Detour to Death (11 page)

“A promise, a threat, or an attachment,” Laurent added thoughtfully. “Some such thing must have kept Miss Allen silent—and some such thing must have come to the doctor’s attention.”

The door was wide open for Trace to lead into the subject of the inkstained fingers, but the door to the patio was also open, and this was the door that arrested his attention as he turned around. A man was coming across the patio at an unsteady gait—half run, half stumble. He made straight for the house and burst into the living-room with no more ceremony than a barbarian descending upon Rome.

“Why, Douglas!” Laurent gasped, coming to his feet. “What’s happened? What have you done?”

It was more than the sudden and unexpected entry that prompted this anxiety. Douglas Laurent was in a state of disheveled agitation. His nice white trousers were streaked with dirt and his expensive sport shirt looked as if he’d been rolling in barbed wire. He stood framed in that bright doorway, blinded for the moment by the contrasting darkness, and then Laurent the elder was between him and Trace, a fatherly arm about the boyish shoulders and all of that cold unemotionalism gone out of his voice.

“You’ve been running,” he scolded gently. “You know that you mustn’t run, Douglas, especially not in the hot sun.”

“I had to run,” Douglas gasped. “The fire!”

“Of course it’s like fire—and no hat, either! You’ll have to excuse us, Mr. Cooper, but my son’s health isn’t up to this sort of thing.”

“What’s that in his hand?” Trace demanded.

He couldn’t see the hand in question at the moment, Laurent was in the way, but he’d seen it clear enough when Douglas came through that doorway. “His hand?” Laurent looked at Trace oddly, and then backed away. “Why,” he said, “it’s a gun!”

It was a gun all right, and a gun Trace wasn’t likely to forget after the way Danny had been pointing it at him last night. “Where did you get this?” he demanded. “Where did you find it?”

By this time Douglas Laurent’s eyes must be adjusted to the light of the room, and there surely wasn’t anything wrong with his hearing. “The gun,” Trace repeated loudly. “Where did you get Virgil Keep’s gun?”

“Virgil’s!” Douglas might be momentarily dumb, but his father had a tongue. “Do you mean this is the weapon Danny Ross took from the sheriff?”

“I’m sure of it. And Danny was hanging onto it like a drowning man clutching a life belt when I left him last night. Your son’s health may be delicate, Mr. Laurent, but not nearly so delicate as Danny’s may be if those trigger-happy deputies have stumbled onto that cabin in Peace Canyon!”

Trace had no idea how he’d been shouting until the silence came. Total, complete silence, and then Laurent’s voice like a hollow echo.

“Is that where you left him—in that cabin?”

“Why not? Nobody’s used it for years.”

He didn’t get an argument—not in words. He got a pair of undefinable stares, and then Douglas began to laugh softly. “Nobody,” he said. “Nobody at all! Well, she won’t use it any more. No one will ever use it now.”

Trace didn’t understand what he was hearing, but he’d heard enough to head him for the door. “Where are you going?” Laurent demanded. It was a foolish question. “I’m going to that cabin,” Trace said. “I’m going to find out what this is all about!”

“You can’t!”

The words came from Douglas, and Trace wasn’t likely to take orders from the likes of him. “And why can’t I?” he demanded. “Who’s going to stop me?”

“The fire,” Douglas said. “It’s all burning down—the cabin and everything in it.”

F
IRE
! D
OUGLAS HAD USED
the word before. He’d tried to tell them about the fire and been silenced in the discussion of the gun. But this was no time for regrets. That dry shell of the cabin would go up like a matchbox and somewhere, in it or mercifully out of it, Danny was in danger.

“Did you see him?” Trace cried. “Did you see Danny Ross?”

“Douglas doesn’t know anything about Danny Ross,” Laurent said. “The name means nothing to him.”

“It’s been on the radio enough these past two days.”

“Douglas never listens to the radio.”

It was maddening to have him stand there like that, disheveled and dazed and with that telltale gun in his hand and not a word on his lips. Trace couldn’t wait around for stumbling explanations. He left the elder Laurent to get to the bottom of Douglas’s adventure and raced for the jeep in the driveway. From the road he could see a plume of white smoke lifting up from behind a yonder ridge like a beckoning finger, and he made for that plume with the accelerator flat against the floor boards.

• • •

Trace wasn’t the sole observer of that smoke signal—and it was like a signal to all who saw it. There was little wind in Peace Canyon at such an hour of the day, and the white plume rose straight and high for all eyes to see. The valley was full of eyes that day. Failure to find Danny Ross in Junction City had turned the search back toward its source; for if Danny had one friend that friend was Trace Cooper, and Trace specialized in reckless acts. Hiding a fugitive of the law would probably come under the heading of exciting sport. So reasoned Virgil Keep when his morning visit to Laurent provided no more than an excursion rich in fluent conversation and destitute of consequence.

