by J. T. Edson
‘Lil, lovable ole me,’ Smith replied. ‘Which Sarah allowed that I was a real he-coon in the front seat of a car afore we were married.’
‘She’s got poor judgment of hats, too,’ Chan sniffed. ‘Only don’t you tell her I said so. She cooks too good for me to rile her.’
‘Anyways,’ Smith drawled, ‘It’s not racial discrimination at all. The lieutenant’s smart. He knows you better than put a gal in with you. Charlie Chan, the first of the Oriental lovers. Comes to a point, you’re better off than I am. You’ve got me with you and I’ve only got you.’
‘Now there’s a depressing thought on a long waiting chore,’ Chan grinned.
‘Your hat’s on crooked,’ Smith observed.
‘So’re my stockings’ seams, but I’ll scream for a cop if you try to straighten them. I’m not a girl to let married men take advantage of m—!’ Abruptly Chan’s falsetto warning ended. His eyes had been watching the right wing mirror and he continued in a quick, alert voice. ‘Doug! I thought I saw something moving back among the trees.’
All the levity left the two detectives. Instinctively their right hands dropped to the waiting revolvers’ butts. With the possibility of the Owlhoot coming towards Chan’s side of the car, Smith did not touch the Burgess Radar-Lite hand-lantern which rested on the seat between them.
‘How about it?’ Smith whispered.
‘I don—’ Chan commenced, still staring at the reflected scene in the mirror. ‘Yes. It’s either the Owlhoot or some damned fool dressed like him. He’s pulling his gun and moving in.’
‘Don’t you-all get Sarah’s hat bust up!’ Smith cautioned and his left hand reached down to unlock the door. ‘Pass me the horn.’
One of the precautions Jack Tragg had insisted upon was that every decoy team kept its car’s windows closed and doors locked. That way, if the Owlhoot managed to sneak up unnoticed, he could not gain access to the vehicle. While that did not give the team full protection, it removed the element of surprise from the masked man.
Still watching the tall, slim figure of the Owlhoot striding towards them, Chan took the Voice Commander radio from the dashboard’s glove compartment and handed it to Smith.
‘Decoy Seventeen to Black Control!’ the white detective said.
‘Black Control by!’
‘He’s here!’
There was neither the time nor the need to say more. Black Control had a large scale map showing the locations of all the decoys and from it knew where to direct the assistance. Having given his brief message, Smith dropped the radio on to the seat and returned his left hand to the door handle, turning it ready for a rapid departure.
The Owlhoot had been late in heading for his hunting grounds that night. After hearing the repeated warnings about the dangers of going necking on the turn-offs, he had wondered if anybody would be foolish enough to do so. Certainly the local law would be increasing their patrols on all three areas, which would ruin any hope of the kind of extended fun he had had at the brunette’s expense. With that in mind, he had almost decided to stay at home or take in a movie. Then another thought had hit him. To do so would look like he had been scared off, or backed down from the threat of the peace officers.
Having achieved his ambition of being taken seriously, the Owlhoot had no desire to spoil his image. That morning he had met some of his pupils in a drugstore and overheard their impressed comments about his alter-ego. It was a most satisfying sensation and he refused to let anything lessen those hard-boiled kids’ respect for him.
Leaving his home shortly before 10 p.m., he had removed the garments which had hidden his old West clothing on arrival at the wood-covered draw where he hid his pickup truck. Then, he had mounted his trail motorcycle and ridden across to where he had committed his third series of crimes. As he had left the trail-bike under a conspicuous white oak tree, he decided that failing to find victims would not be so bad. If that happened, he could claim that he had inspired such fear and respect that he drove everybody from the woods.
Coming into sight of the Pontiac sedan, the Owlhoot had been both annoyed and pleased. Surely after last night folks would be scared to come necking on the turn-offs, he thought, indignantly. Then he felt the thrill of anticipation growing and started to move in on his ‘unsuspecting’ victims. Studying the car, he could make out little of its interior. Going by the shape of the hat, the woman sat on the side nearest to him. That was a pity. He could make the pretense of being distracted work better if she emerged after her male companion. Not that it mattered, nor did he need to circle the rear of the car to approach from the driver’s side. The soldier last night had shown him a way of provoking an attack.
