The cabin wasn’t telling tales either. Except for the moved table and chairs, it was a pretty barren cabin. The stone fireplace showed charred embers and grey-black soot but obviously hadn’t been used in days. There were two plain windows, one on either side of the cabin. There were no other furnishings except a Union Pacific Railroad calendar. There was a bedroll of some kind before the fireplace. An Indian blanket hung over one of the chairs but I wouldn’t know it from a tourist souvenir. I looked at the body again. I didn’t want to but I touched it. Colder than an ice house in spite of the summer heat and the closeness of the cabin. The blood bath had taken place hours ago. Maybe, yesterday.
But it was something a guy who liked frying girls in the sun would get a kick out of. There were no signs of the classic “struggle.”
I didn’t have to be a Sherlock to know the hanging corpse belonged to somebody very close to Brandy. Her father, maybe. An uncle, probably. Which reminded me I’d better get back to her. She might go off half-cocked. I went back outside. The dog stayed where he was, looking up at the corpse.
The day had already drawn more than its share of rabbits out of the hat but it wasn’t through with me yet.
Brandy had snapped her cap. Or her feathers, if she ever wore any.
I was coming through the doorway of the cabin with the Winchester in the crook of one arm when she tripped me from behind. She must have been waiting and ready just opposite the entrance.
She shoved me with one flat palm while her tiny feet hooked my ankles. My first instinct was the natural one. Both hands shot forward to meet the ground that was rushing up. She jerked the Winchester from the rear, stock first, as easily as pulling a loose straw from an old broom. I stumbled headlong, caught myself and whirled, cursing. She was ready for that too. She jabbed the barrel of the Winchester into my stomach so hard I doubled up like an accordion. She followed through as neatly as a Marine bayonet instructor. Her hands reversed like brown lightning and the rifle stock caught me on the side of the head above the ear. I went down to one knee, tears spring to my eyes, my hand refusing to go for my .45 butt because she wasn’t the enemy. Just a half-crazed savage who’s just been put through the mangle. She could have shot me three times already but she hadn’t. I comforted myself with that notion from a reclining position while the hornets of sudden pain chased each other around in my head.
Through half-lidded eyes, I watched her. I had a hard time recognizing the worn-out, half-dead young maiden of a few hours ago.
She’d forgotten me already and raced around the cabin out of sight. Before I could clear my head to do something constructive about her, she came running back, Winchester in one hand, a big kerosene can in the other. I could smell it as well as see it sloshing from the spout, straining her strong, brown legs. I knew. what she was going to do. I tried to stop her but she wouldn’t let me. She snarled something animal at me and forced me away from the cabin with the Winchester. I yelled at her and told her she was doing something stupid. I tried to convince her she was making it twice as hard to find a killer. But how do you convince an Indian girl of the niceties of police procedure in homicides? I couldn’t and I didn’t.
I stood by helplessly as she splashed the contents of the kerosene can somewhere in the cabin. Probably over the body too. I never asked her. She had insanity and fixed purpose on her side. I couldn’t shoot her to stop her, either.
She didn’t reappear from inside the cabin until I could see the first red flickers of flame through the window. I was just beginning to wonder about the dog when the Winchester thundered within the cramped confines of the cabin. He hadn’t even had time to yelp. Somehow the notion made my blood run cold. The red man and his code. Wasn’t there something better?
The honorable funeral pyre got going in a hurry. Brandy joined me where I was, a good fifty feet from the cabin. She kept her distance, still using the Winchester to divide us physically as well as socially. She could have been right at that. Maybe fire can cleanse an outraged body. But it’s pretty convenient for a killer.
The cabin didn’t take long to go. Smoke began a dark ugly coil through the windows. Pretty soon the roof had caught hold. Flames licked hungrily through the old wood. There was a strong piney smell like you get in forests on picnics. Suddenly Brandy put the rifle on the ground, ignoring me completely. It was too late to do anything about the cabin. I watched her, fascinated, because she was unearthly. Fascinated, because my education had begun on New York’s East Side and hadn’t gone much further.
