“Are you going?” demanded Ethel.
“Yes, yes, of course I’m going,” he snapped. He stepped away from his stool and lifted the counter board. Then he hesitated.
“Well?” she asked.
Swallowing, Harry lowered the board and moved over to the drawer. Pulling it out, he reached inside and picked up the loaded derringer. Ethel looked at him with nervous speculation.
“What are you doing?” she asked, somewhat less authority in her voice now.
“Well,” he said, “you can’t tell. How do we know who he is?”
For a moment, he felt a stir of pleasure at the alarmed expression crossing Ethel’s face. Then the cold prickle of dread was on his spine again and he found himself raising the board once more, found himself advancing toward the staircase.
“Wait,” Ethel said suddenly.
Harry twitched and looked around. “No need for—” he began to say, then shut up. Well, the truth of it was he was more than glad for Ethel’s company. There was something reassuring about her presence for all her furies and edicts.
The two of them started up the steps.
“You didn’t get his name?” she asked.
“He didn’t give it,” answered Harry.
For some reason, they both spoke in whispers as if, tacitly, it had been agreed between them that the stranger in the hotel was a menace.
“You—think he has a pistol?” asked Ethel.
Harry swallowed dryly. “Probably,” he said. He tried to sound casual but failed.
At the head of the staircase, they turned left and moved cautiously into the hallway. They both stopped.
“Where is he?” asked Ethel.
Harry stared down the empty hallway. “I don’t know,” he murmured.
“You think he’s in the perfessor’s room?” she asked.
“How could he be?” countered Harry. “The perfessor always locks his door when he goes out. He has valuable specimens in there.”
Ethel swallowed.
“Then where is he?” she asked.
“Maybe he thought I said thirty-nine,” suggested Harry. “Maybe he’s up on the third floor.”
“Go look,” said Ethel.
Harry tightened angrily. Oh, sure, the thought came. Go look. As if he was a big hero or something. As if . . .
Drawing in a shaky breath, he started up the staircase. That man was awfully big. Awfully big.
At the third-floor landing, he stopped and braced himself, one hand resting on the bannister. All right, mister, his mind rehearsed sternly, what do you want up here? You got business? He swallowed again. By Christ, he thought.
He stepped forward quickly, snapping back the hammer of the derringer so that the curved trigger came clicking down to his finger.
The hall was empty.
Harry blinked. Well, what the hell? he thought. What in the blue blazes?
“Harry!”
He started violently, his heartbeat lurching so violently it felt like a horse’s kick against his chest wall. Whirling, he thudded down the steps, derringer extended.
“Come here!” called Ethel. It was not exactly a call of distress, it seemed to Harry, but then you never knew how someone like Ethel might react in a moment of danger. Maybe even sudden peril would fail to alter her habit of demanding.
But she was all right, standing at the end of the hallway by the window. Harry walked toward her quickly, testing the door to Professor’s Dodge’s room as he passed. It was locked.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You leave this window open?” Ethel asked, and there was something in her voice other than demand, Harry noticed.
He had said no before it struck him what the import was of his saying it. He stared out the window at the precipitous drop to the street below.
“You . . . think he jumped?” he asked.
Ethel pressed her lips together. “That’s impossible,” she said angrily.
They both looked out the window. Could a man jump that far? wondered Harry. Wouldn’t it break his legs?
Then Ethel said, “Harry,” in a faint voice.
“What?”
“Look.”
His gaze fell to where she was pointing, and he saw the imprint of boot tracks ending at the window.
Harry gaped. There was a swelling in his chest and stomach as if all his organs were expanding. No, there had to be another explanation, his mind claimed instantly. No man could jump twenty-five feet to the ground nor could he climb along a wall that was devoid of footholds or handholds.
“Of course,” he said, speaking before his mind was set.
“What?” There was a rare sound of grateful attention in Ethel’s voice.
“He’s in the perfessor’s room,” said Harry.
“But you said the door was locked,” she objected weakly.
“Sure.” He plunged on, unwilling to allow the sight of those boot prints to distract him. “He locked it from the inside after he went in. He must have a skeleton key.”
“But—what about the window then?”
“Don’t you see?” he argued. “He tried to trick us. He opened it up to make us think that was the way he left.”
“I don’t—” She stared at him blankly. Then, abruptly, she pointed at the boot prints. “What about them?” she asked.
“That’s a trick, too,” said Harry, trying to outtalk the speed of fear. “He could walk to the window, open it, then move backwards in the same prints. That’s an old Injun trick.”
He snapped his fingers, making Ethel twitch.
“He is an Injun!” he said. “I thought so when I seen him.”
“An Indian?”
They both looked at each other intently, and suddenly Harry knew what she was going to say and it made him cold inside.
“We’ll have to look,” she told him.
A shuddered breath passed Harry’s lips. We’ll have to look. The words echoed in his mind.
“You have the key?” she asked.
Harry tried to swallow.
“Well, have you?”
He murmured, “Yeah.”
“Then . . .”
No more to be said. The two of them edged over to the door, and Ethel put her ear against it, face twisted with concentration.
