Sometimes he stopped to catch his breath and wipe the sweat off his face. The sun was burning a hole in the top of his head, and the only shade here was for snakes and lizards. Then he remembered what he’d been thinking up at that mining-camp the day before: how nice it would be to escape civilization and get lost in these mountains. Well, this was it. This was the great freedom, pioneer fashion, but it was still the same old battle to keep alive. A different set of enemies were waiting for him—the rocks and the sun and the not so unlikely possibility that one of these boulders might break out into a nest of rattlesnakes, but the payoff for losing was the same. It was right there below him, silent and peaceful like its name. Peace Canyon. Peace and death, the one thing man always sought, and the one thing he always found. Off in the distance something that appeared to be a cloud of smoke was rising up from the canyon floor, but Danny had no time to contemplate its origin. On he climbed, one arm’s length, one footing at a time—the way man always had reached his desire—
He didn’t have to look up to know when he reached the rim; the rush of the wind told him. He crawled up over the edge and looked out over a world that had never looked so good. Columbus must have felt the same way when he sighted land—or those wagon-train immigrants of another century when they crawled out of the desert and saw pasturage ahead.
What stretched before Danny was not a boulevard, but he could walk now—run if he had the strength—and a ragged line of vegetation in the distance had to mean water in this country. He thought of that dry river the day before and his heart sank, but this was in the mountains and mountains had springs—at least that’s what he promised himself all the way to that clump of foliage. He found a stream, a little stream that in one spot made a small pool where he could drink, bathe his face, and douse his head in the greatest orgy of his life. This stuff was better than vintage champagne; this stuff should be bottled and sold by the ounce! And on the bank of the stream was shade for resting in, and the wind blowing over his wet T shirt was like an air cooler.
Danny didn’t know it, but the stream he had found ran alongside the wagon-track trail leading to the now smoldering cabin. The first realization he had of the road was the sound of a motor approaching, and, exhausted and aching tired as he was, he scrambled for shelter behind the handiest bush. Moments later a light-blue pickup rolled out of the dust and stopped a few yards away. Danny didn’t dare raise his head, but he could hear someone getting out of the truck and threshing his way down to the spring; and then through the branches he caught a glimpse of a tall man in a wide hat. Jim Rice. This was the guy with the ready laughter and the warped sense of humor. He’d probably be convulsed at the sight of a dusty, sweat-stained fugitive in the bushes. The best bet was to remain hidden and keep silent, but that pickup was a tempting eyeful. Rice had left the door standing open on the driver’s side, and Danny could see the sunlight flashing on the string of keys in the ignition.
The climb up the side of Peace Canyon must have made Danny reckless; not otherwise would he have dreamed of what he was planning now. Rice had finished getting his drink from the spring, but he didn’t seem in any hurry to get back to his truck. Danny could see him more clearly now. He had walked a few steps farther away and was frowning up at that smoke cloud hanging over the canyon. Maybe he wasn’t coming back for a while. He had a rifle slung under one arm; he might be going hunting. And then Danny remembered what new game was on open season these days, and his daring faded momentarily. What if Rice was a part of the posse? What if he happened to look down at the right spot and sight those fresh tracks in the soft earth around the spring? A scrawny mountain bush wasn’t going to be much protection against that rifle.
So it was six of one and half a dozen of another, and Danny chose the six. He waited for an instant when the tall man’s back was turned and then ran from a crouching start. He ran swift and low to the ground, making no more noise than the wind in the bushes or a pack rat in the night; but Jim Rice was an old hand at hunting and his ears were very sharp. Danny was almost even with the rear bumper when Rice whirled and raised his rifle.
It was the sunlight on the moving gun barrel that gave Danny warning. He dropped to the ground before Rice could get off his shot, and rolled in the dust to the far side of the truck. The right rear wheel made a good stopping place. Let Jim Rice put a bullet through his own tires if he wanted to do any shooting!
