by Bob Wade
“I can see why you’d need a combination to find your shadow in a place like this,” John Henry observed. “I feel lost already.”
“That one canyon that cuts into Walking Skull — that must be the starting point. From then on it’s up to your wife.”
“How about it, Sin? What’s the first move?”
Sin wrinkled her tan forehead and concentrated, summoning the long list of R’s and L’s up before her eyes. On the ride from the Bar C Ranch, they had all agreed that these must stand for right and left and the number indicated the canyon to be followed.
“R dash one,” she announced triumphantly.
Trim nudged his horse forward, the Conovers followed. At the mouth of the canyon that led from Walking Skull into the Badlands, the pirate hat was outlined briefly and ludicrously against the sky for a moment. Then Trim disappeared between high sandstone pillars into the shadowy chasm. His voice echoed back, over the clip-clop of horses’ hoofs. “We turn right at the first cross-canyon. You still agree?”
The Conovers agreed in an echoing chorus. The dark jagged walls rose higher and higher on both sides. They rode down an incline until the sky was a crooked slit of comparatively pale blue overhead, then the canyon floor leveled somewhat.
“You still all right, honey?” Sin called over her shoulder. John Henry lurched in his saddle while his horse missed its footing temporarily. He hung onto the saddle horn and said, “Just dandy.”
“Here we are,” Trim announced. “I’m turning right.”
Sin’s eyes were becoming more accustomed to the reduced light. She could see the bay rump of the lead horse as the little man reined it into the first side canyon. Vegetation was sparse and scrawny in the gully they traveled. The floor was sand and smooth stones of all sizes. At the sides leaned great sheets of shale that had evidently crashed down from above. She looked up nervously. “How do we get back out?” she yelled to the man ahead of her. “Follow our own trail.”
“Can you see Barselou’s tracks?”
“I can’t see much of anything,” Trim replied cheerfully. “But three horses kicked things around more than one.
And we’ll be coming back by daylight. What’s the next turn, Mrs. Conover?”
It came to her easier this time. “Left three.”
John Henry bumped along reflecting on the sandstorm that might obliterate their return trail. Trim had requisitioned their only canteen from Barselou’s stable. Three emaciated bodies lost in the tangled canyons … vultures … whitening bones …
He grimaced and tried to forget the legend of Walking Skull.
Thelma Loomis turned her spotlight up on the timber archway and read the twig letters carefully. Then she clicked off the spot and urged the car forward up the curved driveway. The Bar C Ranch house was dark, a somber bulk in silver moonlight. She braked the automobile in front of the door. On the parking lot were two cars — a convertible coupé and a gray sedan.
Miss Loomis moved quickly. From her big plain purse, she dug out a snub-nosed silver revolver. Expertly, she flipped the cylinder out and examined the shiny brass shells protruding from every socket. Satisfied, she eased out of the car and stuck the revolver in the wide belt of her policeman uniform.
Her flashlight beam probed over the other two cars, then swung back to the gloomy house. Thelma Loomis walked the length of the low porch slowly, her practiced feet making only the faintest noise on the tile. Above her hung dark stalactites of bridles and branding irons. Nothing stirred.
“Uh-huh,” she murmured and clucked her tongue thoughtfully. Ignoring the brass knocker, she punched the button beside the door and stood listening to the distant loneliness of chimes. When the last tone had died, she tried the latch. The heavy door swung away from her on oiled hinges. Her flashlight cut a round hole into the blackness beyond. Lightly, she stepped after it and closed the door behind her.
John Henry squinted at the luminous dial of his wrist watch. It was nearly four hours since they’d left the Bar C Ranch. The moon was directly overhead now, melting the shadows at the bottom of the tortuous canyons.
He stood up in the stirrups and tried to find a more comfortable position.
Sin twisted around on her horse, her tired face pale in the moonlight. “Something wrong, honey?”
“I was just wishing this horse and I would have a meeting of minds,” he called. “We’ve met every place else.”
