If the owner of the feed and grain store hadn't seen Roy Spangler drive up, he wouldn't have looked at him twice. As it was, he examined him carefully. Roy wore faded denims and an equally faded and sweat-stained T-shirt. His thick-soled work boots were stained and scuffed. He was about 30, give or take five years, stood five-feet-ten, give or take an inch; and, despite narrow hips, weighed somewhere around one-seventy, mostly because of his meaty shoulders. His face was covered with about two weeks' growth of black stubble, making him look more like a derelict than a paying customer.
The car made the difference. It was a high-powered foreign sports car. The store owner didn't know what type, but he knew it was expensive. He would have been willing to bet it had cost upwards of $20,000. Even with a thin film of road dust over it, the metallic blue had so much depth he felt he could sink his arm into it up to the elbow. Spangler was surely the owner. From the spot where the store owner sat in front of the store, he had a good view of the mountain road until it made its first turn a mile away. He'd watched the little car come dancing down the road like a blue spark on a pine log. The way Spangler had geared down to makes it turn onto to store's parking area, and hadn't skidded so much as an inch, showed he knew how to control the car with precision and how to get the most from it. When he had climbed out and walked around to approach the store entrance, his hand brushed lightly, possessively, over the car's body. It was his car, all right, and that made him a man of means.
Instead of ignoring him and letting the clerk inside take care of him, the store owner got to his feet, smiled and extended his hand. "Hi! I'm Clyde Gibbler. What can I do for ya?"
Spangler shook hands briefly, then took a small notebook from one of his hip pockets. He tore off a page and handed it to Gibbler. "Can you fill this order?" he asked.
Gibbler ran a blunt finger down the list. "Yup, all but the fertilizer. I've got everything else in stock. Gonna plant to a little garden?"
"Yes. I'm building a small place in the hills" he gestured vaguely back in the direction from which he had come "--and I thought I'd see if I can coax anything out of the ground." He showed his disappointment with a frown, and the furrowed brow, coupled with his soft voice, made him seem older than he had at first.
Gibbler added five years to his original estimate, raising the upper age limit to forty. He thought Spangler seemed too mature and settled for the car he drove. A wild sports car like that suggested a degree of hell-raising capability that Gibbler couldn't detect anywhere else. Spangler's pale blue eyes were sober and steady. He looked at the store owner when he spoke; otherwise, he seemed to focus on some distant and tranquil scene.
"When will you have the fertilizer?"
"If ya don't mind waitin' a half hour or so, I expect a delivery of some 40% ammonium nitrate later this afternoon," Gibbler told him.
Spangler seemed to consider. He looked at his wristwatch, then glanced across the road to a truck stop. "Okay. That'll be better than having to make two trips." He took his car keys from his pocket and handed them to Gibbler. "Load everything into my car. I'll wait over there at the truck stop."
"Sure thing, mister. If you watch through the window, you'll see when the delivery truck gets here."
Spangler turned and walked toward the highway with an easy, unhurried stride.
From his position behind the counter in the Truck Stop Cafe, the young counterman had seen the blue car arrive at the feed and grain store as he leaned on the counter and stared out the window. Business was always slow at this time of the day. The last couple of hours before sundown, truckers tried to push for a few more miles while they still had daylight. They seldom picked this time to stop for food or fuel unless the need was great.
There were two men in the cafe, sitting at one of the tables near the front window, but they wouldn't have been there if they had a choice. The Cade brothers were independent truckers who were suffering from a plague of bad luck. First their rig had broken an axle, then the cooling unit on the trailer had gone out. Parts for both were on the way, but there wasn't much hope that they'd arrive in time to save the load of strawberries that was a baking in the hot sun outside. Both men had been sneaking drinks from a hidden bottle to take their minds off their trouble; but every time one of them turned his red-rimmed eyes toward their crippled rig, he shook with impotent rage.
The counterman watched Spangler saunter to the road, pause while half a dozen cars and a truck passed, then walk across. The cafe, like the fuel pumps, was set back about 150 feet from the highway so there would be plenty of room to park the big rigs. When Spangler was about halfway between the highway and cafe he stopped and turned slowly in the direction of the Cade brothers' rig. That's when the smell of the cooking strawberries reached him, the counterman figured, and that was a bad sign. The odor was getting stronger.