“I don’t hear anything,” she whispered.
“Maybe he’s not there anymore,” Harry said hopefully.
“Then where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Harry whispered pettishly. “Are all the other doors locked?”
“Yes. They—”
They both recoiled against each other as a door down the hall suddenly opened.
David Boutelle did not see them. He walked along the hall briskly and turned right onto the staircase. They heard the sound of his descending boots.
“M-Mister Boutelle,” mumbled Harry.
Ethel drew in a deep breath.
“Open the door,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, although his mind said no.
The hand he slid into his pocket was cold and shaking. His fingers twitched when they touched the key. He drew it out and slipped it into the keyhole. It rattled there.
“Shh!” hissed Ethel.
Harry closed his eyes. “Will you—?” he began to request.
“Open it fast,” said Ethel.
And be ready to use your gun, Harry’s mind completed the instruction. He drew in a ragged breath. Through the open window at the end of the hall, he could hear the rustling fall of rain, the clopping of a horse’s hooves as it passed the hotel. All right, mister, his mind began again, put your hands up. You can’t go breakin’ into this hotel without—
He shoved the door open and jumped in quickly, gun raised to fire.
The room was empty.
It was not until immediate fear had gone that the discomfiture of the earlier dread returned. If the man was not in here or in the hall, if he could not possibly have jumped from the window to the street—where was he?
Harry stood in mute perplexity while his wife stepped over to the light bracket on the wall and turned up the flame.
The room seemed truly empty. Harry closed his eyes and shivered. What in the blue blazes of merry hell, he thought, is going on?
“Well, he must have gone out the window then, that’s all,” he said, trying to push down the fear rising inside him.
“But—”
“Who knows why?” he anticipated her. “Maybe he heard us coming up the stairs and got scared. Who knows? But he sure ain’t in here.”
“Harry, the . . . ” Ethel swallowed with effort. “The . . . closet,” she said.
Harry could not repress the groan in his chest. Was there to be no end to the woman’s alarms? Well, he was getting tired of this, he told himself casually, as if his heart were not threatening to discharge itself from place. Striding quickly to the closet door, he flung it open.
It was empty.
“There,” he said. “Now let’s stop this nonsense.” He was so relieved that, for a second, the room swam before his eyes.
“Well . . .” she murmured indecisively.
“Ethel, he ain’t in here,” Harry said, feeling a bolt of dread that she might start telling him to look under the bed, look behind the armchair over by the window, look behind . . .
“I . . . guess not,” Ethel said.
“Come on, let’s go.”
Ethel turned down the flame, and they went out into the hall again.
“Shut the window,” she told him as he closed the door and relocked it carefully. She started down the hall, muttering to herself, “I still can’t see how anyone could jump from that high.”
“Well, he did,” said Harry. And, by Christ, he was going to believe it, too.
When the door had closed and dark silence filled the room again, the man lifted the window and stepped inside.
He stood for a moment beside the armchair, looking around. Behind him, down in the street, a horse was trotting by and he twitched his head around. He looked at the street, raindrops inching slowly down his cheeks.
When the horse had gone, he turned back again. He walked across the room and twisted up the oil flame, the burnished glow of it crowding darkness into the corners. Then he moved over to the bureau and drew out the top drawer.
He looked down impassively at the cuffs and collars stuffed in messily, the mound of starched handkerchiefs. He opened another drawer and stared at the shirts and ties, the undergarments, the books. Abruptly, he shoved the drawers shut. These things were of no value to him.
He stood before the bureau mirror looking at his reflection—tall, copper-skinned, dark-eyed, the hair ebony-black and long. Steadily, he looked at the reflection of his carven face.
Then his hand, which rested on the bureau top, stirred and brushed against something. The man looked down. It was a specimen of gneiss rock. He looked at the veiny structure of it, then his fingers closed around it slowly and his gaze lifted again to the mirror.
He had to find Dodge. He had to find him soon. Fury began to stir in him, and he looked at the wavering reflection of his face in the mirror, at the mounting shapelessness about his features. Only the burning eyes remained steady.
As he stared, the gneiss rock, hardened by centuries, crumbled to dust between his straining fingers.
5
The pendulum clock on the wall behind his desk was just striking for the ninth time as Finley unlocked his office door and went inside.
Standing in the darkness, he peeled off his dripping slicker and tossed it on the bench beside the door, dropping his rain-soaked hat on top of it. Slowly, he removed his damp jacket and hung it on the clothes tree.
“There,” he murmured.
Walking over to the desk, he lifted off the top of the oil lamp and lit the wick, turning the flame up high. Then, replacing the top, he clumped over to the stove.
There was still a bed of glowing embers near the bottom from that morning’s fire. To this he added newspaper scraps and kindling until the flames fingered up brightly. Then he dropped in heavier chunks of wood. He kicked the stove door shut, pulled a chair up in front of it, and settled down with a sigh. Groaning tiredly, he pulled off his boots and dropped them on the floor. That was better.