In the dying daylight, she swept my jacket from her shoulders and scaled my fedora as far away as it could possibly sail. She stood motionless for a full minute, head down, hands crossed over her bared breasts. Her long black hair hung like a shroud down her bruised brown back. She began to sing — chant is more like it. Her voice rose in what must have been pure Indian tongue. Then she began to rock. Primly then fully, until the rocking gave way to freer play of her feet and figure. She swayed and began to dance around in tiny, intimate circles that gradually widened until they included what must have been her whole idea for the dance in the first place. Against the backdrop of the blazing cabin, her tiny, superb figure danced a dance that anybody would have payed $8.80 to see.
She should have included us in her prayers. Dancing around over the dead and keening the blues wasn’t going to help us out of our troubles.
Our troubles came riding along the trail we had taken to reach the cabin. Riding hard, the thunder of their hoof beats drowning out the moaning chant of the dancing Brandy.
There were six troubles and they were loaded for bear. I could see the noses of rifles thrusting into the darkening blue horizon.
There weren’t the visiting firemen, either.
It was getting pretty hard to believe I’d been in Chicago only two days ago looking for a place to park.
5
The six horsemen hadn’t come to help put out the fire, I could tell that by the way they reined in their horses just beyond the perimeter of the brown earth. They lined up, six abreast, facing the cabin. A horse whinnied and one of the men laughed harshly. I had a chance to size them up in the bright blaze of the burning cabin.
One of them was Fatso, the Winchester-packing sheriff. He was fat in the saddle, a large bandaid stuck across his scowling brow. He had found another Winchester. So had the other five. All six of them had the same monotonous taste in clothes. Blue denim jacket and pants with matching ten gallon hats. Only their horses were different. I picked out a chestnut roan and a pinto. Fatso was riding a standard brown mare as were the remaining three.
My hand was riding the butt of my .45 which I had tucked in my waistband. I didn’t like the looks of our visiting firemen. They were ringing in on a tight line, saying nothing and looking nothing. I had the feeling they were just going to sit there, easylike, until the last ember of the cabin smoked into nothing. It got on my nerves. I like my cowboys singing when they come in bunches of six. But these weren’t exactly the Sons of the Pioneers.
I flung a look at Brandy to see how she was taking it. Some detective. She was nowhere in sight. Even with the daylight almost gone, the flames threw a wide swath of illumination for fifty yards or more around the cabin, But no Brandy. I turned to look back at the six horsemen realizing one important fact. They hadn’t seen her take off either.
It wasn’t my game but I’d been dealt in anyhow. So I took up a good position behind a dead tree stump conveniently located between me and the horsemen. Which put them about ten yards from me and in talking range.
Fatso was the impatient kind. He reared in the saddle and jerked his Winchester at me without aiming it.
“That’s the Dude!” he bellowed. “He’s the one with Brandy when they come to the road! Let me take him apart —”
“Shut up, Mr. Tubbs,” a quiet voice cut in. The voice was big and powerful and concise without being raised. That’s quite a trick and usually only salesmen, actors and churchmen ever master it. The good ones, that is.
“If you didn’t jump the switch so often, your train would never leave the tracks so much. I’ll handle this if you’ll kindly remember who pays the salaries around here.”
As Fatso-Tubby subsided with a sheepish grunt, I picked out the voice. It wasn’t hard. It came from the center of the riding pack where the chestnut roan was pawing the dry earth impatiently. The fat sheriff and the four other riders had all shifted their attention to the man on the roan. Suddenly he urged his mount forward a pace and tightened his hold on the reins.
“Stranger,” he said evenly. “You might explain to us about the fire. We are here to listen.”
I restrained a laugh. The roan rider was a big quiet man of obviously even temper who swung more weight than John Wayne. In the glow of the cabin, I could see squinting eyes, a tight mouth and a nose like a coffee spout upside down. It was getting too dark to make out much about the rest of them.
“I could tell you a silly story you won’t believe,” I said. “It would be laughed right out of a New York police station.”
