Chiffon Scarf (9 page)

“It’s a forced landing,” shouted Jim. “Hang on. It may be rough.”

But it wasn’t a forced landing; the plane was obviously under perfect control. She had time to think that. Then Noel shouted something she couldn’t hear and Averill in front of her apparently looked out the window and cried out sharply above the roar of the motors. And then everybody was silent.

For they were landing.

Earth was rushing up to meet them. She held her breath—would they make a good landing? Would they nose over? Would they—

They didn’t. There was a slight bump; the earth was all at once just outside the window—gray-green, covered with short grass and brush. And they rolled gently to a perfect, quiet stop.

The silence in the cabin continued for a moment while they realized safety. Then the engine was cut off. And into the abrupt stillness Averill cried shrilly: “Jim, what’s happened? Where are we? Good heavens, there are mountains—”

And instantly everyone, it seemed to Eden, echoed it. Even Dorothy Woolen looked white and scared and clutched at Noel’s arm agitatedly.

“Trouble,” said Jim rapidly. “But don’t be scared. We’re all right now.”

“What kind of trouble?” that was Noel, out of his seat now, at Jim’s side. Pace, emerging from his rug behind Eden, struggling with the clasp of his safety belt, looked very much like a startled and savage bear.

“I don’t know,” said Jim. “Instruments went haywire during the night; had some clouds; got off our course. Radio’s dead, too. We saw a good place to land and did it. Fuel is barely holding out. We had to land.”

“But where—” That was Noel.

“I saw a ranch house over that way,” said Jim. “Maybe they’ll take us in till we can get squared around.”

“But what—what an extraordinary accident,” cried Averill. “Those are mountains over there—what mountains, for heaven’s sake? Where are we?”

“We’ll soon find out,” said Jim. “I’m sorry, Averill. But we’re lucky to land so near a house. After all there’s breakfast to think of—I’ll go along. Want to come, Noel?”

“No,” said Noel. “I’ll stay here.”

“Don’t be long,” said Creda.

They watched him leave, striding rapidly along almost as if he knew his way across the sandy, flat stretch of land—a land covered with a kind of coarse, sparse grass and clumps of grayish green growth which Eden for want of more exact knowledge took (and correctly) to be sagebrush. Evidently the tract of land on which they’d landed was not under irrigation for it was arid, flat, desertlike—curiously primitive and untouched in aspect.

“Well,” said Averill in a tight voice, “there’s nothing to do but wait.” She looked at her watch, said, “Five o’clock. Good heavens. And they are expecting us at the plantation!” She sat down again, pulling her yellow cloak around her and staring disconsolately out the window. Creda came to sit beside Averill. Dorothy leaned back and closed her eyes sleepily. Pace got out of the plane and walked up and down smoking. Rather oddly there was little audible speculation, although Noel, with something enigmatic in his expression, went forward to where the pilot, too, was stretching his legs and smoking.

Eden looked rather curiously at the pilot as he spoke to Noel. He was big, young and would be thickset—almost a bull of a man now, with his sturdy thick neck rising from the open collar of his leather coat. He had very thick, strong-looking brown hair; his face was on massive, heavy planes—with a touch of the Slav in his somewhat slanted eyes and rather cruelly curved mouth. He smiled a little, showing extremely white and squarely set teeth. She couldn’t hear what they said but he shook his head with a helpless gesture and pointed to the plane and he and Noel walked around it and out of sight.

It was no good waiting in the plane. Eden got out, too, throwing back her face to take in great gulps of the incredibly clear air. Dorothy followed after a while and Averill. There was not much to see—rather there was much, for they could see for miles to the rim of mountains which enclosed them. But off toward the left where Jim had disappeared was a strip of brush and cottonwoods and a cluster of barns and corrals. Behind them and at some distance there appeared to be an area of green—green grass, green shrubs, green pines—and in the middle of it a house, dimly seen beyond the huge cottonwoods.

There was about the place, then and forever to Eden, an extraordinary feeling of remoteness.

New York seemed to be on a different and distant planet. Even St. Louis belonged to a world irrevocably removed. The mountains rimming the horizon became the very limits of existence.

For an instant it seemed to her that there was promise in that distance and division from things past; as if a new life might newly begin for her there.

