Chances are if Adam’s wife, Elizabeth, had lived he never would have heard about his daughter, Betty-Jean. But his wife had died three years ago and late last winter Adam got a letter from a Judge Shively down in Pasadena, California, telling him the facts. The Judge said that he himself was getting old and was straightening out his affairs; so he thought, now, it was his duty to inform Adam that he had a daughter, Betty-Jean Oakman, born April 25, 1912, in his, Judge Shively’s, home as the enclosed copy of the birth certificate would show.
He apologized for not letting Adam in on the secret sooner by saying that when Elizabeth had come to his home, instead of returning to her own people who had opposed her marriage, she had exacted solemn promises from Mrs. Shively and himself that they would never let Adam know he had a child. Betty-Jean, he said, had grown up in their household and flowered into a beautiful young woman of whom he was as fond as he was of his own son. Mrs. Shively had passed on, recently, and since his own days were numbered he wanted Betty-Jean to have a father.
What crazed Adam was that that doll-faced wife of his had known that the meanest revenge she could take on him was to have a child of his living in the world and not tell him about it. Next to ants, children were always his favorite hobby.
St. Dennis O’Dell looked the Judge up in Who’s Who, and he sounded fine with college degrees, one son, two clubs and a nice religion after his name. So we advised Adam to go right down and see his daughter.
“What daughter?” Did we mean a couple of slickers who were playing him for a sucker? While he was in this mood he wrote a letter to the Judge, and the old gentleman answered ending the affair and being most respectfully his.
How the old fox finally managed to get Betty-Jean to come to him, instead of his going to her, I don’t know. But she came in March, and she struck me as being a pretty little blonde with dimples and a small voice always saying, “Yes, indeed,” and, “Thank you very much.”
O’Dell said she was a pleasantly commonplace, excellently reared young woman. Brigid O’Dell said that she was God’s perfect gift to parents.
“Depending on the parents,” O’Dell objected. “She bores me irreparably. She has been boring me all my life.”
When I mentioned that he’d just met her, Brigid who is nice that way, explained. “He means all the ‘dear, sweet girls.’ The sort who still think that calling a Ford car a ‘Lizzie’ is a splendid joke.”
“Our handsome Mayor,” O’Dell said, referring to Adam who, folks say, looks like Ramsay MacDonald, “will be off on another prospecting trip one of these days.”
At his age Adam’s prospecting trips were pretty well over. But, a month later, he invited Mrs. Duefife and Reggie to come to Hay Patch, sending them the money for their tickets, when he got her letter from New York asking for a loan. Mrs. Duefife was Adam’s half-sister, divorced for years from Mr. Duefife.
Rosemary and Twill Young were the children of his other half-sister. She had died when they were little tykes. Their father fell out of a high window in 1929. Since then, Mrs. Duefife said, they had been having a terrific struggle to exist, but she didn’t think the poor things would come to Nevada for a visit, proud and sensitive as they were. Adam wrote to them, anyway, including the wherewithal, and they must have hopped the first train out of New York.
Since Adam had always had it in for his stepmother’s branch of the family, claiming that she’d hounded his father to the grave though she died years before the old gentleman did, I thought Adam wouldn’t have taken such a sudden interest in all these kinfolks of his if things had been more stimulating at Hay Patch that spring. His excuse was that Betty-Jean needed young company.
As I said, I’ll bet none of this was surprising news to Kent, though Adam’s version of it may have been. It was to me.
The surprise came later when we three walked out to see Kent’s horse, Acrasia, and saw her from a distance, loping around the pasture as gentle as a cradle, with something white on her back. To date, as far as any of us had known, Kent was the sole mortal who had sat Acrasia longer than one second flat and lived.
By the time we got to the fence Rosemary was climbing it with a bridle in her hands, and Acrasia without a sign of a saddle was nosing up to the rails and munching suspiciously.
Rosemary was wearing a pair of Twill’s white pants, but kind of grimy, and held up by a belt that shirred them in big wads below her waist, and a shirt with a patch on it. Costumed, in fact, something like a scarecrow without its hat and looking, no matter what O’Dell said, prettier than dawn on the quiet deserts. Her brown hair had come loose from the dignified way she fixed it and was fluffing around her face to her shoulders; and her eyes, which I’d thought were brown, turned out to be a queer soft shade of purple.
