“Don’t do it!” someone was screaming. “Demon, get off!”

With an effort, Buck pried himself to his elbows while human hands yanked at his hair, pulling his head back.

“Don’t move,” another voice was yelling. “She won’t hurt you ifn you just lie still!”

A face came into view. It was the strangest face Buck had ever seen, all huge eyes and wild hair, the head perched on a neck like a skeletal stalk. He managed to reach under him and drag his gun from the holster.

As he did so, the apparition leaned down and put her face next to his and yelled, “Scarlett, do something! He’s gonna shoot my dog!”

Four

Some unseen hand pried the nightmare thing from Buck’s back. He rolled over and sprang to his feet, gun held out in both hands and aimed at, he found, a strange, stick-thin, goblin child about ten years old wearing a ragged football jacket. She promptly flung herself on Scarlett Scraggs.

“Oh, lordee,” the ragged child sobbed, “we just nearly didn’t find you, Scarlett! Me’n Demon was watching the police station, and when we saw you get in that Blazer I knew we was goners!” She wrapped her arms around Scarlett’s waist and laid her frizzy head against her breast. “How was anybody gonna find their way following a car up this ole mountain, even with a good tracker like Demon?”

Carefully, Buck turned to cover the other target, a giant black dog that now sat with its tongue lolling out, regarding him interestedly. Buck immediately recognized the animal as the force that had sprung on him and borne him to the ground a few moments earlier.

The second thing he saw was that blood from his nose was now pouring steadily down the front of his uniform to mix with mud, snow, and a trace of engine oil from the drive. He removed one hand from his police special.38 long enough to tentatively wipe his nose. A fresh flood of red showed he’d only made it worse.

Scarlett Scraggs was talking to the ragged child. “Well, you made it, honey, you don’t have to cry,” she was saying in a surprisingly gentle voice. “But you shouldn’t have run off that way when we had that fight with that old witch. You gotta stick close, Farrie, or I’m going to lose you and Demon. Then we’ll never get to Atlanta.”

Farrie.

This, then, was the missing little sister. Buck put his gun back in his holster and straightened up.

“I’m just so glad Demon is such a good tracker,” the child sobbed. “She can find anybody. But we had to stop and look and look and look down all the streets and roads, and I was so scared – I thought we’d never find you!” She twisted her head to look at Buck. “He isn’t going to shoot Demon, is he?” She clutched Scarlett anxiously. “Demon just jumped on him because he’s po-lice. Like the other one. Demon wasn’t going to hurt him!”

Buck grimly regarded the dog, now lying quietly with its nose between its massive paws. “If that thig attacks me again, ids going to be the last time.” He had trouble talking because his nose was bleeding freely and he had to cover it with one hand. “Cob on, bode of you. I need to teledphone.”

Scarlett smoothed the child’s snow-flecked hair back from her face. “Farrie, you’ve been out in the cold for hours,” she clucked. “I bet you’re gonna get sick.”

Her sister clung to her, staring at Buck. “Why are we going inside his house?” she wanted to know. “What’s he going to do with us?”

“Yeds, house,” Buck ordered, pointing to it. “Got to call off APB now thad your sidster showed up.”

“Nothing,” Scarlett said to the child, “he’s not going to do anything. We’re supposed to be staying here with his mother.” She bent to take the dog by the collar. “Only his mother left.”

Buck stepped in between. “That thig’s not going in he house. It stayds outside.”

At his tone the huge dog rose to its feet, the hair on its back standing up in an unfriendly manner. Buck’s scowl had sent Farrah Fawcett Scraggs scuttling to hide behind Scarlett. “What’s wrog with her?” he demanded. “Ids she hurt?”

The look from Scarlett’s black eyes was withering. “There’s nothing wrong with my little sister!” She took the child’s hand and started for the house.

“Somethig’s wrog,” Buck insisted, following. “She limps. She been hurt?”

“She doesn’t limp!” Scarlett was pulling her sister along rather roughly. “There’s nothing wrong with Farrie. She only limps when she forgets!”

“Whed she forgets?” Buck opened the front door. A rush of wonderfully warm air reached out to them. “She only limps whed she forgets?”

Scarlett pushed past him into the hallway. “Oh, it’s so warm,” she gasped. “We nearabout froze out there!”

The child squeezed past him, the dog in tow.

“Dammid!” Buck snatched at the animal with his free hand but missed.

