by Gwen Moffat
‘Let’s have a look at that point of rock.’ He was addressing her as an equal; he didn’t mind her expressing her opinion.
They had climbed to a higher level and they walked down to the point slowly, separating and studying the ground. There were no prints visible because they were back on the bedrock and it was only lightly scattered with gravel; there wasn’t even a sign of Miss Pink’s presence here yesterday. Arrived at the point they walked round its edge, paying particular attention to the spot immediately above the rifle, which Spikol had replaced in its original position. Pearl and Scott approached; they had found nothing that could possibly relate to the remains in the ruin. The party retreated to the shade and sat down. No one mentioned lunch, they had left the food and the canteens in the saddle-bags.
‘We can’t do any more here,’ Spikol said, summing up. ‘We’ll take down what we found and that’s it. Some day a mother, some relative, will report a guy missing, but there won’t be no way of telling if this is him. No way. Hundreds of people go missing every year, probably dozens of bodies are found: drifters, junkies, wetbacks, you name it. No one claims ’em.’
‘Of course he was poaching,’ Scott said, as if he’d suddenly been convinced. ‘This is a perfect look-out; you can see right down the canyon. He’d have been watching for the deer coming to drink.’
‘He could have shot himself,’ Pearl said. ‘Accidentally, I mean. Did you think of that? And the way he got here: he came in from the top road.’
Everyone looked in the direction of the highway. ‘How far is it exactly?’ Spikol asked.
Pearl said, ‘I never rode it, there’s no trail. But it’s not big close timber like in the Rockies. You wouldn’t have much trouble.’
‘It’s over a mile,’ Scott said. ‘Mile and a half. He could have done it without a horse, easy: pack the meat out on his back.’
‘Then there’d have to be a truck up there, on the highway,’ Spikol said. ‘It’ll be well hidden, but we’ll find it if it’s there.’
‘Not if there was two of them,’ Scott pointed out.
‘Ah.’ Spikol’s eyes came round slowly. ‘Now you’re putting a different slant on it.’
‘They could have quarrelled,’ Pearl put in cheerfully, and stopped. No one responded; they were all considering it.
Spikol collected the remains in a plastic bag but he had to carry the branch separately. Scott took the bag from him as they climbed out of the canyon. When they reached the horses no one felt like eating but everyone drank from the canteens, and then Miss Pink announced that she would walk down. Pearl admitted that the bay was a rough ride but that was all right, she said, Miss Pink should ride the sorrel. Miss Pink demurred, urging her to go ahead, leading the bay, she would follow at her own pace. ‘No way,’ Pearl said, ‘I’m not leaving you alone up here, not after what we found today.’ At this point Spikol swung himself into the saddle. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said with finality and, to Miss Pink: ‘You call me this evening, ma’am, tell me where you’re at; we’re going to need a statement some time.’
Scott said, ‘You going to stay up here?’ The women looked blank. ‘It’s too hot for the horses,’ he said, with a touch of bluster. Miss Pink glanced at Pearl who smiled thinly. ‘You telling me to come down with you, Clayton?’
‘I’m just saying you don’t realise how hard this dry heat is on an animal—’
‘I’ll see you,’ Spikol said loudly, and moved away.
Pearl tightened her cinch with a jerk. ‘What we’ll do, Clayton,’ she said with exaggerated concern, ‘is we’ll put my horses in the shade where there’s a breeze and we’ll ride home after the sun’s lost some of its strength. We can’t come to much harm, the two of us together.’
He gave a grim nod and, mounting, trotted after Spikol.
‘Shouldn’t trot in this heat,’ Pearl mocked. ‘Wants to have his hand in everything, that guy. Hell, no wonder Kristen—Ah, forget it! Come on, if you insist on staying up here, let’s get over to Slickrock, find us a breath of fresh air. Sorry, you’re sore; you want to ride this one?’
‘I’m all right.’ Defeated in her attempt to be left alone, Miss Pink mounted and followed her companion across the mesa to the rim of Slickrock Canyon where, if there was no breeze, there was space, and an illusion of cool shade imparted by the green canopy below. They tied the horses in a kind of cave formed by a grove of junipers and moved away from the flies to eat lunch under a pinyon. They were thoughtful, even subdued, until Miss Pink, closing her sandwich box and adjusting her back against the tree, returned to the subject of the Scotts. ‘He was pumping me,’ she murmured: ‘asking me if I’d seen Kristen yesterday.’
