Free Rocky Mountain Justice (The Legend of Camel's Hump) by Jeff Noonan Page B

You’ve been wonderful the past few days.” She just smiled and snuggled closer. After a few minutes, Jerry started the old grey car again and they headed for Otto’s Grocery Store and its soda fountain.
    In the meantime, Ray had gone into the storage shed to rearrange the bags of chicken feed and spruce up the little shack. He had been working for almost an hour when he heard the deep throaty rumble of a high-powered car coming toward him. He looked out through a crack in the shed wall and saw the sheriff’s car coming up the road.
    The teenager left the shed and stood watching as the big black car rumbled up the road. Standing beside the shed, behind the cottonwood trees, he was invisible to anyone on the main road. He waited to watch the sheriff go by, wondering what he was doing so far from his usual route through the area.
    But Sheriff Montgomery didn’t pass by. Instead, he stopped his car on the road in front of the burned-out hulk that had been the Moore’s home. Seeing this, Ray hunkered down and hid behind a chokecherry bush.
    The sheriff got out of his car and stretched, his gaze covering the area as if to make sure he was alone. Satisfied, he reached in the car and came out with a balled up piece of blue cloth that he jammed into his back pocket. Then he opened the trunk lid and pulled out a gallon can, of the type that typically held kerosene or gasoline. This he tossed into the ditch on the far side of the road. Then he reached back into the trunk and brought out a large camera with a flash attachment mounted on it.
    With the camera, he took several pictures of the can in the ditch before putting on a pair of gloves and picking the can up and carefully placing it back in the trunk.
    Ray could see the sheriff clearly although he was over a hundred feet away. “ What on earth is he doing?”
    The sheriff walked toward the bare spot where the house had been, then stopped beside one of the Aunt Hilda’s remaining lilac bushes. This one had been smashed by the fire trucks into a big tangle of leafy, broken, sticks. Nearby, other lilac bushes were still standing. Stopping beside the crushed bush, he took another careful look around. Seeing nothing unusual, he pulled the blue cloth out of his pocket, rubbed it in the dirt and began carefully stuffing it into an opening between the broken lilac branches.
    Ray suddenly recognized the rag and whispered a startled “Damn!” under his breath. “ That’s my old shirt, the one that I loaned Jerry to go to Big River the other day! ”
    When he had the shirt placed exactly the way he wanted it, the sheriff stepped back and picked up the camera. He took a series of pictures of the shirt from different angles, then carefully picked it up and placed it in a white paper bag that he pulled out of his jacket pocket. With the bag and his camera in hand, he went back to his car and got in. Ray could see him sitting there, writing something on the paper bag. When he was done writing, he started the big car and turned it back toward town. Soon he was just a dust cloud, dwindling in the distance.
    Ray slowly stood up and moved out of the trees. “W hat was that all about?” He walked over to look at the broken Lilac bush. Then he realized that this could be important and he turned toward town and started running. He needed to talk to Jerry!

CHAPTER NINE:
    Otto’s Soda Fountain
    O tto Schweitzer was a huge middle-aged man who had trained as a butcher in his native Germany before immigrating to the united States. He had worked his way west until he found the village of Dublin. He said it reminded him of his little home town in the German Alps. He had left Germany during the difficult years that preceded World War Two; the years when Hitler was “purifying” the country. Otto didn’t speak of it often, but when he did, it was with a tremendous sadness.
    He would tell his friends that he just didn’t understand how normal people could become so evil; so unable to see the