Spangler continued walking, entered the cafe and took a seat at the counter. "Coffee," he said quietly. "And do you have strawberry shortcake?"
The counterman winced and glanced quickly at the Cade brothers. They had scraped their chairs back and were lurching to their feet. "That ain't funny!" one of them roared, and they both moved up behind Spangler.
Spangler gave the counterman a questioning look, but didn't swing around to face them.
The counterman aimed his right index finger at the brothers like a pistol. "Don't you two start anythin'. This fella didn't mean nothin'."
"What d'ya mean he didn't mean nuthin'? You heard him. He thinks he's real smart." The speaker reached out a hand and spun Spangler around on his stool.
The counterman vaulted over the counter, stopping the action before anything more serious could happen. "You don't hear so good," he said, pushing between the brothers and Spangler. "I just told ya, he didn't mean nuthin'. Now go back and sit down. Either that, or go out and wait in your rig. You try to start anythin' here, and I'll call the sheriff."
"It ain't us who started it," one protested, glaring at Spangler, but the bluster was gone. They turned and went back to their table.
The counterman walked back behind the counter, and Spangler spun around on the stool.
"Sorry about that," the counterman said in answer to Spangler's unasked question. "Those fellas have a load of strawberries rotting outside and they're kinda touchy about it."
Spangler nodded. "I can understand that," he said. He had two cups of coffee and a piece of apple pie, and forty-five minutes later he paid his check and left.
As soon as Spangler was outside and walking toward the store on the other side of the highway, the Cade brothers approached the counterman. "How come ya sided with that stranger?" they wanted to know. "We've been good customers of yours for a long time. It ain't right for you to side with strangers."
"I wasn't siding with the stranger, I was looking out for you guys."
"What d'ya mean?"
"Did you see his tattoo?"
"Tattoo?"
"Yeah. He had a tattoo of a little blue devil on his forearm right above the dial of his wristwatch."
"So what?"
"When I was in the Army, I was sent to Fort Benning for advanced infantry training. The cadre there were some of the toughest guys you could ever meet. They'd seen duty in Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and some places you never ever heard of before."
"You mean that guy who was in here was o' them? You recognized him?"
"Not exactly. I've never seen him before, but I've seen that tattoo. Like I said, the instructors were a rough bunch. They had their own private club with an initiation that only the toughest could pass. A new man assigned to the training staff would be tossed on a plane, taken a thousand miles, stripped down to his skin, and left out in the countryside somewhere. He had from Friday night to Monday morning to get back to Benning."
"That doesn't sound so hard."
"It was, though. He couldn't ask anyone for help. If he got back to the barracks without being seen by anyone, he earned the little blue devil tattoo. If not, he never got a second chance."
"Were there many instructors with the tattoo?"
"I knew two of them. They were both experts at survival."
The brothers turned and looked thoughtfully through the window in the direction Spangler had gone.
Spangler entered the feed store, paid his bill and picked up his car keys. The merchant said, "Your seed and cans of fuel oil are in the trunk. We tied the sacks of fertilizer on the rear deck."
"That's fine. Thanks," Spangler said. He went out to the sports car and checked the ropes that were holding the four-hundred pound sacks of fertilizer in place. They seemed secure enough, so he got behind the wheel and pulled away.
He could feel the difference made by the additional weight. The car's center of gravity had shifted rearward, changing the steering characteristics. He drove cautiously for a few miles until he had adjusted to the new handling, then he picked up speed until the speedometer needle hovered on 90 mph. If he hurried, he might be able to get back to his cabin before dark. The added weight in and on the car's trunk had probably had an adverse effect on the headlight adjustment. Even with load-levelers, the front end had probably lifted slightly. In the interest of safety, night driving should be avoided.
Spangler was down-shifting as he drove through an S-curve when he saw the hitchhiker on the other side of the road. Spangler was too busy driving to notice much, but he did register the impression of a slightly built, long-haired figure, wearing buckskins, and carrying a knapsack, trudging along the opposite road shoulder. He might not have seen even that if it hadn't been such a stupid place for a man to be walking along the road. No one was going to stop in the middle of an S-curve to pick him up, and soon the spot would be dangerous. The sun was low in the sky behind him, and when the road dipped in spots it was already dark enough in shallow depressions for cars to use their headlights.