And then while the angry voice on the far side of the truck was yelling at him to step out with his hands up, Danny noticed something familiar about those tires. They had left the same tread marks on the dusty road as the ones he’d seen a couple of hours earlier on the floor of the barn in Peace Canyon.
CHAPTER 15
“WELL, IF IT AIN’T the wandering boy!” Rice drawled, as Danny raised up from behind the wheel. “Keep those hands up!”
“I haven’t got a gun,” Danny said.
“Oh, no! What did you do—leave it in Junction City?”
Jim Rice wasn’t going to ease his grip on that rifle no matter what Danny told him, and Danny wasn’t in a position to argue. They were standing just that way, eyeing each other like a pair of strange dogs, when another dust cloud rolled down the trail from Peace Canyon and settled down around the body of a red jeep. Never had company been so welcome. Undoubtedly that blue pickup didn’t carry the only set of tires in the vicinity that would match the tread marks in that barn, but Danny was in no shape to rationalize at the moment. All he could think of were the bloodstains in the cabin, and all he’d heard about the death of a woman named Francy.
“Danny!” Trace called, hopping to the ground. “Are you all right?”
“Is he all right! Now isn’t that thoughtful?” Rice said. “I catch an armed killer and you want to know if he’s all right!”
“Danny isn’t armed,” Trace snapped.
“How do you know?”
“Never mind how I know. What happened, Danny? What happened back in that cabin?”
It was a question Danny would have liked to answer, complete with descriptive passages, but two things happened to stop him. One was the sudden arrival of Virgil Keep, who wasn’t letting Trace Cooper out of his sight any more, and the other was the delayed reaction of a two-day flight to nowhere that had finally brought him back to the long and strong arm of the law. Danny’s arms weren’t strong at all any more, and his legs were like strings of wet spaghetti. He grabbed the door handle of the truck for support, and saw Rice’s rifle swing toward his head.
“Put that damn gun down!” Trace shouted. “Can’t you see the kid’s done in?”
“What do you want me to do,” Rice demanded, “hold his hand?”
“Just hold your fire! You don’t have to worry about Danny now, Jim. The sheriff’s here; he’ll take charge.”
Danny couldn’t account for it, but somehow even that big ugly sheriff didn’t look too bad. Maybe he was just too far gone to be afraid, or maybe he was just too afraid to know it; but he crawled into Virgil’s borrowed car about the way he would have crawled into a featherbed if there’d been one handy. They were going back to Cooperton now, Danny and the sheriff and Trace following along behind in the jeep; but Jim Rice couldn’t wait for the procession. With a pointed suggestion that perhaps the sheriff should wait until he sent back a few deputies to protect him from so dangerous a prisoner, he tore off down the trail ahead like Paul Revere with a red-hot tip about the British. Jim wanted to be sure the party had a reception committee, and that nobody got the story of this capture secondhand.
Practically all of Cooperton came down to the sheriff’s office to welcome back Danny Ross, and they weren’t there to give him the keys to the city. Danny was still too exhausted to be more than vaguely aware of what was going on, but he gathered that he wasn’t going to win any popularity contest with this crowd. Virgil had picked up a deputy and a photographer at the intersection where the canyon road met the highway, and together with Trace they formed a pretty formidable bodyguard. The photographer w
as a man from the D.A.'s office, and the intersection, Danny learned on the way in, was the spot where Francy Allen had been found. This piece of information fitted in nicely with what he’d seen in that cabin, and somebody should know about it; but the sidewalk was rolling like a choppy sea, and the steps up to Virgil’s office had about six-foot risers.
“Somebody telephone Doctor Glenn,” he heard the sheriff say off in the distance, and then everybody went away for a while and left Danny in the darkness.
• • •
About the time Danny collapsed, a big black man in a light suit elbowed his way through the crowd outside the sheriff’s office and began asking for Trace Cooper. He might as well have saved his breath, because nobody was listening to anything but the sound of his own anger, anyway; but when Trace suddenly appeared in the doorway, Arthur waved down his attention.
