by Jack Usher
One hundred and twenty-eight steps a minute for fifty minutes. Then ten minutes on his back, feet raised on the canteen, the big hat over his face. The infantryman’s mile-eating route step. Calculated to cover an easy twenty-five miles every eight hours. Pelchek felt dehydrated, hot and uncomfortable. But not too tired. Even out of condition it would take two of these eight-hour forced marches to wipe him out. He had found this out the hard way. In training and in Korea. No man knew how far or how fast he could walk until he had to do it. Just on water. And not much of that.
Only twice had the rifle spoken. Once early, when the pursued man first caught sight of him. A well-placed slug kept the man from veering towards the distant, low-lying hills. A second had discouraged him from attempting the last shallow draw meandering out from the cliffs. Since then he’d walked stubbornly straight, placing the hills farther and further out of reach as the desert widened.
At first there’d been a long mile between them. To Pelchek, the man was but a wavering dot among the small sagebrush and runty cacti. Each ten-minute break had seen the man draw away, only to lose the precious ground in the ensuing fifty minutes. Now, almost six hours from the starting point, only a quarter of a mile separated them.
Pelchek looked at his watch again. Nine hours of good light left. The man was sure now he wouldn’t shoot to kill, and was trying for nightfall, the velvety darkness a safe haven. But he had no water. So Pelchek did it again. He shouted.
The man stopped, turned. Shielded his face with the hat, held in front and below his eyes. Pelchek uncapped his canteen and filled his mouth with water, letting a bit trickle down his throat. He washed the remainder around vigorously, spat. Noisily and ostentatiously, the stream of water silvery in the flat air. The man stared, turned and replaced his hat. He began walking again, small clouds of dust rising from each scuffling step.
At six o’clock a scant fifty yards separated the two men, the still-high sun beating down on sweat-soaked clothing. The man in front dove suddenly for the scanty protection of a clump of sage. As he did so, Pelchek caught sight of metal glinting. He stopped. Waited. No sound broke the uncanny stillness of the flatland.
Then came the pale flame of a discharging pistol, seemingly part of the angry report that followed. Pelchek dropped to the ground, and rolled. Five times the pistol barked in rapid succession, desperately searching for the rolling man. Sending little spurts of earth skyward, bouncing pieces of lead singing their ricocheting song across the plain. Then a click, loudly recorded.
Pelchek shot the empty revolver from the hand that held it, the .30-caliber slug shattering metal. With a sobbing cry, the man staggered to his feet, began a stumbling run away from his pursuer. Pelchek shot again, tearing the heel from the man’s boot, causing him to sprawl on the ground.
“The next one smashes your spine,” Pelchek called after waiting for the booming reverberation of the big rifle to subside. He got up, walked slowly toward the fallen man, weapon held at the ready. The only sounds were the slobbering sobs of the prostrate figure on the ground. Pelchek reached out a foot and turned him over.
It was Pete Romero, and he couldn’t talk. The swarthy face began to twitch and pull. It was flushed an unnatural red. The eyes stared horribly at Pelchek, lips trying vainly to form words. Romero was dying and Pelchek knew it. He quickly loosed his canteen and uncapped it, tried to force water between set teeth. He slapped the twisting face, trying to unlock the stubborn jaws.
“Talk, damn you! Talk!”
Romero’s bursting heart gave way and he died, badly and consciously. His graying face moving after light had gone from the eyes.
Pelchek, cursing openly, searched the detective, taking everything in his pockets. He rose, looked down at the dead man, then turned purposefully in the direction from which he’d come.
Fifteen minutes later he stopped and looked back. By some seemingly occult means, two winged messengers of death had started their circular dance, each circle a little lower and a little smaller. He gazed up at them for a moment, then faced the long way back and began walking.
CHAPTER 17
AGUILAR and the two women reached the sheep camp by noon. After Elena and the dog had located Pelchek’s horse, the old man and Chris had ridden double, Elena trudging along by the side of the animal. They obtained mounts for all from the herders at the Last Canyon camp, and the old man arranged for someone to return to the Shelf for Steve. He gave the man explicit directions how to find the dead horses, and asked him to follow Pelchek’s tracks out into the desert.
