by M. K. Wren
Mercifully, he didn’t feel a thing when he sprawled face down on the rocky ground.
Chapter 11
He had actually seen stars—at least, flashes of light—just like in the cartoons.
Conan lay with his cheek pressed against granite considering that phenomenon. Finally, he stirred and discovered he could lift his head, despite the painful protests of his neck muscles and a thudding headache. After he had at length maneuvered into a sitting position, it occurred to him to wonder what had hit him, and if he should be doing something to avoid getting hit again. At the moment, the only practical approach to the latter concern was absolute fatalism.
He closed his eyes while he tried to make sense of where he was and what had happened, then gingerly pressed his hand to the back of his head. He encountered a burgeoning lump, but nothing more; the skin hadn’t even been broken.
The sun shone hot and bright on him, and he looked for his dark glasses, locating them finally a short distance away. He achieved an upright stance by using the granite wall as a support, then crossed the few feet to his glasses. Afterward, he decided that leaning down to pick them up was not a wise course.
Still, he seemed to be making some progress. His eyes were staying in focus, and the pulsating ache occupying his head and lancing down his neck subsided to bearable intensity as he made his way out of the rock-rimmed channel. He could even remember going into the tunnel and looking through the broken boards, which suggested that he’d been unconscious a very short time. He couldn’t remember leaving the tunnel, however, nor anything during the vital seconds before he was hit. He was sure he had been struck with malice aforethought simply because the only other explanation for the new contour of his skull was a fall. That seemed unlikely.
He searched for evidence of a human presence above the channel on both sides, but found nothing—not until he left the adit and started down the path.
The old adage that there were no straight lines in nature was a fallacy; straight lines abound in the natural world on any scale. Still, there were few in this particular landscape, and the board lying beneath a sagebrush about ten yards from the adit stood out as a startling anomaly. He walked over to it and smiled grimly.
It was a three-foot length of two-by-four, gray with age, and there was nothing unusual about it in itself. What was unusual was that one end was wrapped with a burlap sack. It hadn’t been lying here long: there was very little dust in the burlap or on the string binding it.
Now he knew what had hit him, and he knew why it hadn’t broken the skin. But why had his assailant been so considerate as to pad this weapon to soften the blow?
Undoubtedly the blow was primarily for effect, like the rattlesnake in his car. The effect was quite tangible and every pulsebeat brought it home to him, but it would have been far more impressive if the assailant hadn’t left his padded weapon behind. That, Conan was sure, had not been intentional. He started down the path with the board in hand, anticipating the long walk back to the Starbuck house with no enthusiasm, and finding the idea of being the object of such inept intimidation disquieting. The next attempt to scare him off this case might be fatal purely by accident.
Then he came to a sudden halt, staring down at the path.
In the shade of a granite boulder, a shallow depression had caught enough of last night’s rain to turn into mud, and someone had made the error of stepping in it.
He couldn’t have asked for a better medium for preservation; the mud was exactly the right consistency. Both the right and left feet were there; large feet shod in boots most likely, with a deep tread as specific as any tire tread. He found the left foot especially informative: the tread was worn almost smooth on the outside edge of the sole.
*
When Conan reached Slaughterhouse Gulch and crossed the treeless slope toward the Starbuck house, his head was still pounding unremittingly, but as he neared Dex Adler’s house, he braced himself and put as much jauntiness in his stride as he could muster. Adler was still assiduously playing carpenter, this time on his porch step. Conan shifted the two-by-four to his left hand so Adler would be sure to see it. “Good morning, Mr. Adler.”
Adler lowered his hammer and squinted at him suspiciously, and apparently curiosity got the better of animosity. His tone was almost friendly. “Morning. Uh…out for a walk?”
Conan smiled but didn’t break pace. “I went up to the mine adit where Lee’s body was found.”
“The adit? What—what’s that you’ve got there?”
Conan hefted the board. “Oh, just a souvenir.”