‘Oh, Clayton! Know what I think?’ Pearl sounded sleepy. ‘He dreads a repeat, a re-run of Veronica’s trouble, what happened to her. Why can’t he see Kristen’s different, apart from being – well, you know: normal? Oh, she’ll probably get pregnant, but throw herself in the river? Never. She’d go ahead and have the baby, thumb her nose at her father.’
‘How was it she couldn’t persuade Veronica to do that: have the baby? You said the sisters were close.’
Pearl was silent for so long that Miss Pink looked to see if she’d fallen asleep but she was staring down the canyon towards the valley, frowning. Aware of the other’s scrutiny she said, ‘Curious you should ask that question. She never mentioned the baby, and I didn’t ask. I don’t talk about Veronica to Kristen. She took it hard and that could be the reason: she didn’t know about the baby until after Veronica drowned. It didn’t show, no one knew; Veronica wore skirts, peasant style, you’d never notice. But probably Kristen thinks she ought to have known, and if she had she’d have done something about it, like you said: persuaded Veronica to go away maybe, have it adopted. Veronica wouldn’t have needed any persuading either – that’s the worst of it; she was a docile person – and so beautiful. Did I say how lovely she was? Like a Madonna, but thin. Too thin. The bastard!’
‘You mean the hired hand. Romero, was it?’
‘Gregorio Ramirez. He’s a dishy devil; you know the type: more Spanish blood than Indian, slim with small hands and feet, dressed in people’s cast-offs and he looked terrific in them: old straw hat, red shirt, torn jeans, boots coming apart – boots – coming – apart.’ They stared at each other, then Pearl relaxed and laughed. ‘No way. He’d never have dared come back. Not after what happened.’
‘How long after Veronica’s death did he leave?’
‘Shortly after they found the body, a few days, I think. Avril was visiting with friends in Santa Fe, and Fletcher had gone fishing in Colorado. Greg was left alone at Las Mesas to do the chores – they’ve got a few steers they’re fattening and they have to be fed twice a day, and then I guess he was supposed to go up to Badblood to make sure the cows were all right … When Avril came back the steers were bawling their heads off and Greg was gone. So was a diamond ring she’d left in a drawer of her night table.’
‘He’d taken his clothes?’
‘What he possessed, yes.’
‘He didn’t own a horse or a pick-up?’
‘He didn’t own a saddle! Avril won’t admit it but he had to be illegal, poor as he was. She’d be paying him starvation wages. She reported the theft of her ring to Wayne but she won’t see that again; it’ll have been sold in Mexico long ago, or given to a woman. It’s not important beside what happened to Veronica.’ She gave a twisted smile. ‘No, he wouldn’t come back; Kristen would kill him.’
A hummingbird hovered for a moment before an Indian paintbrush, its throat more vivid than the flower, then with a flick and a trill it vanished against the glitter of the cottonwoods. Miss Pink said, ‘So her father thinks Kristen comes up here to meet a man.’
‘Gossip.’ Miss Pink waited. ‘Fact, actually,’ Pearl admitted. ‘No real harm in you knowing – everyone else does – including Clayton.’
‘And the man comes from the Markow ranch.’
‘Tammy talked? No, you jus
t put it together: if she comes up this side of Slickrock then you guessed he comes from the other side – when Ira Markow thinks the guy’s putting out salt for the cows, or whatever. That’s right, he’s one of the Markow hands: Jay Gafford, thirty-seven, the dangerous age and as sexy as they come. Wouldn’t you believe it: the two Scott girls get the dishiest men in the county – and look how it served them, well, Veronica anyway, poor kid. You can imagine what Clayton Scott thinks of Jay – and there’s no way he can stop it.’
‘Has he tried?’
