Dad sighed. “Not the kind of game I like to play to settle my digestion.” He set a hand on Liz 's shoulder. “You did real well. Mow… Do you think you're up to going back to sleep?”
“Beats me.” she answered. “I sure aim to try. though.” To her surprise, she did it. She didn't know what that proved- probably how tired she was to begin with.
When Dan saw a Valley patrol with bloodhounds working its way toward the Santa Monica Freeway, he wondered what was going on. “You guys looking for Luke the trader?” he called to them.
That won him more attention than he really wanted. The whole patrol converged on him. He was used to attention from Sergeant Chuck. Now he had the undivided attention of two sergeants at once, and discovered it was at least four times as bad.
“How come you wanna know, kid?” demanded the one with the dogs.
“How'd you hear about Luke, anyway?” the other one growled. The bloodhounds didn't say anything, but in the torchlight their long, sad faces declared they were angry to have to pause in their search for even a minute.
“If it weren't for me, you guys wouldn't know about him.” Dan spoke to the sergeants. He hoped they'd make the bloodhounds understand. “Have you been to the trader's house on Glendon?”
“Yeah, we were there,” said the sergeant with the dogs. “You really do know too much, don't you? How'd you know about that house?”
“Well, it's the girl there.'' Now Dan knew he sounded a little sheepish. “Did you see her?”
“Oh. The girl.” That was the dog handler. All of a sudden, things seemed to make sense to him. “I might've known.” The other sergeant grunted. Even the bloodhounds seemed sniffy in a different way.
Dan wondered if his ears were on fire. They sure felt that way. “Don't you guys have girls?” he asked-not that he had Liz or anything. He just wished he did.
“We've got girls,” the sergeant with the dogs said.
“But we don't have Westside girls,” the other one added. “Not like that, we don't. For fun, yeah. Not for real.”
To Dan 's amazement, his ears got hotter yet. He hadn't thought they could. “How can you tell?” he asked. To make him feel like a complete idiot, his voice cracked in the middle of the question.
Both sergeants laughed themselves silly. Dan thought the dogs laughed, too, but maybe that was his imagination. The handler said, “You sound goofy when you talk about her, that's why.”
Now Dan was the one who said, “Oh.” Then he changed the subject as fast as he could: “What about Luke?”
“He was there, but he got away maybe three jumps ahead of us.” The dog handler frowned. “I'm not sure how fresh this trail is. though. The dogs aren't all that stoked about it, and we know he's been down this way before.”
“So why are you following it?” Dan asked. Yes, talking about Luke was a lot easier than talking about Liz.
'“Cause it's what we've got,” said the sergeant who didn't take care of dogs.
“And “cause that rotten villain messed up the trail before it got to the trader's house,” added the one who did. “He put down something that almost made 'em jump out of their skins.” That was saying something-the bloodhounds had a lot of skin to jump out of. The sergeant went on, “It was as bad as though somebody turned on an Old Time electric flashlight right in front of your face.”
“Wow,” Dan said. “Oh, wow.” Electric lights were supposed to be bright, all right. He didn't know exactly how bright, because he'd never seen one work. He didn't know anybody who had, either.
“Yeah,” the dog handler said. “So if we ever do catch this guy, we'll make him sorry. You bet we will.”
“I bet he's sneaky,” Dan said. “He looks sneaky. He sounds sneaky, too-I’ve talked with him.” Was that really fair? Dan remembered Luke teasing him. If that didn't exactly make the trader sneaky, it came close enough, didn't it?
“He must be, or he wouldn't have got away from us,” said the sergeant without the dogs.
“If we want to catch him, we'd better be sneaky, too,” said the one in charge of the bloodhounds.
“If he's still here for us to catch,” the other sergeant said. “If he got over the freeway line, he's a gone goose.”
“How could he do that?” Dan asked. “We have it plugged tight.”
Both sergeants looked at him as if he were still making messes in his drawers. “Kid, if he's that sneaky, chances are he can find a way,'“ the one without the dogs replied. His voice was surprisingly gentle. He might have been explaining that the Easter Bunny wasn't real.
“Well, maybe,” Dan admitted. The Valley soldiers were watching out for an attack from the south, not for one man trying to get past them and going that way.
“But if he is that sneaky…” the dog handler said.
“Yeah? What about it?” The other sergeant wasn't much impressed.
“Listen,” said the three-striper with the bloodhounds. They put their heads together and talked in low voices. Dan did his best to listen without seeming to. The sergeants must have noticed, because they moved a couple of steps farther away. Dan muttered under his breath. He hadn't caught much anyway.
The older men both nodded. Then they headed back up Westwood Boulevard toward Westwood Village. They said not a word to Dan about whatever they'd decided. He thought that was rude. W hat did they figure? That he'd tell Luke what they were up to if he knew?
After a moment, he decided that had to be just what they figured. He couldn't remember the last time anything had made him angrier. He was a good Valley patriot. So what if he thought a Westside girl who knew Luke was cute? That had nothing to do with anything.
He could see himself explaining all this to the sergeants. He could see them both listening, and then laughing their heads off. And, because he could see all that so very well, he didn't even bother to try.
Nightfall in Westwood, the sun sinking towards and then into the Pacific. Far fewer tall buildings between Liz and the ocean than there would have been in the home timeline. The bomb that flattened Santa Monica into glass took out the ones that were there in 1967, and not many had gone up since.
As twilight deepened toward true night, Luke came down from his hiding place between the ceiling and the roof. He tipped his hat to the Mendozas again. “Like I said, much obliged to you folks. You saved my bacon there.”
“When you go after somebody with dogs, most of the time you don't deserve to catch him,” Dad said.
Luke started to say something, then checked himself. “You know what? I'm gonna have to think about that one for a while.”
“Probably won't do you any lasting harm,” Liz 's father remarked.
Again, the trader started to answer. Again, he seemed to think better of it. He sent Dad a cautious stare. “You're trouble, you know that?”
“Oh, no. He has no idea,” Liz said before Dad could get a word in.
That made him and Luke both look at her. They both started to laugh at the same time. “Heaven help her boyfriends, man,” Luke said.
“I don't know what you're talking about.” Dad answered, deadpan. They laughed again, louder. Liz let out an indignant squawk. For some reason, her father and the hairy trader from Speedro thought that was funnier yet.
“Well, I'm gonna slide on out of here,” Luke said when he was done with his uncouth guffaws. That was how Liz thought of them, anyway. Luke went on, “Thanks one more time for putting me up, my friend.” He might have been talking about a night on the couch, not a day in a hiding place Liz hadn't even known about.
“Any time,” Dad said, just as casually. ““You want to be careful out there, you know what I mean?”
“I can dig it. man.” As if to prove as much, Luke dropped his right hand to one of his pistols. “And I expect I can take care of myself.”
“Okay, okay.” Dad spread his hands to show he hadn't meant anything much. “I wasn't hassling you or anything. But in case those Valley guys haven't forgotten about you…”
The trader sneered. Liz didn't think she'd ever seen anybody more than twelve years old do that before, but she did now. “Negative perspiration,” he said. She had to translate that into something that resembled the English she knew. Don't sweat it, he had to mean. Then why didn't he say so? He did go on. “If I can't give ‘em the slip, I don't deserve to get out of here. They're from the Valley, after all.” He laced the word with scorn.