Adler might have had more to say, but Conan was past him now, and he knew from the silence behind him that Adler was watching him every step of the way. Conan maintained his jauntiness until he rounded the corner of the Starbuck house, but when he reached the porch he had to pause before attempting the steps to the front door.
He met Delia in the hall. She was on her way downstairs from the bedrooms, and she stopped, staring at him. “Conan, are you all right? You’re white as a sheet.”
He went straight to the parlor and sank into the first chair he encountered. “Delia, I need some aspirin, a glass of water, and an ice pack, if possible.”
A remarkable woman, he thought gratefully; no questions, no fuss or delay. In five minutes, she had furnished the required items. She remained calmly silent while he swallowed two aspirins, considered the matter and downed two more, then leaned back, holding the ice pack against his throbbing head.
Only then did she ask, “What happened?”
“I must’ve run into a door.”
“That’s a queer looking door.” She picked up the two-by-four, which he had dropped at his feet.
He laughed. “Yes, it is. Very queer. Where’s Clare?”
“Out in the garden. Who hit you, Conan?”
“I didn’t see who it was.” He shifted the ice pack. “That feels better. Delia, is Dex still outside his house?”
Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “I’ll look.” She went to the north window, then after a moment, “He’s still there. Conan, you don’t think Dex hit you. He couldn’t have. He’s been out there hammering away for more than an hour. I heard him.”
“No, I don’t think he hit me.”
“Then, who did?”
“I don’t know.” That wasn’t quite true, but he didn’t want to discuss it now. Then he looked up at her, aware of her uneasy silence. “Delia, it isn’t serious. Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry!” She gave a little snort of disgust. “This sort of thing wasn’t part of my arrangement with you. I didn’t ask you to come here to…to run into doors.”
Conan pulled himself to his feet and crossed to the window. “An occupational hazard, Delia, but thanks for offering me a graceful exit. I don’t need it, however. Do you?”
She pursed her lips. “No. Not yet, anyway. Well, it’s almost time for lunch. You feel like eating something?”
Conan didn’t answer immediately. He was watching Dex Adler; he had gone inside his house, but left his front door open. “No, Delia, I’m not hungry.”
“Maybe a stiff shot of whiskey, then.”
“That’s probably not a good idea.” Adler reappeared at his door and stood looking about indecisively.
“Conan, maybe the best idea would be to have a doctor look at you. There’s one in Homedale.”
“No, that’s not necessary.” Adler seemed to square his shoulders, then left his house and walked south at a brisk pace. Conan turned from the window and gave Delia a reassuring smile. “I doubt I’ve sustained any serious damage. By the way, didn’t you say Reub Sickle lives up Jordan Creek?”
She replied warily, “Yes, he has a cabin up there not far from the creek.”
Finding Reub’s cabin was a great deal easier than finding the mine adit, and Conan took it on foot and at a leisurely pace. That seemed the only sensible course out of consideration for his swelling head.
Just walk south on the Jor
dan Creek road, Delia had instructed him, and about half a mile out of town you’ll come to a road that goes down to a ford over the creek. About a quarter of a mile past the ford, the road forks, and you take the left-hand road. It goes up a little valley, and that’s where you’ll find Reub’s place.
It was still a glorious day, and Conan ambled down Jordan Creek road with the stream murmuring behind the willows on his left. On his right the slopes of Potosi Peak were splashed with lupine, scarlet gilia, orange globe mallow, and the multitudinous little suns of balsam. He followed Delia’s directions as far as the second junction of roads—and “road” was a marginally accurate term for furrowed trails—but beyond that point he struck out on his own. He climbed the side of the valley, keeping the road that led to Reub’s cabin in sight below him. He soon found himself in groves of aspen, their trunks ghost-white against the rich, blued green of subalpine fir. The sound of the wind in the firs wakened something akin to homesickness in him, it was so much like the sighing of surf outside his window at home.
At length, he saw a small cabin below, board-and-batten walls weathered into a tapestry of gold and umber. Reub had chosen a beautiful setting for his little home, facing west with War Eagle at its back, surrounded by a meadow bright with wild flowers. Behind the cabin was a slope-roofed outhouse and a sagging shed. A flat roof shaded the porch that spanned the entire front of the cabin, and a battered Jeep was parked before it, as if hitched to the corner post.
