Build My Gallows High (10 page)

A state police car cruised past and disappeared around a bend. Slats wondered if they had the same idea he had. That would muss up the deal. It sure would. But when Slats topped a rise, there was the Kid’s car down at the foot of the hill and the police car was out of sight. Slats’ foot sought the brake and his car moved slower. The Kid’s car went around a curve and a hill was between Slats and the other.

Beyond the curve a dirt road forked left and wandered off toward the mountains. Dust hung over the road and yonder it boiled up to mark the passage of an automobile. Slats stopped, got out and saw the print of tires leading off. A metal sign, pocked by bullets from the guns of frustrated deer hunters, said the road led to Elm Creek.

Now Slats didn’t have to hold his coupe back. The dirt road did that. It was bad and the dust was inches deep. He hung to the wheel, swallowed dust and wished he was at the corner of Forty-Second Street and Broadway. The brush thinned out. A pine forest climbed the hill and the road climbed with it, then snaked down into a canyon where a line of alders marked a creek. A shaky wooden bridge rattled under his wheels and he was almost past the Kid’s car before he saw it half hidden in an alder thicket.

Slats drove on a way, pulled off into some pines, got out and, carrying his rod and creel, walked cautiously back to the bridge. A path led down to the stream and there were footprints on the path. The footprints crossed a strip of wet sand and went on up the creek. Slats put his rod together and threaded his line. With expert fingers he tied a leader on and put a coachman and a gray hackle on the leader. He made a few tentative casts. With satisfied surprise he felt a sudden strike. He flicked his wrist, setting the hook, then played the trout until it tired. He reeled it in. A good one. Half a pound at least. He opened his creel and dropped it on top of two forty-five automatics. He started upstream after the Kid.

Three quarters of an hour later, when the Kid crept cautiously downhill through the forest toward the road, he found two cars screened by the trees—a black and white Mercury was hidden two hundred yards from the bridge. Fifty yards beyond was the Chevrolet. The Kid ran down the road, backed his Ford out and drove hurriedly away.

Darkness filled the canyon when he reached Red’s camp. Red poured him a drink of Scotch and filled the tin cup with water from the bucket outside the tent. He opened the envelope and read Guy Parker’s brief note. Whit Sterling, it appeared, was in the back country fishing for a few days. Guy was sending a man in after him. Guy was sure that Whit would see him. Guy said to sit tight.

Red handed the letter over to the Kid. ’They’re stalling,’ he said.

The Kid read it, nodded, grinned. Then his nimble fingers started talking and as they formed letters the Kid chuckled and his blue eyes danced.

Miller looked up from his newspaper and watched Ann with troubled eyes. Across the breakfast table, Mrs. Miller dug into a stack of hot cakes, put a forkful of food in her mouth and kept right on reading the comic page. She paid no attention to her husband when he rose and went over to the sideboard where Ann was making sandwiches.

‘Kind of lonesome at the office these days,’ Miller said, letting his hand rest on her shoulder.

Ann didn’t speak. She spread butter thinly on the white bread and put bits of meat and lettuce on top of the butter.

‘Going fishing again?’

Ann nodded. She wrapped the sandwich in waxed paper and put it in the creel that stood on the sideboard.

‘Jimmy going along?’ His tone was hopeful.

‘No,’Ann said.

‘Jimmy’s a fine boy.’The comment brought no response. Miller fumbled in his mind, said, ’He’s having a rough time of it.’

‘Yes, dad.’ She put the second sandwich in the creel, slung it over one shoulder and held her face up for his kiss that found a ghost of a smile. She picked up her rod that leaned against the wall near the back door and pushed the door open. Mrs. Miller looked up from the paper, and started to put some of her bitter disapproval into words. But Miller’s sharp glance killed the unborn speech.

The screen door slammed. They watched her cross the yard to the sagging gate and follow the trail a thousand hooves had cut deep in the meadow grass.

‘She’s going to meet him,’ Mrs. Miller said. ‘You know it and you do nothing to stop her.’

‘Let her alone,’ he said. He slammed the door as he entered the living room.

Mrs. Miller looked after him, her thin lips forming words but the words were for herself and remained unspoken. Then she sighed and went back to her reading, finding solace in the bloodthirsty antics of her favorite comic characters.

In the rocky waste back of the mountain wall the wind found a few clouds and herded them across the sky, as though displeased with its pale blue emptiness. A covey of quail whirred out of a willow clump, to cross Ann’s path. In the pasture beyond the creek a lark gave sudden thanks for morning. The creek meandered lazily over to the highway, gathered strength to plunge through the culvert, then placidly continued through the broad, pleasant pastures where the silly sheep nibbled aimlessly at the sweet grass.

Gradually the bit of world Ann knew so well gave her some of its brightness. He was alive and he was somewhere near at hand. Soon she would find him—lying beside the creek, waiting for her in some tiny hidden meadow ringed with lodgepole pine. So thinking, and knowing again quick thrusts of happiness, she put her rod together, threaded the line through the eyelets, tied her leader on the line and began tempting the wary German Brown and even warier Lochleven with two bright-feathered tufts.