Suddenly, a gray highway department truck appeared ahead, bearing down on him rapidly. It had a stake body covered by sheets of tarpaulin. The driver was hogging the center of the road, straddling the white line. Spangler pulled as far to the right as he could, but it wasn't quite enough. There was almost no shoulder, and at that point the roadbed had been blasted out of rock, with a three-foot wall of stone on both sides. There was plenty of room for two lanes of traffic except, as now, a driver tried to take his half out of the middle.
Spangler pumped his brakes and geared down rapidly to use the engine drag to help slow the sports car. The truck swerved slightly to avoid a head-on collision and shot past with its canvas sides flapping wildly in the slipstream. As the truck's rear bumper passed the back of Spangler's car, it made contact with his rear bumper, yanking it around and slamming it against the shelf of rock.
The setting sun had shone directly into the cab of the truck as it passed. Spangler saw three men in the cab and one of them was holding a bottle to his lips. It figured.
Angrily, he cut his wheels to the left, dropped back into second gear because he was still rolling slowly, floored the accelerator, driving the rpm's to the red line, then popped the clutch to spin his rear wheels and break their traction with the road. The back end swung around and the sports car was in the other lane in time to see the truck disappear around a bend a quarter of a mile away.  
Spangler didn’t know how much damage had been done to his car, but he knew it hadn't gone unmarked. The way it had been slammed against the ledge of rock, there was probably excessive body damage, if nothing else. His better judgment told him he should stop and examine the car before trying to drive it at high speed, but he knew if he stopped for too long, he might not be able to catch up with the highway department truck. Right then his desire to get his hands on the driver of the truck outweighed all other considerations on his mind. He ran through the gears more quickly than he ever had at a drag strip and entered the S-curve doing 95 mph and accelerating. The truck was only seconds ahead of him and he fully expected to see it again at any moment.
He went into the first turn and hit the apex perfectly, then straightened out and geared back up to fourth, and bore down on the second curve. He dropped back into third, then, at the last moment, he swung wide, hitting the brakes and spinning out.
The little hitchhiker he had spotted earlier was lying in the road, directly in the path he would have had to follow to negotiate the curve at high speed. Spangler narrowly missed going off the road and into the trees and heavy underbrush, but he steered into the skid and got the car under control. As soon as he had the car slowed sufficiently, he twisted the steering wheel and raced back to the still form in the road. He jumped out and ran to it, leaving the car door hanging open.
He had assumed the hitchhiker had been hit by the truck, but when he got closer he saw that wasn't the case. The form was lying peacefully, like a passed-out drink; not torn and mangled as it would have been had a speeding struck even a glancing blow. Spangler knelt, slipped the knapsack from the man's shoulders, and rolled him onto his back. That's when he discovered the hitchhiker was a girl.
She had long brown hair framing her pale face, and she wore no makeup; however, at this close range nothing would have concealed her femininity. There was a gash above her left ear and blood had matted the hair around it. Pieces of brown glass told the story: as the highway department truck had reached this point, the man who had been drinking had finished the bottle and hurled it out the window at the hitchhiker, probably not really expecting to hit her. It was the kind of thing a drunk might think was funny.
Spangler passed his thumbs along the edge of the wound. Her skull seemed to be intact and the bleeding was stopping, but she could just have easily been dead. As it was, there was no telling how seriously she was hurt until she regained consciousness or he took her to a hospital.
Spangler scooped the girl up and took her to the sports car. He strapped her in with both the seat belt and the shoulder harness, and dropped the knapsack on the floor at her feet. Hardly a minute after he had stopped, he was speeding down road again in pursuit of the gray truck. The curves and dips were more gradual along this stretch, so he was able to open the car up.
For the next few minutes, he gave himself entirely to his driving, concentrating on the car and propelling it as quickly as possible over the ribbon of road that was unwinding in front of him. Then he reached a straight stretch that extended for five miles. He looked for the truck and it wasn't ahead of him.
The road was empty.
This didn't make sense. There had been no side roads, and the truck couldn't be so far ahead that it was out of sight.
Yet it was out of sight.
