Lotho Sackville-Baggins Is Missing by Kathryn Ramage

Merry and Pippin's search for Lad Whitfoot led them around Hobbiton and Bywater, but their first efforts were fruitless. Since it was market day, few people were at home to talk to them, and the friends of Lad they did speak to had not seen him.

"For all we know," Pippin concluded dispiritedly after they had knocked on the doors of a dozen smials and cottages, "Frodo's wrong and Lad isn't here. Perhaps he rides all the way to Michel Delving every night, and back again in the morning."

"No, he said he was here..." Merry's equally downcast expression suddenly brightened as he recalled what Lad had said that first night at the Green Dragon. "He said he was here to look at ponies! What places hereabouts would have ponies to sell?

Thereafter, they focused their inquiries on the local farriers and stables. It was at the stable where Dora Baggins' household kept their ponies that they found an answer: the groomsman proudly showed them a shaggy black-and-white pony that had been delivered for Mr. Milo that morning from the Gammidges' farm, which lay less than a mile outside Hobbiton.

It was midday by the time they reached the farm, but their search ended there. They were just in time, for Farmer Gammidge told them Lad had been staying at the farm for the past two weeks, but was leaving that very day. In another hour, they would have missed him. The farmer showed them to Lad's room, where he was packing his bag.

Lad was surprised to see them. "Pip, Merry, hello. What are you doing here?

"We've just seen Milo's new pony," said Merry, beginning the conversation on comfortable terms; he didn't want to put Lad on his guard too early so that he refused to talk to them. "You've made a good choice, Lad. It looks like a real runner."

"Oh, he can run all right!" Lad agreed with enthusiasm, for this was the one subject on which he could speak with authority. "I've seen him take the fields here at the farm fast as a rabbit with a pack of hounds at his heels--he'd be wasted pulling a farmer's cart. I knew he was just what Milo was looking for. Are you looking for a pony, Merry? I didn't know you were interested in the races."

"I like to place a wager now and again, same as anybody," Merry answered, "but I wasn't thinking of getting a pony to race myself. We were surprised to hear that Milo had actually bought one--weren't we, Pip?"

Pippin nodded in agreement, although he wasn't surprised; it was, after all, exactly what both Lad and Milo had told them Milo was planning to do. Lad said as much himself.

"Yes, but we'd heard the Burrowses were having money troubles," Merry said. "Can he afford such an extravagance?"

"We've gone in halves on it," Lad explained. "Well, more like I've leant Milo his half of the money to buy the pony, and he's promised to pay me back from his winnings. He didn't have much luck last season, but he's got some high hopes on this one. I don't mind lending him. Milo's been my friend for years, and we're almost kin. You see, I'm-" the young hobbit blushed and ducked his head.

"Going to marry Angelica," Merry finished for him.

"It's all right, Lad. We know all about it," said Pippin. "We were visiting the Old Place yesterday."

"And heard Miss Baggins tell 'Gelica she should pick somebody else, I'll be bound," Lad said glumly. "Milo's the only one of 'Gelica's family that likes me. He passes my messages on to her, and brings hers back to me here... or at the Dragon. Now the pony's been paid for and sent to Milo, I don't have an excuse to stay around any longer. I'll have to be off home." He gestured at the packed bag on the bed. "Well, as long as you're here, why don't you come have lunch with me? Mrs. Gammidge sets a good table. I'm sorry I won't have time to stop by the Dragon before I go. You could see me off properly with one last ale."

Mrs. Gammidge was out at the market, like every farmer's wife in the Bywater area, but she had left lunch in the farmhouse kitchen for her husband and guest: bread, cheese, pickles, the leftovers of last night's mutton-and-potato pie, and mugs of the best house-brewed beer, which all three young hobbits agreed was at least as good as any they could get at the Green Dragon, so Lad was sent off respectably.

"The first races at Michel Delving are only a few days away," Lad said over the meal. Farmer Gammidge had finished in his lunch and gone outside to smoke, leaving the trio alone to discuss their 'gentlefolk's business.' "Milo was hoping to go with me to start the season, but it looks like he'll have to stay on here awhile. He can't leave his family in the middle of this trouble about Lotho."

"You've no idea where he's gone, Lad?" asked Pippin.

"Lotho?" Lad gave the matter some thought as he munched on a piece of cheese, then shook his head.

"We thought you might know."

As Lad stared at Pippin, the points of his ears began to turn pink. "Why? What d'you think I have to do with it?"

"We didn't come to talk about ponies, Lad," Merry finally admitted. "There's something else we wanted to ask you about: your fight with Pimple."

Lad sat silent and shrank into his chair. Then, he asked timidly, "Did Milo tell you?"

