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The clouds gathering overhead were an unsympathetic slate-grey, and they loomed over Hilda like anvils over a comic-strip character. The plump redhead frowned up at the sky— she’d planned a fishing trip, and was in her bathing suit anyway, but there was a great difference between getting into a stream or pond of her own volition, and having cold water fall on her unbidden from above. Her flowered straw hat wouldn’t stand up to a really determined attack by the elements, either. She glanced down at Chuckwagon:
“What d’you think? Do we fish, or cut bait?”
The little terrier wagged his tail enthusiastically upon being spoken to, but offered no opinion on their dilemma. A faint rumble in the distance made up Hilda’s mind: she’d best get Chucky indoors before the thunder spooked him.
“Homeward bound it is.” She made a decisive about-face, but her gait was a disappointed trudge as she started back towards the roadway. She’d been looking forward to a lazy afternoon on the riverbank with a fishing-rod as her excuse for being there, and a novel in case the fish stood her up. She supposed she could still read the novel at home. Chuckwagon trotted along beside her. Reaching the road, she walked alongside it, avoiding the gravel and watching the tussocks and clumps of weeds for bottles or cans. The stretch by the Clayton homestead was not well-kept.
As she made her way up the tedious slope, a stopped station wagon came into view above the hilltop. A girl in a light-coloured tennis dress stood by it, steadying a spare tire while her companion worked on it with the iron, lying on an old army blanket thrown down to protect her own dress from the asphalt, if not the grease. They looked up as Chuckwagon barked at them. Hilda blushed and rather wished she’d worn one of her polka-dot bathing-suits instead of the one made from a flour-sack today— she hadn’t expected to encounter strangers. Still, these two were in for a wetting if they couldn’t fix the flat, and it’d be unneighborly to leave them in the lurch. Especially—
“I still think we should ask him for help, Betty.” The girl with the tire was still looking up towards the Clayton shack.
“He can see us, Barbara,” the girl on the ground retorted, “and he hasn’t offered any— besides, I don’t much like his looks.”
“You’re not wrong,” Hilda interrupted, arriving just behind Chuckwagon. “That’s Bevis Clayton, laziest and meanest man in this county. He’s probably hoping you’ll set foot on his property so he can have some target practice.” She nodded at the NO TRESPASSING sign. “It’s his favorite sport. Well, his only sport, really. I’m Hilda. Can I give you a hand?”
“There’s no jack in the tool kit, but I’d hate to ask you to try to lift the—”
Hilda took hold of the station-wagon’s bumper and tried pulling upwards. A sturdy farm girl, she could just lift the mass of steel, wood and chrome off the ground...
“Ugh,” she said ruefully, as she dropped the end of the car. “That’s no use.” Looking up she noticed Betty and Barbara’s saucer-eyed expressions.
“That was amazing.”
“But I can’t hold it up long enough to do any good. Pity my cousin Louie’s not here. He can carry a pony under each arm. Oh well.”
“If we could wedge something under the axle, while you lift—“ Betty, the fair-haired one, suggested. The three girls looked around. Some loose bricks sat temptingly just over Clayton's property line, but the man was still watching smugly, his stockinged feet propped on the weathered porch railing.
“Just daring us to set foot on his land,” Barbara complained.
Turning her back to the Clayton homestead so only Betty and Barbara could see her face, Hilda put a finger to her lips and gestured to them to move towards the back end of their vehicle. She walked across the road and slipped cautiously down into the ditch on the other side, where she crouched down and turned to look back. From here she could just see the top of the shack’s roof over the ditche’s grassy rim; she hoped that meant she was invisible to the shack’s owner. Unfastening the fishing rod she’d been carrying over her shoulder, she cast the fly across the road and began reeling it in until she felt it hook on something she could only hope was a brick.