They rode directly to Calderon’s ranch, arriving there by late evening. Fifteen minutes later Elena was driving them to Las Milpas, an hour’s ride.
“No, Grandfather, we cannot go to your place,” she said for the third time. “If Steven doesn’t get the man who shot you and Chris, it might be dangerous to go to the ranch.”
“I wish we hadn’t left the dog at Calderon’s,” the old man said petulantly. “They’ll probably feed him garbage.”
“The dog!” The girl looked over from her driving and smiled at him, shaking her head.
“Do you think he’ll catch him?” Christine asked.
“If he doesn’t, he’ll walk him to Mexico,” Elena said. “Steven is a stubborn man.”
“Stubborn and opinionated,” Chris said shortly, then lapsed into a stony silence and gazed straight ahead.
They rode silently for several miles before the old man cleared his throat, and still looking out the side window, started talking.
“You remember when you were a young girl, still in school, Christine? How you used to follow me around the place asking about your problems? The dancing dress without the shoulders—”
“Straps, Grandfather,” Elena corrected.
“Very well, straps then… and the football player who was too aggressive? If I remember, I gave you a little knife for him.”
“I almost scared that boy to death,” Chris said, lips curving in a reluctant smile.
“Well, you can still listen to me.” He turned to the pale girl sitting between him and Elena. “This man will come to you, chiquita. Be sure of that. It is eating on his insides right now and he doesn’t know what to do about it. But he will come. The feeling is in him. I can tell.”
The girl patted the old man’s hand. “We’ll see,” she said.
It was dark when they reached the outskirts of Las Milpas, nearly ten o’clock. Elena wound through back streets and alleys to avoid showing the dirt-stained Ford to anyone who might recognize it. Finally, she pulled into dark shadows behind the Mazatlan and stopped. Aguilar looked at the dimly-lit back door and shook his head dolefully.
“I’m glad your grandmother isn’t alive to see me taking you girls into this place.”
The girls smiled at each other, then Elena slid from behind the wheel and went to the door. Two minutes after she’d been admitted the door reopened and Al Reyes came out, Benny Esparza following. He motioned to Benny.
“Help Mr. Aguilar into my office,” he directed. “Then come back and hide this car.”
When the two had started for the door he looked in at Chris Baker. She stared back at him.
“Hi, Al.”
“Hello, Chris. Can you make it?” He reached out and took her arm, seeing the damaged shoulder for the first time. “Who did it?”
“We don’t know,” she said, slipping out of the car and walking with him to the door. “Steve Pelchek is out on the desert following him.”
He escorted her to his office without further comment, sat her in the big chair and picked up the phone.
While Al was phoning for the doctor, the office door opened and Elena came in, followed by Mary Perrini. Both carried steaming cups of coffee in each hand. Mary, her face still showing bruises, handed a cup to Chris, then stood close to Reyes at the desk.
“Well,” she said, looking about the room. “This looks like a gathering of the clans. Will someone please fill us in? Wha’ hoppen?” She placed one hand ove
r Al’s.
Elena told her, after which Mary told them about the abandoned mine and the line camp.
“… and so Al and I haven’t moved since we got here. We had a doctor for him and he’ll live.” She looked up at him affectionately, then back to the others. “We’ve been waiting for Steve. We wait some more, huh?”
“He’ll be here, young woman,” the old man said fiercely, from his position on the divan. “He’ll be here and bring us the dog he went after.” He turned to Reyes. “Now get the doctor here, boy, and get me out of this whorehouse.”
“Yes, sir.” Al grinned, still holding the phone.
At two o’clock in the morning they were still waiting. The doctor had come and gone, putting the protesting old man into Reyes’ bed with a light sedative and dressing Chris Baker’s shoulder. He agreed to hold off reporting the gunshot wounds until he heard further from Reyes.
Elena was asleep at the desk, head resting on her arms. Only the dim light of a small table lamp reflected in the room, casting shadows on the waiting foursome. The rear of the building was silent, adding to the unnatural stillness. Christine broke the silence.
