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Show 22. Remember how peculiar that boy acted when we found him out there? And how wild she was here in the camper at first? They were seein' things all right!" "But Clarence! That burned place in the grass. You said yourself that . . ." "Well, I been thinking about that. There're at least a dozen ways kids could make a spot to look like that. Take a little charcoal starter fluid, for instance. Even lightning can tear up the ground and burn the vegetation. I've seen it myself. And he never found his camera," he added, "now did he?" "I guess you think he never had one." "Now you're talkin'! Never had a camera and never took pictures of the elk, either." "I don't know, Clarence. They looked like they'd had some terrible thing happen to them. Why would they tell us such a story and put on such a big act?" "That's the only part I can't figure out," Clarence admitted. Ruth looked away from her husband. For a long time she didn't say a word. Then, after inspecting the hands she held tightly clasped in her lap, she turned back to him. "They reminded me of Jim and Sally," she said. Clarence put his big hand on his wife's knee and pulled her closer to him on the seat. "I could see that." |