"No, actually, we have other sources of information," Pippin said with a note of mystery.

"I expect a dozen people saw us at the Dragon," said Lad. "The shirriff even asked me about it. I had to answer him, but Milo said I shouldn't go around talking to anyone else 'til we found out where Lotho was. He said it looked too bad for me."

"Was Milo there?" Merry asked him.

"No, he came by afterwards. He was looking for Lotho himself, as a matter of fact. I told him what'd happened. I told Angelica a bit too, but not as much. She only knows that I quarreled with Lotho over her."

"Did you?" Pippin inquired eagerly.

"Yes, but not the way you think, or the way I let 'Gelica think," Lad admitted.

"Then what did happen?" Merry pursued.

"Well..." Lad looked from one to the other. "Pimple's mother's been pushing him to marry Angelica. Did you hear about that?" When the two nodded, he added, "I wasn't worried for Angelica--as if she'd look at a shriveled-up little stick like Lotho Sackville-Baggins!--but I didn't know how Lotho felt about her. I didn't hear about this Miss Daisy 'til Milo told you. Anyway, I was there Trewsday night, sitting and waiting for Milo, when Lotho came to my table. He asked after my father, said he was thinking of running for Mayor himself."

The other two hobbits exchanged looks of surprise. Lotho run for Mayor?

"He said he thought he could do a better job of running things. I didn't know what to make of it," said Lad, "and I wasn't as friendly with him as I might've been. Lotho must've guessed why, for he laughed and said, 'Don't fret, Laddie. You're quite safe as far as Miss Angelica Baggins is concerned. I don't have any designs on her'. He said it in such a way that I couldn't take any comfort from it. It was nasty-like, as if he thought she wasn't good enough for him. 'Gelica! The prettiest girl in the Shire!" Lad's round, good-natured face was red in indignation on his beloved's behalf. "So I said to him, meaning to serve him out for 'Gelica's sake, 'Well, I'm sure she'll be glad to hear that! What would she want with a Pimple like you!'"

"And that's when the fight started?" Pippin asked.

Lad nodded. "You'd've thought I'd slapped him, or thrown my ale in his face, instead of calling him a name half of Hobbiton calls him by. He ought to be used to it by now. His face went as purple as a beetroot, and I thought he would throttle me if he could get his hands 'round my neck. He might've too, if some of the farm lads from hereabouts hadn't jumped in and pulled him off."




"Well, that's one question of Frodo's answered," Merry said after he and Pippin had seen Lad off from the Gammidges' farm and were walking back into town. "There's no reason to suppose it didn't happen just as Lad said it did."

"No." Then Pippin's eyes brightened mischievously. "But what if we look at it as Sam said we should, and assume Lad's not telling all the truth? The fight in the pub happened just as he said--there's a dozen witnesses to that. But what if Lad ran into Pimple again afterwards, on that same Trewsday night?"

Merry looked interested. "You mean, Pimple might've been waiting for him outside the Dragon to carry on their fight?"

"Why not? And think of how it would go: Lad was caught by surprise when Pimple came at him the first time, but if he was in a position to defend himself, he'd only have to give Lotho a good knock on the head to put a stop to him. Or maybe when he saw Pimple, he decided to pay him back for insulting Jelly?"

"Yes, I can see that," Merry agreed. "In a fair fight, scrawny little Pimple would be no match for a strapping young hobbit like our Lad. Lad could've killed him with a single well-aimed blow, not even meaning to do harm."

"And then he got frightened and hid the body?" suggested Pippin.

"And Lotho's been lying under some brambles in a ditch all this time?" Merry shook his head. "No, surely someone would've found him by now."

"What about in a pond then, under the lily pads? Or in the cellars of the Dragon under the empty kegs?"

As they met each other's eyes, both hobbits laughed. It was all nonsense, and they knew it. While it was just conceivable that Lad might have struck Lotho down by accident, he could never have hidden the body in a panic so successfully that no one had found it a week later, and then put on a calm face afterwards. Not the Lad Whitfoot they knew. He couldn't hide anything: If he were guilty of doing harm, it would show so clearly in his face that all the Shire would see it.

"Do you think there's anything in this Pimple business, Merry?" Pippin asked once they had stopped laughing. "Truly? Or are we only poking in where we don't belong?"

"I don't know," Merry admitted. "Frodo seems to think there's something going on. Why else would he want us to keep asking questions? We'll go on investigating as long as he wants us to."

As they returned to Hobbiton, they saw that a crowd of people had gathered on the village green in front of the post office and the hut that served as a sherriff's station, and were babbling excitedly. Merry and Pippin went forward quickly to find out what was going on.
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