by Jerry eBooks
“What if you have to camp out overnight?”
“I’ve brought a tarp and a blanket. I know how to build a fire. I’ve camped out before.”
“Alone?”
“No. But what is there to be afraid of?”
She made it seem reasonable. He’d been in California long enough to know that many Western girls thought little of doing things that would terrify most city women. And yet he couldn’t believe that a businessman would ask his private secretary to take such a trip as this girl planned unless he was desperate.
“Who is your boss?” he asked. “His name is Fitz Jordan.”
JIM held himself rigid, trying not to show his excitement. He knew he’d succeeded in concealing his feelings from her, when she went right on. She didn’t suspect how much the information she had given him meant to him.
“If you know Los Angeles you’ve probably heard of him. He’s a well-known mining man.”
“I’ve heard the name,” Jim said.
“He’s a grand guy—the kind of man everybody likes.”
Jim knew that this was true. Fitz Jordan was a big man, and fine looking, with the kind of smile that made you like him. Jim had liked him. He’d liked Fitz Jordan so much that he’d been slow to suspect him.
The door into the bar opened. El Tigre lounged in and put a nickel in the juke box. He stood beside the machine, snapping his fingers in time to the tango the machine poured out. After a moment, he came toward Jim’s table. Jim now saw the marks of the prize fighter on him. His nose had been broken and he had old scars over both eyes.
El Tigre bowed to Hope Graham. “Will you dance?” he asked.
The girl looked at him in surprise.
Jim got up. All the hate he felt for Fitz Jordan was in him. It would be a pleasure to punch somebody’s face, and El Tigre had asked for it.
“You were going somewhere, were you not?” Jim said.
“You want to hear something?” El Tigre asked.
“The dying man’s last words?”
The Tiger leaned forward and his voice was soft. “I have a good memory, gringo.”
Something was happening at the street door. The little soldier was no longer slouching over his rifle. He stood at attention, his rifle rigid in front of him.
Colonel Ortega came in. He had changed from his uniform to crisp white linens, with a coco-straw hat from Cuba. His sad, intelligent face was turned toward Jim’s table, his eyes focused on El Tigre, and he made a slow alight gesture with his head. El Tigre went back into the bar.
Ortega sat down at a table. The waiter went running, Ortega smiled at Jim and then his chin lifted, an unmistakable command to join him. Jim got up and went across the room and sat down opposite him as a poker player sits down at a cutthroat game—without taking his eyes off those of the dealer.
Ortega ordered a vermouth for each of them.
“You have a way with you, Señor,” he said, when the waiter had gone. “You have the manner of an honest man and the manners of a gentleman.”
“Thank you, colonel. But you did not come here tonight to discuss either my manner or my manners.”
“But I did. I fancied this afternoon that I found in you something that belongs to Harkness, something I learned to admire when I was there. I am incurably sentimental. It is a failing in a chief of police, perhaps. But I suffer from it.”
“So?”
“I was not always happy at school in the States. I was a foreigner and it was often lonesome for me. But I see it now as the happy time of my life. I do not forget Harkness.”
Jim nodded.
“After you had gone this afternoon, my feeling overcame me. I had to look again at the Alumni Register. I found no mention of any Johnson in the service of the United States Treasury.”
“No? Well, I, Señor, have been careless. I have neglected to keep the alumni secretary informed of my activities.”
Colonel Ortega smiled, but his eyes were sad. “I knew you would have an answer, Señor. I am sorry to tell you it is not satisfying to me. You see, there is a James Howard listed in the Alumni Register as a member of the Treasury Department.”
“Yes, of course,” Jim said. “I’ve heard of him.”
“I’m sure you have, Señor,” Colonel Ortega said. “I have been examining his photograph in an old yearbook, Señor, do your old schoolmates call you Jim or Jimmy?”
“To my friends I am Jim.”
“Then, for the time being, at least, Jim.”
“And you, colonel?”
