by Dick Francis
The gentle dude rides had been no preparation for this reckless descent, and the one or two point-to-points I’d tried in my teens were distant memories and milksop stuff in comparison. But skills learnt in childhood stay for ever: balance still came instinctively. I didn’t fall off.
We kept up the pace until there was less than a mile to go, then I veered the pony along to the right, up along the valley and away from the bridge to the ranch.
The wranglers would no doubt follow him up there to round him up, but I hadn’t time to do the whole detour on foot. It was too light and too late to get back into the ranch across the bridge. I was going to have to cross the stream higher up and go down to my cabin through the woods on the far side.
I slid off the pony nearly half a mile upstream, and took off the bridle. The rough brown hide was streaked dark with sweat, and he didn’t look at all like an animal who had spent a peaceful night grazing. I gave him a slap and he trotted away, wheeling round and upwards, back on to the hill. With luck the wranglers wouldn’t find him until he’d cooled down, especially as it wouldn’t be him they’d be looking for.
I could hear the panic going on down by the ranch house as soon as I stepped cautiously out of the woods and began the freezing cold traverse of the stream. The stones dug into my bare feet, and the water splashed my rolled-up trouser legs. But as I couldn’t from where I was see any of the buildings, I trusted that no one there could see me. The shouts came up clearly, and then the thud of several horses cantering across the bridge. By the time I was across the stream and sitting down to put on my shoes again, they were going up towards the woods, and I could see them. Six wranglers, moving fast. If they looked back, they could see my head and shoulders sticking up out of the stretch of sage brush.
A hundred yards of it between me and the safety of the trees on the ranch-house side of the valley. I lay down flat on the ground for a few exhausted minutes, looking up at the dawn-filled sky: a high clear pale blue taking over from grey. The tracks of the mares and foals and both the stallions led straight uphill. I gave the wranglers time to go some way after them, and then quietly got to my feet and slipped unhurriedly across the sage brush and down through the trees to my cabin.
It was ten past six. Broad daylight.
I pulled off my filthy sweaty clothes and ran a deep hot bath. Tiredness had gone down to the bone, and the water tingled like a friction rub on my skin. Relaxing, reviving, I stayed in it for half an hour.
The tape played back for me the heavy knocking on Yola’s door and the head wrangler telling her that the mares and stallions were out.
‘What do you mean, out?’
‘The tracks lead down to the bridge. They’re out on the hills.’
‘What?’ Yola’s voice screeched as the full meaning hit her. ‘They can’t be.’
‘They sure are.’ The wrangler’s voice was much calmer. He didn’t know the size of the disaster: wasn’t in the game. ‘But I can’t understand it. The padlock was fastened like you said it must be, when I checked around yesterday evening.’
‘Get them back,’ said Yola sharply. ‘Get them back.’ Her voice rose hysterically. ‘That new stallion. Get him. Get him back.’
There were sounds after that of drawers being pulled roughly open, and a door slamming, and silence. Yola was out looking for Chrysalis. And, Chrysalis was on his way to Kentucky.
The ranch guests knew all about it, at breakfast.
‘What a fuss,’ Wilkie said. ‘You’d think they’d lost the deeds to a goldmine.’
They had.
‘I’m glad they found the dear little foals anyway,’ Samantha said.
‘They’ve found them?’ I asked. The small paddock was still empty.
‘They’ve put them in the barn,’ agreed Mickey. ‘With their mothers.’
‘Someone left the gate unlocked,’ Betty-Ann told me. ‘Isn’t it a shame? Yola’s obviously in a fearful state.’
Yola had been in the dining room when I strolled in to breakfast, standing silent and rigid by the kitchen door, checking that all the guests were there, looking for signs of guilt.
Poise had deserted her. The hair was roughly tied with a ribbon at the nape of her neck and the lipstick was missing. There had been no professional reassuring smiles. A muscle twitched in the strong jaw and she hadn’t been in control of the wildness in her eyes.
I ate a double order of bacon and buckwheat hot-cakes with maple syrup, and drank three cups of coffee.
Betty-Ann opposite me lit a cigarette and said did I have to leave, couldn’t I stay another few days. Wilkie gruffly said they shouldn’t try to keep a feller. Wilkie had cottoned on, and was glad to see me go.
Strong footsteps came into the room from the door behind me. Betty-Ann looked over my head and her eyes widened.
‘Why hello there,’ she exclaimed warmly, transferring her attentions. ‘How good to see you.’
Wilkie, I thought in amusement, should be used to it by now. But the Wilkersons’ problems blinked out of my mind for ever when someone else called the new man by his name.
Matt.
Matt Clive spoke from behind my shoulder; a drawling bass voice under strict control.
‘Listen folks. I guess you know we’ve had a little trouble here this morning. Someone let out the mares and horses from their paddock over there. Now if it was any of you kids, we’d sure like to know about it.’
There was a short silence. The various children looked uncomfortable and their parents’ eyebrows peaked into question marks.
‘Or if anyone knows that the gate wasn’t properly fastened yesterday at any time?’
