Mountain Madness. Jimmy Dale Taylor
Although Terrie couldn’t see what he did next, Jimmy did. “What the hell is he doing now?” Jimmy muttered to himself. Glenn deftly slipped the pistol out of its leather pouch and shoved it into his right back pocket. He left his round gold-plated watch on the turn signal handle, pulled his wallet out of the glove box, left the car, and swaggered through the front door.
Left alone with Terrie, Jimmy offered her a cigarette. Again she declined in favor of one from her own pack. “How long you been on the road?” he asked.
“Since two or three o’clock. That’s long, you know. It seems as though nobody is going any distance today. It’s taken me three rides to get this far. Now you and your friend are taking me all the way to Sacramento.”
Jimmy didn’t answer. Sacramento, hell! If Jay took her all the way back they might as well forget Seattle. He felt sorry for this young chick, stuck out here by herself, but she wasn’t alone. Everywhere you looked, girls were hitchhiking. Especially those who were trying to reach San Francisco.
Terrie wasn’t that much different from a host of others he’d seen. She did have big blue eyes and a nice body. Anyway, what he had seen of her legs looked nice.
Glenn returned, climbed into the car, chucked his wallet back into the glove compartment, threw a box of Kleenex onto the front seat, slipped the gun back into its pouch, and pulled a six-pack of Olympia beer out of a brown paper bag.
Before he could hand one to Terrie, she said, “Let me out. I want to go inside for a moment.”
“You’ll be back, won’t you?” Glenn asked.
“Now where else would I go? Of course I’ll be back. I want to buy a few things.”
Jimmy opened his door, got out and raised the back of his seat.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she said.
After she had entered the store, Jimmy said, “Man, what are we doing here? I thought we were going straight to Seattle.”
“We’re on our way. Let me finish with Terrie. Then we’ll let her out and we should be in Seattle sometime tomorrow. You can wait that long, can’t you?”
Jimmy knew he didn’t have any choice. Not unless he got out and started walking. Or hitchhiking.
He popped the top on a can of beer and took a sip. Damn, but that was good.
“Look at her,” Glenn said, as Terrie stepped out of the store, balancing a soda and ice cream bar in one hand and clutching a small bag containing grapes and a peach in the other. “Man, she’s built just the way I like ‘em.”
Jimmy suspected by now that the way Glenn liked them was female and breathing. If they met those qualifications, more than likely they passed the old man’s test.
Glenn told Terrie to watch her soda and backed the car out of the parking lot. Instead of heading west to where they could get back on 1-5, he turned east. “Now where in the devil are we going?” Jimmy asked.
“Oh, just driving around a little.” Glenn wondered if there was any easy way to get rid of his buddy until he was through. Two bulls sniffing around after one little heifer in heat wouldn’t work. Get a combination like that and somebody was going to get hurt. If somebody did, that person would be John.
What was important was that he keep Terrie on his side. “You ain’t in no hurry, are you?” he asked. “We got some friends living near here that we oughta stop and see before we head south. Sooner or later we’ll get you to where you’re going though. Don’t you worry about that. Probably be sooner than you think.”
“What friends?” she asked.
“Slim and Virginia. They own a ranch up in the mountains. Thought that since we’re this close we might stop for a few minutes.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“There’s a new singing group staying at the ranch. I can’t remember what they call themselves but they are damn good.”
“Sure. All right.”
Jimmy wondered what was going on. This was the first he’d heard of Slim and Virginia and any singing group. He suspected that the old guy was blowing smoke for Terrie’s sake. Whatever Jay had in mind, Jimmy owed it to the girl to see that she wasn’t mistreated. The old man had better not use force. He had too much respect for women to ever allow that to happen.
A sign pointing to the left read: DEAD INDIAN ROAD. Glenn turned onto it. Ahead lay a winding asphalt track, snaking its way up a mountain that was bare on the sides and covered with trees on top. It had the appearance of a man with a round head and a poor haircut. Robbed of sunlight this late in the day, it looked gloomy.
“Slim and Virginia live over on the other side of Dead Indian Mountain,” Glenn said.
Sure they do, thought Jimmy. And I’m the president of Cuba and Fidel Castro is King of England and old Lyndon Baines Johnson is loved by all in North Vietnam. He might be naive, but he wasn’t stupid.
On their left was a small airport; on their right was the Airport Market. “We can’t go up there with only one six-pack of beer,” Glenn said. “Let’s pull in here and get another.”
Jimmy was not one to argue against the need for more beer.
Glenn parked in front of the store. After going through his ritual again, he went inside. Terrie wiped her hands on a Kleenex and said, “Your friend is kind of strange. Have you noticed?”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
She rolled her eyes at Jimmy. “How about you, John? Are you strange?”
Jimmy shook his head. He turned in the seat until they were facing one another. “I got it together,” he said. “Being in the service did that. Your big blue eyes sure are pretty.”
“Thank you.” Terrie took a bite of peach.
“You really going to Sacramento?”
“I really am. Maybe farther.”
“You could get hurt hitchhiking.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Maybe. I don’t know what Jay’s got in mind, but I want you to know I respect women. Nothing’s going to happen to you if I can help it.”
“There’s no need for you to worry about me. Jay isn’t going to do anything to me even if he wants to because I won’t let him. I am experienced at taking care of myself, you know.”
“You might need help. Look.” Jimmy plucked the revolver from its ledge under the car’s dash. “I got this from Jay.”
Terrie pulled back. It was a small gun that John held in his hand. It was shiny, a chrome-plated revolver with light colored grips, but it could be deadly. Guns were something to be feared. “Does it shoot?” she asked.
“It better. What good is a gun if it won’t shoot?”
“But why do you want it?”
“For protection. Don’t have no license, or nothing.”
As he spotted Glenn coming out of the store, Jimmy hid his gun back under the dash. “Don’t tell him I showed it to you,” he said. “No need in making him mad.”
“It’s our secret,” Terrie said. It wasn’t clear what they were doing with a gun. From what did they need protection?
“He keeps one on the floor between his feet,” Jimmy said in a conspiratorial tone.
When it isn’t in his pocket, he thought.
Two guns! Terrie shivered.
Glenn climbed in, passed two six-packs of beer to Jimmy and broke the seal on a bottle of wine. He offered it to Terrie who drank first and then passed