He seemed to consider that. “We’re here to listen. That happens to be Charley Redwine’s cabin that is burning to the ground. Charley is a friend of all of us. We might like to know what’s happened to him.”
I thought fast. “Charley has a girl that your boy Tubby wasn’t exactly hospitable to a few hours ago. Or doesn’t that make any difference?”
“You mean Brandy, of course. Old Charley’s daughter.”
“I don’t mean Pocahontas,” I said.
He refused to get angry with me. He seemed to have as much time as it took to build the West.
“We can discuss Brandy later if you want to. But for the time being I’m willing to tell you that Mr. Tubbs behaved as he did because Brandy is a troublesome female. Her sex has made too much trouble in camp. Being one of the two only women in these parts, she became rather a problem. But your story is what concerns me. New York, you said?”
I’d said it deliberately because this man was no native Westerner. His voice had been to school, in a big city, and miles away from the plains at some time in his forty odd years.
“Okay,” I said. “Try this on your campfire some time —” I watched them all as I went through the blowout, the bombarding Cub, the stakeout, the murder of Charley Redwine and the disappearance of Brandy. I didn’t mention the initials P.J., skipping the details. I also left out the incident of the female motorcyclist and her strange behavior. When the quiet man on the roan had mentioned two women, I had thought of Mary Lou immediately. Don’t ask me why but I felt she just might belong to somebody in the six-pack horsemen group. Daughter, sister, wife, sweetheart, who knew what? I didn’t fancy the idea of hurting somebody’s feelings in a land where everybody had a rope and there were plenty of cottonwood trees.
The story didn’t take long but it sure got results.
Somebody cursed, another ran a long sentence together that had everything to do with me being a red-faced liar. Tubby ripped out a big laugh that sneered at me in all directions.
“Let’s take him,” Tubby boomed. “He’s lyin’, Mr. Riker. Who in hell’ud believe a fish story like that?”
Mr. Riker raised in the saddle and threw one long withering look at his men. They all subsided, muttering. Only their horses, friskily pawing and shifting around, indicated their mute disagreement.
Mr. Riker looked down at me from his great height.
“So Charley is dead and his daughter is running around out of her head. I am sorry. Charley was old, Mr. Noon. The land had been finished with him long ago. Quite a man, however. You know he was eighty when he sired Brandy? And today he is dead at one hundred and two. I’ll miss him.”
I frowned. “All well and good, Mr. Riker. But aren’t you interested in who killed him?”
His smile was bleak.
“All in good time, Mr. Noon. Our sheriff, Mr. Tubbs, will deal with the murderer.”
“Okay,” I snapped. “Let’s stop playing games. I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with I don’t know what. I’m longing to get back on the highway on my way to sunny Cal. Now what can you do about arranging that?”
The horsemen grumbled some more but Mr. Riker was still Boss.
“In good time. Now will you ride with us to our camp at Agreeable Wells? We’ll put you up for the night. Tomorrow one of the men will ride you back to where your car is. Or if you prefer, to Rock Springs where you can order a tow truck. In the light of morning, everything will look less bewildering.”
I’ll bet, I thought. “What is Agreeable Wells, Mr. Riker?”
I had touched a nerve. His face hardened and his thin mouth and coffee-spout nose quivered in the half-light.
“Where we stay, Mr. Noon. That is all you need know for now. If you wish, you may mount behind me and make the ride in. Once in camp, we can discuss things —” He urged the roan forward while I tried to make up my mind. The whole business smelled of monkeys from here to the Bronx Zoo and back. But what can a foot soldier do when he’s smack in enemy territory with nothing but a .45? I didn’t have food or water or any supplies for a holdout. Not even a compass to guide me. The sky looked starless so even the North Star wasn’t working tonight. Mr. Riker’s hospitality was It or Nothing.
