Susan Huddleston stepped forward. Clearly the girl didn’t belong in jail, but neither could one discount the dangerous Scraggs factor, either. “Buck, I’d be very careful with all aspects of this,” she warned.

Sheriff Buck only grunted. When he was still a young county deputy, before he’d taken over his father’s job, he’d been called to the Nancyville middle school one day on a complaint of disorderly conduct and fighting. He’d gotten a faceful of scratches before the alleged culprit had taken off across the field in back of the school, never to be seen again. But before she’d hightailed it Buck had had a glimpse of a long-legged, scrawny vixen with the blackest eyes he’d ever seen.

Now, studying this female in the lockup, he couldn’t swear she wasn’t the same one. Although he tried not to look below her grimy neck where the old sweater and skimpy cotton dress left little to the imagination.

Susan said, “I don’t suppose there’s any doubt she’s a Scraggs?”

The deputy promptly responded, “No doubt at all, Miss Susan. They call this one Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs. Her mamma gave them all fancy names. The sheriff here put one of her no-good relatives, Elvis Presley -”

“Yes, I know,” Susan said quickly. It wasn’t wise at that particular moment to bring up the sentence the oldest boy was doing in the state pen. And who had put him there. “I don’t think you can charge her with a felony, Buck. Loitering’s only a misdemeanor.”

At her words the figure behind the bars stiffened.

“You can’t keep me here!” the girl shrilled. Her black eyes flashed. “Yore fat old deputy whopped Demon for no reason at all and laid its head open, and my little sister ran off!”

“You did something to the little sister?” Buck turned to his deputy, frowning. “Who’s this you whopped?”

Deputy Holt sucked on his bitten finger. “Buck, will you let me say something? These two Scraggs – females - was down by the post office this morning, sitting on the curb, making a nuisance, and their big monster dog done jumped Mrs. Stevens’s cat and half tore it to death. ”

“Did not,” the prisoner yelled. “That’s a lie!”

“Mrs. Stevens called for police assistance,” Mose went on doggedly. “When I got there these two were attempting forced entry on Mrs. Stevens’s front door -”

“That old cow hit Farrah Fawcett,” the prisoner shouted, “when we wasn’t doing anything!”

“- threatening to assault Mrs. Stevens, and throwing rocks at her house. This one told Mrs. Stevens she was going to – ah -” – Deputy Holt’s face grew even redder – “snatch off certain parts of Mrs. Stevens’s – ah, body.”

“Tits!” the prisoner behind the bars screeched. “I told her I’d pull off her old flappy tits if she ever hit Farrah Fawcett again!”

Deputy Holt reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his face. “Buck, I never heard no young woman talk like that. I swear, there’s just no telling the words that are going to come out of that mouth!”

“Where’s my sister?” Scarlett O’Hara gripped the bars with both hands. “My little sister Farrie’s run off in the cold, and she’s lost and it’s your fault, you old -”

Buck stepped toward her. “That’s enough of that.” The steely authority that had made his late father famous and which he had passed on to Buck in a considerable degree made the girl suddenly close her mouth. “Now let’s hold it down,” he ordered.

Scowling, the Scraggs girl tilted her head back to get a good look. The fluorescent light of the cell block illuminated Buck’s square-jawed face and stern, unfriendly expression.

Buck was thinking Miss Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs looked wild and unmanageable. On the other hand, from her nearly bare feet to the top of her gypsy-black curls she projected so much – Buck’s mind stumbled over the thought – well, sexual attraction that the effect on the public at large was worrisome.

“How old is the little sister?” he asked.

“Ten, eleven, somewheres around there,” the deputy answered.

“And this one?”

Mose Holt shrugged. “She won’t say.”

Buck studied her. If the other Scraggs girl wasn’t more than eleven years of age, then half the case was out of his jurisdiction. The younger half.

“Susan,” he said, “I’d be obliged if you’d rout old Ancil Scraggs out of the hills and get him to come down and claim his relatives.”

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than they were subjected to a truly anguished screech.

“Don’t do that! Oh, please don’t get my grandpa!” the figure behind the bars yelled. “Please, mister, I’ll get that old witch another mangy cat in place of the one Demon tore up – me’n my little sister’ll do anything! But don’t let Devil Anse come for us!”

Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs clutched at the bars of the cell with an expression that was genuinely heartrending.