“Guillermo.” He gave it the full Mexican accent so it sounded like “Geel-yermo.” He smiled. “At Harkness, however, that was too difficult for the Yankees. They called me Bill.”
“Then Bill—for the time being, at least.”
“Let it be so,” Colonel Ortega said, “I am, as I have said, a sentimental man—or should I say a sensitive man? The two words have a different meaning, have they not?”
“You are both,” Jim said. “You are a man of feeling, who will never forget what he has loved. You are, moreover, a man of pride.”
“I am also a politico, and that is a word which does not translate well into English. A politico is not the same as a politician.”
“No,” Jim said. “It is not the same.”
“Very well, Jim. As a policeman and as a politico I must know why you—an important person in your Treasury Department—present me with the credentials of an underling—a mere detective.” Jim tried to think of something that would sound all right.
“To travel—it is a pleasure, Mexico is a beautiful land.”
“Mexico! This is not Mexico. This is Baja, a desert in the summer and worse in the winter, I stay here only because, if I am a good chief, I will go back to Mexico.” He sipped his vermouth. “Why don’t you tell me what you want, why you came here, Jim? I might be able to help you.”
Jim thought hard. He did not dare tell Colonel Ortega that he had come to find Fitz Jordan. Fitz was the kind of man who made himself agreeable wherever he went. He had a gift for making people like him. He had spent so much time in Baja that he would have many Mexican friends. The chances were that Colonel Ortega knew of him as a man of standing and would not believe he was a crook.
“I can’t do it, Bill,” Jim said. “I can’t tell you what my orders are.”
Colonel Ortega shrugged his shoulders. He took another sip of vermouth and looked at the ceiling.
“You have noticed this blond one who calls himself El Tigre.”
“I have observed him,” Jim said. “He is a maker of trouble, but he is also a distant cousin of mine. His father has influence. It is not in order that I throw him out. His father wishes him to remain here. I was on my way to tell him that he does not return to Mexico.”
“He has been celebrating his return.”
“I have been informed,” Colonel Ortega said. He looked sadly at Jim. “I hear he does not like you.”
“I have a hunch he doesn’t,” Jim said.
“He is a headache. So are you. You are traveling as someone you are not. I do not intend to report it. I prefer to do nothing official. But if you do not use your head, I may have to send El Tigre after you. Unofficially, of course. Thus one of my headaches will take care of the other.”
“You have a logical mind, colonel.”
“I am a policeman,” Colonel Ortega said. “It is the rule of my profession never to do anything directly that may be done indirectly. It is my responsibility to know everything and to seem to know nothing,” He paused and looked Jim in the eye. “What about the charming young woman with whom you are dining?”
“An old acquaintance—a chance meeting.”
“She is annoyed with me,” Colonel Ortega said. “She wishes to go south. She has papers for one of your compatriots—Fitz Jordan, She feels she must deliver them. Fitz Jordan has friends in Mexico, I do not wish to anger him. I told the lady that I would have two of my men deliver her papers for her. But she refused. What can I do? Fitz J
ordan should know better than to ask a girl to bring him messages in the south country. It is not country for a woman to travel alone.”
“I quite agree with you,” Jim Howard said.
Colonel Ortega finished his vermouth and paid the little waiter. “Then we understand each other,” he said.
“It is so.”
“Tomorrow is another day.”
“It is true.”
“Adios, Jim,” Colonel Ortega said. Jim Howard went back to his table and sat down opposite Hope Graham. “Well?” she said.
“The chief is a wiser man than you know. He has given me something to think about.”
“Really?”
“Why did you refuse his offer to send two of his men with your papers into the Sierra and deliver them to your boss?”
“Because the boss wants me to deliver them in person.”
“They are that kind of papers?”
“I imagine,” she said.