Beyond her, Trim halted his horse and said, “Not so much talking, please. If Barselou hears us — ”
John Henry lapsed into moody silence. The constant prospect of sheer canyon was monotonous. He punched a knee into his horse and it stopped. “I meant gid-dap, Nightmare,” he said wearily and tried a heel. He came up alongside the other two riders.
“You do think we must be nearly there, don’t you, Mr. Trim?” Sin was asking anxiously.
The Federal agent was indefatigable. He sat erect and alert in the saddle, apparently as fresh as when they had ridden away from the ranch house. His narrow shoulders shrugged under the blue buccaneer coat. “I hope you can answer that better than I can, Mrs. Conover. How many more numbers are there?”
Sin pushed her eyes shut and put her hands to her cheeks. She felt wrung dry. “I don’t know,” she confessed finally. “Two or three, I guess. They just seem to come one at a time.”
Trim pushed his cocked hat back farther on his bald head and grinned encouragement. “Didn’t mean to hound you. Guess I’m getting a little worn down myself. I keep worrying over what the office would say if they could see me now. What’s next?”
“Right one,” Sin replied automatically.
Trim flicked his reins and began to move toward the next gap in the high stone corridor. The Conovers trailed after him. Sin drooped in the saddle, her hair bouncing at every lurch of her horse. Her husband put over a comforting hand and stroked her shoulder. She lifted her head and smiled wanly at him.
For a while after they made the turn into a new chasm, there was no sound except the clip-clop of hoofs and the occasional swish of a tail. A spark enlivened the gloom now and then as an iron shoe glanced off rock. The walls, oddly-carved by the wind, towered almost a hundred feet over their heads.
Trim reined in. He tilted his pug nose upward, sniffing. Sin whispered, “What is it?”
“We’re getting close,” Trim muttered.
“How come? Whoa, Nightmare!”
“Do you smell anything?” The Conovers sniffed tentatively. “I caught a whiff of smoke just then. Campfire.”
“Barselou?”
“Maybe.” Trim sucked air over his teeth. “Or Mr. Jones.”
John Henry’s sleepiness disappeared as excitement hit him like a cold shower. Sin’s eyelids quit drooping. “I’m scared,” she said needlessly.
“The horses make noise enough. I don’t have to warn you two to be quiet from now on.”
“I’ll say you don’t.”
The FBI man straightened in his saddle. “What’s the next one, Mrs. Conover?”
Sin squinted studiously. The number seemed to elude her. “Left — left — two,” she said doubtfully.
Trim’s horse plodded forward.
They passed the first gray mouth of a canyon on the left. Sin caught her first scent of burning wood. Despite the danger it presaged, the familiar fragrance abated her nervousness. There was other human life in all this desolation.
She frowned suddenly. They had passed the second left-hand canyon. Sin cupped her hands beside her mouth and called after the little pirate softly. Trim wheeled his mount around and rode back. John Henry caught up with them once more.
“What is it, Mrs. Conover?”
“You’ve made a mistake,” Sin explained. “We passed the second canyon just then.”
“Oh, that,” deprecated Trim. “You were the one who made the mistake — not I. Your memory’s phenomenal, Mrs. Conover. But that last direction should be ‘left three,’ not ‘left two.’”
He dropped his reins on his sa
ddle horn and opened his fist. Lying in the palm was a strip of oiled paper, a narrow curling strip of directions which began, R-1, L-3, R-2 …
Sin’s lips moved but no sound came out. John Henry’s mouth hung open loosely.
With his other hand Trim plucked the wooden pistol from his belt. He let John Henry stare at the cork on a string that was stuck in the muzzle. “Please be sensible, both of you. The cork is laughable but it comes out — followed by a very real bullet.”
John Henry saw his world reeling around his head. He spoke and didn’t know what he said. “Mr. Jones,” he croaked, “I presume?”
There wasn’t a soul in the house. Thelma Loomis was ready to stake her professional reputation on that.
But somewhere there had to be people. The evidence of the two cars pointed that way. Of course, Lieutenant Lay might have been wrong about Robottom. Or he might have been pulling her leg. He was the kind of guy who’d think it was funny.