Savoring the pleasures he would soon be enjoying, pistol-whipping the man and terrifying the woman, the Owlhoot gripped and tried to turn the door handle. It did not move. Even as the realization rang a warning for him, he saw the door on the other side fly open. Then he became aware of the bulky and masculine shape of the ‘woman’. Snarling out a curse, the Owlhoot flung himself away from the car. Aimed at the door, his Peacemaker bellowed loud and its muzzle-blast lit up the night.
Ready for action, Smith watched from the corner of his eye until he saw the Owlhoot close to Chan’s door.
‘Now!’ Smith hissed, thrusting open his own door and diving through it.
Working in smooth coordination with his partner, Chan flopped sideways to the left. Ignoring the lantern and radio gouging into his body, he flattened himself as low as he could upon the seat. Nor did he move an instant too soon. He heard the Colt’s deep bellow and impact of lead as its bullet punched through the safety glass of the window. With a feeling of relief, he knew the bullet had passed over him and was sure to have missed his partner. Wasting no time on self-congratulation, Chan snatched the Radar-Lite from beneath him and wriggled rapidly through the open door.
Smith had landed crouching so as to keep the bulk of the car between himself and the Owlhoot. Hearing the deep bark of the shot, he moved towards the front of the Pontiac still scrunched up and keeping low. Then the sound of rapidly-departing feet reached his ears. Straightening up until he could line his Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver across the car’s hood, he aimed at the fleeing figure.
‘Halt in the name of the law!’ Smith challenged formally.
While his partner took up a position to give the Owlhoot a chance to surrender, Chan had left the sedan. With the Burgess lantern in his left hand and his three-and-a-half-inch barreled Smith & Wesson Model 27 revolver in the right, he headed for the rear of the vehicle. Rising, he switched on the lantern and started to swing its powerful sealed beam towards the figure in the trees. Before Chan could focus on him, the Owlhoot skidded to a halt, turned and cut loose with another shot. Chan heard a startled exclamation from his partner and, from the corner of his eye, saw Smith jerk and stagger backwards. Throwing up his .357 Magnum hand-gun, Chan took a fast sight and fired. Even as he pressed the trigger and the hammer rose then fell, the Chinese detective’s shooting instincts told him that he had missed.
Not by much!
For the first time in his life the Owlhoot heard the eerie ‘splat!’ of a close-passing bullet. Panic stabbed into him as he realized what had caused the sudden, vicious sound. Twirling around, he flung himself into a racing stride, going as fast as his legs would carry him towards the place where he had left his trail-bike.
‘Doug I—’ Chan snapped, clicking off the light and turning to the left.
‘He only nicked me I’ Smith answered, kneeling on the track and holding his right shoulder with his left hand. ‘I’m all right. Get after him. I’ll hit the radio.’
Throwing a glance at his partner, Chan growled something in Cantonese. Then he sprang from behind the sedan and gave chase. Like every peace officer in Rockabye County, Chan kept himself in excellent physical condition. However his bulky, powerful frame did not lend itself to foot-races. Especially through woodland in the weak light of the half moon. So he could not close the dista
nce separating him from the Owlhoot. Nor, despite it having a beam capable of shining for half a mile, did he make use of the Radar-Lite lantern. With the Owlhoot weaving among the trees, he offered too poor a target for snap-shooting and the lantern’s light would present him with an aiming mark while the detective halted to take the careful aim necessary to hope to hit him.
Turning to make a fight did not enter the Owlhoot’s head.
From what he had seen and heard, the occupants of the Pontiac were peace officers. Which meant there must be more of them on the turn-offs. Sheriff Tragg and Chief of Police Hagen would not put out a single decoy in the hope that the Owlhoot selected it for his next target. Probably the tracks and trails were swarming with similar decoys. Called in by radio, they would soon be on his trail. His only hope lay in reaching the trail-bike, getting through the circle of officers and to his truck. So he sped through the trees, hearing the crashing that told at least one man followed him. At last he reached the white oak. With fumbling hands and feet, he managed to holster the Colt, then mount the trail-bike ready to escape.
