TWENTY-TWOI DROVE down the hill, and to be honest about it, somewhere along the way I found myself no longer pushing the idea—the notion that somebody would try to kill me next. It’d got behind and was pushing me. Like the fellow back home who tried to fell a chopped tree by pushing at it, and it fell on him.
I’d been relying too much on my cheese-town experience, and what did it amount to?
Canadian Jones was all. Canadian had been a smalltime ’legger, about all the underworld we had in Milquevais. He killed a man for the hip-pocket bankroll, and then he ran for cover. The only mystery had been what cover and how to smoke him out.
Well, I’d come into this deal with the illusion I could easily solve the Crossways’ and everybody else’s problems—if I took an interest and cared to. And if s