By noon a ridge was between her and the broad meadow and the voice of the creek was louder as it found its way through a narrow canyon. She discovered a stretch of sand behind a rock, put her fishing basket in the shade and climbed the rock. She looked up and down the canyon. Below her the creek paused long enough to form a pool before it hurried on. The water in the rocky pool was deep and cold. She jumped down, stripped off her clothes and let her body slide into the green depths, holding her breath as the cold fingers tugged at her. She swam across and back to scramble up and know again the good warmth of sand and sun and wind.

For a while she lay face down on the sand, her eyes closed, her mind dulled by the warmth the sun spilled into the narrow gorge. Yet she found, now and then, some memory of him to savor and cherish. A moment on a hill top. His tall strong body swinging along a trail. The pungent scent of sundrenched bear clover and pine needles all around them. Life would be good again and life would be full and rich again. She heard the promise in the rush of water through the tortuous rocky passage, in the singing of the wind through the pines straggling up the steep and stony hillside. Then a voice pushed itself into her consciousness.

‘A water baby,’ the voice said.

She threw a startled glance upward. A thin, khaki-clad fisherman stood on the rock looking down at her.

Her quick hand found her clothes and pulled them over her. ‘Go away’ she said.

‘I like it here.’

‘Please. Let me dress.’

The man dropped down on the rock and let his legs dangle. Deftly he rolled a cigarette, lighted it and grinned at her. ‘Fish don’t bite good around noon, do they?’

An evil face, she thought, desperately tucking her scant clothing about her—a thin, hard cruel face. And the voice, despite its softness, evil. Hungrily his glance swept over her and she shuddered. Slimy and cold. Like brushing against a water dog as you swam across a stagnant pool.

‘Waiting for someone?’ he asked.

Automatically she started to say no, then hoping that a lie would send him on his way she said hurriedly, ’Yes, I am. He’ll be here very soon.’

‘That’ll be nice,’ the man said, not moving, dribbling smoke from his nostrils. He brought his fishing basket closer and opened the lid.

’Go away,’ she repeated. ‘Please go away.’

He took something from the basket and slid it in his pocket but his body shielded the object. As he started down the rock She jumped up and tried to scramble away from him. A hand caught her shoulder. She threw it off and plunged into the pool, swam over behind the shelter of a boulder and, gripping the slippery stone, hurled broken, frightened phrases at him. He stood on the sand, grinning now at her, now at her clothing crumpled at his feet.

“Kind of cold, ain’t it?’ he asked. Because he was watching her, and because the sound of the creek echoed all around him. he did not see the Kid clamber down behind him, did not hear the crunch of the Kid’s footsteps on the sand.

The Kid had a rock in one hand. He swung the rock and slammed it against the man’s head. The slat-like body folded and he went down on his hands and knees, trying desperately to stay conscious, trying to push darkness back so he could see his attacker. There was sand in his eyes and sand in his mouth and the canyon tumbled in on him.

When he pushed himself up and saw the canyon walls again and the dark water swirling around the shining stones, he was alone on the little strip of sand. Painfully he pulled himself up on the rock. Nothing moved but the water and the wind-racked trees. The sun was sliding down the sky and somewhere far up the canyon thunder muttered faintly.

‘That red bastard!’ he said aloud, at last finding anger for his quarry, finding a reason other than an order for killing him. He transferred some of the anger toward himself. What a goddamned fool. One look at a naked dame and he let the guy he was looking for sneak up behind him and knock his brains out. The memory of Ann’s brown body gave him no pleasure because knives of pain stabbed at his skull. Nausea made him dizzy. He crouched on the boulder, retching and cursing.

Beyond the ridge Ann swung lithely down the trail. Close behind her was the Kid. Now and then he stopped to look back, keeping one hand at his waistband where the butt of one of the Slats’ forty-fives protruded.

When they reached the flat land and climbed through the fence to the sheltering wall of willows, Ann stopped to rest. The Kid came up and squatted beside her at the edge of the creek.

‘Thanks, Kid.’ Ann patted his skinny shoulder.

The Kid shook his head and his lips smiled but his eyes didn’t. Desperate anger lay in them, an anger at the wall of silence that would never be broken down.

Her fingers dug into his shoulder. ‘Such a good boy,’ she said softly.

The Kid’s throat tightened as though the million words that could never be spoken were rising up to choke him. For a moment tears clouded the pale blue of his eyes. He shook his head, clearing the angry frustration from his mind. One finger put words on the wet sand. ‘I should have killed him.’

‘No, Kid.’

The Kid’s thin hand smoothed the sand. The Kid smiled at her, stood up and helped her to her feet. North, a thin column of smoke was a monument to some hill fire and already the sun flushed angrily. The Kid looked at the smoke for a moment, then led her across the lush pasture toward her home. He carried baskets and rods and when they reached the fence he squeezed her hand, gave her her things and hurried off toward the highway. She watched him go, thinking,
Poor Kid! Poor, silent, tortured Kid,
wanting to hold him close, because she knew that’s what he wanted, that’s what he would always want and never could have.