More silence.
Matt Clive walked tentatively round the long table, into my line of sight. About Yola’s age, Yola’s height. Same jawline. Same strong body, only more so. I remembered the two bedrooms in their cabin: the ring-less fingers of Yola’s hand. Yola’s brother, Matt. I drank my coffee and avoided meeting his eyes.
One or two of the guests laughingly mentioned rustlers, and someone suggested calling in the police. Matt said they were seriously thinking of it. One of the stallions was quite valuable. But only, of course, if it was absolutely certain that none of the guests had left the gate open by accident.
Sympathetic murmurs were all he got. He might indeed be brave enough, or desperate enough, to call in the police. But if he did, they wouldn’t recover Chrysalis, who should by now be hundreds of miles away on a roundabout route, accompanied by a strictly legal bill of sale.
Matt eventually went away, trailing a thunderous aura and leaving the guests unsettled and embarrassed.
I asked the girl who waited at table if she could fetch my account for me, as I wanted to pay up before leaving, and after an interval she returned with it. I gave her cash, and waited while she wrote a receipt.
The Wilkerson family said their goodbyes, as they were hoping to go riding if any of the wranglers had come back from searching for the missing horse, and I walked unhurriedly back to my cabin to finish packing. Up the two steps, across the porch, through the two doors, and into the room.
Yola came out of the bathroom carrying a rifle. The way she handled it showed she knew how to use it. Matt stepped from behind the curtained closet, between me and the way out. No rifle for him. A shotgun.
I put on the puzzled act, German accent stronger.
‘Excuse me. I do not understand.’
‘It’s the same man,’ Matt said. ‘Definitely.’
‘Where’s our horse?’ said Yola furiously.
‘I do not know,’ I said truthfully, spreading my hands out in a heavy shrug. ‘Why do you ask such a question?’
Both the guns were pointing steadfastly my way.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘I have my packing to finish. I have paid the bill. I am leaving this morning.’
‘You’re not going anywhere, friend,’ Matt said grimly.
‘Why not?’
‘You get that horse back here, and then you can go.
Not before.’
He was going to have a fine old time if he intended to keep a prisoner silent indefinitely on a ranch full of holiday guests.
‘I can’t get him back,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where he is. Several friends of mine, however, do know where I am. They will be expecting me to be leaving here this morning.’
They stared at me in silent fury. Children in crime, I thought, for all their ingenuity. They had walked straight in with their guns without thinking clearly through. They were, however, lethal children, ruled by impulse more than reason.
I said, ‘I am unlikely to go around saying “I stole a horse from the Clives.” If you do nothing, and I now drive safely away, you may hear no more of it. That’s the best I can offer. You will not, whatever you do, recover the horse.’
The only sensible course open to them was to let me go. But Yola’s finger tightened on the trigger, and I reluctantly decided it was time for the Luger. Watching her, I saw a split second too late in the looking glass that Matt had taken a step behind me and was swinging his gun butt like a bludgeon.
He caught me solidly across the back of the skull and the patchwork quilt on the bed dazzled into kaleidoscopic fragments in my glazing eyes as I went down.
Chapter Ten
When I woke up it was pretty clear that I wasn’t intended to be a hostage, but a corpse.
The cabin was full of smoke, and small flames rose in a long uneven swathe across the floor. I couldn’t remember anything at first. Looked at the scene muzzily, half sitting up, my head dizzy and splitting with pain. The Clives, I thought. They’d emptied the whole tub of pep out into a straggling line, and set it alight. Sawdust and diesel oil burning slowly and billowing out unbreathable gases.
They’d laid me against the stove so that it would seem as if I’d fallen and hit my head on it. The empty pep tin rolled away from my foot as I tried to get up, and my hand brushed against a cigarette and a book of matches.
Most deaths in fires weren’t caused by burns but by asphyxia. The cabin wouldn’t burn down from fire on the floorboards: fire never burnt downwards, only up. The Clives were staging my exit for no better motive than revenge. And as an accident it was one of their poorer efforts.
Having staggered its way through those useless random thoughts, my brain cleared enough for me to decide it was high time to move if I was going to do anything about living. And I supposed I would have to.
I stumbled on to my feet, pulled the quilt off one of the beds, tottered into the bathroom with it and soaked it under the taps in the bath. Smoke was well down in my lungs, thick and choking. It’s bloody stupid, I thought groggily, it’s damn bloody stupid that boy-and-girl keep trying to shove me where I want to go, and I keep trying not to let them. Ridiculous. Ridiculous …
I found myself on my knees, half unconscious. The bath water still running. Pulled myself up a little, hauled out the dripping quilt, flung it over the worst of the fire. Silly, I thought. Much better to go out of the door. Tried that. Damn thing was stuck.
Window, then. Stuck.
Wrapped my hand in the curtain and pushed it through one of the panes of glass. Some air came in. The insect screen stopped more.
Down on my knees again. Terribly dizzy. A black hell in my head. Smelt the quilt burning, lifted it off one lot of fire, and on to the next. Damped it all out into a smelly black faintly smouldering path and felt old and weak from too much scrambling up and down mountains and deeply ill from the crash on the brain and too much smoke.
