  Persia sat primly at the secretary which stood in a corner of her parlor. She frowned, checked her addition. It was nice to have bank accounts in three different towns, but she wished that just once they would total as much as she had expected. The town was busier than it had ever been and on paper she was making a good deal of money; but it was all going to pay off Mr. Jay. She shifted her chair to face Sam as he came into the room. He regarded her as placidly as ever through his lenses, but she knew him so well that she could sense a mild urgency about him. "Mr. Jay is in my office," he said shortly. "Oh?" Mr. Jay never visited the townhouse unless his business was very urgent indeed. "Sam, is anything wrong?" Sam moved his head negatively. "He has some instructions he wants to give you personally. It's a simple matter, but he wants it done just right." They went at once to the office. Mr. Jay sprang up to take Persia's hand in both of his. "Charming! More charming than ever!" he said, throwing his head back to look her over. His alert little eyes danced and his beard framed a smile as he devoted a second or two to looking charmed. He led her to a chair as Sam slid into another. Mr. Jay stood between them, hands clasped behind his back. He glanced from one to the other and drew in his breath noisily. "There are two men upstairs in Sam's rooms that I don't want seen around town. They have been riding all night and are hungry. Now—" Mr. Jay paused to smile crisply at Persia—"I want you to feed them. Have your maid throw together a meal; soup, ham and eggs, left-overs—anything that can be prepared quickly. You might say that Sam has some old friends visiting him, something like that. Then you or Sam take the food up to them—not the maid. In the meantime, Pinky Bronklin will bring a bag of supplies here. These two men will take it and leave. Their horses are tied out back." Persia smiled faintly. "Aren't you going to tell me what nefarious connivance I'm a party to?" "Oh, it's underhanded," Mr. Jay said, "completely underhanded. If I were suspected of being connected with it, my career would be finished. But you'll guess it anyway, in the light of future developments; so you might as well know now. Ben Vickers' big boiler reached Ellensburg yesterday. He had a crew and a huge wagon waiting for it, so I expect that by this time it's on the road. I—well, there's going to be an accident." "I wish now I hadn't asked," Persia said. "No one will be hurt, I hope." "I certainly hope not." "I don't like this, Mr. Jay." "Of course not. I don't like it either." "Does Vickers know the boiler's arrived?" Sam asked. "Not yet, I think," Mr. Jay said. "My information is that his messenger was delayed. I dare say that he will get word, though, before the day is out. And I dare say he will send Mr. Tesno down there at once." Finding no comfort in the solitude of his room, Tesno left the hotel and strolled aimlessly up the street. His big Raymond watch showed only a little after eleven. He would wait till noon, he decided, before dropping in on Persia. He stopped at the new tobacco store and bought a handful of cigars. Lighting one, he sauntered past the livery barn and up the slope behind it. Most of the timber had been logged off here, and brush and ferns were already claiming the ground. Finding a degree of solace in the faint warmth of the sun, he pulled himself up on a stump and found he had a view that drew him out of himself. It was a cloudless day, and the range jutted its ragged vertebrae into a sky as blue as a mountain lake. Below him, the town seemed a naked, ugly fungus sprung newly from the earth. The camp, almost hidden by pines, was less intrusive. Beyond the gulch, above it, the crisp black arch of the tunnel scarred Runaway Mountain. Here it all is, he thought, spread out in front of me. I've either got to become a part of it or get the hell out. He tried to plan what he would say to Persia. He would tell her flatly that the time had come for the gamblers to go, he guessed. He would ask her to have Madrid clear them out, all of them. If she stalled or refused—well, he would do it himself. Or resign. The townhouse lay off to his left, and he found himself staring at it, thinking that she was in there somewhere, wondering what she did with her mornings. He watched two men come out of the back of the far part of the building, each carrying a small bundle. At this distance he could tell little about them except that they must have come up from the cattle country east of the mountains. One wore woolly chaps. Both wore Stetsons and walked with the peculiar swagger of men in high-heeled boots. They disappeared behind one of the outbuildings, and when they came into sight again, they were mounted on