The Ghost Riders Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  April smiled. "No other place in town to buy liquor. Nearest bar is in the next settlement, and that's over seventy miles away. No. If Marty was on a drunk, he'd have been in here—only I can tell you, he hasn't been in."

  A few minutes later, Solo walked out of the City Bar. He paused on the board walk, stared both ways along the sleepy street. Then he glance over his shoulder at Mabel, drinking alone at the table inside the tavern.

  He strode along the walk, going past the ranch station wagon. He walked beyond the feed store, then stepped around the corner, pressed himself against the adobe wall, waiting.

  It was a short wait. He heard Mabel's bootheels clattering on the boards as she half ran in pursuit. She slowed, then stopped, looking around puzzled, a few feet from where Solo stood.

  Solo stepped out upon the walk immediately behind Mabel. He caught her arm.

  Mabel heeled around. Solo fixed her with an unyielding smile. "Looking for anyone we know, Mabel?"

  "Let me go."

  "I let you go, but you don't go. Why? Do you find me that fascinating, Miss Finnish?"

  Mabel shivered slightly. "I don't find you fascinating at all."

  "You disappoint me. I had such high regard for your taste. Tell me, if I'm not your type, why do you follow me around?"

  She winced, looked helplessly both ways along the sun-stricken street. "Maybe you just happen to go all the same places I must go."

  "An interesting theory. Maybe you can tell me why you want to go all these places where I so inconveniently show up—just ahead of you."

  "Need I remind you, Mr. Solo? It's a free country. I can go where I like?"

  He continued to smile, coldly. "And let me remind you. Freedom and life are being threatened here. It's no game. I won't play by any rules that will please you. I might even get rough. Now, shall we try again? What are you doing here?"

  "Because I heard that one thousand of Mr. Maynard's cattle disappeared without a trace."

  "Are you interested in cattle? Or disappearances?"

  Mabel's head tilted slightly. "Like everyone else, I heard that two huge trains also disappeared without a trace."

  Solo stopped smiling. He shook his head, puzzled. "And that's why you came here?"

  She met his gave levelly. "Doesn't the name Finnish mean anything to you, Mr. Solo?"

  Solo frowned, filtering the name through his mind. There was the faintest stirring of recall. He shook his head. "Should it?"

  "Leonard Finnish," she said. "He was a geologist known all over the world. He was my grandfather. He disappeared without leaving a trace."

  "On one of those trains?"

  She shook her head. "My grandfather disappeared five years ago."

  "Here in the Sawtooth mountains?"

  "No. Grandfather vanished while on a geology expedition in Death Valley, in California."

  Solo nodded, remembering. "Yes. He was exploring some subterranean caverns in Death Valley, but that's fifteen hundred miles from here."

  "Yes. And five years ago. Still, he did vanish without a trace. Just as the cattle and the trains disappeared. Is it so wild that I'd look for my grandfather here—try to learn all I can about these disappearances? You're here. Yet those trains disappeared in Indiana, didn't they, Mr. Solo?"

  Solo smiled, released her arm. "Checkmate."

  SIX

  Solo set up the polygraph machine in Maynard's ranch house den. He was checking it out when the door was thrown open and Maynard burst into the room.

  The rancher's sun-tanned face was gray. His eyes were distended. He said, "Solo. The bunkhouse. You better come. Quick."

  Maynard turned on his heel and Solo followed. The few dude ranchers remaining on the place eyed them silently, coldly as they passed. These people stood up, tense, watchful.

  They found the same chilled reception at the bunkhouse. The ranch hands were taut, eyes bleak and troubled.

  Maynard thrust open the bunkhouse door and Solo followed him inside it.

  Inside the room, Solo slowed, stopped, staring at the men on the bunks.

  "Pete and Marty," Maynard said. "They got violently ill last night. Mabel Finnish drove into Cripple Bend to fetch Doc Cullin, but I don't think she'll make it."

  Maynard was right. Marty died before Doc Cullin arrived, and there was nothing the medic could do to save Pete.

  Maynard caught the doctor's arm. "Why? What caused them to die like that, Doc?"