“Trace” he called. “Hey, Trace, I’m back.”
Arthur was like a bonus from fate. Lowell Glenn’s office phone rang without response, and Virgil wouldn’t hear of calling old Doc Gaynor’s residence on a day such as this. It was nice and respectable of Virgil, but in Trace’s book the living took precedence over the dead any day. In very few words he explained what he wanted Arthur to do.
“But don’t you want to hear what I found out in Red Rock?” Arthur protested.
“Just as soon as you get Glenn over here,” Trace said. “I don’t think the kid’s suffering from anything more than sunburn and exhaustion, but it might calm down a few excited citizens if they see he needs a doctor. It’s not much fun to lynch someone too sick to care.”
Trace might have exaggerated the temper of the crowd—it was too early to tell—but it did seem that every man, woman, and child in Cooperton, with two exceptions, were either in front of the sheriff’s office or on the way over. And that old truck coming down the street was Walter Wade’s, with Viola leaning her head out of the cab so as not to miss any of the excitement.
“Okay,” Arthur said, “but in case you can’t wait, the answer is yes.”
Now, of course, Danny Ross didn’t hear any of this conversation, and it wouldn’t have made sense to him, anyway. It wouldn’t have made sense to the crowd, either, who were just being normally curious about a desperate killer with two murder charges hanging over him. Two—and if you listened to Viola Wade (it was quite a feat to avoid listening), maybe three. Cooperton was of a mind to believe anything at this point, considering those two fresh graves in the cemetery and that new addition to the Junction City morgue.
But there were two people in Cooperton who didn’t know a thing about all this excitement until Arthur stuck his thumb on the Gaynor doorbell. Through the fancy glass panels on the old-fashioned door, he saw Joyce rise from the sofa and come forward. Trace was right: she wasn’t alone, and the other occupant of the sofa was young Dr. Glenn. At the hearing of Arthur’s message, he bounded up like a trial lawyer making an objection.
“The sheriff’s office!” he echoed. “Why am I wanted there?”
“Sick boy,” Arthur said. “They just brought in Danny Ross. He’s kind of done in.”
It seemed to be a letdown for the doctor, or maybe a relief, but he wasn’t taking Arthur’s word for anything. “This sounds like some of Trace Cooper’s doings,” he said. “Why didn’t Virgil telephone if he wanted me?”
“He did. You weren’t in.”
“There’s a phone in this house, too!”
“Sure there is,” Arthur agreed, “so why don’t you just ring up the sheriff and see if I’m telling the truth.”
Arthur waited in the hall where the afternoon sun cast long shadows on the faded carpet, and where Lowell Glenn’s struggle for an open line came like an impatient staccato from the old doctor’s study. The telephone operator would be pretty busy for a while helping the countryside catch up on the latest news. Joyce stood by the door, pale and troubled.
“Was he hurt when they took him?” she asked.
“Who-Danny Ross?”
“Yes. Trace thinks he’s innocent.”
“Was Trace here?”
“A few hours ago.”
That accounted for the doctor’s reluctance to leave, Arthur decided. He probably suspected the whole thing was a trick to get him out of the house so Trace could return. “The doctor sure hates to see you two get together,” he remarked, nodding toward the study door. “He must be afraid Trace is going to talk some sense into your head.” He expected Joyce to rare up and protest this intrusion in what she considered a private affair, but all the fight was gone out of Joyce now. She was still wearing black, and her pale blond hair was all done up in a sedate style that suited her about like jodhpurs on a cowpoke. It was the dress of mourning, but there was more worry than grief in her eyes.
“What is ‘sense'?” she asked hollowly. “I’ve given up trying to rationalize anything. I just don’t understand, Arthur. I don’t understand murder, and I don’t understand deceit. Why do people do such terrible things?”
“Maybe they don’t mean the things they do to be terrible,” Arthur said. “Maybe they mean them for good and they turn out wrong.”