Chuckwagon barked, and Hilda heard a shriek from either Betty or Barbara. There was a sudden yank on her fishing line that pulled her out of the ditch and nearly off her feet – no easy thing. Across the road she could see one of Clayton’s billy-goats bucking and tossing his head; with an awful lurch in the pit of her stomach, she realized the line was wrapped around one of the beast’s horns. Just then the line went slack as the billy-goat made a charge in her direction, Chucky yapping and loyally nipping at his hooves, but to no avail.
“And now we’re wet. And the car is back there, and it still has a flat.” Betty complained to Hilda and Barbara. The other two were both still out of breath from their run back to Hilda’s cottage; the goats had only chased them for the first part of the way, but then the rainstorm had broken.
Chuckwagon shook himself and water droplets flew off him at all angles.
“Let me see if I can find you something to wear while your clothes dry—“ Hilda rummaged through an old dresser. Most of her things would be too big for the girls, but would do for now— “and then I’ll put the coffee pot on the stove. You’ll feel better once you’re warmer, and after that we can draw up a plan of action.”
“I can make the coffee,” said— is she Betty or Barbara?— Hilda wondered. The less sneezy one, anyway.
“There’s some already ground up, in the can on the second kitchen shelf from the top,” Hilda advised. Presently she heard metallic clunking noises, but they didn’t sound disastrous, so she pulled a couple of cotton dresses from the press, decided the polka-dot one was too décolleté for her guests but that the checkered one would do for one of them. Struck by inspiration, she went looking for her new and as-yet unspotted painting smock. By the time she returned to the kitchen with garments and towels, there was an encouraging fragrance of coffee from the pot on the stovetop.
“The bedroom’s through there if you want privacy to change.” Hilda held out the dry clothes. “How’d you take your coffee?”
Two hours later, the clouds had parted just as suddenly as they had flocked together, and Betty and Barbara’s sundresses, being thin cotton, had dried quickly. Hilda had changed into her denim shorts and a halter top before returning with her new friends to resume work on their car, and she carried a sturdy jack from her toolshed. As they reached the station wagon, however, Betty began to wail:
“Our hubcaps!” Sure enough, they were gone as last year’s Christmas candy. “The – the goats can’t have eaten them, can they?”
“Goats nothing,” Hilda fumed, stomping a clump of dandelions under her bare foot. “I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that Bevis Clayton has them hanging up in his shack right now!”
The three girls turned their heads in unison to glance at the hilltop cabin; its lord and master was no longer lazing on the front porch, and the broken screen door was latched.
“Is he inside? Or gone into — Hilda, where are you going?”
“One way to find out,” Hilda muttered as she circled carefully round Clayton’s hill, throwing a wary look at the goats; but the latter were placidly munching on some unwholesome-looking grass and appeared to have given up (for the moment) their policy of aggression.
Climbing to the shack carefully — she didn’t want another tetanus shot — although they were good for three years, weren’t they? Never mind. Focus on the job at hand— the redhead peered through the smallest of the home’s small windows, figuring it for the least likely to have Clayton’s eye upon it at that moment. She could just see in, if she shaded her eyes. Her heart lifted as she caught the glint of the stolen hubcaps (their chrome the only untarnished metal in the single room) stacked on a side table; and sank again— the shack’s owner was planted in a nearby rocking chair. He seemed to doze, but Hilda thought she’d just as soon bet on a napping rattlesnake. Nevertheless, she risked moving to a nearby and larger window, and tried to assess if she could squeeze through.
The width was ample enough, but the sash was only raised to a height of a foot or so. Hilda, recalling an adventure the previous summer, was not about to risk it; but she tried stretching her arm through. It was no use— the hubcaps were at least a foot out of reach, and any attempt to hook them with a stick might cause them to flatter to the floor. Someone of smaller build was going to have to do the burgling.
“You don’t think he’s… caught Hilda, do you?”
Betty sniffed impatiently.
“She hasn’t been gone five minutes yet, Barbara. And we’d’ve heard her yell.” Both girls started at a sudden rustle in the nearby grass, but it was only Hilda returning from her scouting mission. Barbara breathed an audible sigh of relief, but the redhead was all business:
“This looks like a job for more than one person,” she said. “And I think this time out, I’d better be the distraction. Earlier, I thought I saw some empty strawberry baskets in the back of your station wagon-- I might have an idea. There’s a field near here...”