Pearl opened her mouth, checked, and started again. ‘I was going to say: of course he has – because I can’t imagine him not trying every which way to stop it; he hates Jay Gafford, and small wonder – but then Kristen never said her father had taken any kind of action. What could he do anyway? Lock her in her room, sell her horse? He hasn’t. And he hasn’t laid a finger on her since she grew up. That surprises you? All the kids out in the boondocks know what their daddy’s belt felt like when they were little – and that goes for where I come from too.’ Pearl’s eyes were sombre in the shade of the pinyon. She went on coldly, ‘Clayton didn’t do anything drastic to put a stop to it but I guess he had plenty to say.’
‘What about Kristen’s mother?’
‘Poor Ada. She wouldn’t worry. She’s an invalid, you see: a lovely lady, so kind and gentle; and she adores her girls – adored, I should say. Veronica’s death broke her in little pieces. I think Kristen feels as much for her mother as for her sister. After all, Veronica’s suffering is over. Where are you going?’
‘Just stretching my legs; they’re seizing up.’
‘Don’t go far, and keep away from the edge.’
She moved along the lip of the canyon looking for the natural line that she knew must be there, and that she suspected was unmarked by cairns or even ducks. She discovered it by dint of peering over the crumbling rim until she could see ledges below. Looking back she saw that she was unobserved; Pearl was lying on her back, her hat over her face.
The top of the route was a kind of rock staircase on the wall and its start could be identified by a group of alligator junipers close to the edge. Now she realised that there could well be ruins in this canyon: unrecorded, perhaps as yet unseen by white men. It was an added inducement for exploration. She sat down to watch for birds.
Pearl was packing the saddle-bags when she returned. ‘I insist we change horses,’ she said. ‘It’s worse going down.’
‘I can walk, and lead the bay.’
‘No. It was my fault for putting you on that old mule; I’m going to sell him – heh, watch it, you guys—’ Back in the junipers there was a sudden commotion. Pearl had leapt to her feet. ‘Oh, it’s you, Michael.’
‘Michael who?’ murmured Miss Pink, glimpsing the figure of a man on foot and wearing a white cotton hat.
‘Vosker. You’ll like him: the retired neighbourhood professor.’
‘What’s he doing up here on his own?’ She regarded the newcomer with resentment. He was thin and he carried a heavy pair of binoculars and a small haversack. She had an impression of the Middle East: dark eyes and a bony nose but a generous mouth that softened what might otherwise have been a predatory face. He had been, still was, handsome, but age showed in the folds of his throat and his finicky progress through the prickly pear. He acknowledged the introduction in a pleasant cultivated accent.
‘Did you see anything?’ Pearl asked. ‘There was a hummer here with a red throat.’
‘That could be a broad-tail. Are you birding?’ Miss Pink’s binoculars were round her neck.
‘I’m no expert. And I don’t expect to see much in the middle of the day.’
‘There’s always something to see. There was a whipsnake where I crossed Rastus Canyon.’
‘Did you meet Wayne and Clayton?’ Pearl asked.
‘Yes. You must have been surprised, ma’am, to climb up to a cliff dwelling and find human bones.’
She nodded, thinking that surprise was something of an understatement. Pearl said, ‘What do you think, Michael? Michael is an anthropologist,’ she explained.
‘What connection— Ah, think about what, Pearl?’
‘Why, how he died. Accident, suicide or – no, that’s wild. What kind of accident: was it the usual kind of carelessness like shooting himself with his own rifle when he slipped, or he fell and broke a leg, or d’you think he got lost in the canyons?’
‘What makes you dismiss murder?’
‘What! Hell, that’s way over the top.’
‘It’s the formula: accident, suicide or murder; you were about to say that yourself.’
‘My big mouth. Come on, Michael.’
‘If it was Greg Ramirez—’
‘Michael!’
‘Did Spikol suggest that?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘No. What he did say was that no one was missing and I pointed out that Greg was. This was a Mexican hand working for one of the ranchers.’
‘She knows. It’s nothing to do with Greg. He went home.’
‘How do we know that? And the boot could be his. Spikol showed me, see if I recognised it. I’m surprised you didn’t think of it yourself. No one else we know has boots that old.’
‘But it’s not someone we know!’ Her tone changed. ‘We did think of it, and dismissed it because we – I said Greg wouldn’t come back after what happened.’