“It’s awfully quiet, Al. I should think this place would be noisy this time of night. At least, I’ve heard…” She stopped, confused. “… I mean, what with the girls and…”
“Benny Esparza shut the back end down until this deal is over,” Reyes said quietly. He shifted on the chair arm, looked down at the top of Mary’s head.
“Benny Esparza? Why, I thought—”
“No more, Chris. I sold him the place this afternoon.”
Chris Baker struggled to a sitting position, a grimace of pain crossing her features. She looked from Reyes to Mary Perrini, then got to her feet. She walked over and kissed Reyes on the cheek.
“Al,” she said quietly. “I’m so glad.” She turned to Mary. “Miss Perrini. You did it, didn’t you?”
“That I did.” Mary grinned. She looked up at Reyes. “I’m taking this bandit back to Pennsylvania with me. I’ve a flock of brothers back there. They’ll see he makes an honest woman of me. And it’s Mary, honey,” she said, turning back to Chris. “We’ve been to the wars together.”
Chris walked back to the divan and sat down. She stared starkly at the door.
“The hunky’ll be here, honey. You can bet your life on it,” Mary said. And they waited.
Pelchek arrived two hours later. Covered with dust, face drawn from near-exhaustion. He accepted the drink Al handed him, looked around at the three women and one man. He flopped on the divan.
“It was Romero. He’s dead.”
Reyes broke the shocked silence that greeted this announcement. “Did he talk?”
“No.”
“How did you get back, Steven?” It was Elena. She sat at the table, rubbing her eyes.
“The man your grandfather sent met me a few miles out on the desert. He took me straight to the hills and through a draw. Romero’s car and horse trailer were parked at the end of it. So, I wired it up and came on in.” He sank back into the divan.
“Tell it all, Steve,” Reyes said.
“That’s it,” Pelchek said, some time later, “and from what you’ve told me, it looks like we’ll have to do it the hard way. If we do it at all. And we’ll need some help. Official help.” He got up from the divan and picked up the phone, dialed the operator. While waiting he glanced at Mary. “You sure as hell stayed out of it, didn’t you?”
She smiled at him, then at Reyes.
“Operator? Get me Chief Mathewson.… I realize that, but this is an emergency. Get him at home… Right, I’ll take the responsibility.” He looked at the others. “She’s going to get him out of bed, I guess… Hello! Mathewson? This is Pelchek… Yeah, Pelchek.” He listened intently for a moment, then interrupted. “Wait a minute… No, wait… I’ll explain all that when I see you… Right away, Chief. I’m at the Mazatlan. Right. It’s very important… Okay, in an hour.” He replaced the phone. “He’ll be here.”
“Coffee, Steve?” Mary stood by the door.
“I could use it.”
The girl went out and Pelchek turned to Reyes.
“You got lucky, huh, Colonel?”
“A woman, Steve.” From his seat atop the safe the tall Mexican smiled at him. “She doesn’t even know how much of a one she is.”
“My congratulations, Al. That ends your fight with the natives, doesn’t it?” Pelchek walked over, stood near Chris Baker.
“I guess it does.” Reyes glanced at Elena, said something in rapid Spanish. She smiled, looked at Pelchek.
“I think I’ll go in and see how Grandfather is,” she said, going into the bedroom.
Reyes slid off the safe, went to the door. “Mary is probably bringing coffee for us. I’ll go help her,” he said, shutting the door behind him.
Pelchek faced Chris Baker, said stiffly, “Whatever it was, it must have been funny. Did you understand him?”
She nodded.
“Well, what did he say?” he asked impatiently.
“He wondered why anyone as smart as you was unable to see beyond your own nose,” she said calmly, not looking at him.
Pelchek sighed, walked over to the desk, leaned against it. “I couldn’t thank you up on the hill,” he said. “Didn’t have time. You probably saved my life, Chris. It was a brave thing to do and I—”
“Just forget it!” she said tensely. “You forget it, and so will I! If you get my brother off you’ll have thanked me enough.”