Spangler slowed and pulled over to the side of the road. He didn't have to be Dick Tracy to figure this one out. If the truck wasn't ahead of him, and it wasn't, then he must have passed it. It must have turned off somewhere along the way and he'd been going too fast to notice any telltale signs of the road shoulder.
His first impulse was to retrace his route immediately and find the spot where the truck had turned off. He didn't want the driver to get away that easily, but he had to consider the girl. She might need emergency care. He turned on the instrument panel light and found she was fully conscious and staring at him. She seemed to be about twenty. In other clothes, he was sure, she would be very attractive.
"You feel okay?" he asked.
"Lousy. My head's splitting. What'd you do--run me over?" It wasn't an accusation. She was looking for information.
"No. Someone threw a bottle and you caught it over your left ear."
She reached up to touch the spot and winced. "Why did you stop? You were going like a bat, then pulled over."
He explained about the chase and how the truck must have pulled off the road.
"Well, let's go back and find it. I want to give those guys a piece of my mind!" she said.
Spangler examined her eyes. They looked all right. There didn't seem to be any indication of a concussion. Her skin coloring wasn't as pasty pale as it had been, either. She was a lot tougher than he expected a girl her size to be. There didn't seem to be any reason to go rushing off to a hospital, so they might as well try to track down the highway department truck.
He turned around and kept his speed at 40 mph. He turned on his headlights and drove in the center of the road as the truck had been doing. This way, the lights threw almost equal illumination on both sides of the highway.
"Look for tire tracks on the shoulder or crushed grass and underbrush," he told her. "I'll do the same on this side."
It was the girl who found the spot where the truck had turned off. "Over here!" she called, indicating a place where the foliage was especially heavy. Spangler pointed his headlights at it and could see where heavy tires had pulled across the shoulder. About ten feet from the road, a pair of 5--gallon drums were sitting, and the trail led between them. Once he knew where to look, it was easy to read. There was a path leading into the underbrush, marked by the two seemingly abandoned steel drums, and the truck had steered between them.
Spangler nosed the sports car between the steel drums and stopped. The trail was well-worn, the product of much traffic. Tire tracks led down a slope to the left. Between them, the tall grass was streaked with dirty oil and grease where it had wiped the undersides of passing vehicles. Clearly, this wasn't a one-time maneuver the truck driver had made to throw off pursuit. He might not even have realized he was being followed.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" the girl asked. "Let's see where it goes."
Spangler eased the car forward and began to follow the twists and turns of the hidden trail. Dense underbrush pressed in on both sides, and there were places where tree branches blocked the sky. The rays of the setting sun touched the treetops, but it was already dark along the trail, and the farther they went, the blacker it became.
The trail was leading downward. At times Spangler had to touch the brake pedal to slow the car's forward motion. He didn't know what to expect and wanted to approach whatever lay ahead at a controlled pace. The weight of the fertilizer on the trunk was a blessing. With the car's nose pointed down, the headlights would normally have given only a very limited view of the path ahead. As it was, because the front end was lifted slightly, the lights had greater range than they would have had otherwise.
The sports car came to a shallow stream and Spangler considered turning back. As the car inched across it, he could hear the sound of rocks grating against the frame and differential.
The little car didn't ride as high above the ground as the highway department truck; therefore, the hidden trail contained hazards that wouldn't concern the truck driver at all.
Spangler couldn't imagine what kind of project the highway department was engaged in so far from the road. After traveling a mile, he seemed no closer to the end of the trail than before. He would have turned around, but there was no place to do it. On one side there was a 30-foot drop and on the other a weed-covered embankment. Then, a short while later, the trail became even more steep, made a sharp twist to the left, and the sports car emerged at the edge of a small clearing.
Two tents had been set up 150 yards away, and a jeep painted highway-department gray was parked in front of one of them. The truck they had been following stood at the entrance to the other. A gasoline generator could be heard chugging in the distance, and flickering bare light bulbs hung from the tents, illuminating the area.
Half a dozen men were collected at the rear of the truck. The lights of the sports car swept over them just as Spangler brought it to a halt. The men turned toward the car, stood frozen for a second, then became very busy at the mouth of the tent. One man separated from the others and moved to the right with a long tube on his shoulder.