“Please, mister,” she pleaded, “I’m nineteen years old, I’m full grown, I can do what I want, can’t I? My little sister and I didn’t do any harm sittin’ on the curb waiting for the Greyhound bus that goes to Atlanta until that ole cat jumped on Demon. You gotta let me go, so I can go find Farrie!”

Buck turned to Susan. Who was staring at the prisoner, appalled.

“You gotta,” the voice in the cell yelled belligerently. “We didn’t break the law, me’n Farrah Fawcett! We were just running away!”

Two

Scarlett watched the man she knew by now was the sheriff talking to the tall blond woman. Once he took her hand, but she quickly moved it out of the way.

“I’ve never heard of a runaway Scraggs,” the woman was saying. “Although I suppose any child in their right mind would want to get away from that horrible crowd.”

The big redheaded sheriff said, “This one’s hardly a child.”

They both turned to study Scarlett. Who hunched her shoulders in the gray jail blanket the deputy had given her, and glared back.

Although Scarlett would never let them see it, she was worried sick. Her little sister was somewhere out there in the town of Nancyville, and it was growing dark. Farrie didn’t even have any money. Scarlett had the sixty-three dollars for the bus tickets and the extra she’d taken when she’d raided the black iron pot where Devil Anse kept his cash.

The only good thing Scarlett could think of was that at least Farrie had the good pair of shoes, the pink and white sneakers Scarlett had bought for her last summer. She’d kept the rubber sandals for herself. They were the reason her feet were so numb with cold now that she could hardly feel them.

The worst part, Scarlett knew, was that there was no telling where Farrie and Demon were now. And it was snowing; Scarlett had seen it as she was coming into the jail.

She heard the blonde say, “Well, Buck, you can’t hold her on vagrancy, I don’t care what that old crank, Della Stevens, told Mose.”

“Assault, Susan,” he told her, “not vagrancy. Attempted assault.”

She snorted. “Assault on Della’s cat? It’s as mean as old Della is!”

Scarlett pressed her face against the bars, listening. This wasn’t turning out at all the way she’d planned it. By now the Greyhound bus to Atlanta had come and gone, instead of taking them away from Catfish Holler and their grandpa and the rest of the Scraggses. Farrie and her dog, Demon, were wandering around somewhere in Nancyville, and there she was. In the county jail!

The thought made Scarlett’s mouth tremble, and she bit back hot tears. No need to cry, she told herself fiercely, you know it never gets you anywheres.

Nobody was coming to help. Help, she well knew, was for other people. Scraggses who cried got hit, whopped on the head, and made fun of. Crying was the most useless thing anybody could do. Along with praying.

“The youngest girl should go into a shelter,” the woman was saying. “That takes a court order.” She hesitated. “Good heavens, relatives should be present in court. Can you imagine all those Scraggses -”

The sheriff’s expression was grim. “That will be the day, when I have to round up the Scraggses to appear on a runaway case. Believe me, Susan, if I ever get them into court I’m going to prosecute the whole tribe for manslaughter, hijacking, armed robbery – everything else they’re wanted for.”

Scarlett studied the sheriff with narrowed, suspicious eyes. He didn’t talk about Devil Anse the way other people did. Like they’d do anything to stay out of his way.

“I just can’t turn her loose, Susan. Listen, can’t you put her over in the Hardee County shelter with her little sister? That is, when we find her.”

“Are you kidding?” The woman turned to him. “Buck, you’re not going to make me give up my Christmas vacation! Why, even if I could find somebody brave enough to take in a couple of Scraggses over the holidays – which is highly unlikely – there’s the prospect that Devil Anse would be coming to town to claim them. Ugh! Why do I keep thinking in terms of armed attack, siege, home invasion, ambush -”

“Don’t be melodramatic, Susan,” the sheriff said coldly. “It’s not called for.”

“Melodramatic?” The social worker put her hands on her hips and faced him. “Look, I didn’t volunteer for this. You called me, remember?”

Scarlett was thinking the woman was right. At any minute now Devil Anse would find out that his granddaughters were missing. And so was his money.

She took a deep breath. She was never going back, neither was Farrie. That’s what she’d promised.

“I’m not going to miss my meeting in Atlanta,” the woman was saying firmly. “And this girl isn’t in my jurisdiction, anyway. Frankly, I was glad to get Scarlett O’Hara off my hands when she left high school. Buck, just do what your dad always did.”