“You-hoo! Mr. Clayton! Can I interest you in some fresh-picked strawberries?” He’s got to figure this for a trick, Hilda worried, but she smiled brightly at the man. She’d already pulled down her gingham halter top as low as it would go without slipping off, and she placed a hand on the generous curve of one hip above her tight denim cutoffs. With the other hand she held up one of the strawberry baskets invitingly.
“Didn’t you used to sell’em side of the road?” Clayton asked suspiciously. “Goin’ door-to-door now, eh?” He leered, but Hilda was undaunted. Keep his attention on yourself. Buy Betty as much time as you can to slip through the back window. He must have already had a pretty good view from his porch, but she leaned forward very slightly to make sure he could see down her halter.
“So, Mr. Clayton...” Hilda had never realized she could drawl and grit her teeth at the same time: “May I come on up?” He nodded brusquely, and the redhead strolled up the hill to his cabin, as slowly and languorously as she could, while her customer tapped his foot impatiently. Reaching the porch, she leant against the railing and seductively lowered the sunglasses Barbara had lent her from the car “for that movie-starlet look." Clayton, however, remained in his doorway, unmoving.
“You tryin’ to sneak in here, girl?”
Hilda batted her lashes:
“Why, Mr. Clayton," she cooed, "are you trying to lure me in?”
“No. And stop leaning on that rail, you’ll break it.”
“Only because it’s needed repair these twenty years,” Hilda snapped. Unexpectedly, Clayton grinned, showing unsavory front teeth:
“You got some mouth on you, eh? All right, don’t take it hard, I like a lass with sass. And--- well, never mind.” At least the man had the bare-minimum decency to look abashed at what Hilda guessed he’d been about to say. He cleared his throat: “Let’s see those strawberries, then.”
He snuffled over the berries, picking one out and examining it like a ruby. As he held it up to the light between a grubby thumb and forefinger, Hilda was glad there’d been enough berries to fill two baskets and that she and the girls hadn’t had to make up the weight with pebbles – it would’ve been no more than Clayton deserved, of course, but his investigations would’ve uncovered the deceit by now. Popping the strawberry in his mouth, Clayton regarded the young woman intently.
Too intently.
Hilda was bracing herself to fend him off when she realized he was staring in her eyes – no, her sunglasses. Doggoneit, they were reflecting Betty as she gingerly picked up the hubcaps on the far side of the room behind him.
“Betty, run!” Hilda yelled, tossing the strawberries in Clayton’s face; a terrible waste of good berries, but hey-ho.
Once more Hilda was tearing down Clayton’s Hillock. She became vaguely aware of Betty coming around from the side, carrying the hubcaps before her like stacked trays. Behind them Clayton bellowed curses. Hilda hoped he wouldn’t go for his gun.
“Get in!” Barbara waved frantically. She’d thrown open the back doors of the station wagon and Hilda and Betty dashed in; Hilda nearly colliding with the spare tire Barbara had dragged into the back seat. Which meant they were driving on—
If a car could ever be described as driving with a limp, this one could; but lurching movement was still movement. Hilda just hoped she wouldn’t get seasick. The car wobbled again and she fell against the tire and Betty.
“Sorry!” Barbara gasped, then asked: "Do you think he'll chase us?"
"If he's got any sense," Hilda groaned, "he's scooping up all those berries we picked. They're a more than fair exchange for your hubcaps. Not that they aren't nice hubcaps," she added hastily.
“It’s all right,” replied Betty, patting her hair. “At least we’re safe from that—that troglodyte and his goats. Hilda, we owe you -- once we reach a place we can stop and get this tire fixed, what say we drive you into town for an ice-cream soda?”
"All right,” said Hilda, leaning back and fanning herself with her straw hat. "Only, any flavor but strawberry."