Spangler didn’t have to be told what that was. He'd seen a bazooka before. By the time the man had dropped to his knee and aimed the weapon, Spangler had shot the car forward and was leaning it into the tightest turn he'd ever attempted. One thing he knew--getting by a bazooka rocket wasn't habit forming. Once would be too much.
When he saw the flash at the rear of the launcher, Spangler stood on his brake pedal, hoping he was guessing right. He was. The gunner had been aiming ahead of the car, sending the rocket to the point where the car would have been if it had continued at the same speed. The rocket, a dull-black projectile, passed through the headlight glare and struck the trunk of a tall tree 30 yards away. There was a red and yellow flash and toothpick-sized splinters filled the air. The sports car shot out of the clearing just as the tree came crashing down to block the hidden trail.
There was the whine of bullets whipping past his open window, followed by the reports of rifles.
"They--they're trying to kill us!" the girl exclaimed.
Spangler knew the only thing she wanted to hear was a denial, so he didn't say anything. That's when the warning light flashed on the instrument panel and he knew he had no oil pressure. He remembered the grating sound as he had crossed the stream and figured he must have holed the oil pan. His oil had poured out on the trail and taken one of his options with it--the option to run. He stopped and killed his lights.
"What are you stopping for? They'll be after us, won't they?"
Spangler drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "Yes," he answered. "But we need more time." He reached into the map pocket on his door and pulled out a flashlight. Then he opened the door and stepped out.
"Where are you going?"
"To buy us some time," he said.
Spangler trotted back along the trail toward the clearing. He held hid hand over the flashlight's lens so he could control the beam by opening or closing his fingers. When he got close enough to the clearing to hear excited voices, he turned off the light.
He stood at the point where the trail dropped steeply before twisting to the left and dropping to the clearing. He could hear the men below him swearing and rattling a chain. He figured they had been cutting branches so they could attach a chain to the trunk of the fallen tree. Once they pulled it out of the way, they'd be pouring out of the clearing like garbage from an unplugged sewer.
Then what? He squatted down to listen and decide on his course of action.
Someone, obviously the leader of the group, was rebuking a man called Ritchie. "Ritchie, you're too much! You've been practicing with that bazooka for three weeks, an' the first time you have to use it, you miss by a mile."
"How wuz I t'know he'd stop? I did ever'thing just like the book said. I'd had a few drinks in town." There was a whine to his voice.
"That's another thing--you idiots were told to pick up supplies and lay off the booze. Instead, you came coasting in here smelling like distilleries. I don't know what you did to attract attention to yourselves an' get that sports car to follow you, but it's cost us the armored car. If we can't make people believe we're a highway department work crew, and stay out of sight before the robbery, there's no way we can expect to do it afterwards when half the cops in the country will be looking for us."
"Ain't there some way we can still pull it off?" one of them wanted to know.
"Only if we're lucky. If that sports car reaches the road, we can kiss the armored car robbery good-bye. But it was mighty low-slung, and the trail isn't easy to travel at night. If it gets hung up somewhere, or the driver misses a turn or piles it up some other way, we may be able to catch it."
The sounds of activity became more frantic. Spangler allowed his fingers to part a fraction of an inch and swept the area around him with a sliver of light. He located half a dozen boulders of various sizes and quickly collected the boulders in a pile at a point where the trail made it’s final sharp, twisting descent to the clearing.
Finally he heard the sound of the truck being moved into position, the rattle of the chain again, and the fallen tree was dragged aside. Spangler stooped, picked up the largest boulder, hugged it to his chest and stood up, then did a military press, hoisting it high over his head. As soon as the path was clear, the jeep nosed into the path and started up the steep incline.
Spangler stood high above it, well out of the glare of bouncing headlights. When there was no possibility of missing, he heaved the heavy stone through the windshield directly in front of the driver.
The jeep bucked crazily, then stalled with its front end half off the trail and its headlights pointing into the dense foliage. Someone howled in pain and panic, and Spangler dropped a pair of 50-pound boulders onto the canvas top, tearing it from its supports. The scream became a whimper and stopped abruptly. He followed these with two more slightly smaller rocks just to be sure he'd done all the damage he could, then ran slipping and sliding down the slope to the side of the disabled vehicle.
