The Frighteners (10 page)

The man in the khakis was hauling some of the bags out of the trunk, perhaps to see if anything was hidden beneath them. He didn’t set them down, he simply tossed them aside and watched them hit the ground as if hoping they’d burst open, but they were good pieces and remained closed. One set was tan with brown piping; the other was dusty rose. His and hers. At last the khaki-clad gent picked up a medium-sized, rose-colored suitcase right-handed, tossed it high into the air and, with a powerful swing of the machete in his left hand, sliced it open as it came down. I remembered being told that the luggage of Will Pierce and his lady had also been demolished. Gloria gave a gasp at the sight of her intimate honeymoon garments spilling out and fluttering away across the trashy clearing. Distant whoops of laughter reached us as the whole crew, except the driver, who remained in his seat, surged forward to join the party.

“Note the weapon our friend is using,” I said softly. “We may not have found who ordered your daddy and Mrs. Charles killed, but maybe we’ve spotted the gent who did the actual killing.”

‘‘But they 're
destroying
. . . !”

The head man had stepped back to watch the show in a tolerant, boys-will-be-boys manner. I studied the dark, cleanshaven face, rather handsome in the Latin manner, until I knew I’d recognize it if I saw it at close range without optical equipment and passed the glass to Gloria.

“The
jefe
," I said. “Anybody you recognize? No? Well, make sure you’ll know him the next time you see him. And as many of the others as you can.”

“Matt, they’re just . . . just vandalizing . . . !”

“There’s not much we can do about it.”

“But why? What’s the point?”

“Just be glad it isn’t you,” I said. “Think how they vandalized your pop and his girlfriend.”

Gloria gave me a shocked look; apparently I should have been more respectful of the dead. Down across the highway, they were trashing the Cadillac thoroughly. Other machetes had come into play, slicing up the soft top, smashing the lights, carving up the upholstery, chopping up the tires—that took a little doing, but they made it—and even hacking up the body metal. They were also, of course, looting the luggage and demolishing everything that couldn’t be pocketed or carried away. Soon the car was a total wreck, and the area looked as if the trunk had exploded, blowing fragmented suitcases and rags of clothing, male and female, in all directions.

At last the man in khaki called them to order and gave them their instructions, finishing with a wide sweep of his machete that encompassed all of northern Mexico. I couldn’t hear the words, and I might not have understood them if I had heard them, but the meaning was obvious:
You’ve had your fun, now find me the lousy gringos, pronto.

“But I don’t understand!” Gloria whispered plaintively. All the sulky resentment had gone out of her as she watched the scene across the way. “I just don’t
understand!
Our rendezvous . . . Why would anybody send us into a . . . a deathtrap?”

I said, “Isn’t it obvious? I wasn’t really selected for this bridegroom spot because I was such a bright and competent fellow. I was selected because I’d make a swell dead body that, after a little judicious machete work by our friend over there, could be buried as Horace Hosmer Cody, another unfortunate victim of those murdering Mexican
bandidos
who specialize in Texas millionaires and their dames.”

Strangely they had only one tracker worth a damn. You’d think that among a bunch of mountain ruffians there’d be hardly anybody who didn’t know how to work out a simple trail; but they obviously weren’t hunters, they’d had no training as military scouts, and they didn’t think in those terms at all. Anyway, by the time they’d finished doing a job on the car and luggage and got themselves organized, they’d milled around so much that there were no clear footprints except theirs left near the vehicles. The khaki-clad leader never even looked at the ground; he just sent them off to hunt for us in every direction, apparently figuring that, dressed as unpractically as we were, we couldn’t have got far.

They might never have found our tracks, the tracks I’d been careful to leave for them, if it hadn’t been for one man, the one who’d driven the van, who’d finally got out where I could see him clearly. Another Little Boy Blue, in jeans, blue work shirt, and a short blue denim jacket, except that he was a Big Boy Blue. He must have been close to my six-four in height, and in width he had shoulders that just had to give him trouble going through small doors. He was the kind of specimen that, when you meet him in my line of work, you toss aside the .38 and reach for the .44 Magnum if there isn’t an elephant rifle handy. He wore no hat and his light hair was cut quite short, giving him a bullet-headed look. Some kind of a revolver was stuck into the front of his pants, but it was obvious that he didn’t take it very seriously. With those shoulders, and hands to match, he didn’t need to.

He exhibited no signs of Latin blood that I could see at that distance. As far as we were concerned at the moment, he was the one to watch, even though I got the impression that finding us wasn’t really his job; he served the headman as driver and bodyguard and hadn’t been included in the search-em-out orders. But there were apparently brains inside all the beef; and after a while he got bored watching his
compadres
thrashing around mindlessly in the sparse, spiny brush, so he got out of the van and wandered down the dirt road toward the highway, finally spotting the mark of one of Gloria’s spike heels. Then he found another. Reaching the paved highway, he made a cast along the shoulder to the east and then, returning, to the west, discovering no more of those distinctive feminine shoe signatures. He was looking across the road thoughtfully, obviously considering an examination of the other side, when the man in khakis called to him, remonstrating with him. It was hard to tell through the little scope, but I guessed that the bossman was the typical kind of paranoid big shot who isn’t comfortable without at least one gun at his side in addition to his own. With a couple of hostiles on the loose,
El Jefe
wanted his protection sticking close and paying attention to his job instead of wandering around looking at the ground.

“Shouldn’t we be running?” Gloria whispered.

I shook my head. “How fast can you run, dressed like that? And how far? How fast can I run in these damn boots? We’d just leave them a clear trail to follow. Those guys look pretty durable; I don’t think either of us is in good enough shape to outdistance them. We may as well just keep an eye on them from here and see if they fall for the phony trail we laid for them. If they don’t, if they spread their search pattern wide enough to find us here, well, it’s a better spot for a fight than some I’ve seen.” I grimaced. “Hell, I’ve got five in the gun and a couple of five-shot refills. There are only eight of them. No sweat.” Gloria gave me a glance of annoyance; apparently she didn’t appreciate gallows humor, if that’s what it was.

She licked her lips. “If they catch us, they . . . they’ll kill us like they did Papa and Millie Charles, won’t they? Both of us?”

“I would judge that to be the object of the exercise, yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, God, they’re coming across the highway now!”

She sounded as if it was the end of the world; actually I was happy that Big Boy had talked his southpaw boss into letting him continue his researches. They crossed the highway together. After a littie, they discovered the tracks I’d had Gloria make by the edge of the pavement. The big man was suspicious of the dainty footprints and started to look farther, but he was called back impatiently.
El Jefe
had decided to buy the scenario I’d sketched out for him: the beautiful young gringa and her elderly husband, after leaving their fancy car in a breathless hurry, not even stopping to lock it, had stood by the roadside and flagged down a bus or other vehicle and ridden it back east the way they’d come, crouching down so they wouldn’t be seen from the brown van that soon passed them from the other direction. It was too bad, que lastima, but they were obviously miles back down the highway by this time. Further search was clearly futile; and with a lot of illegal arms showing and the demolished Cadillac sitting there to incriminate him, the man in khaki was suddenly hot to evacuate the premises and gave sharp orders to that effect.

Big Boy Blue was obviously not so certain that the answer they’d found was the right one. Heading for the vehicles, he paused at the far side of the highway. Somehow I knew what was coming next, and even though I was lying in the shade and feeing north, so there could hardly be any reflections, I lowered the little telescope hastily and checked to make sure that Gloria and my big white hat were out of sight. Then he’d turned to look straight at me. The distance was about a quarter of a mile and without the scope I had no chance of reading his expression, but I knew that he knew I was there, not from footprints or other evidence, just because that’s where he’d have been if our situations had been reversed.

He stood there for a moment, obviously debating whether or not to make a final attempt to persuade his nervous chieftain to delay long enough to throw a few men across the ravine and have them scout the ridge. Then he shrugged resignedly, swung away, and hiked up to the van parked in the clearing behind the wrecked Cadillac. A few minutes later, all aboard, they were driving away, back toward Cananea and points east.

I heard Gloria’s breath go out in a long sigh as the van disappeared from sight. She lay beside me for quite a while with her face buried in her arms.

“Are you okay?” I asked at last.

She raised her head to look at me, dry-eyed, clearly hating herself for having been scared and me for having been a witness to her fear. She didn’t answer my question but sat up behind our bush and started to give a modest pull to her skirt. She stopped, aghast at its soiled condition. She made as if to scramble to her feet to determine the full extent of the catastrophe, but I put my hand on her sleeve.

“Easy. The men at the roadblock up the way may have got radio instructions to come by and see if they can catch us doing a victory dance to celebrate our escape, or just standing by the roadside trying to pick up a lift. Let’s give them another few minutes. . . . Down! There they are.”

It was a small white Japanese station wagon, not new, with a badly bent rear bumper and plenty of dents and scratches. There were two men in front and two in the rear. They turned up the little road across the way and pulled up behind the Cadillac as if they’d been told where to find it, as they undoubtedly had. The driver got out and walked up to the convertible and kicked one of the wheels, and I saw that I’d been wrong again, this was a woman, Mexican, short and stocky, with stringy black hair, but that means nothing nowadays. Some of the most glamorous fashion-magazine models look as if they’d been shampooed with crankcase oil. Her sturdy figure strained, in the obvious places, the faded cloth of the green coverall she was wearing. She carried a small machine pistol, make unknown, slung from one shoulder.

Returning to the station wagon, she paused to pick up something, and held it against her substantial figure, modeling it for the benefit of the men in the car: a lacy, black garment designed for minimum female coverage and maximum male stimulation. Everybody laughed. I heard Gloria give a sniff of indignation at this display of her underwear. The sturdy lady in the coveralls tossed away the lingerie and climbed into the beat-up wagon. It drove off eastward, as the van had done.

I rose and clapped the Stetson on my head. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.’’

Getting to her feet with my help, Gloria glanced down at herself and was horrified by what she saw. “Oh, God, just look at me!’’ she gasped.

I said, “What are you complaining about? I don’t see a single bullet hole or machete slash. I never contracted to preserve your pretty costume, just you. Stop fussing and come on.”

She was trying to pull herself tidy and brush herself clean. “But where? How? We haven’t got a car. . . ."

“Oh, yes, we have. It’s about three miles southwest of here.” I took out the two folded papers that had come with the survival kit I’d picked up in the Douglas hardware store, selected one, and unfolded it. “Southwest, yes. Say two point seven miles.” I got out the little compass I’d been given, and pointed. “Thataway.”

She was watching me, frowning. “You arranged . . . ?”

“That’s what I’m for, arranging.”

She looked in the direction I’d indicated. The view wasn’t encouraging, just the same steep, brushy landscape through which we’d been driving.

“Three miles! I can’t possibly . . ."

I said, “Sure you can, if you just stop worrying about your lousy clothes. Hell, that’s the bridal outfit you were going to douse with kerosene and set fire to because you didn’t like the attitude of the groom, remember? You were going to write it off then; well, write it off now. There’ll be something for us to wear when we reach the car. Do you want me to break the heels off your shoes and chop the bottom off your skirt for better leg action, like in the movies?”

“No, thank you! You’ve done quite enough to me already!” She turned and marched off stiffly down the back of the ridge

in the direction I’d indicated. I went after her but soon moved into the lead so I could pick the easy routes for her; she had absolutely no eye for country. At first I also tried to give her a hand in the bad places, but she rejected my help irritably. When we stopped, it was still light enough to read a map. Sitting on a stone of convenient size, I took a look at the one I’d been given. Actually, it wasn’t a map but an aerial photograph—rather, to be completely accurate, a small piece cut from a larger aerial photograph. Having been brought up on topographic maps, I still have trouble deciphering the stratospheric snapshots that have largely replaced them; but the ground covered here wasn’t too hard to figure out. The photo fragment displayed an inked arrow for north and a straight ink line on which were marked four mile divisions for distance. It showed the winding, paved, east-west highway we’d left. It also showed an even wigglier little unpaved mountain track coming up from the southwest. It ran within a few miles of the highway for a short distance and then swung down to the southeast.