“You’re talking about Trace and Francy, aren’t you?”
“I’m just talking about the things people do. Take your grandfather, for instance. I don’t suppose there ever was a finer man, but that didn’t stop him from making a terrible mistake.”
Joyce’s head came up quickly. She was trying to read answers in Arthur’s face, but he was heir to an old silence that volunteered nothing. And he was loyal. That’s why he holds me in such contempt, she thought—he’s loyal and I’m not.
“You’ve got to tell me,” she said. “You were on the place all the time Francy was there; you must know the truth.”
“I’d be the smartest man on earth if I did,” Arthur muttered.
“Don’t talk like that! It’s all very noble of you to keep silent because Trace does and you respect his wishes, but it’s not for myself that I’m asking. Can’t you see what’s happening? People are beginning to say that Francy was murdered just like my grandfather. If it turns out that Danny Ross isn’t guilty, who do you suppose will be accused next?”
All the fear in Joyce’s eyes had a name now, but Arthur couldn’t protest. He couldn’t answer or make any denial, because now Lowell Glenn had completed his call and was putting down the phone. There was only a moment before he came back into the hall, hat in hand, and in that moment it was Joyce who spoke.
“I wouldn’t blame him if he did kill her,” she said. “If all we’ve suffered is a lie and she let it go on, I wish I had killed her myself.”
• • •
The answer was yes—that’s what Arthur had called back as he edged back through the crowd. Trace took the knowledge back inside with him, but by this time it was more of a corroboration than a surprise. The inkstains on Francy’s fingers had to mean what he now knew: she had regained consciousness before her death; she had been able to use a pen. But Francy had no worldly goods to bestow, and she couldn’t have been writing her memoirs so close to the edge of her grave. What she could have done was sign a statement and name a name only one other person could have known until it was shared with Charley Gaynor.
So it all came back to the old man as Trace knew it must. But where was the statement now? Had the doctor made an extra stop on the road back to Cooperton? Had he posted a letter or made a telephone call? The latter idea Trace abandoned immediately. Any act the doctor might have performed was still a deep secret, and conversations on the Cooperton line were as confidential as a bass drum. Trace pondered that unhappy fact for a moment, and then he began to understand.
But conjecture was foolish until Arthur returned with the details, and even when he returned, with a grumbling Lowell Glenn in tow, the outlook didn’t brighten. No one at the hospital had any knowledge of a written statement. All Arthur had learned was that Francy had been conscious before her death, and that the old doctor was closeted with her until the las
t. It was like finding a key only to realize that the door was still missing.
“What are you two hanging around for?” Virgil demanded, returning from Danny’s cell. “Lowell says there’s nothing wrong with the kid but some blisters and scratches.”
“Can I talk to him?” Trace asked.
“Why should you?”
What Trace really wanted was to pry out of Danny every word Charley Gaynor had uttered during their brief acquaintance. Words that meant nothing to him might mean a great deal to a man with a key. But he wasn’t ready to share this new-found knowledge yet.
“I’d like to know how that fire started in the cabin,” he said.
“I’ll write you a letter when I find out.”
“Virgil, for God’s sake be reasonable!”
“I am being reasonable! I’m letting you walk out of here instead of throwing you into a cell where you belong. I know how the kid got to that cabin, and you know damn well that I do! If it was anyone else—”
Virgil didn’t get any farther. A cry from the street interrupted his tirade. “Hey, Virgil, what’s the doc for? You going to pretty up the kid for his funeral?”
“Break it up out there!” Virgil yelled. “Everybody go on home!”
The deputy at the door squinted through the glass panel. “Nobody’s going,” he said. “That’s Jim Rice shooting off his mouth. I think he’s been drinking.”
“Well, tell him to go home!”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Trace said. “Ask him to come in.”
Both Virgil and the deputy looked at Trace as if he’d gone mad, but there was nothing wrong with his reasoning. Jim Rice on the inside couldn’t cause any trouble on the outside.
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