Off the Mangrove Coast (Ss) (2000) (20 page)

"You in this, too, Mickley?" Dud demanded sharply. "If you're not, ride out of here!"

"You've got gold hidden on this place," Mickley said. "Let us have it and you can all go on your way. If there's shootin', you'll all die and so will the girl."

"And so will some of you," Dud replied stiffly. "I think we can handle it."

"No," Navarro said suddenly. "I do not wish to die!" Shafter could scarcely believe his ears. He would have backed the Mexican to a standstill in any kind of a fight, but here he was giving up!

Before he could speak, Navarro said quickly: "I will tell you, senors, so do not shoot! I think of the lady, of course!"

Callan snorted, but Mickley nodded eagerly. "Of course! So where is the gold?" Navarro reached over and took the letter from Farming's surprised fingers before the older man could close his fist. "Here! You see? It says the gold is under the vine." Mickley stared at the letter over Navarro's shoulder. The other men held their guns steady. If that had been Navarro's plan to take them by surprise and shoot it -was wasted. This bunch had their rifles over their saddle horns, ready for action. No, there was no question, much as Dud hated to admit it, Navarro had gone yellow. "Under the vine?" Callan stared. "What vine?" "But surely, senor," Navarro protested, "you know of the vine that covers the cave mouth? It is there, where the spring flows from the rock. Behind that hanging vine there is a cave. And I think I know where the gold is!"

"You know?" Mickley stared at him suspiciously. "Where?"

"There is a ledge, senor, with something upon it. You walk in, say forty paces on your horse, and there you are!" Forty paces! Shafter's face stiffened, then relaxed, and he tried to keep the gleam from his eyes.

"Damn you!" Shafter burst out furiously. "You sold us out!"

"Let's go!" Mickley said eagerly. "Let's get it!"

"The box will be ver' heavy, senor," Navarro warned. He rolled a smoke with nerveless fingers. "It will take several men."

"That's right," Mickley agreed. The storekeeper bound up a piece of a canvas ground sheet around a three-foot stick to make a torch. "You" he motioned to three of the men "you come and help move the money. Bert, you stay and keep an eye on these folks. I don't trust 'em. Nor you," he added, turning on the Mexican. "Come with us!" He handed Navarro the stick and set a match to the bundle on the end.

Navarro's face paled, and his eyes lifted to meet Dud's. He started to speak, to voice a protest, but Navarro gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head.

"Of course, senor," he said gently. "Why not?"

Mickley turned abruptly toward the cave entrance. As he turned, the bright silver on the butt of his pistol caught Dud's eye. He remembered the flash he had seen during the robbery. It was Mickley! The store owner had planned all this!

Dud Shafter stared after him, and Benzie swallowed, his eyes wide and white. Neither Fanning nor Beth understood, and they could only believe Dud looked so because of the betrayal.

"They'd better find it," Bert Callan warned. He sat his horse beside the remaining three men.

Well, Navarro's attempt to cut the odds had helped some. It was three to four now, if the shooting started. If only Beth were out of the way!

He looked at her, trying to warn her with his eyes, but she failed to grasp his meaning, and moved closer.

He glanced around, and saw with panic that the group had disappeared behind the vine. Mentally, he counted their steps. Suddenly his hard, freckled face turned grim. "Run, Beth!" he yelled.

Callan's face blanched, then suddenly his hands swept down for his guns and they came up spouting fire. But too slow, for Dud Shafter's gun was blasting almost before Callan's cleared the holster!

But at the same instant, there was a great crash of falling rock from within the cave, and screams of agony! Then more falling rock, and in the midst of it the roar of guns as Shafter, Benzie, and Fanning opened up on the remaining riders!

Shafter's first shot struck Callan high in the chest and rocked him in the saddle, unsettling his aim so that Callan's bullet went wild. Then Dud, firing low and fast, triggered two more slugs into the gunman. Suddenly, loose in the saddle, as though all his bones and muscles had turned to jelly, Callan rolled and fell, like a sack of wheat into the grass.

