked in our direction, but we hunkered down behind the junked Ford, our eyes in line with its windows which allowed us to see all the way across the junkyard without being seen.

Dec did a masterful job of steering us through cross currents sweeping in at the mouth of the Big Indian when we reached the intersections of the two rivers. He guided that motorboat right up alongside a sandbar, and Baxter and Cooper excitedly sprang out of the boat and darted up the river bank to romp in the fields beyond.

I followed the dogs over the side of the boat, a line in hand to tie us off with. Dec cut the engine and it spluttered to an abrupt halt, leaving us in silence for long moments. And then sounds came back to our ears. The smooth hiss of the river passing by. Birdsong from a copse of trees on the west bank. The wind blowing through the leaves high above our heads. And then, Baxster and Cooper let out ferocious barks as they ran through the field out of sight above us.

“Best see,” Dec said, stepping out of the boat, “what those two mangy mutts scared up.”

He landed in deep sand beside me. After inspecting my tying job, seemingly satisfied that it would hold the boat tight to the sandbar, Dec said, “Good job, Hawk. You tied a real fine knot there.”

I said, “Well, I should have been the one to drive the boat, too. After all, that’s how the Hawkins’ clan ended up in Beatrice.”

Dec asked, “In a motorboat?”

I said, “No, my great grandpa was a river boat captain. It’s how he met my great grandma. There was some flood over in Ohio, right along the route Jessie Hawkins drove his river boat. A big steamer. When a flood swept through Ohio, Jessie rescued Rebecca Bower. They mar-ried, traveled up the Mighty Mo to Brownsville, then the Platte to Salt Creek, then the Blue and on into Beatrice. That’s how the Hawkins clan ended up here in the sticks.”

Dec and I stood for long moments, watching our two hounds chasing a rabbit. Cooper, with his longer legs, outdistanced Baxster, the short-legged beagle. Before long though, Baxster changed tactics. Instead of bounding through the thickets lining a copse of elm trees, he stationed himself along the trail that doubled back out of the stand of trees.

In this way, Cooper did all the work. Staying right on that rabbit, running himself ragged as he tried to keep up. Soon, one rabbit springing ahead of my dog, turned into two. And then, three. Those rabbits were having a hay day, springing ahead of Cooper. I think they were confusing the hell out of my dog, leaping one way and then another, able to change directions within a split-second.

Cooper worked one rabbit away from the rest of the gang, forcing him to double back toward Baxster. Poor Baxster would have sprang out and nabbed him, too, but suddenly out of the blue, a big dark shape came hurtling out of the hedgerow, bowling both of our dogs over.

It was Dum-Dum, the Catlin junkyard’s guard dog. Though ‘guard’ would be a laughable joke to any who trespassed in the yards after dark. Dum-Dum was a strapping black Lab and he didn’t have a mean bone in his body. In fact, most customers who ventured to Catlin’s place, had a good laugh at his expense. Especially the days he thought he was a pig, and went rolling in every mud puddle he could find. Most folks greeted by him had to shoo the dog a safe distance away, for he was usually covered head to tail in a slimy coating of black mud.

“Dum-Dum!” called a voice from the small woods between us and Catlin’s junkyard. The big lab began wagging his tail as a slender, raven-haired girl stepped out beside a tree as if materializing like a magical forest dryad. Katherine Catlin, the only daughter of Daniel Catlin, owner of the junkyard, came from a long line of Irish gypsies. With her dark, smooth skin, her doe-like brown eyes, and her wild tangles of black shoulder-length hair, Kat greatly resembled a fairy princess.

She had once stood up to Big Ty when he’d caught some middle school kids drinking down near the tracks. Ty had lined those seven kids up in a row, marched them out to the old railroad bridge, and ordered them to jump off and plunge down into the dark waters thirty feet below. Kat and her brother, Chris, happened to be fishing beneath the old Northern Pacific bridge. They had watched Ty badger those kids, and heard all of them begging Big Ty to let them go, swearing they’d never drink again.

Ty had just been pulling out his pistol when Kat and Chris strode to the middle of the old bridge. Those drunken kids hightailed it and ran from the bridge. So there were no real witnesses as to what happened next. The way rumors spread, Chris leveled Ty with one punch, knocking him out cold.

Kat actually told me the true story later. Contrary to popular belief, Chris never landed a fist on Ty’s face. He’d simply scared him so bad by speaking up on behalf of those bawling kids nearly wetting themselves, the dumb galoot had dropped his gun. No one ever did explain why he’d pulled it on seven unarmed kids in the first place, but Ty had drop-ped his pistol and it fell down, slipping through the railroad ties, landing on the pylon ten feet below.

It had been Kat who climbed down off of that bridge and retrieved Big Ty’s pistol and returned it to him.

But it was Chris who walked away a hero that night.