  Cullin shook his head. "I don't know, Carlos. There are no physical signs of any kind. We'll just have to wait for the autopsy."

  That evening Solo was working on his daily report when there was a knock at his door in the upstairs of the ranch house. He said, "Come in."

  The door opened and Doctor Cullin entered. "Maynard said I should give you the results of the autopsy report, Mr. Solo. Autopsy shows the presence of a nerve gas in the lungs of both men. Death was caused by strangulation; that nerve gas had been in them for some days slowly choking them."

  Solo gazed at the doctor, then stared beyond him at Mabel Finnish, standing gray-faced in his doorway.

  ACT II: INCIDENT OF THE MISSING CASTLE

  The train hurtled downward into the belly of the earth. The stifling darkness shrouded the car where Illya braced himself against the plunging descent.

  Breathing was difficult, movement almost impossible. It seemed to Illya as the train lowered that his body became heavier with increased tug of gravity.

  Suddenly there was the creaking of giant chains and winches. The train trembled as the huge lift settled into a brilliantly illumined cavern and came to rest.

  Illya ran to the windows. Beyond the train, fluorescent lighting made the high-domed caverns brighter than sunlight. Yet Illya knew they were miles beneath the surface of the earth.

  He checked the small sender attached to his lapel. Its transistors were in perfect order, its continual flow of bleeps flared unchecked—into the solid rock surrounding him. The small instrument was useless.

  From outside the sealed car Illya heard the sounds of men running, shouting.

  He wheeled around from the windows. From his jacket he took the components of his machine pistol, working swiftly. He tried to force his fingers to react more swiftly, but there was a languid heaviness to all his movements.

  He set the barrel of the pistol into its stock, screwing it into place. But even as he worked he knew he would not work swiftly enough.

  There was a whispered sound, as if some magnetic seal had been released. Doors at each end of the custom-built car swung open, suddenly freed.

  The gush of machine-driven air filled the car. Illya straightened, feeling unexplained panic.

  He took a backward step as the first warmth rushed over him. It enveloped him like some invisible cloak, striking him down to his knees as if it were a physical blow.

  Stunned, Illya twisted half around under the unseen impact. He caught at a seat, but fell to his knees. The machine pistol was driven from his grasp, hurled to the floor some feet from him.

  Striking on his knees, Illya stared at the gun, concentrating upon it, scrambling toward it.

  "He's here! Take him!"

  Illya's head jerked up. Men rushed into the car through the opened doors. The gusts of heated gas seemed to have ebbed.

  Staring at the men rushing toward him, Illya grasped out for the machine pistol. In horror he saw his hand strike the gun and lie helpless upon it.

  Lift it. Pick it up. Lift it. His mind sent frantic messages to his hand, but his fingers remained stiff, straight.

  He could not close them.

  Helplessly, sprawled like a bug on the car flooring, Illya stared upward incredulously at the men surrounding him.

  His eyes widened. These men looked as if they were like him—or once had been. But all had undergone some strange metamorphosis down here. They were alike in body, with the roundness of moles or fat underground rats. They moved with their heads bent forward, peering through thick-lensed glasses as if l
ife below surface was steadily destroying their sense of sight. Most appalling of all was the doughy pallor of their faces, their bodies—beings who lived shut away from the memory of sunlight.

  Illya struggled frantically on the flooring. He managed to lift his weighted, slowly-responding body to his knees. But he could rise no further.

  Illya hung there, supported on leaden arms, head drooping between his shoulders. He panted through parted lips, aware suddenly that he was breathing something that was not oxygen—this warm gas was slowly paralyzing his muscles and his body.

  He tried to speak, tried to cry out.

  It was like a nightmare. He was unable to make a sound.

  He reached out one more time for the machine pistol and almost sprawled on his face.

  Deep, guttural laughter spewed down over him.

  One of the mole men reached down, took up the machine pistol, examining it with interest.

  It took an eternity, but Illya managed to lift his head. The men stood, peering squint-eyed through their thick glasses at him, their faces pulled into savage caricatures of something they remembered as laughter.