“Hello?” she said, questioning a little, smiling and wiping the sugar off her hand to her shirt-front.
Adam never opened his mouth. Kent had his open just enough to look gawky. I was never a hand for etiquette, so I kind of fumbled saving the situation. “Kent,” I said, “meet Kent. Rosemary, this is Rosemary.”
“Rosemary,” Kent said, sounding a little silly and doing the first fresh thing I ever saw the boy do with a lady. He put his hands round her waist and jumped her down off the fence.
Then and there I noticed a peculiar thing. There was something alike about Kent and Rosemary. Now Kent being an upstanding, sunburned blond, good-looking though not resembling, I’m pretty certain, the Vikings of old as Mrs. Duefife accused him later, it stands to reason that he and Rosemary didn’t look alike. No, and they didn’t act or talk alike. I figured a lot over it on my way home and the best I could do was to say that they jibed, like a question and its right answer.
Since it was only twenty miles out of my way, I went around past the O’Dells’ place to give them the news.
O’Dell said, “That bag of candy was symbolical.”
He had said that before, talking about the bag of candy Adam had given to Kent when he was a curly haired three-year-old getting underfoot the night of the mine disaster. The baby ate it and threw it right up.
“Beginning with that evening,” O’Dell went on, “Kent has consistently refused to swallow the unsavory stuffs that Oakman has forced on him. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche—when the boy was seeking at seventeen. A capital offense, if I had my way——”
I interrupted, knowing how hot O’Dell always got on the subject: “Adam may have made mistakes but he wanted Kent to be a good mining man and he is.”
“Wrong. Kent is a good mining man, but Oakman wanted him to be the traditional mule that strays away to the outcropping ledge so that its owner finds the mine with the mule. Now he has picked the boy’s wife for him. We’ll wait and see. But I’ll tell you one thing, Jeff. You didn’t fumble your introductions. That was the wisdom in you, man—your deep soul speaking in spite of you.”
I never did know whether O’Dell’s talk was senseless or just sounded that way. But speaking of mules had put me in mind of Adam so I repeated another piece of news he’d told me that afternoon.
“Betty-Jean,” I said, “is reforming Twill of all his bad habits.”
Brigid said, “How nice for Betty-Jean. But I didn’t know the sweet kid had any bad habits.”
“He hasn’t,” I said. “Smoking, taking a drink once in a while. Adam wouldn’t care. It made me kind of wonder if he was up to something. What he can’t get in one way he usually gets in another. He’s pretty slick,” I said, half admiringly, maybe, “and slippery, the old codger.”
“So’s a wet fish,” Brigid said.
Chapter III
One of the more affronting aspects of the Memaloose murders was why the criminal should pick a city when I, Sheriff of Oakman County, was present in person on the place. What made it worse was that I’d been up around Tahoe, chasing some bootlegging Canadians for a couple of weeks giving any criminal a good chance to take advantage of my absence instead of presence.
The morning after I got back I met Joe Laud
in Slim’s eating breakfast. As soon as he got through with his wisecracking about Indians always escape up Tahoe way—though he had his mouth full of Tahoe trout right then—he began on the news.
Seemed that old Judge Shively had been over Memaloose for three days now. Joe had it sized up wrong as usual, that Kent had got sweet on Betty-Jean and Adam had sent for the Judge to help him put a stop to it.
Changing the subject, I asked Joe how the Labor Day barbecue that Adam had held at Memaloose had panned out.
Joe said, “Something awful. They had fireworks. Mrs. Duefife made a speech,” and added: “Something awful.”
“How are all the other folks over there?” I asked.
“Hot,” Joe said. “And going crazy. All but the pup. Oakman has gone already. I drove Brigid O’Dell over there last week. The O’Dells’ car is up for overhauling and her papa had to take a flying trip back East. Oakman said to me, ‘Joe,’ he said, ‘male ants, after marriage, are brainless. The only comfort is that, being too idiotic to feed themselves, they soon die.’ Was he insulting my ex-wife, or what did he want to say such a thing to me for?”