At that moment Buck knew he was going to have to do something about his injured nose and never mind the Scraggs sisters; they were in the house and safe enough for the time being. But he was a bloody mess.

He started for the kitchen to search for paper towels to stanch his nosebleed. While there, he stopped long enough to ring up a few numbers in the hope of finding the Scraggs sisters a place for the night. The neighboring county’s juvenile office was closed for the day, but he was able to get the Hardee County sheriff on his mobile telephone.

“Buck, you’re not pulling my leg, are you?” the Hardee sheriff boomed. “Scraggs? Like some of Devil Anse’s crowd? Hey, this is Christmas coming up, not Halloween! You want to get my jail dynamited? Our social worker run out of town? Call me back when you’ve sobered up, boy!”

Buck was too tired to think of a reply. And the Hardee sheriff had a point. He thanked him and hung up. The prospects of placing the Scraggses somewhere, at least for the night, were growing dim.

Buck came out of the kitchen with a roll of paper towels under his arm. The front hallway was empty, the house suspiciously quiet. Where the devil had they gone to? he wondered.

The door to the dining room was open. He thought he could hear voices: Scarlett O’Hara’s husky contralto, the gnomish child’s squeaky rasp.

“Oh, Scarlett, it’s a tree!” As he grew closer he knew this was the little sister. “Isn’t this the most beautiful house you ever saw? And a real Christmas tree, to go with this real house!”

There were curious rustling noises. “His mother went off and left all these things around,” he heard the other one say. “See, all over the floor.”

Buck moved into the doorway.

Like many houses built in the nineteenth century the dining room and parlor were connected by paneled doors, now open to make one big room – a beautiful room with high ceilings, Victorian plasterwork, and parquet floors covered with reproductions of nineteenth-century Brussels carpet.

The house represented Buck’s mother’s years of hard work and decorating skill. Just as it did the love in his father’s original gift of it to her. The furniture was Victorian reproductions, as were the gilded Venetian mirrors, the green velvet draperies now looped with fancy red and gold Christmas garlands.

Buck could see Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs was right. Alicia Grissom had dropped everything in her hurry to leave for Chicago. The rooms were strewn with Christmas ornament boxes, partly wrapped gift packages, and ropes of tree tinsel. In the parlor area the blue spruce Christmas tree that Buck had put up towered over everything, half-finished.

The two girls had their backs to him, bent over the boxes. Buck was suddenly aware that Scarlett wore a sweater with holes in it over a faded dress and was bare-legged, her feet in rubber Japanese sandals, purple with cold. The child had on a frayed magenta football jacket over either a long shirt or a very short dress, it was difficult to tell, and baggy lime-colored tights with snow-stained sneakers.

Buck winced. This was not just the signs of poverty; the southern Appalachians were full of people who had been poor for generations. This was something worse.

The child straightened up, a tree ornament in her hand. “When we get to Atlanta,” she said in a dreamy voice, “we’re going to have to work hard and make enough money to find a house like this to live in.” She lurched her way to the tree and fastened the ornament on it.

“Well, first I gotta get a job.” Scarlett’s voice was less hopeful. “I don’t know how to do much, and I missed my high school diploma.”

“Oh, you’re going to get a good job, Scarlett,” the child told her, “because you’re so smart. Even ole Devil Anse Grandpa says that. And you’ll make enough money and we’ll be able to buy a car, and go travelin’.”

Scarlett watched her sister as she dug another ornament out of the box and fixed it to the tree.

“First we got to get there,” she said softly. “We didn’t do so good today when we missed the bus because your dog was trying to kill that old woman’s cat. It hasn’t done you a bit of good, either, being out in the cold. Come here, Farrie.” She pulled the child to her and laid her hand on her forehead. “You’re turning red. I just know you’re gonna get sick.”

Buck stepped into the room. “What do you mean, she’s going to be sick?” The little Scraggs was shivering all over, even Buck could see that. “Does she get sick often?”

Scarlett Scraggs turned to him, her arm protectively around the child. “She’s been out in the cold, that’s all.” She hesitated, then set her jaw. “I’ve got to put her to bed somewhere. You don’t have to do us a favor. We can put up most anywhere.”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘anywhere.’” Buck frowned down at Farrah Fawcett Scraggs. He thought of pneumonia. He wouldn’t put it past her; the kid was like a skeleton, anyway. “My sister’s old room,” he said hurriedly. “Let’s go.”