  The laughter raked at him and Illya tried to cry out. He could not force a sound past his lips. His throat felt swollen, closed. He tried to brace himself, but had no muscular coordination. The warm thick pressure of that strange sick-sweet gas closed upon him like an occluding fog.

  He toppled helplessly upon the floor, suffocating and paralyzed, the sound of the weird, wicked laughter raging in his ears.

  And then the warmth darkened around him, shutting out everything except that laughter, and this spun like enraged hornets inside his mind.

  TWO

  The unbroken, whispered clatter of his wrist-watch alarm awakened Solo an hour before dawn.

  For a moment he lay unmoving, protected from the chilled Wyoming darkness, from all the unknown that lay ahead of him.

  From the corral below he heard movement and subdued voices of men calling to each other. Wind riffled the curtains at the windows.

  Solo yawned, throwing back the covers.

  A shard rap sounded at his door. Maynard's whispered voice came through the facing. "Your horse and pack are ready, Mr. Solo."

  "Thanks," Solo said. "I'll be right down."

  He swung out of bed, snapped on the small bed-lamp. He slipped his legs into corduroy trousers, and then stood up, donning a heavy shirt.

  The whispering, dry-hinge creak of his balcony door, brought him wheeling around.

  The door pushed slowly open, Solo caught up his gun, but dropped it when he recognized Mabel Finnish. She moved in from his balcony.

  He stared at her. She was dressed for the trail in slacks, heavy jacket and riding boots.

  "I'm going with you," she said.

  "What makes you think I'm going anywhere?"

  "Let's not waste time, Mr. Solo. You're riding alone up into the Sawtooth ranges looking for some trace of those missing cattle, and I'm going with you."

  "Nobody but Maynard knew my plan. How did you find it out?"

  She gave him a faint smile. "I may as well tell you the whole truth—"

  "That will be refreshing."

  "I have a small listening device. I hear what I must. It's like a hearing aid, only concealed, and much more powerful. I'm sorry to force myself upon you like this, Mr. Solo, but I have no choice."

  "I could think of several—"

  "I must find my grandfather. That's all that matters to me. I have to know what you say, what you learn about the disappearance of those cattle, just as I must go with you."

  "I'm sorry. That's impossible."

  Mabel seemed not even to hear him. "I can be of help to you."

  "I don't need your help."

  "I've been on those trails."

  "I have maps of the ranges. I know where the cattle were last seen. No, I'm sorry, Mabel. It's too dangerous. I don't have to tell you that Pete and Marty died because they were up there. They were attacked by some kind of nerve gas and it was fatal. I can't expose you to such danger."

  Her head lifted. "I'm not afraid."

  Solo's jaw was taut. "Well, I've sense enough to be afraid for you."

  "You don't understand, Mr. Solo. You're wasting time. I'm going with you."

  "Then you're bigger and stronger than you look."

  "I'm big enough and strong enough, Mr. Solo."

  He grinned. "And lovely enough. I'm truly sorry I can't take you with me."

  "I told you." Her voice became deadly. "You'll take me, or you won't go."

  He laughed, turning slowly. "How do you plan to stop me?"

  For the first time Solo saw the gun in Mabel's hand. He saw something else, too. Her grip was steady. Her finger was firm on the trigger. She knew how to use that small firearm, and she would not hesitate to do it.

  Her voice mocked him. "Now do you understand why I'll go with you? I won't hesitate to shoot you."

  "What will that buy you?"

  "That's it, Mr. Solo. It won't buy either of us anything. That's why I hope you'll be smart enough to take me. I know the mission you're on is urgent to you. But my search is even more urgent to me. I'm sorry, Mr. Solo, but I'm desperate—"

  "Enough to shoot me?"

  He watched her, but the gun in her hand did not waver.

  She nodded. "I'm desperate enough to do anything that will help me to learn the truth about my grandfather. I know his disappearance is somehow related to all this. I've got to find out."

  "If I find your grandfather, I'll bring him back. I promise that."

  The muzzle of her gun tilted slightly. "That's not good enough, Mr. Solo. I go with you or nobody goes. That's up to you now."