They drank their coffee in silence. He stole glances at her. He wondered how much she knew about Fitz Jordan. He couldn’t believe that Fitz Jordan had asked her to make the trip unless he was desperate. She was bringing him something that he had to have and that he did not dare try to get in any other way. She must know this. She must know a great deal more than she was telling. And yet he felt she was all right. He was going to take her with him because she knew where to find Jordan. He wondered what he would be doing if he hadn’t that excuse.
She finished her coffee. “When do we start?” she asked.
“Can you be ready in ten minutes?”
“I’m ready now.”
“In those clothes?”
“I have slacks in my car. I’ll change on the way.”
“Where is your car?”
“Half a block down the street, right behind your car.”
“Give me the key.”
She got the key out of her purse and Jim called the waiter and gave it to him and asked him to take care of the Señorita’s car.
“Sí, Señor,” the little waiter said, pocketing the bill Jim gave him. “It will be done.”
Jim Howard walked down the street with Hope Graham, and held the door of his car for her. He got her bags and the tarp and the blanket. He had some difficulty finding room for her things in the luggage compartment. He had a lot of stuff in there—two five-gallon cans of gas and the things he’d figured he’d need if he had to camp out. It took him five minutes to rearrange it. He got in behind the wheel and started the motor.
“You don’t know what you’re in for,” he said.
“No,” she said. “But I think you’re a decent guy. And if not, I have a gun.”
THE streets and the plaza were deserted; luck was with him. A gas station, its familiar American trademark looking strange with the name of the company in Spanish over it, stood beside a grocery store. But both were dark.
They rolled on through the town, toward the hotel that had been the scene of big gambling until Cárdenas stopped it. The road seemed to go straight to the hotel, looming dark and abandoned in the fog. But at the gate to the wide gardens, a track cut off to the right. A California Automobile Club sign said: SANTO TOMÁS, 30 MILES, CARMICHAEL’S RANCH, 110 MILES. Some vandal had peppered the sign with bird shot; rust, starting from the holes, was eating the sign away.
Jim swung down the hard-packed dirt road. The fog was breaking into mist. It would be clear for a moment, then a cloud would form and blow softly in front of them. Suddenly the air cleared, the stars came out and a dew began to fall, so heavy that he had to use the windshield wiper. Water streamed down the windshield as their bodies warmed the inside of the car and condensed the moisture out of the overburdened air. But through the open window the moon was brilliant on Todos Santos Bay.
“If you’ll stop here,” Hope Graham said, “I’ll change.”
He got the bag she asked for out of the luggage compartment and went back to his place at the wheel. She stood behind the car. In two minutes she asked him to put the bag back. She had changed to a slack suit, but she still held the wide-brimmed straw hat she’d been wearing.
“I can’t pack it without ruining it,” she said. “Will it go on the shelf behind the seat?”
It did.
Jim drove on. The road turned sharply. He was going twenty miles an hour when he hit a patch of clay that had been corduroyed by the wind. They both bounced so hard their heads hit the canvas top of the roadster. In trying to control the car, he stalled it.
Before he could start again, four soldiers appeared out of the dimness, their bayonets fixed on their rifles. They stared at him impassively, brown faces under big brown hats. The moonlight picked up spots of brass and silver on their uniforms.
The corporal said in Spanish, “It is not permitted to go south, Señor.”
“What?” Jim said, trying to bluff, “What did you say? I don’t speak Spanish.”
The corporal was not to be bluffed. “You are Señor ’Ovard,” he said in Spanish. “The chief said you might pretend not to understand Spanish. But you speak excellent Spanish, Señor. If you do not turn your car and go back north, I have orders to put a bullet in your gas tank.”
“I don’t get it, mister,” Jim said in English. “You want to see my papers? My name is Johnson.”
“It was foretold,” the corporal said, “that you might claim to speak no Spanish and that you carried the papers of Honson.”
Jim waited.
“Meestair ’Ovard,” the corporal said in what he tried to make English, “you go al norte, please. Viva los Estados Unidos.”