That, of course, was fancy. It didn’t take Pace’s figure, trudging heavily across her vision, to remind her of it.

But the feeling of fatefulness remained.

It was half an hour before Jim returned and he was not alone. A tall, lean, lazy-looking man accompanied him, who despite his lazy, loose-jointed walk still managed to cover distance very rapidly.

“This,” said Jim, nearing the little cluster about the plane, “is Mr. Sloane.”

“P. H.,” murmured Mr. Sloane, looking at them with light, extremely keen blue eyes which were completely surrounded by a fine network of wrinkles. His face was brown and hawklike in the sharpness of its features; he removed an enormous Stetson hat—a ten-gallon hat, Eden was later to learn.

“It’s awfully good of you,” said Noel.

“Glad to have visitors,” said P. H. Sloane pleasantly.

Jim introduced them separately. When Eden put out her hand the rancher took it briefly, not too heartily, gave her one smiling, brief look and turned at once to speak to Creda. Yet, Eden thought suddenly, he’ll know me again—he’d know me anywhere again and remember me and every circumstance of our meeting.

He wore a khaki-colored shirt that was open upon a lean sunbrowned neck, khaki riding breeches that looked worn and almost white with washing and laced high boots. A typical rancher, she thought—and then wondered if all ranchers had such extraordinarily observant eyes.

“You’re up early,” said P. H. Sloane. “Well, now if you’ll come along to the house I’ll see you get some breakfast. Don’t bother about your bags. I’ll send a couple of boys for them.”

“Oh, we’ll not need our bags,” said Averill swiftly. “It will be only two or three hours at the most.”

“Well, that’s all right, too,” said the rancher. “Glad to have you, I’m sure. But it’s no trouble for the boys to bring your bags up to the house. You might want ’em. This way, if you please. It’s not much of a walk. There’s no need for anybody to stay with the plane. Nobody’ll touch it.”

“Mr. Sloane,” said Averill, “exactly where are we?”

The rancher surveyed her rather quizzically for a moment before he replied, drawling a little:

“Well now, Miss Blaine, that’s easy. You’re almost in the middle of the Chochela Valley. Over toward the east—you crossed ’em—is the Sangre de Cristo Range. Red. Spanish named ’em; Blood of Christ. Toward the west is the Continental Divide; the Culebra Range is over that way.” He gestured lazily with a long brown hand toward a southwestern mountain rim. “Them mountains, west, is the Cochetopa Hills; beyond are the La Ganta Mountains. The Rio Grande lies quite a way to the south.”

Averill’s small face was stiff.

“Just where is the nearest city?”

“Well, there’s Rocky Gap that way about fifty miles. But it’s not much of a city.” P. H. Sloane paused thoughtfully. “But there’s Telluride,” he went on doubtfully. “It’s north and west of us. And Cimarron. But if you want a city, you’ll have to go down to Sante Fe. Or Albuquerque. Or even Denver on the other side. They’re nearest, I reckon. But not very near, at that. Cady tells me your destination was Louisiana. You’re off your course quite a way.”

“We know that,” said Averill.

And Jim said:

“Come along, Averill. Mr. Sloane’s ordered breakfast for us. Don’t keep it waiting.”

The coarse grass was unexpectedly firm and springy under their feet. The air was as clear, as crisp, as clean as the morning sky.

As they approached the fringe of brush and cottonwoods, the panorama of ranch houses and corrals began to stretch out, and the cottonwoods seemed to grow taller. There were barns, sheds, corrals; the party circled them and came in view of the house itself—long, low, rambling, flanked on each side by clusters of rustic cabins with native stone chimneys and narrow verandas running their full length.

The oasislike effect of the green in which the house was set was due, Eden discovered, to a swift small creek lying below the house.

“It’s a dude ranch,” said Jim to Averill, as she lifted questioning eyebrows. “P. H. Sloane is the owner. It used to be a cattle ranch—still is, I guess.”

“I don’t care what it is,” said Averill, “so long as they’ll give us breakfast and a telephone. I expect you can telephone for anything you need.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong yet,” said Jim, “but, as you say, we can telephone.”

Eden, walking beside Averill, looked up quickly at Jim, caught by an undercurrent of meaning in his words. But his face was uncommunicative.

Yet he must have planned the whole thing. She was almost sure of that in spite of the explanation he gave.