Jim Caldwell’s station wagon stood in the yard in the shade of the poplars. Jim was in the kitchen drinking coffee and eating hot doughnuts as Mrs. Miller dipped them from the pot of grease.

‘Any luck?’ Jim said, getting up and following her to the sink, a half eaten doughnut in one hand and a coffee cup in the other.

‘Some.’ Ann pulled wet fern from the basket, spilled the shining bodies of the trout into the sink.

‘Good ones,’ Jim said admiringly. ‘Maybe I better weigh ‘em up. Maybe you got more than the limit there.’ He drained the cup, licked the crumbs from his fingers. ‘They started work today.’

She turned a puzzled glance on him.

‘Up at my new place,’ Jim said. ’It’s going to be swell.’

She found a warm smile for him, aching because that was so little to give a man with so much love shining in his eyes.

Red Bailey’s service station was locked up tight, so the little Greek drove on through town to the Sierra Bar, parked his Dodge around back and went inside. The bar was across the street from the highway patrol station and a couple of state coppers were drinking beer and kidding the big-hipped broad who was waiting on table. Joe slid up on a stool near the table where the state coppers were and told the guy dishing out the booze to give him a rye old-fashioned. He sipped it and listened to the cops telling the broad not to forget to stick around after midnight. He gave her the once-over out of the corner of one eye and wondered what the hell anyone would want with her. She said she’d be there ready and willing and went on her way. Then the cops started talking about Red Bailey so Joe hunched over the bar and tried not to appear interested.

The boys, it seemed, had been looking all over for Red, but hell, how could you find a guy who knew those hills like he did if he was hiding out up there? Anyway somebody had seen Red in Reno and somebody else had seen him in Fresno and somebody else had seen him in L.A., and if you had the law on your tail would you be sap enough to stick your neck out where everybody knew you?

Joe had a couple more old-fashioneds. By that time the cops had made themselves scarce. He went on through the arch into the cafe, ordered a steak, French frieds and coffee and read about Red Bailey while he ate. Things were cooling off. The guy who wrote the story tried to get all steamed up but there wasn’t much to be steamed up about. They hadn’t found him and they were still looking and that was that. He looked up to see Slats coming in. Slats went past him to the counter. His hat was pulled down but you could see the patch of bandage on the side of his head.

Joe went back to the paper, eating slowly and sending an occasional cold look from his frog eyes at Slats’ back. A dame with a scrawny neck took Joe’s plate away and shoved a menu in front of him. Joe ordered apple pie a la mode and another cup of coffee. By the time he finished Slats was on his way out. Joe waited a couple of minutes and then went out and drove his Dodge down beyond the motel, parked it well off the highway and walked back to Slats’ dark cabin.

At his knock Slats opened the door a crack, saw who it was and let him in. He pulled down the shade and switched on the light.

‘Who slugged you?’Joe asked.

‘A rock.’ Slats dug a bottle of Scotch out of his bag, got a couple of glasses and fixed drinks for them. ‘I was fishing and I slipped on a wet rock. Damn near drowned.’

‘And so you didn’t find Red,’ said Joe dryly.

‘Not yet. I will.’

‘We ain’t got all year.’

‘You want to take over?’ Slats emptied his glass and spilled more Scotch in it. ‘I got a slippery dummy and a dame to watch.’

‘Never mind the dame. Just the Kid,’ Joe said. He took a folded paper from a pocket and handed it to Slats.

Slats read it. It was from Red and it told Guy Parker to quit stalling. It told Guy to get hold of Whit Sterling right away.

‘That was mailed from here last night,’ said Joe. ‘So the dummy saw him yesterday. Where were you?’

‘Little son of a bitch ditched me.’

‘He wise?’

‘No. The cops were tailing him and he pulled a fast one on them and I got sucked in.’

’And today?’

‘I tailed the dame. No luck.’

‘She didn’t slug you with the rock?’

Slats dropped his lids to hide the anger in his eyes. ‘No. I think maybe I know where to look for him now.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Up where she went fishing.’

Joe’s laugh mocked him. ‘Red ain’t that nuts—to tell a dame where he is.’ He got up, took an envelope from one pocket and pitched it on the bed. ‘Slide that under the service station door late tonight. Tomorrow don’t let the dummy shake you.’

Gingerly Slats touched the bandage back of his ear. ‘Not me. One for the road?’ He held out the bottle.

‘Sure.’ Joe had a drink then let himself through the door into the garage and went around back of the motel toward his car.

Slats had three more stiff drinks. It was midnight so he switched off the lights and crossed the highway to the dark station and slid the envelope under the door. The drinks stirred up the anger in him but they also stirred up the memory of naked, sun-tanned skin on clean white sand. Maybe with Red out of the way a guy could get some of that. Anyway, a guy could have a stab at it.