by Dora Benley
Dora ordered the smallest steak that the steakhouse offered, the ladies' cut. Even that looked big enough for a ranch hand to her. Edward was not accustomed to steak so much as roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. But he was hungry enough to make do even when they served the steak with french fried onions, which he had hardly ever tasted before, and spicy Texas steak sauce on the side.
They were sitting by the door in case they had to leave quickly and bolt out of here. Dora held her menu over her face as best she could just in case. Still she felt somebody eyeing her. But she did not know who and she did not know where they were hiding. It made shivers go up her spine. She kept on glancing at her wristwatch and wondering when they could leave. But Edward kept on cutting still another piece of meat to eat.
Suddenly a group of waiters burst into the room singing, "Happy birthday to you!" They surrounded a table nearby and put down a cake in front of the guests who clapped and happily sang along.
Her nerves tensed. She did not know why.
Dora could hardly believe it when another group of waiters burst out of the kitchen singing the same Happy Birthday song. They surrounded Dora's and Edward's table before they realized what was happening. It was certainly not her birthday or his!
Edward dropped his knife and fork. He looked up from his steak only just in time to grab her hand and leap up. Two of the waiters turned out to be the hired photographers from Pittsburgh. They began to flash photos of the couple while the other waiters sang and sang, forming a circle with linked hands around their table.
Edward broke through the linked hands and yanked her out of the restaurant. It was already dark. They headed off into the night. Their headlights lighted up a big white sign that said: WELCOME ADRIAN, TEXAS ROUTE 66 MIDPOINT LOS ANGELES 1139 MILES CHICAGO 1139 MILES.
Dora smelled an awful odor drifting up to the highway. "What's that?" she asked.
He sniffed and winced. "It smells like cow dung if you ask me."
"Surely they could not have paid the cows to be in on the plot to make us stop somewhere so they could steal the maps!" she sighed.
He shrugged. "Who knows? Around here it seems like everybody can be bribed including the cows perhaps."
South of town they flashed by cattle feed lots. It seemed that they drove half the night before stopping in Glenrio at the Texas Longhorn Motel and Cafe. She was so bleary eyed she did not even know where they were until the next morning after they woke up and discovered themselves in a nondescript white wooden building by the side of the highway.
She could almost peel the clothes off herself. She just had to take a bath. She could never believe that in her life she could get so dirty, she the Pittsburgh heiress worth millions of dollars. She wished they could stay somewhere long enough to get her clothes properly laundered, but when you were traveling somewhere with Churchill's chiefest spy, Colonel Sir Edward Ware, you could not take such ordinary luxuries for granted.
Edward squeezed into the four by four foot bathroom while she was taking a shower. He was attempting to shave himself. But all she had to do was step out of the shower and start to towel herself off before she discovered something else that was being forgotten.
He was staring straight at her naked chest. She shivered and remembered that the purpose of this trip was originally supposed to be a tryst to get her pregnant. He picked her up naked as her bath towel fell to the floor and carried her into the bedroom. As he thrust into her, she remembered that this was all that should really matter to her. She was so tied up with this Colonel Sir Edward Ware that she would go anywhere and do anything for him just to be alone with him for a stolen moment or two. Heiress or not this was the only thing that meant anything to her and had for years now through a world war and more. And it mattered not if King Kong or Hitler was chasing them.
Chapter 18: Petrified Forest
Dora and Edward began to make their way across the tortured landscape of New Mexico. This looked like another planet. It reminded her of a painting in her school textbook from high school when they were talking about other planets in the solar system and how painters had envisioned them over the years.
"Edward, how can any place look so lonely and forsaken?" she exclaimed. "It resembles the far side of the moon." She shook her head sadly.
He shrugged. "The Syrian Desert during the Great War looked pretty forsaken, too. No water for miles. Big rocks and sky islands. Lots of sand and peculiar plants that you would never see anywhere else. But New Mexico is a lot bigger. I will grant you that. It seems to go on forever."
"Will we ever get to the end of it? Will we ever find that damned Stone Tree House?" she despaired.
"About another six hundred miles the way I calculate it," he sighed as he patted her leg. "At least that is what the maps seem to indicate. That is where we are supposed to meet Churchill's operative."
"Churchill sure knows how to pick out of the way places," she groaned.
"It was supposedly as out of the way as he could get," Edward replied.
"You can say that again!" she moaned. "But it can't be obscure enough that those creeps stop following you about. They show up everywhere all the time no matter where you go."
"That is the danger of it all," he admitted. "But we have to try to elude them. That is the name of the game."
At lunch time they made a quick stop at the Route 66 Diner in Albuquerque. They sat on aquamarine blue stools at the counter made of black and white tiles with red lights overhead. They ordered hamburgers and fries (even Edward was getting used to them!) not to attract any attention to themselves by ordering something different. They also kept their heads down and did not meet anyone eye to eye.