She opened the back door and let herself out into a little patio, where galvanized-iron trash cans and an electric garbage disposer kept silent vigil. Outdoors was brighter than ever after the inky interior of the ranch house.
Miss Loomis went around the corner and headed for the higher boxlike building a hundred yards away. Suddenly, she stopped short, her hand fumbling for the snub-nosed revolver. Midway between the house and the other structure, something dark huddled on the ground, something that might have been a man. A darker blob crouched beside it.
“Good God!” she ejaculated. The second shadow had moved. Thelma Loomis was staring at the outline of a huge cat, its ears erect, its eyes gleaming brightly at her. Her hand shaking, she tried to level the muzzle of her .32 at the giant animal.
“You nearly surprised me,” the cat purred. “Not quite. Nearly.”
Miss Loomis took a firm grip on herself to keep from breaking and running. She forced her legs to carry her forward, up to the cat.
“Nice kitty,” she said unsteadily. The cat stood up on its hind legs and stretched.
Moonlight poured over the face of Faye Jordan and the blonde woman began to understand the cat disguise. She had forgotten that she, too, was in costume. Her nerves unwound slightly and she chuckled softly.
“You’re a policeman,” Faye Jordan remarked.
“That’s right.” Thelma Loomis felt her smile slackening as she scanned the other, the unmoving shadow, with professional interest. “You certainly surprised me. Both of you.”
“It’s pretty fur, don’t you think?” Faye said and preened the woolly material of her costume contentedly. “It zips down the back so I can get out. But I don’t want to get out. I want to wear it all the time.”
The other woman kneeled on the sandy ground and looked at the man huddled there. He was short and plump and dead. From the back of his neck the feather-tipped shaft of a long wooden arrow protruded. Blood had gushed forth sparingly, to dry in rivulets on his neck and his white shirt. He had been dead for some time, she decided.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Faye rubbed the back of one black mitten under her round chin. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
“Who killed him?”
“I did,” the girl said carelessly, her round eyes shiny. Thelma Loomis got up slowly, the revolver ready. “I have claws. Not everyone has claws as sharp as mine.” The girl crooked her mittened hands and scratched languorously in the air.
The blonde inspected the too-bright eyes, the vacuous pretty face with its tip-tilted nose and jaw now slack. “Why?” she asked softly.
Faye Jordan looked reproachful. “I hope you’re not going to ask all those questions, too.”
“Who else asked you questions?”
The girl assumed a mysterious expression and prowled away toward the stable. Thelma Loomis followed her into the shadows, her gun butt damp in her hand.
Faye was swinging on the wooden gate to one of the stalls. It creaked rustily back and forth like a badly tuned violin.
Miss Loomis lanced the gloom with her flashlight. The bright beam wavered. On the straw of the stall lay another form, a loose white sack of a man with arms and legs limply extended. The dark hawk face was relaxed and babyish. The man’s head was lopsided with swelling under one half of the mussed silver hair. By Sagmon Robottom’s ear rested a discarded stirrup iron.
Faye’s gate swung in slow tortured rhythm.
“What happened here?” the blonde woman asked gently. Robottom’s chest rose and sank regularly and an eyelid twitched.
“He didn’t believe I was a cat.” Faye crouched on the stable floor and the creaking came to a halt. Her mouth contracted viciously but the rest of her face was puzzled. “I think he said I mustn’t use my claws. I don’t like people who order me around.”
“Would you like to go for a ride?” Thelma Loomis suggested soothingly. “Just the three of us. I know somebody you’d like to talk to, Faye. A man.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea.” Faye bobbed her head excitedly. “I like to talk to men!”
Mr. Trim howled with laughter. His mouthful of irregular teeth was a wide circle and his shoulders shook. But the sound was thin, not carrying far enough to spawn an echo from the rock walls. Though his merriment was deep, neither his damp brown eyes nor the corked tip of his disguised pistol wavered away from the Conovers.
He stopped suddenly. “Shock can certainly produce a variety of comical expressions,” Trim said with a final chuckle. “And yours rank with the finest in my collection. First, however — ” his voice turned sharper “ — gently toss that .45 back to me, Conover.”