“That isn’t it,” he said. “There’s something else I’ve got to—”
He was interrupted by Mary and Reyes returning with the coffee. When Elena came in from the bedroom they sat around and sipped the steaming liquid. They talked about the case until Benny Esparza came in with Mathewson.
“What in hell has happened to all you people?” were his first words upon entering. He looked from one to the other, eyes cataloguing marks and bruises. He shook hands with the two men, glanced curiously at Mary Perrini, raised his eyebrows at the sight of Chris Baker, nodded to Elena. Resting against the office door he let his eyes roam over them again. “I asked you. What in hell have you people been into?”
“Maybe the tail end of the Baker case, Mathewson,” Pelchek said. “Sit down and listen. You may not believe this.”
The big man seated himself on a straight-backed chair, hat pushed back on his head, and feet planted firmly on the floor. “All right. Tell me,” he commanded.
Pelchek began from the night he’d been worked over in the Casa’s parking lot. As he talked, the chief pulled the ancient briar from his pocket, filled it and lit it. Pelchek talked on. When he came to the part about Reyes and the Perrini girl, Mathewson grunted softly, allowed the pipe to go out. Steve took him into the hills, described the attack on the Shelf, then his walk on the desert.
“Who was it?” Mathewson growled.
Pelchek walked to his jacket, emptied one pocket. He handed the contents to the chief. “Look at it.”
Mathewson fingered the wallet, shield attached. He looked at Pelchek. “Why’d you have to kill the son of a bitch?” he asked quietly. “I wanted him. I’ve waited five years for this guy.”
“I never laid a hand on him,” Pelchek said dryly. “If the birds leave enough, you can prove it.”
“All right. I’ll have to buy it all.” Mathewson rose from the chair, stood facing Pelchek. He indicated the rest of the room. “Everyone couldn’t be lying. Now what?”
“I’m not sure,” Pelchek said. “With Romero dead before he could talk we’ve run out of gas. He may have been the last person who could connect the bright boy who engineered this deal.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t him?” Reyes asked.
“Yeah. It could have been, but I doubt it. Not enough motive. In fact, no motive at all for initiating the Walker killing.”
“Have you any ideas?” the chief asked.
“Two. One is that you could probably work backward on this th
ing, and with a lot of work, time, and luck, run it down. We don’t have the time. So we need a confession. Witnessed. That’s my second idea. Maybe we can get it. Will you help me set it up?” he asked Mathewson.
“How?”
“This afternoon I want Allen Baker and Frank McCreery in the Land Company office.” Pelchek heard a gasp from Christine. He turned to her. “Do you think you can get Marlin to locate Allen?”
“Yes. I’ll call him,” she whispered.
“Who else?” Mathewson asked.
“That’s all. Tell ’em you can’t locate me and want to talk about it. Or you can tell ’em anything you want. Just have ’em there. Will you do it?”
“Yeah, Pelchek, I’ll do it.” The chief expelled a long breath. “For one reason. It looks like we may have made a mistake about the Baker boy. If someone killed Walker and framed Baker, I want him.”
“That’s good enough for me, Mathewson. Just be sure they don’t know who’s coming. Will you call me when you’ve got it arranged?”
The chief nodded, then looked at Elena. “I wish you luck, Mrs. Baker. I hope this man is right.” He jerked a thumb at Pelchek.
“And if he isn’t?” a new voice broke in. Aguilar stood in the doorway, looking across the room at Mathewson. “And if he isn’t right, Tracy? What do we do then?” The old man stared at the chief.
Mathewson clumped across the room until he faced the old man, his face tired and stern. He held out a hand.
“Then I’ll start digging. Hello, Esteban.”
“This boy is right, Tracy,” the old man said, taking the proffered hand.
“We’ll see,” the chief replied. “Why didn’t you come to me, Esteban?”
Aguilar shrugged. “Quién sabe? Maybe we’re getting old and afraid to put things on a personal basis. Why ask me, Tracy? You knew the Baker boy couldn’t have put a knife in a man’s back. When you first became part of the police you would have picked up everyone close to the case and beat the truth out of one of them. Now?” He shrugged again, smiled a little. “Whatever happened to the hell-raiser who almost ruined my wedding night?”