Conan moved cautiously downslope to the edge of the meadow, but when he heard a warning bark and saw a black dog of mixed ancestry—predominantly Lab, probably—and unmistakable territorial instinct rise from the shade of the Jeep, Conan sank down behind a young fir, grateful that the wind was in his favor. The dog sniffed the air in every direction, put in another bark as the last word, then lay down in front of the door to guard it.
The door opened a few minutes later, and even at a distance of at least two hundred feet, Conan clearly heard Reub Sickle’s gruff, “Hey, Sheba, move over, you ol’ mutt.” Sheba did, wagging her tail and putting her head up for an affectionate rub when Reub came out on the porch. “I’m goin’ over town for supplies. You want a ride down?”
But that wasn’t for Sheba; Reub was looking back at the man who emerged from the cabin behind him.
“All right, Reub,” Dex Adler said, frowning absently at the dog, then at the Jeep as he followed Reub. He was still frowning when Reub turned the Jeep and lurched away down the road. Sheba was in the back, grinning happily, ears flying.
Chapter 12
Before he made himself guilty of breaking and entering—and in this case it would only be entering; there was no lock on Reub’s door—Conan scouted around the cabin for bare patches of earth still damp enough to hold footprints. Near the front porch he found several of Reub’s prints—exact duplicates of the ones near the mine adit, with the tell-tale smoothness at the outside of the left sole produced by Reub’s malformed ankle. Conan also found the slightly smaller tracks made by Dex Adler’s Wallabees.
At the back of the cabin he found another set of tracks that were far more intriguing: they were small, with a rippled pattern, and their shape was unusual; rather like a bowling pin in vertical cross-section. A woman’s high-heeled, wedge-soled shoe. No doubt Reub’s cabin was very photogenic, but it seemed a little outside the purview of an article on Silver City.
When Conan went inside the cabin, he left the door open. There was only the one room, its walls, floor, and ceiling all of rough pine, and it was remarkably tidy. A broom and dustpan stood in one corner, and the windows were curtained in faded flour-sacking. The narrow bed, with its thin, concave mattress, was neatly made up under a gray wool blanket. On the right-hand wall was a wood-burning cookstove, which apparently served as Reub’s heat source as well, and in the front corner near the stove, a plank counter supported a washbasin and water pail. The shelves beneath the counter were filled with sacks of flour, beans, sugar, and cornmeal, boxes of raisins, dried milk, a variety of canned goods, a sourdough crock, and such necessities as coffee and tobacco. There was also, Conan noted, a first-aid and snake-bite kit. A calendar, courtesy of the Wagon Wheel in Murphy, was nailed to the wall by the stove. It was two years out of date.
On the left-hand wall, in open shelves and hung on nails, was an assortment of tools: shovels, pickax, rock picks, sledge hammer, maul, long-handled ax, gold pans, mortar and pestle, mineral-stained crucibles. Near the door hung a pair of snowshoes and a sheepskin jacket, and occupying the center of the cabin was a wooden table flanked by two chairs. There were no books, no pictures, no means of communication with the outside world, and little that even hinted at its existence. Yet here was a man’s entire life neatly stored in one small room, and Conan didn’t doubt that Reuben Sickle was satisfied with his life. A fortunate man, perhaps.
Conan searched the cabin thoroughly, but without leaving a trace. He’d been trained for that, but no amount of training could make him feel comfortable about invading another person’s privacy. He could only assure himself that in some cases, at least, the ends justify the means. In this case, his aching head provided further justification.
But Reub apparently had nothing to hide, or he had hidden it elsewhere. Conan had nearly given up when he realized that one of the floorboards behind the stove had been sawed, then laid back in place. He used a table knife to pry it up and within the earthen cavity beneath found a small, wooden box with a metal hasp and a padlock securing the lid.