I turned that off by saying that it was hot enough here and now to bring on a thunderstorm during the day.
“Not a chance,” Joe said, wrong as usual. “Ellie won’t need to sweep you out under your bed today.”
I don’t know that I’m scared of thunderstorms, but I don’t like them. So, that afternoon when I was having a little snooze in my room at the Ferras Hotel and was waked by the thunder I got up and went directly downstairs.
The poolroom was chuck-full of the boys who acted like they had never seen a man in his socks before. I guess they wouldn’t have let up on me yet if Kent hadn’t been there playing stud. He dropped out for a couple of rounds and rescued me.
Seemed that I’d slept through the worst of the storm when there had been a cloudburst. Kent thought the folks at Memaloose would be worrying for fear he’d been caught in it on the south slope of Tumboldt Mountain. If he had, nine chances out of ten he’d have been killed so they likely were bothered all right. The phone wires were down so he couldn’t call them.
He said he could borrow a horse or walk the nine miles over there, but he hoped that when the storm cleared they’d find the road wasn’t washed out so bad but what the boys could fix it in a few hours and he could drive the car back. Judge Shively was planning to leave for home on Number 24 at eleven that night, and Kent wanted the old gentleman to get off on account of the heat affecting him pretty seriously—chills, cramps and so on.
I never thought much of Adam’s driving, but Adam did and I knew he wouldn’t let anybody but himself drive his car around Tumboldt at night. So I wondered to myself whether the Judge wouldn’t rather put up with a few more nice chills in this weather than wind up at the bottom of one of Tumboldt’s hairpin curves.
Kent, who always was kind of a mind reader, said, “I won’t bring the car unless the road is safe for Dad to drive at night,” and went on asking me a favor, he said. Would I mind riding my nag, Dollar, over to Memaloose and telling the folks he was O. K. and would be over pretty quick? Betty-Jean, he said, was giving a send-off dinner for the Judge at eight that evening, and he gave me the bottle of sherry that he’d come for and that she’d be fretting about not having to use in her cooking.
“You’ll stay for dinner, of course, Jeff,” he said. “Betty-Jean would have invited you if she’d known you were back from Tahoe.”
I’d eaten Betty-Jean’s dinners and, knowing that they were the best ever served in the state of Nevada, I accepted with pleasure. I was glad to accommodate him by riding to Memaloose; but I had a few little things to attend to first. So, by the time I got there the sun was out drying things up so fast you could hear the murmuring sounds they made getting shed of the damp.
I dismounted and opened the Memaloose gate, all plastered up the same way the road had been with wild western hospitality (“Private Property.” “Keep Out.” “No Trespassing.”), and there, leading Acrasia, was Rosemary.
She was wearing a big, black rubber slicker of Adam’s that fitted her like the cage fits the canary bird. I knew the minute I looked at her pretty pointed face so white that it made her eyes twice as big as usual and darker, where she was going and what she was dreading.
“Kent’s fine,” I said, as fast as I could. “I just left him at the Ferras Hotel playing poker.”
For a minute I thought she was going to break down and cry from the sudden good news; but, by the time I got to her, she was smiling and thanking me and explaining that she’d have started sooner for Tumboldt only that Twill wouldn’t let her.
“He knew that Kent was too wise to come home when a storm was threatening,” she said, defending Twill as she always did, “but we’ve all been worried. Aren’t the deserts glorious after the storm?” she said next, and that she was going to take a quick canter out toward the White Cracker Mountains. And up she was, and off and away, sitting her horse as pretty as any buckaroo that ever pulled leather.
Along with everything else, she was a natural-born horsewoman, that girl, and meeting her made me feel good all over as usual. So, when I opened the kitchen door at the community house and Adam, who was in there rasped out at me, “You!” which I’ve thought was what folks said only to the villain, I did not take it kindly.
“Sorry to discover you, Mayor,” I said, noting a guilty-looking sandwich in his hand. “I just dropped in to tell you that Kent is winning all the money in Ferras at a stud game over there. He’ll be home pretty soon, but not driving the car. The cloudburst wasn’t so bad, but there’s one mean place where another hunk may slide later.”
