The Blight Way by Patrick F. McManus Page A

would keep the Scraggs from rustling his cattle.”
    â€œThat sure didn’t work, did it?” Dave said.
    â€œNo,” Tully said, “it didn’t. That’s why I later sent both the Scragg boys, Lister and Lem, off to prison. Rustling.”
    â€œPrison didn’t seem to do them much good,” Pap said.
    â€œI’ll be darned,” Buck said.
    â€œWhat?” Tully said.
    â€œYou went to college, Bo?”
    â€œDon’t hold it against him,” Pap said, grinning. “He didn’t learn nothing except how to paint pictures. They got a bunch of them up on the walls of the courthouse right now.”
    â€œWhy, I saw them,” Buck said. He seemed about ready to offer a criticism but then thought better of it. “These sure are good hash browns, Dave.”
    Tully glanced at Susan. He could tell there was at least one person at the table impressed he’d been to college.
    â€œI haven’t seen your pictures yet,” she said.
    â€œI have to warn you,” Tully said, “that display has caused a virtual explosion of art criticism in Blight County. Folks who previously came out of the hills only to vote against school-bond issues come to town at least twice a month now, just to voice their criticism of the sheriff’s pictures.”
    â€œHey,” Dave said, “I think Bo’s pictures show a lot of promise. The colors are real nice. If his art classes had just taught him something about perspective, they’d be fine.”
    â€œIs that why all your animals look like they’re about to fall out of their pastures?” Pap said.
    â€œBasically, that’s it,” said Dave. “No perspective.”

Chapter 10
    After lunch, Dave stayed at the café, and Susan and Buck headed out to the old mining road. Tully and Pap stopped by the gas station. Ed Grange, who owned and operated the station, was out cleaning the windshield of a car being gassed up at one of the two pumps. At one end of the station were shelves of groceries, along with coolers for milk, sodas and beer. A counter ran half the length of the station. In front of the counter was an open area furnished with tables, chairs and a wood stove. A young woman stood behind the counter at the cash register. She looked too young to be working at the station. Tully wondered why she wasn’t in school. She greeted them with a quick little smile when they came in. They pulled up chairs next to the fire.
    â€œThere’s something you don’t see much anymore,” Pap commented.
    â€œWhat’s that?” Tully said, thinking about the girl at the cash register.
    â€œA car getting its windshield cleaned at a gas station.”
    â€œThat’s because Blight County is thirty years back in time, and Famine is at least fifty years back.”
    â€œEd still charges a dollar and a half a gallon for gas,” Pap said. “I guess he’s not that far back in time.”
    â€œSo how much did gas cost when you were a kid, Pap?” Tully thought he should ask, just to be sociable, because he knew he was about to be told anyway.
    â€œBack in the forties, everything cost fifteen cents,” Pap said. “Didn’t make no difference what, a hamburger, a pound of bacon, a gallon of gas. I don’t know why fifteen cents was the magic number, but it was.”
    Tully expressed the appropriate amazement.
    Ed put the finishing touches on the windshield, then came into the station and shook hands. “Pap complaining about the price of gas?” he said.
    â€œNaw,” Tully said. “He was just telling me how nice it was back in the olden days, back when folks plugged an artery they got death instead of a bypass. The doctor got fifteen cents.”
    â€œDidn’t say nothing like that,” Pap said. “But in some ways it was better back then. What do you think, Ed?”
    Ed took off his hat and hung it on a peg near the stove. The few hairs