At the end of the day of driving across northern New Mexico on Route 66 they pulled into the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup on the far western edge of the state. As soon as they stopped in front of the place that looked like a misplaced mansion in the wrong setting they heard gunfire. She tried to duck down as Edward put his hand on his own pistol ready to fire if he needed to.
A man in a cowboy hat raced into the parking lot firing at an Indian wearing feathers. The man fell to the ground. He looked up at the sky with lifeless eyes. He appeared to be dead.
Dora screamed.
Edward floored the gas to try to back out of the parking lot. They did not want to be trapped at the scene of a murder. But behind him loomed two large trucks that were filling up the parking lot. They were also blocking him. He could not move very far, let alone escape.
"Cut!" cried a man with a camera, leaping down out of one of the trucks followed by a whole crew of other men with cameras.
The dead man sat up. One of the men from the truck handed him a glass bottle of Coke. He started to sip it and talk animatedly. The man with the western gun wiped his brow and fanned himself with his western hat.
"Are we going to do a retake?" he asked one of the cameramen. "I think I messed up right before I shot the gun."
"Is this a movie crew?" asked Dora, wondering what they had stumbled upon.
"I don't think we need a retake. You were wonderful, John!" A camera man addressed the cowboy. "In fact, I think you're going to be a real star someday the way you really put power into the role. People are going to get to know the name John Wayne very well, I think."
"It must be a movie crew," agreed Edward, befuddled as he helped Dora out of the car and escorted her up to the front desk. They did not want to get distracted or off schedule if they could help it. And these days they seemed to encounter nothing except distractions from King Kong to twisters to cowboys and movie stars from Hollywood, too. They could not easily tell who was going to suddenly transform himself into a spy and start shooting at them for real.
The next morning they finally crossed the border into Arizona. Suspense mounted as the landscape transformed itself into a desert with badlands on each side of the highway. And the badlands took on vivid
hues in the bright sunshine that made Dora wince. She was glad that some stops back she had purchased a pair of cheap sunglasses. It looked like a different world indeed.
"Be on the lookout for any signs about the Stone Tree House or whatever you can find," Edward advised Dora.
Dora nodded. She sat there tensely observing every sign that flashed past. Finally came the turn off for Petrified Forest National Monument. It was no farther away from the highway than any other roadside stop. That was convenient.
Edward turned sharply to the right into the parking lot of the Painted Desert Visitor's Center. The northern part of Petrified Forest National Monument apparently was called the Painted Desert. She learned something different every minute in this godforsaken country.
"Maybe we can ask somebody inside where to go from here," Dora suggested.
They walked into what looked like a combined visitors' center, restaurant, and souvenir shop selling postcards, books, and souvenir pieces of petrified wood that somebody might use as a book end. Dora expected a crowd, but when Edward opened the door for her, the place was deserted. They seemed to be the only ones here. They waited at an empty counter next to a cash register. No one appeared to wait on them.
"Is anyone else here at all?" Dora called out to no avail.
Edward looked from side to side cautiously with his hand on his gun. Finally he shrugged.
To her left she saw a bunch of tables and chairs and figured that must be a restaurant of sorts. They took seats and waited and waited. No waitress appeared.
Edward glanced at his watch. "We have a head start escaping the spies. I do not want to waste it idling around here. Let's go. No one is going to help us. It is as obvious as the day is long."
Dora sighed as she forced herself to her feet with difficulty being too close to the next deserted table.
"Maybe this place is closed today or maybe the staff took the day off. Who knows and who cares?" He shrugged. "Let's get out of here now while we still can. Maybe we can even come back tomorrow once we get our bearings. We will have to find an auto court or at least somebody who knows about the Stone Tree House."
As she rose she noticed in the corner a table with a steaming plate of food. It looked like a hot sandwich with gravy and mashed potatoes on the side. It would not still be steaming if it had been sitting there very long. But Edward was already out of the building. She did not want to lose him, although it looked very puzzling.
When she got to the car she hissed, "Edward, there was a steaming plate of food at a table behind us."
"If we wait to figure out every mystery, we will never find Churchill's operative," he said.
She guessed he was right as she climbed into her side of the Cadillac and slammed the door behind her.
They were about to get back on the highway when Edward noticed a loop road that continued farther into the monument beyond this building and this parking lot. He paused a minute considering before he cautiously inched forward towards it and paused.
"That must be the place!" Edward pointed at a sign some yards ahead. It had an arrow pointing down the loop road in the opposite direction from the highway. The words said:
"Stone Tree House: Built of Petrified Wood 80 Million Years Old".
Dora hoped it was the place they had been searching for as they slowly made their way down the narrow, winding park road that looked as if it was wide enough to be only one way at a time. If they met another car coming in the other direction, she did not know what they would do. Back up? Pull off the road? Knowing Edward, he would probably get out his pistol and stare the other driver in the eye.