I put on my simple face. “Fine. Haven’t been on a horse in years but —” I kept on making idle conventional patter as Mr. Riker urged the roan in closer. He extended a long, left arm. I circled it with my hands after shifting my .45 back to its shoulder bed. Mr. Riker’s arm, even through the blue denim sleeve, was as sturdy as a telegraph pole. He grunted and I swung up on the saddle behind him. Placing my arms about his waist didn’t inconvenience him at all. His middle was as thick and as hard as that same telegraph pole, Mr. Riker seemed to be something of a psychologist too. Strapped to a worn cartridge belt girdling his waist was a heavy pistol whose butt was poking into the underside of my forearm. I could have got the drop on him any time I got the notion.
Mr. Riker had one last word for his followers.
“We’ll head back for Agreeable Wells. There may be some word there. Then, Mr. Tubbs, you will begin your investigation. The proper authorities should be notified. Ready, Mr. Noon?”
“Ready, Mr. Riker.”
Tubby started to grumble and splutter.
“Damn it all, Mr. Riker. That cabin’s a mess of ashes right now an’ as for that she-wolf, she’ll hole up in the hills for days an’ —”
Mr. Riker ignored him. “Forward — ho-o-o-ohhhhh!”
Right out of the Seventh Cavalry and Mr. George Armstrong Custer, thank you. The six horses trotted briskly, picking up at a gallop and trampled down the long flat ground leading away from the massacre. The massacre of Charley Redwine. I took a last look at the remains of the cabin. It had been leveled completely now and a low, fiery glow marked the spot where old wood and an old man had burned away to eternity.
Mr. Riker had moved his six-horse cavalry out at a pretty good time.
Just as we cleared the flat reaches of the area surrounding the cabin, a rifle started banging away with automatic speed, sounding like a machine gun.
Brandy got off a dozen shots before she must have realized that Mr. Riker and his troopers were too far away to be hit by a Winchester. Like an Indian, she had made for the high ground. Like an Indian, revenge had made an animal of her.
The last slug from the Winchester spanged the earth far short of the sixth horseman. Mr. Riker was oblivious to the firing.
We headed for Agreeable Wells.
6
With the gathering darkness of night coming on fast, I couldn’t see much of the landscape. But Mr. Riker knew where he was going so I hung on. He was a fine horseman because even carrying double, the roan provided one of the smoothest rides of them all but I wasn’t getting much of a forward view. It’s a lot like motorcycle riding when you’re a passenger. All you get is the side show. All that got to me were long stretches of the same old flatland. There was a mountain range in evidence but it was
too far off to be more than a rising mass of unidentifiable ground.
With the sun out of sight, it had gotten colder too. The night air was windy and active. My sweaty shirt had long since dried out and now the chill of the ride sent goose pimples sprouting all over me. But I comforted myself with the notion that Brandy and I hadn’t walked for too long a time after leaving Agreeable Wells. It should be an even shorter haul by horse.
It was. The six horses stayed together as a unit and moved fast. Leather squeaked and metal spanged in the darkness as we crowded each other. Mr. Riker’s broad back arched. He was drawing rein. The roan slowed and started to pick a passage. I looked around as much as I could, just in time to see the wooden sign that welcomed you to Agreeable Wells going by in the gloom. We were on the narrow, curving dirt trail that led downward. I could feel my weight fall against Mr. Riker before I could check it.
“We are almost there,” Mr. Riker said clearly. You would have thought he was announcing the first sight of Shangri-La. I could understand how he might feel about Agreeable Wells. It might be the only watering hole around for miles.
Suddenly, we had trotted into a large clearing where several cabins huddled together beneath a towering shelf of rock sloping down from the blue-grey horizon. A first survey with evening hard upon the land didn’t reveal much. I saw some tools like spades, pickaxes and wheelbarrows lying around the area. Off to the left was a tower of some kind, rising tall and mysterious in the darkness. A silver gleam to the right of that seemed to be a pool of mountain water. It twinkled like stars as we rode by. Mr. Riker suddenly drew up and a heavy oath roared from his chest.
“There is no lookout, Mr. Tubbs!”
Tubby pulled his horse alongside. His attitude was laughingly meek.
Lust Is No Lady Page 3