But where would Trace conceal a fugitive? The farm was too obvious, and a quick check on his way back to town took care of Virgil’s curiosity in that direction. The place was deserted except for the usual quota of dogs in the barnyard. But the longer Virgil considered the matter the more sure he became that Trace must know something. He’d been entirely too calm about Malone’s death this morning, just as if he’d known all about it before Virgil broke the news. Just as if he’d heard the whole story from a first-hand witness. Even Trace Cooper couldn’t be that cool about a third violent death within forty-eight hours.

One, two, three— They were beginning to add up, and so was the pressure on Virgil Keep. He studied that map on his office wall, but this time the question wasn’t where Danny might be hiding—it was where he might be hidden. That old Cooper ranch was honeycombed with hiding-places, caves, ravines, and old outbuildings that a man like Alexander Laurent would neither know nor care about; but Trace knew them all. And so Virgil went ahunting and found—hung like a chiffon scarf against the turquoise sky—a signpost of smoke.

The trail to Peace Canyon was corrugated with the wear and weather of many years, and Virgil wasn’t driving the four-wheeled counterpart of a mountain goat. Even so he reached the cabin site ahead of Trace, and by then the building was a black ruin. Orange flames still licked at the smoldering uprights, but the roof had fallen, most of the walls were gone, and the galvanized sheeting over the heavy plank porch teetered crazily between the skeleton supports of the few posts the flames had so far spared. He crawled out of his car and surveyed the scene with a sense of futility and wonder. A deserted cabin couldn’t set itself afire, but if any living thing had been in that inferno the ashes would have to be sifted to find the bones.

“Danny! Danny Ross!”

Virgil whirled about to meet the cry behind him. The wheels of the jeep had hardly stopped turning before Trace was racing toward the smoldering ruin, and when he saw Virgil it was too late to stop his words. “Looking for someone?” the sheriff inquired quietly, and Trace could deny nothing.

“Have you seen him?” he gasped.

“All I’ve seen is what you’re looking at. If the kid was in there, his troubles are over now.”

Trace felt sick. He tried to get nearer to the cabin, or what was left of it, but Virgil’s hand was like a vice on his shoulder. “Don’t be a fool!” he snapped. “That porch roof is going any minute!”

“Maybe he got out,” Traee said. “Douglas got out.”

“What are you talking about? Who’s Douglas?”

“Douglas Laurent! He came home just now with Danny’s gun—the one he took off you, and he must have gotten it from the cabin. Danny had it with him when he went in there last night.”

Trace looked about searchingly. There was only one other building in the canyon, and that one just a few running steps away. He had company on the run because now Virgil wasn’t going to let him out of sight; but the barn was as empty as Danny had found it, and Trace had no time to study tire tracks. Out in the sunlight again he threw back his head and called out at the top of his voice, “Danny! Where are you, Dan-ny!” And a half a dozen echoes threw back the call.

A tongue of flame shot up higher at the taste of fresh timber, but only the crackling of the fire answered the echoes. Nothing was left of the cabin now but the heavy porch floor and the burning uprights, and nothing would be left inside but the twisted ruin of the kerosene stove and a few blackened objects of metal. Trace began to think of that now and to think too of what Douglas had said about the cabin. “… she won’t use it any more. No one will ever use it now.” At the edge of disaster a man got strange ideas, and when a little scrap of white something waved to him from the porch floor, he moved forward without thought of danger.

“You crazy idiot!” Virgil yelled. “Come away from there!”

But when Trace came away he had Francy’s handkerchief in his hand.

A scrap of flimsy white cloth edged with cheap lace and embroidered with the letter
F. F
for Francy,
F
for failure. Now Trace understood just a little of what would have to be known to find the face of murder; but now it was too late. The cabin was gone and, as Douglas had said, everything in it. Was Danny gone, too? He turned away from the cabin and began to search the canyon wall for some sign of movement on the rocks. Even if Danny had fallen asleep with a lighted cigarette he was young and fast enough to get out ahead of the fire—providing he was only asleep. It might take hours for that ruin behind him to cool enough for searching, but those same hours could mean another kind of death to a green kid lost in this canyon.

• • •

Danny was no mountain climber. That hike across the desert after abandoning the sheriff’s car couldn’t be classed as a Sunday school outing, but at least the desert was level and as far down as a fellow could go. The earth didn’t crumble under foot, and rocks didn’t go bouncing down the dizzy descent just as you were about to put your weight on them. It wasn’t such a deep canyon from the standpoint of the geography books, but it seemed to get deeper below and higher above the longer Danny climbed.

It was easier if he didn’t look down. It was easier if he didn’t look up and try to measure the distance to the top, if he just thought about one arm’s length, one footing at a time. He should have gone back and tried to find the cabin and that narrow road the jeep had taken last night; but the man with Virgil Keep’s gun was back there, and the skillet and the bloodstained towel. There was a limit to what Danny’s nerves could stand. There must be a limit, too, to what his body could stand, but the body was a peculiar mechanism. Just when it seemed ready to give out and stop functioning, a new spurt of life would come like all the cylinders taking hold after a misfire. Danny kept climbing.

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.