The first blast of Benzie's shotgun had blown a rider clear out of his saddle even as his hands lifted his rifle, and for the rest, that was enough. The two remaining men held their hands high.

Dud turned, thumbing shells into his gun, and started at a stumbling run toward the cave. One of his legs felt numb and he remembered a stunning shock when something had struck his knee as the shooting began. Yet as he reached the cave mouth, the vines were shoved aside and three men rushed out. Two of the would-be robbers, and behind them Navarro!

Shafter let out a whoop of joy and held his gun on the two riders, but they had no fight left in them. They looked pale and sick.

Dud stared at the Mexican. "You're safe? I thought you'd betrayed us, then I thought you'd committed suicide!"

Navarro looked white and shaky himself, and his black eyes were large in his handsome face.

"You forget, amigo, that I knew what was to happen! At the moment we reached the thirtieth step, I stopped and, holding my torch high, pointed ahead! There was a ledge, and on it a fallen rock that in the shadows did not look unlike a chest. They rushed forward, and poof! They were gone! It was awful, senor! A horrifying thing which I hope never to see again!"

"Mickley? Mickley was the man who wore the white hat. When he started for the cave, I recalled the flash of silver from his gun, the same I saw on the trail!"

"Si, Mickley and one other, who was close behind them. These? They were frightened and ran. It was most terrible, amigo."

They walked back to the adobe. Beth, her face stark white, her teeth biting her lower lip, was standing beside Benzie, who held the two riders under his shotgun.

"You two" Shafter motioned with his six-gun to the men from the cave "line up over there with them others!"

They obeyed, avoiding the bodies of Callan and the man Benzie had killed. Dud's hard face was remorseless.

"Your boss died back in the cave," he said, "and there's the other one." He motioned to Callan. "Now who do you hombres work for?"

A lanky man in a worn vest swallowed and said, "Shafter, I reckon we all done run out of a job! We shore have!"

"Then I'll give you one." Dud Shafter's voice was quiet. "Plant these two hombres over against the cliff and plant 'em deep. Then if I was you, I'd climb into leather and -light a shuck. They tell me," he added grimly, "they are hiring hands up in the Wind River country."

Gingerly, Shafter examined his knee. It was already turning black, but evidently a chunk of rock from the foundation of the house had ricocheted against his leg, for there was no sign of a bullet.

Fanning shrugged hopelessly. "An ugly fracas," he said, "and we ain't no closer to the gold!"

Dud glanced up, pulling down his pant leg. "I don't know where it is but I'll lay a bet Navarro knows! He wouldn't have taken them into the cave unless he knew that wasn't the right place."

"Si." The Mexican nodded. Turning, he pointed to the brand chiseled into the cliff behind the adobe. "See? Corb I Farming's brand the PV Nine which the vaqueros, of which I was one, shortened to call the Pea Vine! Where else would a man bury his gold but under his own j| brand?"

*

Somehow I had always known that if she got in a bad spot, she would call on me, just as I knew that I would never turn her down. Maybe it was because I had encouraged her in the old days when being an actress was only a dream she'd had.

Well, it was a dream that had matured and developed until she was there, rising to greater heights with every picture, with every play. It was never news to me when she scored a success. Somehow, there had never been any doubt in my mind.

When my phone rang, I'd just come in. A few of the boys and I had been getting around to some nightspots, and when I came in and tossed my raincoat over a chair, the telephone was ringing its heart out.

It was Ruth. It had been six months since I'd seen her, and I hadn't even known she knew my number; it wasn't in the book.

"Can you come over, Jim? I'm in trouble! Awful trouble!"

Sometimes she tended to dramatize things, but there was something in her voice that warned me she wasn't kidding.

"Sure," I told her. "Just relax. I'll be there in ten minutes."