“Right in here,” said P. H. Sloane, opening the door from a wide porch to a wide hall. “Dining room at the right. And breakfast—” He stopped, sniffed and finished with a smile, “Breakfast is ready for you.”

If it was a dude ranch then there were no dudes. The cabins were obviously closed and unoccupied; the long, sprawling house itself vastly empty.

They had a glimpse of a spacious lounge and at the end of the entrance hall, a billiard room. Rusticity stopped short of discomfort; the few Mexican shawls, the handsome brown and black bearskin rugs here and there were in no sense out of place although one faded crimson shawl lay over an old, massive piano—a Steinway and a concert size—laden also with worn sheet music. Along the walls were bookshelves, packed mainly with books, although there were Indian relics, too—flutes, bows and arrows, machetes, feathered headdresses on the shelves beyond the great piano.

They passed through a large dining room with small bare tables and entered a smaller one—evidently their host’s own dining room, for the table and chairs were old and beautiful, and there were two or three good pictures on the walls.

It was an enormous place, thought Eden, glancing about—the original old ranch had been quite evidently rebuilt with added wings and porches. It was so obviously and so fortunately able not only to house them all but to feed them for any length of time that that very fortuitousness was suspicious.

Up to then perhaps no one except herself had questioned the accident Jim and the pilot claimed. But there was something too neat, too pat about running by hazard upon a hotel. And a closed hotel—so there was no one else about to in any way interfere.

However, although the silence may have held doubt it was not expressed. And Jim’s face remained a brown, self-contained mask. He ate hungrily and drank and said little.

They were all hungry. There were honey-brown flapjacks and enormous platters of bacon and eggs and steaming, fragrant coffee—all served neatly and quickly by a Chinese houseboy whose round face wore a habitual grin.

The pilot ate with them, naturally, but finished sooner than anyone else and went, he said, back to the plane to get to work.

And it was just then that the inevitable suspicion first voiced itself.

For, as sound of the pilot’s footsteps along the hall died away and the door banged behind them, Creda said: “Jim, isn’t that pilot’s name Strevsky?”

Pace, who happened to be sitting beside Eden, froze into instant immobility; she noticed that because he was buttering a hot flapjack and his hand became rigid. But Pace was not the only one struck by that name. For Noel turned as if he were on a wire to look at Jim; and Dorothy Woolen’s pale eyes lifted suddenly, too, and Averill said after a queer little silence:

“Strevsky? But—but that’s the name of the mechanic—yesterday. The one with Bill—”

“Yes, of course, it’s Strevsky,” said Noel quickly, replying to Averill but still watching Jim.

And Jim said: “This is Ludovic Strevsky. Brother to Mike. Why?”

F
OR A MOMENT NO
one answered. Then Noel leaned quite suddenly across the table. “Look here, Jim,” he said. “This—is an accident, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” said Pace suddenly and heavily. The small blunt knife in his hand was oddly inappropriate to the threatening grip of his wide fingers. He leaned, like a great sulky bear, across the table toward Jim. “Why have you brought Strevsky’s brother along?”

Jim looked at Noel and then at Pace and smiled a little.

“ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’ ” he said softly. “I don’t intend taking it from His hands if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“We’re not afraid,” said Noel. He pushed back his plate and got to his feet. His eyes were brilliant under his black peaked eyebrows; his face intent and angry. “I just don’t understand your motive. Look here, Jim, if you have any fool notion of—”

“Of what?” said Jim.

“Of—anything,” said Noel. “I mean—oh, Jim, we all know how you feel about the accident. We don’t blame you. But if you’ve got any crackbrained notion to—”

“To do what?”

“I don’t know,” said Noel. “But I do know this—all this”—the wave of his hand included plane, ranch, flapjacks—“is too—too slick. Too much coincidence.”

“Don’t quarrel with your luck,” said Jim gravely and in an unperturbed way. “Have another flapjack?”

Noel put both hands on the table and leaned toward Jim.

“Listen, Jim—I don’t know why on earth you’d purposely bring us all out here. None of us had anything to do with what happened yesterday—if that’s what’s on your mind. That was sheer accident; I only mention it because I know your faith in your engine and I can’t think of any other motive for your bringing us out here. But even that has no sense. You couldn’t possibly accomplish anything by—by plunging us in this—”