When the growl of the trail motorcycle’s engine reached his ears, Chan cursed again in Cantonese and lengthened his stride. From both ends of the track, the sound of sirens shattered the silence of the night. Although one of them was close by, Chan doubted if its crew could arrive in time to take a hand. Nor could the rolling stake-out cars travel at any speed through the woods once they left the track. Unless he took some definite action, they might still lose the Owlhoot.
Even as the thought came to Chan, his forward foot sank into an unnoticed hole and was caught beneath a sturdy tree root. Unable to stop himself, he pitched forward and pain knifed into his ankle. Still spluttering oaths, including a variety in English, he sprawled to the ground. Instinct and training caused him to hold up the revolver and lantern. Winded for a few seconds, he recovered in time to hear the trail-bike moving off.
Figuring that the Owlhoot would be unlikely to stop and make a fight of it, and willing to take his chance if the other did, Chan turned the Radar-Lite’s switch. With the lantern held at arm’s length away, he raked its powerful beam in the direction of the engine’s sound. Fitted with a new battery before being issued to the decoy team, the lantern threw out a cone of light which fully justified its manufacturer’s claims. After a moment, Chan saw the Owlhoot ascending a slope on the trail-bike. Extending the Smith 8c Wesson before him, the detective thumb-cocked and aimed it. He knew that he could not waste time. So, trying to allow for the other’s forward and upward movement, he squeezed the trigger—to make the luckiest shot of his life.
Although the bullet missed the Owlhoot, it struck his means of transport. A keen combat-shot, Chan used cartridges with flat-faced, truncated cone-shaped heads of the kind designed by hand-gun expert Elmer Keith. Leaving the short barrel at 1,220 feet-per-second, the flying lead spiked through tire’s tread and inner tube to impact against the rim of the wheel with a force that buckled it out of shape.
Caught in the beam of light, the Owlhoot had just decided to swerve when he felt a savage jolt at the rear of the bike. Then it swung violently, tilting over and sliding from under him. Thrown from the saddle, he passed into the darkness and rolled to a halt against the trunk of a tree. He rose fast, fear spurring him into motion, and moved to put the tree between himself and the detective as the light started to move his way. In the distance one of the sirens died off and voices shouted to the accompaniment of slamming car doors. Already the first of the peace officers’ reinforcements had arrived by the Pontiac sedan. He must get away before they came to join the man who had wrecked the trail-bike.
Leaving the shelter of the tree, the Owlhoot began a fast swerving dash up the slope. The beam swung back, picking him out as he reached the top. Expecting to feel the sickening impact of lead against his flesh at any moment, he plunged on into the welcome blackness beyond the rim.
Holding his fire, Chan tried to rise and follow. Agony from his ankle caused him to sink down again. There was no hope of him following the fleeing Owlhoot, so he gave his attention to guiding assistance his way. Flicking off the Radar-Lite’s beam, he stood the lantern on the ground and threw another switch. Instantly the brilliant red safety-flasher began to operate, sending its glow out in regular fiery glares.
Guided by the flashing red light, help came fast. Dashing up with their assault weapons held ready for use, Deputies Rafferty and Chu skidded to a halt. Concern showed on their faces at the sight of Chan laying on the ground.
‘Did he get you, Charlie?’ Chu inquired.
‘Naw!’ the detective replied. ‘I sprained my ankle that’s all. Damn it, Charlie Chan’s script-writers never put any blasted great tree roots for him to fall over!’
‘You should try hiring them,’ Rafferty suggested. ‘Which way did he go?’
‘Over the rim,’ Chan answered. ‘Watch him. He’s only used two bullets.’
Tour left then,’ Rafferty growled, hefting the Thompson and glancing at its fifty-shot drum magazine. ‘We’ve got him out-numbered, Tommy.’
‘Sure have,’ Chu agreed, for his M.1 carbine’s magazine held fifteen .30 caliber bullets. ‘Will you be all right if we get after him, Charlie?’
‘Get ahead,’ Chan offered.