As they advanced there was clearly no place to pull over on the side of the road either. They drove past a sign that said Tiponi Point. Dora was amazed at the sculpted red earth stretching out to the horizon. The rocks took on different forms and shapes. She could imagine they looked like all sorts of objects under the clear blue sunny sky dotted with puffy white clouds. They looked like waves in the sea. From another point of view they resembled pyramids in Egypt. From still another angle they became the surface of Mars. But the wild, barren, almost surreal landscape certainly did not look like a place to rendezvous with a contact from England! Churchill's man would lose his way!
Tawa Point looked even more extreme as they kept on driving. Some of the rocks were as high as mesas. They were so red that they resembled volcanic rock. It must have dried and crusted in waves flowing down from one of those extinct volcanic peaks in the distance. It all looked very dramatic despite the fact that it was frozen in time, in place in rock form. It was easy to imagine it was the Lost Continent of Atlantis all dried and shriveled up by the sun when once there had been life and a whole civilization now vanished into dust. But the landscape was so barren, so devoid of life right now, that she could not imagine lingering around this place for long even to locate Churchill's operative.
Signs kept on lining the road. If this was not the place for the Stone Tree House, she could not imagine where it was located. The next sign said with another conspicuous arrow: "Hopi and Navajo Arts And Crafts. 6 Guest Rooms $2.50 per night". The next one said: "Kachina Point. Petrified Forest National Monument. Stone Tree House Ahead. Don't Miss." And the next sign said, "Desert Tours 200 Feet Ahead".
Kachina Pointed loomed in front of Dora like the dark side of the moon. Half of it was cast into dense, dark shadow. The other half was illuminated and scintillating in the sun with pink, red, and orange tones extending all the way to the far horizon in the big sky that seemed to extend in all directions forever. Dora did not want to think about their car breaking down and stranding them in a place where little red men might appear next. Startled, she put her hand to her mouth when she saw what looked like a giant hand complete with giant red fingers reaching out towards them from a red rock hillside as if it belonged to Polyphemus or another one of the race of the Cyclops.
Soon the two story stone structure came into view. Edward stopped the car right in front of the building made of petrified wood colored dark pink, red, and black depending on the vein of stone that Dora looked at. She had certainly never seen anything like it before anywhere she had been in either Europe or America. It was totally unique. It set the mood. It overwhelmed Dora with an uncomfortable feeling of anticipation. Who knew what she would encounter next?
Edward paused to look both ways before they entered through the door that seemed to be propped open waiting for guests. Dora's eyes were drawn to a wall on the other side of the room painted with dancing Hopi Indians in ceremonial attire. Bare wooden vega logs stretched from one side of the ceiling to the other. Wooden restaurant tables were scattered around the room with green painted wooden seats and others just plain wood color. They had to assume that Churchill's informant was waiting for them at one of those tables. Where else would the elusive man be found? Certainly not outside in that outer space landscape!
But as they advanced into the inn, they did not see anybody here either. They took a seat at a table in a corner and sat there opening up a menu. No one came to wait on them. Absolutely no one.
Dora hissed at Edward, "Could we have gotten the wrong place?"
"There is no other place!" He threw his arms out.
"What are we going to do?" she pressed.
Is anybody here?" Edward said in a loud tone of voice, practically shouting. No one could fail to hear him speaking in that tone.
No one answered.
"Edward," she leaned toward him and whispered, "why isn't anybody here? Wasn't the informant told to watch for you? Even if he was staying in one of those guest rooms, he would hear you, wouldn't he?"
Edward rose and paced from table to table searching everywhere. Finally he reached a table tucked away in the corner. A man fell out of the booth and onto the floor. He gaped straight up at the ceiling with eyes bulging from his head. He was staring at nothing at all.
He was dead.
Chapter 19: Monsters of 1933
Edward clapped his hand over Dora's mouth to prevent her from screaming. He gave her a stern look. She restrained herself.
Dora could always count on Edward. He had the presence of mind to kneel down on the floor and start going through the dead man's pockets to confirm his identity. Before Edward could finish his search, just as he was saying, "This is clearly Churchill's operative! It could not be anyone else," a gun began to fire at them. It must be from one of the open windows or doorways. The body falling out of the booth — it had all been a trap!
Edward knocked Dora to the floor and rolled on top of her. They concealed themselves underneath the nearest painted restaurant table until Edward could reach for his own gun. He fired straight and must have hit the mark, though she had not even caught sight of the assailant. The crossfire ceased instantly. After all, he was an ace shot. It reminded Dora of his story about how he was strafed by a low flying airplane during the Arab Revolt back in 1917 and how he survived by using his wits.
Edward yanked Dora to her feet. He pulled her out the open door back to the empty parking lot. Thankfully their car was only feet away. They were almost there.
Suddenly from underneath the blue Cadillac V16 crawled a giant lizard which must have been about two feet long. It was bright pink with very distinct black banding. Dora had never seen anything so hideous in all her life. Despite the danger from other possible gunmen and the need to get going, Dora backed up against Edward and stifled another scream. The thing's forked tongue flicked out just like any other demon from hell. Even worse, it had yellow eyes that turned towards them and stared boldly as it hissed and hissed.