‘You mentioned murder,’ Miss Pink reminded him, and the dark eyes turned to her: liquid eyes, like a spaniel’s, nothing predatory about them. ‘He knew the area,’ Vosker said. ‘Maybe he didn’t go far, holed up with a buddy of his in the valley, or a gang of migrant workers, and came back with one, maybe with two fellows, to a place where he knew there were deer. Scott says it’s a good vantage point, above where you found him – and there was an accident or a quarrel, who knows? They abandoned him.’
‘Oh, no,’ Pearl breathed. ‘They left him injured, alive?’
‘People commit appalling atrocities,’ Miss Pink said, and so quietly that they scarcely heard her, but they caught the gist of it because their heads turned to her slowly, reluctantly on the part of Pearl, but with interest where Vosker was concerned. After a long moment Pearl stooped to her saddle-bags and said gruffly, ‘C’mon, the horses’ll need a drink.’
‘I’d like you to meet my wife,’ Vosker told Miss Pink, and her mind lurched to a different plane. ‘Will you come to our house this evening for coffee?’
She accepted weakly and they parted, leaving him on the rim. They rode away through the scattered woodland and neither said a word until they were well out of earshot.
Pearl broke the silence: ‘That is one very nasty mind.’
‘You had the same thought yourself,’ Miss Pink pointed out. ‘You were the first person to suggest that if the dead man wasn’t alone then there could have been a quarrel.’
‘I never suggested the guy was Greg Ramirez.’
‘What difference does it make?’
There was another long pause. ‘None,’ Pearl said.
Chapter 4
Two men were leaning on the gate of Pearl’s corral. They were tall and they wore battered straw hats, jeans and boots, but there the similarity ended; one was paunchy, the other built like a classical sculpture. They turned when they heard the horses and regarded the women with a kind of gentle amusement, a familiarity which disturbed Miss Pink until she realised that she was concentrating on the Greek god, and Pearl was ignoring him, introducing the other man. She blushed furiously and nodded to Ira Markow.
He held her horse and she dismounted. The other fellow had moved to Pearl’s horse. His back was an elongated triangle: wide shouldered and slim waisted with small buttocks under the thin denim.
‘So what do you think of New Mexico?’ Markow asked, taking her reins.
She wrenched her attention away from that hard back. ‘Primitive,’ she said weakly, suspecting his courtesy was assumed, that he knew exactly why this silly old woman was blushing and was lau
ghing at her. ‘Uncrowded,’ she elaborated. ‘Raw. Civilisation passed it by.’ She was aware of Pearl staring at her, of Markow’s large features registering bewilderment. She said quickly, ‘I’m talking about the country, the land.’ She smiled feebly. ‘No fences, those wild canyons’ – she gestured at the escarpment – ‘bears, diamondbacks, lions – why, I haven’t seen a tourist since yesterday morning! I love it.’
Pearl gave her a hard look and turned to her saddle-bags. The hired man lifted her saddle as if it weighed a few ounces and strolled towards the wash-house where she kept the tack. At that moment Kristen came out of the house and intercepted him. They stood apart, not touching, probably saying something quite innocuous but the sun had left the patio and in the diffused light the girl’s posture appeared abandoned, even wanton. The observer was aware that the light was going and that when the afterglow faded night would come creeping in from the desert like a velvet cat, the frogs would sing and the night birds call, and old people remember what it was like to be seventeen and in love.
‘So what did you think of Jay Gafford?’ Pearl asked as they prepared supper. Kristen had taken Pearl’s third horse and ridden to the Markow ranch with Gafford who was taking the blue roan home. ‘That’s what I thought,’ she went on, seeing that Miss Pink was having difficulty with words. ‘I told you he was sexy. I could see it got to you.’
‘Rubbish.’ There was a pause. Miss Pink stared at the window. ‘He took my breath away,’ she admitted. ‘And the age gap! Twenty years. It must drive her father crazy.’
‘It’s not deliberate.’ Pearl was laughing. ‘The poor guy can’t help having a gorgeous body and bedroom eyes.’
‘At your age,’ Miss Pink murmured, with just the hint of a question, and Pearl fielded it deftly.
‘At any age – but we’re as discreet as nuns in Regis.’ Her eyes were veiled. ‘It helps that we have no street lighting,’ she added coolly. ‘And that the creek lies at the back of our properties. Kristen usually rides up the creek bed to the mesa road, and she’s not one of the discreet people.’