He yanked open the door and shined his light inside. The driver sat with the huge boulder in his lap. His head dangled to one side and blood dripped from his open mouth. The only other occupant sat beside the driver. He'd been holding a rifle between his legs with the stock on the floor. One of the 50-pound boulders had struck him between his hunched shoulder blades, driving him forward and imbedding the rifle barrel into the center of his chest. A pair of hand grenades hung from his belt.
Spangler transferred the grenades to his own belt and snatched the key from the ignition. The rifle was covered with gore and probably bent besides, so he left it where it was. He tossed the key into the thick foliage just as he heard the rumble of the truck. He knew the others had unhooked the tree and were coming to follow the jeep.
He turned and ran up the trail as fast as he could. He didn't use his light until he had turned the first bend and then he kept it shielded with his hand. By the time he got back to the sports car, he was breathing heavily. It had been an uphill climb all the way.
The girl was standing beside the car. He told her what he'd overhead and what he'd done. Then he said, "Give me a hand. We have to work fast."
He untied the rope that was securing the sacks of fertilizer to the trunk carrier. He handed the rope to the girl, telling her to unravel it and make one long length of twine from the individual strands. While she got busy with that, he tore a corner from each of the four plastic fertilizer sacks. Next he removed a five-gallon fuel oil container from the trunk and poured about a gallon of fuel oil into each sack.
"What're you doing?" the girl asked.
"Getting a surprise ready for those guys in the truck. I'm going to ruin in their day," he said, using the understatement he picked up in the Army.
He tossed the fuel oil container into the underbrush and brought out a couple of one-quart cans of oil that had been in the trunk. He set them beside one of the front tires while he crawled under the car. As he expected, there was a gash in the oil pan. He made a temporary repair by wedging a piece of his T-shirt into the opening and pounding it tightly in place with a screwdriver and a rock. Then he raised the hood and poured the oil into the filler opening.
"That's not as much as the engine needs," he told the girl, "so I'm going to have to drive slowly."
The fertilizer sacks were the next problem. Even if the rope had still been intact and strong enough to hold them, it would be at least an hour before the fuel oil was absorbed properly. And they couldn't be placed on their slides or their contents would pour out the openings he'd made.
He returned to the trunk and proceeded to clean it out. He threw away most of that afternoon's purchases and his spare tire along the trail. The only thing he retained was his tool chest and his new shovel. He set the sacks inside, positioning them so they couldn't fall over, and closed the lid.
He drove slowly, stopping often to crawl under the car and inspect the plug in the oil pan. It remained in place. When he got to the point where the trail had a steep drop on one side and a tall embankment on the other, he stopped again. He used the shovel to dig two holes, one in each tire track, and concealed them with twigs and brush.
Once the men got the jeep out of their way, he knew the truck would be coming. When it got this far, one or both of its front wheels would drop into the trenches. He figured it would take a lot more time and effort to free the truck than it had taken to set the trap and it would give him more time.
As it turned out, Spangler hadn't finished the holes any too soon. He'd no more than settled himself behind the wheel of the sports car again when he heard the rumble of the truck and saw the glow of its approaching headlights. He got away from there and didn't stop again until he reached the road.
Here he unloaded the fertilizer sacks, dropping two into each of the 50-gallon steel drums that marked the entrance to the hidden trail. He pulled the safety pin from one of the grenades, being careful to hold the release handle down while he did it, and straightened the pin with his teeth. Then he replaced the pin. The next time it was pulled, far less force would be needed to remove it.
He repeated the procedure with the second grenade, then attached the end of the twine to its pin and set it inside the nearest of the steel drums. He ran the twine to the other drum, fastened it to the pin of the remaining grenade, and walked back along the hidden trail playing out the length of twine. The made a half-turn around a small tree, crossed the trail and tied the end securely to another tree.
"Another trap?" the girl asked.
"Uh-huh. I've turned the fertilizer into a pretty powerful explosive, but it'll take a good jolt to set it off. When the truck comes it'll hit the twine, pulling the pins from the grenades, then keep right on coming. It'll be next to the drums when they blow."
They went back to the sports car and Spangler drove slowly away with the girl beside him.
"What about the police?" she asked.
"What about them?"
"Aren't you going to call them?"
"I don't need to police," he said.
She seemed to consider that for a moment. "No," she conceded. "I guess you don't." Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, "My name's Marie."

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Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine