Suspended Sentences (4 page)

“Maybe. What was Charlie after? Specifically, what kind of game?”

“He said he wanted a bobcat and a mule deer buck.”

“But?”

“He kept asking me about Rocky Mountain goats.”

“They're a protected species, aren't they?”

“What's left of them, yes.”

“But he wanted one.”

“One or a dozen. I think if he'd seen any goats he'd have killed them, yes.”

“How was he with a rifle?”

“Good. Not spectacular, but good enough.”

“Is it customary for the guide to stay in camp while the client goes out hunting?”

“Some hunters want you right with them all the time. But it wasn't unusual. He was just scouting around. He said he didn't want to waste his time sitting around watching me set up tents.”

I unfolded my county map. “Show me where it happened.”

He put his finger on it. “About there.”

“Near Goat Peak.” I folded it and put it in my pocket. “Anybody live up in that area?”

“It's National Forest. You can't own property up there.”

“Sometimes you tan lease it. Do you mind answering my question?”

For the first time Mallory looked uncomfortable. It was subtle — I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been waiting for it. A knotted muscle rippled briefly along his jaw; that was all. He said, “There's a sourdough who lives in a lean-to up there. Been searching for years — for the mother lode, I guess.”

“What's his name?”

“I don't remember.”

“Come on, Sam.”

He pretended to be thinking, exercising his memory. Then he snapped his fingers. “Collins, that's it. Hugh Collins.”

“I don't suppose he's got a phone.”

Mallory laughed. “Up there?”

“I'd like to talk to him.”

“What for?”

“He lives on Goat Peak. He may have seen someone.”

“I doubt it. He lives on the far side of the peak.”

“Can you take me up there? I'll pay for it.”

“Waste of money.”

“I want to talk to him,” I said gently. “It'll go a little faster if you'd be willing to guide me.”

“Suit yourself. We can leave in the morning.”

“Make it ten o'clock. I've got something to do first.”

You didn't put two jacketed .30-caliber bullets into a space smaller than a handspan at 400 yards without knowing what you were doing. That was what had stirred up my suspicions at first; it had been followed by improbabilities and too many coincidences.

The town didn't have a library or a newspaper. I had to get the information by phone from Denver. It took more than an hour and I was a few minutes late meeting Mallory. He had an old Dodge Power Wagon — four-wheel-drive, winch, jerrycans, and canteens. A real wilderness rig. When I was a kid in the Southwest I'd known uranium prospectors who'd go out in Power Wagons and live out of them for months at a stretch and that was long before the fad for truck-mounted camper outfits.

We rolled out of town and Mallory put the truck up a steep dirt road through the pines. “Find out anything?” he asked.

I watched him while I spoke. “Seventeen hunters have died in this county in the past six years. Eleven of them in the vicinity of Goat Peak. Nine killed by 30-'06 bullets. Jacketed.”

“Not surprising. That's what a lot of hunters carry. And Goat Peak's where most of the hunters go to set up their base camps.” But he said it in a tight-lipped way.

I glanced at the carbine he had clipped to the inside of the door panel by his left knee. “What's that, a .30-30?”

“Right. Saddle gun. For varmints.”

“Tell me about Hugh Collins.”

“Nice old guy. A gentleman. You'll see for yourself.”

I said, “You didn't like it much in 'Nam, did you?”

“Did anybody?”

“Some did. We had to arrest some of them. The ones who learned to enjoy killing. Got so they'd kill anybody — our side or theirs or just neutral.”

“Fragging?”

“Those. And others. Some of them just got bloodthirsty. Psychotic. They couldn't stop killing — didn't want to.”

He said, “We had one of those in my outfit. One of the other guys fragged him — threw a grenade down his blankets while he was asleep. We never found out which guy did it but we figured he probably saved all our lives.” He glanced at me. “It wasn't me.”

“No. You never got into that bag, did you?”

Mallory said, “Too scared. And in the end I supposed I developed a respect for life. No, I never got to liking war.”

“That wasn't war,” I said.

“Shook you up, did it?”

“It was a long time before I got pulled back together. I had to have a lot of help.”

He gave me a quick look and his eyes went back to the steep rutted road. “Shrinks? Psychiatrists?”

“Yes. And friends,” I said. I opened up to him because it might inspire him to share confidences. “Mostly it was the interrogations that did it to me. The ones we arrested. The way they could talk about committing grisly murders — and laugh about it. I couldn't take it after a while. It was too grotesque. Terrifying. The bizarre became the commonplace. One day I just started screaming, so they sent me home.”

“Rough,” Mallory remarked.

I watched his profile. “Charlie Cord liked to frag animals, didn't he, Sam?”

“You could put it that way,” he replied, giving nothing away.

“He didn't have much respect for life.”

“Not for animal life, at any rate.” He turned the wheel with a powerful twist of his shoulders and we went bucking off the road up into a meadow that carried us across a rolling slope into a canyon. He put the Power Wagon into four-wheel-drive and we whined up the dry gravel bed of the canyon floor. I was pitched heavily around and tried to brace myself in the seat.

It was past two o'clock when we reached Hugh Collins' lean-to. It was a spartan camp. A coffee pot and a few utensils were near the dead ashes of the campfire — he'd built his fireplace out of rocks. A cased rifle stood propped inside the lean-to. A bedroll, two canteens, a waterproof pouch with several books in it. No one was in sight, but we left the truck there and Mallory led the way through the forest. He was following tracks, although I couldn't discern them.

After a half-hour hike we heard the ring of a hammer against rock and presently we came upon the sourdough. He had a black beard peppered with gray; he wore coveralls and a plaid work shirt; he was short and built heavy through chest and shoulders. His eyes gleamed with an intelligence that seemed almost childishly innocent.

Mallory made introductions. “Mr. Stoddard's investigating the death of Mr. Cord.”

“Who?”

“The hunter who got killed the other day over on the far side of the peak.”

We hunkered in the shade. Hugh Collins had been whacking away at a rock face with his pointed hammer. I said, “Finding any color?”

“You always find color. Enough for day wages. I pan out a few hundred dollars a month. You wanted to ask about this hunter?”

“Someone shot him. Looking at the map, I thought the man might have come from this direction. I wondered if you might have seen anyone that day.”

“What day was that exactly?”

“Sunday.”

“Nobody came through this way Sunday.”

“You didn't hear a couple of shots that day, then?”

Collins laughed. He showed good teeth. “I hear shots all the time. This time of year these hills are alive with idiot hunters.”

An animal limped into sight and approached us hesitantly. It was a hardy-looking little creature; it had only three legs but it managed to hobble along with dignity and even grace.

Collins said, “All right now, Felicity,” and snapped his fingers and the delicate little creature came to him and nuzzled his hand. Its left foreleg appeared to have been amputated at the shoulder. Collins said, “Felicity's a Rocky Mountain goat. You don't see many.”

“What happened to her leg?”

“That's how we got together, Felicity and I. Seven years ago — she was a yearling — some idiot hunter blew her leg off and I came across her half dead up there on the peak. Bandaged her up, looked after her. She's been with me ever since. Like the lion and Androcles.” He scratched the goat's ears. After a moment she hopped away toward the woods. Collins looked up through the pines, evidently judging the angle of the sun. “You gentlemen hungry? Why don't we walk back to my camp?”

He served up a meal of beans and fritters and greens that he must have harvested from the mountain slopes. “Sorry there's no meat. I don't keep any on hand. Don't get many visitors.”

“Are you a vegetarian?”

“Going on seven years now.”

I said, “You don't talk like a back-country hermit, Mr. Collins.”

“Well, I used to be on the faculty at the School of Mines down in Golden.” He had an engaging smile. “I'm mainly antisocial. I prefer it up here. Of all the animals I've met, I find man the least appealing.” The three-legged goat appeared and Collins fed it the last of his salad.

I'd seen the cased rifle when we'd arrived in camp; it was propped inside the lean-to. Now I walked to it and unzipped the leather case. I was sure before I opened it, but it needed confirmation. The old rifle shone with fresh oil — it was well cared for.

Collins and Mallory hadn't stirred from their places by the fire place. Collins said in a mild voice, “That's a real old-timer, you know. Dates back to Black Jack Pershing's war.”

“I know.” I watched Sam Mallory get up and walk toward the Power Wagon. When he opened the door I said, “Leave the carbine there, Sam,” and he looked at me — looked at the rifle I held — and closed the truck door with stoic resignation. I said to Collins, “Funny that a vegetarian keeps a rifle around.”

“Varmints.” He met my gaze guilelessly.

Mallory returned to the fire and sat. I said, “If I had this rifle tested by the crime lab in Denver, do you suppose they'd identify it as the weapon that killed Charlie Cord?”

I looked at Hugh Collins and then at the three-legged goat. She was curled up by the old man's side. I said, “What was he doing, Mr. Collins? Drawing a bead on Felicity here?”

“No. He was taking aim on a bighorn sheep. We've got a little flock of them up here. Seven or eight bighorn sheep. They're the last survivors of a multitude.”

“How long do you expect to keep getting away with it?”

Sam Mallory said, “Sometimes you can't go by that.”

I thought about the misery Charlie Cord had trailed around him. I remembered the face of the woman in my office and I looked at the half-asleep face of Felicity by Hugh Collins' side. I had an image of Charlie and I remembered the passionate happy killers who'd appalled me, sent me screaming toward lunacy; and I saw the calm faces of Collins and Mallory.

I said to Mallory, “You're a hunter who doesn't like to kill. You had to have a reason to work for killers. It was to lead them into this old man's trap, wasn't it? How long have you two known each other?”

“Sam's my nephew,” Hugh Collins said. “We didn't see much of each other until he came back from Vietnam. That was his lesson — the way Felicity was mine.”

I said to Mallory, “But you still eat meat.”

“I'm his nephew and I'm his friend. I'm not his disciple.”

Collins said, “Sam never shot any of them. That was me. I'd stalk them and watch them and decide whether they were hunters or criminals.”

“Nine hunters in the past six years,” I said.

“Eleven. Killers, Mr. Stoddard.”

Mallory said, “I've guided hundreds of hunters through here.”

Collins said, “You want to mind that trigger. She goes off easy.”

I set the safety and put the rifle down against the lean-to and walked to the truck. I looked back at Mallory. “We'd better start back or it'll get dark before we're down off the mountain.”

Mallory got to his feet, bewildered. I said, “I'll report that it was a hunting accident.”

Collins scratched Felicity's chest and she pawed amiably at him with her one front hoof. Mallory came past me and opened the truck door. “You trust me next to this carbine?”

“Yes.”

“Because you want us to trust you?”

“That's right,” I said. I went around and got in. When I shut the door Mallory started the engine. Collins appeared at the window.

He didn't offer to reach in and shake my hand. But he smiled slightly. “If you change your mind, don't go to Sheriff Wilkerson with what you know. It would put him in a dilemma.”

“I assumed he was in on it,” I said. “He had to be. Otherwise he'd have compared the ballistics on those various .30-'06 bullets over the years and it would be public knowledge that they were all killed by the same rifle.”

“All but two. Last year that was. I started shooting at one of them and the other two panicked and killed each other. Damnedest thing I ever saw.”

Mallory had the truck idling. He said, “I still can't say I understand this.”

I said, “Let's just say we're fellow veterans of the same war.”

TWO-WAY STREET

“
Two-Way-Street” is a fiction that derives from speculation about the actual murder of Phoenix reporter Don Bolles. This isn't how it really was, but perhaps this is how it ought to have been
.

Initially this story was published over a pen-name, in the same issue of
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
that contained one of my Charlie Dark espionage stories. Perhaps the magazine was short of material that month. Because two of my stories were appearing in the same issue, the editor asked if I would mind putting a pen-name on one of the two stories. I agreed, and supplied the name. John Ives was the name of a character who had appeared in a couple of my books; subsequently it became a nom-de-plume under which I wrote two novels in the late 1970s
.