You got a nice taste in bourbon."
They seemed relaxed, watchful, reasonably friendly. I made myself a drink and took it over to the bed and sat beside Buckelberry. He had tucked his shirt in and wore a red-brown corduroy jacket with lots of pockets, all with flaps and buttons.
Jasper Yeoman was an astonishingly youthful fifty-eight. He had black hair combed back, just a little grey over his ears. He wore a dark business suit. He was a lean, long-limbed man. He had a long narrow brown face, deeply seamed, Indian-dark eyes, ears that stuck out far enough to give him a countrified look. He had horse teeth and a thin-lipped mouth with a small twisted and sardonic smile which looked habitual.
He had great assurance, a steady stare, and he was the sort of man who would disconcert you by seeming to be amused by some joke you did not understand.
He sat slouched with one limber leg hooked over the arm of the chair. They were waiting for me to make the move, and I damned well wasn't going to.
Finally Buckelberry sighed and said, "Jass here was curious about you, McGee."
"I can imagine he might be."
"Just to set your mind at rest," the Sheriff said, "we've got a pretty good line on that pair. The professor took off from home yesterday afternoon. His junk car is over to the Carson Airport. The manifest says a Mr. and Mrs. Webber Johnson caught the one-fifteen flight to El Paso this afternoon. The ticket man says a big blonde woman and a great old tall skinny boy, both of them in big dark glasses."
"Near as we can find out," Yeoman said lazily, "Mona left the house about ten this morning. Two suitcases gone. Clothes and jewelry. The way it figures, you were at the Carson Airport to drive her car away for her. You could tuck it off in any one of those little roads off there behind Cotton Corners, after you'd taken it up to take a look around the cabin. There's only one thing makes any kind of damn fool sense to me. That's that Mona must figure she'd got one hell of a good hidey-hole planned out for her and the professor, and when we can't turn her up, we'll come back to paying more mind to that damn fool story of yours."
"What good would that do?" I asked.
"You look like a steady enough man," Yeoman said. "How come you sucked into this kind of foolishness? She convince you I stole her daddy's money and treat her cruel? Son, Mona has just come into her restless time, and the thing to do is just wait it out. She's gone romantic as a young girl. Let me tell you something. She isn't real steady. She like to tore herself up beyond fixing before I married her. She needs a firm rein. She needs a man half husband and half daddy to keep her settled down. She's got that poor professor in a condition where he don't know which leg to put in his pants first. Having a husband old as me, she's got a fool notion life is passing her by. If she'd been fertile it would have worked out better for her, I guess. But she hasn't wanted none for servicing, and until she got the romances, it seemed to please her just fine. She'll outlive me, and when I'm gone I'll leave things tied up so she can have an income that'll give her a chance to be a damn fool in every city of the wide world, if that's what she wants. But as of now I'm her husband, and I know better what's good for her than she does. I've whipped her when she was ripe for it, and it has settled her down nice and grateful for it. And I've bought her about every damn thing she set her mind on. I'm not begging and I'm not pleading. It's just that if you know where it is they plan to hold up, it'll save everybody a lot of trouble and nuisance. I'll even go this far, son. Once they're bird-dogged, I'll even hold off a week, ten days, before busting it up. Then she might settle down faster when she's back, having got herself at least some of what it is she thinks she's got to have."
"Now Jass," Buckelberry said in a very gentle voice.
"All right, Fred," Yeoman said. "I talk too much about private