“You win,” Jim said. “May I be permitted to congratulate you, corporal, on your tact and your devotion to duty?” He reached in his pocket as though for cigarettes and took out his wallet. He displayed a five-dollar bill casually and smiled, and found his cigarettes. Each soldier accepted a cigarette, with grave thanks.
“Señor,” the corporal said, as he motioned his soldiers back, “I am sorry. I am a patriot. Also I do not defy Chief Ortega, my colonel. You will proceed back to Ensenada?”
Jim saw that the privates were too far away to hear. “Ten dollars?”
“Ten dollars buys for you two bullets in the gas tank, Señor.”
Jim gave up. He started the car and turned it around under the bright beady gaze of the soldiers and headed slowly back toward town. Once around the curve, he was in sight of the sea. The breakers were oily and long in the moonlight. If he knew weather, it was going to be a clear hot day tomorrow.
He turned abruptly into the hotel grounds. There might be a trail through. He found an old service road that went south. But he hadn’t gone far when he came to a high woven-wire fence. He got out to look at it in the light of the head lamps. It was an American fence, on heavy pipe posts set in concrete, and no doubt guaranteed for twenty years. He got back into the car and considered charging the fence in the hope of knocking it down.
“What are you going to do now, Meestair ’Ovard?” Hope Graham asked.
“I am thinking,” he said.
“Why don’t you think up your real name?”
“What difference does it make to you?”
“It would be so nice to know what to call you.”
“Call me Jim.”
“Okay, Jim. If you will let me drive, I think I can find a way out of this. I told you I had been to Ensenada before.”
Jim got out of the car and walked around it. She slid over behind the wheel and he took her place. She backed the car around and started toward the hotel. At the corner of the building she cut across what had been a lawn, dropped into first gear as she went through a neglected flower bed. She swung again at the next corner of the building, and there was Todos Santos Bay, shining in the moonlight, with the long oily seas rolling in all the way from Japan. They bounced over a terrace and struck the hard sand of the beach. She swung the car south, turned off the headlights and drove close to the water. Every fourth or fifth wave came higher than the rest, the cream
y crest of it running in on the beach, until the wheels of the car were inches deep in sea water. But the speedometer said twenty miles an hour. They were making time.
“The bay curves in,” she said. “We ought to find the road south two or three miles below where those soldiers stopped us.”
Jim had scarcely slept for two nights. He couldn’t hold his eyes open any longer. He shut them for a moment and was awakened by the violent skidding of the car and the sound of something brushing against it. “What’s the matter?” he asked. Hope Graham turned the headlights on. The car stood in a patch of tule, higher than the top.
“The brakes are wet,” she said. “I couldn’t stop.”
“Can you back out?”
She tried, feeding the gas slowly, letting the clutch in delicately. On the third try, the rear wheels caught. She made it back to the hard sand of the beach. Jim got his flashlight from the dash compartment and walked ahead. The ground where the tules grew was wet. Clouds of mosquitoes descended on him. He pushed on until he saw open water ten yards wide with more tule on the other side.
He went back to the car. “It’s no soap. There’s a creek ahead. Maybe when the tide goes out we can cross it.”
“I’ll turn around and go back,” she said. “We might find a place where we can cut up the bank.”
Jim walked along the upper edge of the beach, looking with his flash for some way to higher ground. But the bank was too steep.
“We’ll have to wait for daylight,” he said. “We might as well get some sleep.”
He got the tarps and blankets and spread them beside the car. Then he drew the short-barreled, heavy-caliber belly gun he carried in a holster inside the waistband of his trousers. It was the kind of revolver he preferred to any automatic pistol. The front sight had been rounded and the hammer spur ground off, so neither would catch on the holster in the act of drawing quickly. The front of the trigger guard had been cut away, so it could not interfere with the trigger finger. He cocked the gun now by pulling on the trigger until the hammer rose high enough to be caught by his thumb. He lowered the hammer gently and swung the cylinder out, in order to make sure that every chamber was loaded He looked UP to see that Hope Graham was watching him.