horses. He watched them ride eastward out of the gulch. He supposed they had come to sell beef or hay, or on some such business, and he quickly forgot them. When his watch read almost noon, he started downhill, avoiding the street and heading for the townhouse. Persia answered his knock, smiling when she saw him. It wasn't the polite and pretty company smile now but a special one, personal and tender, an eager doorway closed quickly behind him as she came into his arms. "I'm glad you came," she said. She drew him into the parlor. "It's been a bad morning." "I heard about the accident," she said. She detached herself from him and sat down on the sofa, crossing her long legs and smoothing her skirt over them. "Is there anything anyone can do?" "Not for the dead men." Her eyes touched him warily. She said, "For you then? You ought to get your mind off it." "No," he said. "I ought to think about it. I ought to think a great deal about it." She nodded slowly, frowning. He seized the back of a chair and leaned over it moodily. After a moment, she said, "I've been wishing all morning you'd drop by. Jack, it's such a beautiful day. Could we—I suppose it isn't a good idea, but couldn't we pack a lunch and have a picnic? I know a spot where there's a creek and a little waterfall. We'd be a million miles away from everything." "It sounds fine," he said. "We'll have to sort of sneak away," she said. "I wouldn't want Sam to know. He'd want to come, too, I'm afraid." It was after sunset when they came back into the gulch along a forgotten skid road. They reached the kitchen door of the townhouse at a remarkable moment when the entire sky was aglow, burning scarlet beyond the bleak western peaks and cooling down to a grayish pink in the east as night seeped into it. The buildings of the town, the trees, the earth itself were suspended in a pinkish haze. Persia caught Tesno's hand and halted him. "It's almost frightening!" she said. "It gives you the feeling something strange is about to happen." He knew what she meant, but he grinned and said artlessly, "It will be a clear day tomorrow." Stella was at the back door then, saying dinner was ready and going stale. Sam Lester met them in the kitchen. He gave Persia a questioning look and turned to Tesno. "Vickers is in there," Sam said, jerking his head toward the parlor. "He's been combing the town for you. He finally learned from Stella that you'd gone off somewhere with a basket of food—she didn't know where. He's been camped in there ever since." Tesno found Ben dozing in a chair. He leaped to his feet wild-eyed when he heard his name. "The boiler's on it's way up here!" Ben said. "It will move fast enough until the road hits the mountains, and I expect it's damn near to Cle Elum by now. If you ride all night, you can be there by dawn. Where in the merry hell have you been?" "Picnic," Tesno said. "You could leave word where I could find you." "I've been trying to think things out, Ben. I've decided to quit." Ben clapped a hand to his forehead. "Not now! Not with that boiler down there!" "You could send somebody else." "This job might need special talent, Jack. It just might be a dirty one." Ben fell silent as Persia and Sam came into the room. He nodded curtly at Persia. Suddenly he gestured violently and continued. "The thing arrived yesterday. I had a crew standing by to unload it and start it up here. A man left at once to bring me the news—should have been here before daylight this morning. But he was overtaken by a pair of toughs who beat him up, tied him to a tree, shot his horse. He worked loose and walked eight miles in the middle of the night to a ragcamp, where he borrowed another horse. He didn't get here till well after noon." "You think they did this just to delay the news?" "Seems like it. And when you remember that phoney telegram—well, that boiler needs you down there alongside of it, night and day, a gun in your hands." "All right," Tesno said. "I'll chaperone the boiler for you. After that...." "We'll see, we'll see," Ben said quickly. "Once I get that thing up here and the compressors working, life ought to be a little easier for everybody. I've got your blue roan saddled and waiting outside. You can start right now." "Not till he's had something to eat!" Persia said. She stepped up and grasped Tesno's arm possessively. Ben grunted. "Just so he's at Cle Elum by daylight." He located his hat, clamped it on his head, and headed for the door. Sam Lester went with him. "Actually," Persia said, "I think that man is mad. Sit down and have a drink, Jack. I'll have Stella get dinner on the table. Sam has already eaten." "I'll have to hurry," Tesno said. "Maybe...." "Nonsense. Sam has work to do, and I refuse to be left alone. Not tonight, Jack." |
|