John Henry made his paralyzed hand reach for it.
“Gently. Not that I trusted you with a loaded gun — but, on the other hand, you might now be tempted to club me with it.”
Carefully, John Henry lobbed the automatic to the other man. Trim snatched it deftly from the air and put it in his belt. Without shifting his gaze, he pounded his wooden pistol down sharply on the saddle horn. The painted toy shell shattered. He peeled the broken pieces from around a short black revolver and flung them to the canyon floor. “No need for masquerade any longer, is there?” he commented. The trigger of the revolver had been the only portion protruding from its gaudy camouflage.
Sin finally found a tremulous portion of her voice. “Then you’re not really a G-man, at all?”
Trim smiled sparingly and shook his head. “Let’s say that I’m really — ” he touched the cocked hat “ — a pirate. That’s closer to the truth than my other personalities.”
The moon slipped past the jagged edge of the canyon above them and the little man became a malevolent shadow against the gray gloom of wind-carved stone.
“Just one thing I want to know,” said John Henry. He sagged wearily in his saddle. “Then I’ll shut up. Where did you have that combination? We searched you.”
“Not very thoroughly,” said the shadow. “You missed the pistol, for one thing. But the combination wasn’t there. The combination was here.”
“Where’s he pointing?” asked John Henry, straining forward.
“His mouth!” cried Sin.
“That’s right,” chuckled Trim. “My dentures are false. No one thinks of that. Whoever heard of owning a set of false teeth that look worse than real ones? No self-respecting dentist would make them. Everybody assumes that they must be natural — but they’re as false as that story about Mr. Robottom, which I consider pretty adequate for the spur of the moment.” He peered to see the extent of the Conovers’ chagrin and drew back satisfied. “Enjoy the sweep of the joke,” he commanded. “Others among my foes have been fooled and appreciated it.”
“Mr. Trim,” said John Henry earnestly. “We are not your foes. From the beginning, we’ve only — whoa, Nightmare!” The horse wanted to carry him forward but Conover felt he was close enough to the other man.
“No,” said Sin.
“Nonsense. You’ve been a complication since Saturday night — althoug
h a curious one. It was an accident that Barselou learned we were in the game at all. But then to have you gullible innocents mistaken for us — I call that highly amusing. Wouldn’t you?”
“No,” said Sin.
“We? Us?” questioned John Henry tentatively.
“My daughter Faye and I,” replied Trim blandly. “My name is Jordan — if names mean anything. But don’t break the habit of a week end, I beg you.”
“Oh!” gasped Sin. “Then she — then we — ”
“Haven’t you noticed the family resemblance — the Jordan nose? It’s turned up at the world — pushed into that position by generations of well-applied thumbs. Yes, it was Faye who insisted the cottages be switched so she could go through your belongings for this precious combination while they were being moved. Gayner, poor fumbler, didn’t suspect a thing — he was that eager to search your stuff himself. But he searched the clothes after Faye had finished and it was he who mussed them so deplorably. And spilled your peppermint, Mrs. Conover.”
Sin trembled with rage. “You killed him! And you can remember that silly peppermint in the same breath!”
“Relax, honey,” said John Henry uneasily.
“Yes,” chortled their captor, “you might frighten Barselou. Though he’s probably so busy chopping into chests of pearls and emeralds that he douldn’t hear Judgment Day. I hope he’s saving me the trouble of the heavy work.”
John Henry sensed that his wife was shivering, although the dark of the new day was not chilly between the protective canyon walls. He edged his horse closer to hers so that their legs touched comfortingly. “Let’s move on,” said John Henry and his voice was tired. “Let’s get it all over with.”
There was enough light for him to see Trim raise the short fat revolver menacingly. “No rush,” was the amiable reply. “I prefer to board the Queen by daylight. Barselou is an excellent shot.” He settled back on his steed luxuriously. His proud voice said, “Faye’s taking you to the Bar C in the first place was impromptu, Conover — but it shows her flair. That way she was able to separate you from your wife and go through the only clothes of yours she hadn’t inspected — the clothes you were wearing the night before.”