“I beg your pardon, Jeff,” he said. “I thought you were Kent. Not that I was actually worried about the boy, but——“ He went on then, inviting me to stay to dinner, to stay all night, to stay a week if I could; even going so far as to offer me his sandwich, which I refused.
He looked at his watch. “Four o’clock,” he said, “and we aren’t dining until eight, you know.”
I’d had a smack at Slim’s knowing, too, that it doesn’t take long to get hungry after six in the evening; so I said that nothing on earth would make me spoil my appetite for one of Betty-Jean’s dinners and added, only by way of making conversation, that I’d just met Rosemary out by the gate.
“Jeff,” he said, “did you know that when a Miner Ant Queen gets into a Scamp Ant’s nest she is the most lovable thing imaginable? She caresses the Scamp Ant Queen, dresses her hair for her, flatters her, until in the friendliest sort of way she——“ He stopped and opened the back door. I should have known he was up to something, the old dizzard, remembering how he prides himself on his story-telling, but I didn’t. “Saws her head of?!” he shouted and banged the door, leaving me alone and more taken aback—to make a long story interesting by beginning at the end—than I was when I heard the gunshot three hours and a half later.
Chapter IV
Brigid, Kent and I were on the front porch of the community house, all of us feeling upset because of a quarrel Adam and Kent had just had inside, when the shot cracked out.
“What’s that?” Brigid and I said.
Kent’s answer, “Must be a firecracker left over from Labor Day,” was sensible, so we all went on down the steps. But before we’d turned east toward Brigid’s cottage, which we were bent for, Adam came around the house from wherever he’d gone out of the back door after his quarrel with Kent, and joined us. We stopped a minute, just standing, and then Kent and Brigid strolled on ahead leaving me to trail after them with Adam.
It was about half-past seven and dark was dropping down so the place didn’t look quite as hideous as usual. Everything was nice and still, too, except for our footsteps clapping so loud on the cement walk that they made me feel humiliated.
When we came to Rosemary’s cottage (Adam’s and Kent’s quarrel had been about her), I noted that Kent slowed up, and I was hoping the boy wouldn’t get Adam sore again by goi
ng in there, when I saw Rosemary come running out of Twill’s cottage, which was just beyond hers, and heard the awful sound that she was making—too low for screaming but too loud for moaning, shaking itself out into the quiet, and drawing in, and shaking out in horror again.
By the time Adam and I got to her Kent had his arm around her and was begging, “No, no, dear. Don’t say that. It isn’t true.”
“But it is true,” she said, and I heard her teeth chattering. “I’ve killed Twill. I’ve shot him and killed him. I know I pointed the revolver at him and said that I’d kill him, but I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to. He said I didn’t mean to. He knew it. He knew I loved him. Just before he died he said to tell you that he’d killed himself. But he didn’t. I did. Kent, can you understand? I can’t. But I shot Twill.”
Adam started running up the walk to Twill’s cottage. I went with him. The door was ajar and the electric light in the parlor ceiling was on showing us at a glance that Twill was not in there dead or alive. The wall bed had been let down and a pillow from it was on the floor between the parlor and the breakfast nook, dented down in as if somebody had just that minute got up from lying on it. In the dent and around it were spots red and wet with blood.
“Flesh wound,” Adam said. “Twill isn’t much hurt. Rosemary is hysterical.” He stepped around the pillow and went striding through the breakfast nook into the kitchen, snapping on the lights. I went with him. I’ll give a plan of the cottage here. We went through the kitchen, through the bedroom, through the bathroom, back into the parlor again. I had a crazy feeling that Twill was, maybe, keeping one stride ahead of us through the house; so I half expected to find him in the parlor when we went into it. But he wasn’t there.
Rosemary was lying on the bed. Kent was sitting beside her. Brigid was standing by the window looking out with her mouth open. (She said, later, that her mouth opened like that when she saw Rosemary’s arms and pretty white frock all smeared with blood, and that she couldn’t make it stay closed for half an hour afterward.)
The Desert Lake Mystery Page 2