“I hate snakes,” someone muttered.

“Ma’am, if our prisoner is in there, he and your snake may have already met,” Inman warned.

Tansy moaned. “I don’t want anything to happen to Larry. Hurry up,” she said, and darted into the house with a bevy of searchers behind her, as the others stood guard outside the cellar door.

The house was tiny and didn’t take long to clear.

“No one here, sir,” they said.

“This here door goes down to my cellar, but I always keep it locked from this side,” Tansy said as she turned the lock, but when she started to go first, Inman stopped her.

“No, ma’am. If he’s there, it won’t be safe,” he said.

“Oh my lord, I can’t believe all this is happening,” she said. “Yes, well…just don’t hurt Larry.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be careful.”

“You’ll need this,” she said, and handed them her flashlight. The same one she’d retrieved from the cellar after she’d heard the prisoner running off. She guessed it was Larry that had sent him running, and as it turned out for her, his absence was a good thing.

“There’s no light down there?” someone asked.

“I don’t have lights anywhere here except lamps,” Tansy said.

They began breaking out flashlights. Nobody wanted to meet Larry in the dark. They filed down the stairs with Tansy right behind them.

“Oh hell! There’s Larry,” someone said, and someone else stumbled over an old three-legged milking stool in a panic to put some distance between him and the snake.

Tansy went straight to the snake coiled up on a shelf. “Now, Larry, no fussing at all the racket, okay? You’re safe,” she cooed, stroking his shiny skin.

“What the hell is that smell?” Detective Inman asked.

“Green pelts. I trap and sell. They aren’t all cured up yet.”

“Green as in fresh skinned?” he asked.

“Yep. Wanna see?”

“No, ma’am.”

Then Tansy started looking around her cellar, playing the part that would keep her out of trouble for harboring a criminal.

“Oh my stars! You were right! Someone was in my cellar. All my pelts are on this table, and they used to be on that cot over there.”

“You didn’t hear anything?” they asked.

“No. Maybe he was already gone before I got back from my patch.”

“Your patch of what?” the officer asked, picturing marijuana in his mind.

“’Sang. I got me a ginseng patch. It’s another way I keep myself fed. I trade pelts and ’sang for supplies. Don’t have no use for money up here.”

One of the officers radioed to the men above. “All clear down here. See if you can pick up a trail from the cellar back into the woods.”

“Ten-four.”

Inman walked out of the cellar into the yard just as the trackers were getting ready to move.

“Officer, when you followed the tracks up to here, whose tracks were laid down first? Hoover’s or the woman’s?” he asked.

“Oh, his for sure, Sarge. Her smaller footprint was on top of his.”