But he wasn’t the first to discover this box. The hasp had been pried loose, making the padlock a useless appendage.
He took the box to the table to open it and found only two objects within it. The first was a cameo brooch with a female head in profile set in a gold filigree mounting.
The second was a nickel-plated .38 revolver.
Conan examined the gun closely. It was fully loaded, but he doubted it had been fired recently; there were spots of corrosion not only within the barrel but even on the cartridge casings. Some identifying marks had been scratched on the butt. He frowned over them and finally deciphered the letters LL. Leland Langtry, perhaps?
Conan reexamined the brooch, but there was nothing to indicate its owner’s identity. Still frowning, he checked the interior of the box, noting a few tiny scraps of brittle, yellowed paper. One seemed to be the corner of a sheet.
He heard the distant rumble of a motor and a bucking rattling. Reub’s Jeep. The usual course would be to replace the box and make a quick exit, but he chose to stay.
Reub Sickle had some explaining to do.
*
When Reub opened the door, Conan was standing behind the table with the .38 leveled at him. The box was still open on the table.
Sheba was the first to recover from the initial surprise. She danced about in a fury of barking, and Reub, glaring from Conan to the gun, reached down with his left hand to restrain her. His right hand was occupied with his rifle. “Quiet, Sheba. Jest hold on, now.…”
Sheba subsided with a warning growl, and Reub’s eyes shifted to the box. The scar flawing his face seemed to turn whiter as his face reddened. “What the hell’re you doin’ with—you got no right—”
“No, but I have this gun,” Conan noted. “Reub, I’m not out for blood, but I could damn sure put you in a hospital.”
Reub seemed to consider that, eyeing Conan speculatively. “That thing’s li’ble to blow up in your face if you pull the trigger. Hasn’t been fired in over forty years.”
“You want to take that chance, Reub?” Apparently he didn’t; his wide shoulders sagged, and when Conan ordered, “Put your rifle here on the table, then back off,” Reub quieted the restive Sheba again, then approached the table and laid the rifle on it. But outrage overwhelmed discretion when he looked into the box.
He cried, “Where’s the—you stole it! You gawdamned—” Conan pulled the rifle out of Reub’s reach and raised the .38 a few inches as a reminder. “You mean the letter?”
“No, I didn’t, Reub, and all I want is some answers. I didn’t open this box. This is exactly the way I found it, and the only thing I’ve removed from it is this gun.”
Sheba growled and showed her teeth, and Reub stood in granitic silence, unimpressed and unconvinced. Conan sighed wearily, but gave it another try. “Reub, why do you think I’m still here? I heard you coming in plenty of time to get out of here—with the whole damned box. And I have ample reason to press assault charges against you, and one hell of a headache that makes that sound like a good idea.” That shook Reub, but not enough to induce him to take a more cooperative attitude. Conan demanded, “What’s missing from this box?”
Still, stoic silence; Reub’s fisted hands didn’t relax. Conan nodded at the .38. “This is Lee Langtry’s gun, isn’t it? Where did you find it? And when? Damn it, Reub, you’re only making things worse.”
There was a fleeting—and revealing—movement in the tense muscles around Reub’s mouth at Lee’s name, and he finally spoke, but not to answer Conan’s questions.
“Mister, you get outa here, or by Gawd, I’ll sic Sheba on you—gun or no!” The dog seconded that with another growl.
Conan irritably slammed the box shut and reached for the rifle. “Give me the keys to the Jeep.”
Reub’s blue eyes widened in candid bewilderment. “The keys are in the—” Then he caught himself. “What d’you want the keys for?”
“Never mind. Get over there by the bed. Move!” His peremptory tone worked. Reub shuffled warily toward the bed, while Conan moved around the table in the opposite direction. “Keep that dog with you. That’s right. Lie down on the floor. Do it, Reub!” He waited while Reub reluctantly did as he was ordered, with Sheba, nonplussed, trying to lick at his face. Conan put down an urge to laugh, concentrating on keeping his tone terse and uncompromising. “Now, slide under the bed.”