  Solo chewed at his lip a moment studying her, and that unwavering gun in her fist. He shrugged his shoulders, giving her a reluctant grin of capitulation. "I've been wondering all along how to beg you to ride out with me, Miss Finnish."

  Mabel sighed out heavily. "You're very wise, Mr. Solo."

  He lifted his hands deprecatingly. "It's really very easy to be wise, Miss Finnish, with a gun staring you in the face."

  THREE

  They climbed steadily into the blue-hazed heights of the Sawtooths, the silences deepening through the morning, noon.

  There were no longer even any trails on these lava-scarred mesas. The uncharted wilds had been tortured into ridges and ravines by countless suns and mountain winds.

  They reached a treeless escarpment by midafternoon. Solo halted the horses.

  Shifting in his saddle, he gazed downward along the way they'd come. It was as if they were the only human beings in the breathless world of sand-scarred boulders.

  Their horses slipped, fighting for footing on the slate outcroppings.

  Far below them sprawled waterless plains, vast and uninhabited; above them reared inaccessible plateaus, crags jutting against the sky, massive ranges lost inside monstrous mountains, trackless and forgotten.

  Solo shivered slightly. He glanced at Mabel. "I never really knew what the word desolate truly meant until today."

  "The silence is unbelievable," she said. "Not even a bird, or an animal."

  He sighed. "What are you really doing up here, Mabel?"

  She frowned. "I told you. I'm looking for my grandfather."

  "I know. It just doesn't add up."

  "Nevertheless, it's true."

  "Is it? I keep asking myself, why should a young, beautiful girl like you spend her life looking for a man who has been missing for five years?"

  "That man is my grandfather, Mr. Solo."

  "But he must be dead. They would have found some trace of him."

  "Have they found any trace of your trains, Mr. Solo?"

  He frowned. "But you. So young. Looks like you'd marry, have a family—"

  "It's more important to me to find my grandfather. I know he's alive. He was a very great man, Mr. Solo. I never met another man worth taking me from the search for him."

  Solo smiled despi
te himself. "You're a strange girl."

  "It's a strange world, Mr. Solo." She prodded her horse and moved away.

  Solo rode slowly. He could not explain why, but felt himself growing taut.

  He stiffened in the saddle, searched the boulders and the cliffs around him, moving his gaze slowly, peering. He found nothing, yet the feeling increased that they had ridden into trouble.

  There was a sudden, subtle shift in the atmosphere. It was nothing he could explain, yet it was there. The sun was unchanged, undiminished, cresting far to the west of them. The brilliant haze lay across rocks and outcroppings, but there was a difference between this plateau and the land below them.

  Troubled, Solo was aware of a faint, but persistent ache in his temples. A headache! Hadn't this been the sign Pete and Marty both noticed first up here?

  Something else nagged at Solo. Then he remembered. Mabel had said it. There were no birds, no animals, not even a lizard or a mouse.

  He was aware that Mabel had shifted in her saddle and stared back at him, a faint smile twisting her lovely mouth. "What's wrong, Solo?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know. I only know that something is wrong."

  "It's your imagination."

  "Perhaps." Solo reached up, messaging his temples. "Why don't we stop for coffee?"

  Mabel laughed, but agreed. They swung down, ground-tied their horses.

  Mabel sat on a small boulder. She watched Solo gather grease-wood sticks and start a small fire between two smooth stones. He placed the smoked coffee pot on it; soon the aroma of coffee obscured everything else.

  Solo hunkered beside the fire. His eyes ached now, but he remained alert, watchful. He was troubled, though there were no sounds except the crackle of the fire, the bubble of the boiling coffee water, the snuffling of the tethered horses.

  "You're scared, Solo." Mabel's voice raked at him.

  He glanced up. "Sometimes you have to be smart enough to be scared. Did you know that's how man learned to exist in this world—by being scared first?"

  "What scares you up here?" she inquired.

  He shook his head. "Everything. Nothing. I've the unshakable feeling that we're being watched."

  "Watched?" She laughed. "By whom? By what?"