Opened the front of the fat black stove. Shapleigh, it said. Gradually the smoke began to clear away up its stackpipe while I lay in a poor state beside the cabin door and breathed the fresh air trickling in underneath.
Several eras later I stopped feeling like morgue material and the hammer in my head died to a brutal aching throb. I began to wonder how long it would be before Matt and Yola returned to make their horrified discovery of my death, and wearily decided it was time for action.
I stood up slowly and leaned against the door. They’d fastened it somehow from the outside, in spite of there being no lock: and it was simple enough to see when one’s eyes weren’t filled with smoke. The screen door opened outwards, the wooden door inwards. A small hook leading in through the latch was holding the two together. I pushed it up, and it slid away as the inner door opened.
My wallet lay on the table, not in my pocket. They’d been looking. Nothing for them to find, except their own photograph. They’d taken that. But they hadn’t searched very far: the Luger was still in its holster at my back, under my outhanging shirt. I checked the magazine – still loaded – and put it back in place.
The only other thing I really wanted to take with me was my radio. I squashed down its extended antenna aerial and shoved it into my old suitcase on top of the things I’d packed before breakfast. Then, picking it up and fighting down the whirling chaos which resulted, I opened the screen door. Behind me the cabin lay in a singed shambles. Ahead, the comparatively short walk to the car seemed a marathon.
I might have made it in one if I hadn’t felt any worse: but at the end of the woodland track, when all that was left to go was the open expanse of the car park, a wave of clammy sweating faintness seethed through me and I dropped the suitcase and leaned against a tree, waiting weakly for it to pass.
Yola came out of the kitchen door and saw me. Her mouth fell open, then she turned on her heel and dived back into the ranch house. For the rifle. Or for Matt. My hand closed on the pistol at my back, but I was very loath to use it. Too many explanations to authority would be involved, and I preferred to avoid them at this stage.
‘Hello,’ said a cheerful voice behind me. ‘We thought you’d gone ages ago.’
I turned my wonky head and let my hand fall away from the gun. Mickey and Samantha were coming down the track from the branch which led to the Wilkersons’ cabin.
‘And I thought,’ I said, ‘that you’d gone riding.’
‘The wranglers haven’t brought in enough horses,’ Mickey explained sadly.
‘Are you sick or something?’ asked his sister, coming to a halt and staring up into my face.
‘A bit,’ I admitted. ‘I’d be awfully glad if you’d carry my suitcase for me, across to that black car.’
‘Sure,’ said Mickey importantly, and Samantha took my hand in motherly solicitude. With one child at each side I completed the trip.
It was the rifle Yola fetched. She stood with it stiffly in her hands and watched the children put the suitcase in the car and stand close to my window while I started the engine. An accidental drowning, an accidental smothering she could manage: but three public murders by shooting were outside her range. Just as well. If she’d lifted that rifle towards the children, I would have shot her.
‘Bye,’ they said, waving. Nice kids.
‘Bye.’
I released the brakes and rolled away down the drive in a plume of dust, accelerating fast as soon as I hit the metalled road, and taking the main branch down to Jackson. If Yola thought of following in the pick-up, she didn’t do it fast enough. Repeated inspection in the mirror showed no Clives chasing on my tail. The only things constantly before my eyes were bright dancing spots.
Through Jackson I turned north and west on the winding road to Idaho Falls. Along there the Snake River and the Pallisades Reservoir, sparkling blue against the dark pines, were stunningly beautiful. But my several stops weren’t for appreciation: the cold sweating waves of dizziness kept recurring, like twenty-two over seven. I drove slowly, close to the side, never overtaking, ready to pull up. If I hadn’t wanted to put a hundred miles or so between me and the Clives, I wouldn’t have started from Jackson. Most of the time I wished I hadn‘t.
Walt was pacing the motel lobby like a frenetic film producer when I finally showed up at five-thirty in the afternoon.
‘You are four-and-a-half hours late,’ he began accusingly. ‘You said …’
‘I know,’ I interrupted. ‘Book us s
ome rooms. We’re staying here.’
He opened his mouth and shut it tight.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, softening it, ‘but I feel ill.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Concussion.’
Walt gave me a searching look, booked the rooms, and even went so far as to carry my suitcase. I lay straight down on the bed, and he sat in an easy chair in my room and rubbed his fingers.
‘Do you need a doctor?’ he said.
‘I don’t think so. It’s not getting any worse.’
‘Well … what happened?’
‘I’ll give you some free advice,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever let Matt Clive come within bashing distance of your head.’
The dizziness wasn’t so bad lying down.
‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked.
‘No … Let’s listen to a tape recording instead.’ I told him how to open the back of the radio and to rewind the reels.
‘Neat little job,’ he commented. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘Had it specially made, two or three years ago.’
Walt grunted, and switched on. The head wrangler banged on Yola’s door and told her that the mares and stallions were out. Walt’s face lifted into a half grin.