Light rain was falling and it was quiet outside. A few late searchlights probed the empty sky, and my tires sang on the pavement. I took backstreets because for all I knew, the cops might be having another shakedown of cars, and I didn't want to be stopped. Not that it would mean anything, I wasn't carrying a gun even though I had a permit, but I wanted to avoid delay.

She opened the door quickly when I knocked. The idea that it might be someone else never seemed to enter her head. She was wearing an evening gown, but she looked so much like a frightened little girl that it seemed like old times again.

"What's the trouble?" I asked her.

"There's a ... there's a dead man in there!" She indicated the door to what I surmised was the bedroom.

"A dead man?" Of all the things it might have been, this was one I'd never imagined. I put her aside and went in, careful to avoid touching anything.

The guy was lying on the bed, one leg and one arm dangling over the side. He was dead all right, deader than a mackerel.

My guess would have put him at fifty years old. He might have been a few years younger. He was slim, dapper, and wore a closely clipped gray mustache. His eyes were wide open and blue. There was an amethyst ring on his left hand. Carefully, I felt his pockets. His billfold was still full of money. I didn't count how much, after I saw it was plenty. The label of his suit said that his name was Lawrence Craine.

The name rang a bell somewhere, but I couldn't place it. Spotting a little blood on his shoulder, I saw he had been stabbed behind the collarbone. In such a stab, most of the blood flows into the lungs. That must have been the case, for there was very little blood. At a rough guess, the guy was five-ten or -eleven. He must have weighed a hundred sixty or thereabouts.

Ruth, I still called her that although she was known professionally as Sue Shannon, was sitting as I'd left her, white as death and her eyes big enough and dark enough to drown in.

"Well, tell me about it," I suggested. "Tell me how well you knew him, what he was to you, and what he was doing here."

She had always listened to me. I suspected she had been in love with me once. I know I had with her. However, it was more than that, for we were friends, we understood each other. She tried to answer my questions now, and though her voice shook a little, I could see she was trying to keep herself from getting hysterical.

"His name is Larry Craine. I don't know what he does except that he seems to have a good deal of money. I've met him several times out on the Strip or at the homes of friends. He seemed to know everyone.

"He had found out something about me, something I didn't want anyone to know. He was going to tell, if I didn't pay him. It would have made a very bad story and it was the sort that people would tell around. It would have ruined me.

"I didn't think he would do it, and told him I didn't think so. He laughed at me, and gave me until tonight to pay him. I don't know how he got here or how he got in. I went out at eight o'clock with Roger Gentry, but we quarreled and he disappeared. After a while, Davis and Nita Claren drove me home. Then I found him."

"You haven't called the police?"

"The police?" Her eyes were wide and frightened. "Do I have to? I thought that you could hush it up."

"Listen, honey," I said dryly, "this man is dead! And he's been murdered. The police always seem to be interested in such cases."

"But not here! The body I mean, couldn't you take it someplace else? In stories they do those things."

"I know. But it wouldn't work." I picked up the phone and when I got Homicide, I asked for Reardon, praying he would be in. He was.

"Reardon? Got one for you, and a very touchy case. In the apartment of a friend of mine." I explained briefly, and she stood at my elbow, waiting.

When I hung up, I turned around. "Kid," I warned her, "you're going to have a bad time, so take it standing. The body is here, and if they find out about this blackmail, they've got a motive."

When the squad car pulled into the drive, I was standing there with my arms around her and she was crying. Over her shoulder, I was looking at the wall and thinking, and not about her. I was thinking about this guy Craine. I couldn't make myself think Ruth had done it.

However, there was a chance, even if a slim one. Ruthie, well, she was an impractical girl, and always seemed somewhat vague. But underneath was a will that would move mountains. It wasn't on the surface, but it was there.

Also, she knew a man could be killed in just that way. She knew it because I remembered telling her once when we were talking about some detective stories we'd both read.