‘Keep the flasher going and your gun ready,’ Rafferty advised as his partner started to move up the slope. ‘The last thing we want is for that bastard to lay hands on a hostage.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Chan promised, then nodded to where flashlight beams knifed through the trees. ‘There’s help coming.’ Seeing six more peace officers approaching, Rafferty and Chu advanced up the slope. The number of men available came as no surprise to Chan. Four of them had been on decoy duty at different points along the track, the other two being deputies from the Gusher City Sheriff’s Office who had been riding in another rolling stake-out vehicle. On learning the nature of Chan’s injury, one of the six stayed with him while the remainder followed Rafferty and Chu. The reinforcements carried a variety of arms, two Burgess Radar-Lites and a Voice Commander radio.
‘Come on, amigo,’ drawled the big, burly white man who had remained. He was one of the deputies who had volunteered to come along from Presidio County and, not knowing the terrain as well as the local officers, could best be spared to help the injured detective. Holding out his hand, he went on, ‘Let’s get you back to your car.’
‘How’s my partner?’ Chan inquired as the deputy helped him to stand up.
‘Doing right well, last I saw of him,’ grinned the Presidio peace officer. ‘Lean on me and keep your weight off that ankle.’ Hobbling slowly back through the trees, Chan told the deputy about his bad luck in the matter of a decoy partner and the reason he attributed to it. Talking kept his mind off the throbbing ache in his injured ankle, but he wondered why the man from Presidio found his words so amusing. Chan soon found out the reason.
Coming into sight of the Pontiac sedan, the Chinese detective stopped and stared. He could see what had been amusing the Presidio County deputy.
‘It’s racial discrimination, that’s what it is!’ Chan wailed.
Smith sat comfortably on the front bumper of the Pontiac, his bullet-grazed shoulder already bandaged, with two members of the Bureau of Women Officers helping him to don his shirt and jacket.
Seventeen
If the Owlhoot had found a hiding-place, he might have evaded the cordon of peace officers combing the woods for him. Instead he kept moving. So efficient was Jack Tragg’s disposition of man-power, that the masked man had found himself cut off from his pickup truck and driven southwards away from the city. Every way he turned, the Owlhoot saw the powerful beams of the peace officers’ lights. Overhead a helicopter’s crew scoured the woodland and relayed messages or signals from the ground.
Suddenly the Owlhoot found himself on a narrow, newly-cut track that ended on the edge of a large clearing. There could be no turning back, for his first group of pursuers fanned out behind him at a
distance of about four hundred yards and others spread in a decreasing circle all around him. Even as uncertainty tore at the Owlhoot, he saw a light ahead. Not the searching, probing beams of the peace officers’ lanterns but the steady glow that must come from a window. That meant a house, people, and, so far away from Gusher City, some form of transport. If he could reach the building, acquire a car, he might be able to crash through the searching lawmen and reach safety.
With that thought in mind, the Owlhoot started to move across the open ground. He went at a fast jog-trot, wondering how soon he would hear shouts or be pin-pointed in the beams of his pursuers’ lights. What he failed to take into consideration was that the peace officers on his trail could not travel at an equal pace to his own. So he covered the half a mile to the source of the light before Rafferty and Chu’s party reached the edge of the clearing.
While approaching the square glow that might mean safety, the Owlhoot studied it. As he had guessed, it came from the window of what appeared to be a one-story hunting cabin. The building was apparently under construction and only the one window showed a light. What was worse from his point of view, there did not appear to be a vehicle of any kind around the structure. Music sounded from inside the illuminated room and the Owlhoot moved cautiously towards the window. He peeped inside and let out a low hiss of excitement as he recognized the man, woman and two girls gathered at the fireplace. There before him was the answer to his problem. Looking back, he saw lights at the edge of the clearing. Then he went to the cabin’s door and knocked on it.
‘What do you reckon, Tommy?’ Rafferty inquired as the Radar-Lites probed across the clearing.
‘I’ll swear he hasn’t broken back through our line,’ Chu answered. ‘And we—Somebody just went into a door out there, Pat.’
Having seen the oblong of light develop and disappear near to the window’s square glow, Rafferty agreed with his partner’s summation of the situation.