He was just relaxing, eyes shut, deliberating whether or not it was worth the effort to get up and make a pot of coffee, when there was a single, hard rap on the door. He grunted and opened his eyes. Pushing slowly to his feet, he walked across the cold floorboards in his stocking feet and opened the door.
“There you are,” he said, “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Have ya?” Al Corcoran looked exhausted, his eyes rimmed with red, his face drawn and colorless.
Finley stepped back quickly and drew the door open wide. “Come in and get warm,” he said. “I’ll put some coffee on.”
Al came in, and Finley shut the door, pulling down the shade that covered its top half of glass.
“Now look, Al,” he said, turning, “before you start—”
“They ain’t back yet, Finley,” said Corcoran. It was almost a warning.
“I know that, Al,” said Finley.
“And they ain’t holed up in some cave,” said Corcoran. “And they ain’t out ridin’ in the rain.”
“Al, there are a hundred places in this area they could be,” said Finley. “You can’t expect to find them on a night like this. I’ve been out looking for them, too, and I couldn’t see a thing. So—”
“So nothin’,” Corcoran interrupted. “You gonna do anything or not?”
“Al, I’ve done all there is to do tonight,” Finley told him. “In the morning, we’ll—”
“In the morning be damned!” flared Corcoran. “For all I know they’re lyin’ out there somewhere with—!”
He stopped abruptly, breathing hard, as someone knocked on the door. Finley gritted his teeth and stepped over to it.
“Yes?” he said.
“Boutelle,” said the voice.
Oh, great, thought Finley. This was exactly what he needed right now. Exhaling wearily, he opened the door.
“Come in,” he said.
Boutelle’s eyebrows raised slightly when he saw the brooding Corcoran standing there. “Good evening,” he said, nodding once. Corcoran grunted.
“If you’ll excuse us for a second, Mr. Boutelle,” Finley said, “I’ll be with you directly.”
“Of course,” Boutelle said crisply. He walked over to the desk, glancing briefly at Finley’s unshod feet.
“Now, listen, Al,” Finley said quietly, hoping Boutelle wouldn’t hear. “So help me God, Braided Feather had nothing to do with this. You’ll be making a terrible mistake if you think he did. It’s something else. You have to believe that. At least until—”
“Why should I believe an Injun lover?” said Corcoran through his teeth.
It was only the slightest tensing of skin across Finley’s cheekbones, the least flinting of his gray-green eyes, but Corcoran went rigid as if preparing for a fight.
Finley forced away the angry tension.
“We’ll forget you said that, Al,” he said.
“You don’t have to—”
“Al.” Finley’s fingers tightened on the heavy man’s arm. “Take my word on this until morning. That’s all I’m asking you to do. As soon as it’s light, we’ll go out and find them.”
He paused a moment. “All right?”
Corcoran stared at him for a few seconds. Then, jerking his arm free, he turned on his heel and walked over to the door. It slammed loudly behind him.
Finley closed his eyes and blew out a heavy breath. Then, bracing himself for the inevitable, he turned.
“Braided Feather had nothing to do with what?” asked Boutelle.
Finley felt a heavy sinking in his stomach. Dear God, now he was in for it.
“Just a small misunderstanding,” he said.
“Regarding what, Mr. Finley?”
Finley didn’t
answer.
“I would appreciate your telling me,” Boutelle said stiffly. “Anything concerning the Apaches—”
“This does not concern the Apaches,” said Finley.
“Apparently, the gentleman who just left thinks otherwise,” said Boutelle.
“He’s wrong.”
“Please let me be the judge of that,” said Boutelle. “What does he believe, Mr. Finley?”
Finley sighed. Well, what was the purpose in trying to keep it a secret from Boutelle? It would only make him more suspicious. Casually, as if relating something of little consequence, Finley told the younger man about Tom and Jim Corcoran’s disappearance that afternoon. He did not emphasize Al Corcoran’s idea about it.
“And they haven’t been found yet,” said Boutelle. It was not a question.
“Let’s say they haven’t shown up yet,” said Finley. He forced a smile to his lips. “Now, can I be of service to you, Mr. Boutelle?”
Boutelle ignored this.
“Why are you so positive the Apaches had nothing to do with it?” he asked.
Finley clenched his teeth.
“I’m positive,” was all he said.
“You talk, Mr. Finley,” said Boutelle, “as if no white man has ever been robbed and murdered by an Apache before.”
“No white man ever has been by Braided Feather’s people,” snapped Finley.
“I suppose—”
“That was war, Mr. Boutelle,” Finley interrupted, anticipating what the younger man was going to say. “I, myself, killed eight men during the war with the Confederate states, but I don’t think of myself as a murderer.”
“I suggest, Mr. Finley,” said Boutelle, “that you are, with some deliberation, blinding yourself to a condition only too prevalent. I realize fully that the idea of your hard-won treaty being already broken is not a—”
“You’re wrong, Mr. Boutelle.” Finley shuddered. How long could he hold his temper? He was close to the edge now.
“It has been well established,” said Boutelle, “that any number of Indians—Apaches included—periodically desert their reservations—after first collecting their government-issued supplies, of course—and rob and murder white men!”