Lachlan was the junior member of the firm, both in
years and in seniority. He had been in residence on that
job in Central America, in charge, with a second in
command by the name of Goodwin. Of course, Dunbar
and my father had been there a dozen times or more,
but you can’t see everything, especially when you trust
the man who’s doing the job. And when the dam folded
up like water-soaked cardboard, they flew in in a
chartered plane. Police were waiting for them at the
airport.
Lachlan hadn’t sold any of the reinforcing steel. That
would have been too easy to spot. But with Goodwin in
charge of the concrete work, government inspectors for
sale, and native labor who didn’t know a mix
specification from the second chorus of “The Peanut
Vendor,” it was just stealing candy to divert around a
hundred thousand dollars’ worth of the cement into his
own channels. Most of the proceeds had gone into the
campaign fund of another eager beaver on the make—
an army colonel who had his eye on the presidency. The
two of them pulled it off. About a week before the dam
folded, the colonel had taken over the government in a
palace revolution. How could Lachlan lose? He didn’t.
Dunbar and Belen went to jail, while Lachlan and the
colonel took over what was left of the firm and only God
knows how much of the damages collected by the
government. You’ll never go broke taking it out of one
pocket and putting it in another.
That was in 1936. I said I’d kill Lachlan when I grew
up. Cathy said I’d have to get there first, because she
was going to kill him. She was ten years old.
Nothing in Her Way — 22
We grew up that way, the two of us with that shared
obsession for revenge. After a while, of course, we gave
up the childish and impractical idea of killing him, since
that wouldn’t prove anything at all and would probably
land us in the electric chair besides. What we were
going to do was more poetic. We were going to take
him the way he had taken our fathers. It was a large
project for a couple of kids.
I ground out the cigarette and lay looking up at the
dark. We knew where he was at last. But could we do
it? How could we do it? Lachlan would be nearly fifty
now; he’d been everywhere and done everything; and
he was a swindler himself and knew all the angles. It
was still a large project, and I didn’t know.
And then it occurred to me that I didn’t even know
yet what this plan was they had cooked up for Goodwin.
I found out in the morning. Charlie told me. And it
was sweet.
* * *
He was staying at the Roosevelt. When I go over to his
room around eleven a.m. Cathy and Bolton were
already there. Charlie was still in a silk dressing gown,
the plump, angelic face pink from fresh barbering, and
was just finishing a breakfast consisting of a Persian
melon and a large pot of cafe Creole in the living room
of his suite. He lighted one of his precious Havana
cigars with slow, loving care and leaned back to smile
benignly at me.
“Ah, come in, Mike,” he said. “I see that Miss
Holman’s powers of persuasion are somewhat better
than my feeble efforts.”
Did he really think she was Elaine Holman? I
wondered. But we had to keep up the act. I looked
across at her. She was very lovely and chic in a brown
suit with a fur piece dangling in casual elegance from
her shoulder.
“If that puzzles you, Charlie,” I said, “take a look at
yourself and then at Miss Holman.”
She smiled at me and said, “Thank you, Mr. Belen.”
Nothing in Her Way — 23
I still wondered about it. Nobody had kidded Charlie
about anything since he was five. But, actually, what
difference did it make whether he thought she was
Elaine Holman or Florence Nightingale? He could still
run out with all the money either way.
Bolton and I nodded curtly to each other to get it over
with for the day. I thought about last night, and
wondered if she still had the harpoon in him. She
seemed to despise him—but why was she mixed up with
him?
Maybe it was an act for my benefit, I thought
suddenly. Maybe there was more to their “business”
relationship than met the eye. I stopped, silently
cursing myself. What was I getting jealous for? We
weren’t married any more, were we? What did she
mean to me? Nothing at all, I told myself. Nothing.
“Well, I’m here, Charlie,” I said. “I take it I’d only be
wasting time trying to get you to raise your offer of
fifteen per cent.”
“A very sound hypothesis, Mike,” he agreed, “if a
little weak in the statistical department. The figure was
ten per cent.”
I shrugged resignedly. I’d known it was ten, of
course, but to make it look good I had to haggle a little.
“All right,” I said. “Just when and how do we sandbag
Miss Holman’s uncle?”
He winced. “Mike!”
“O.K. But how? Remember, I know nothing at all
about it. What do I do?
He removed the cigar and looked at it thoughtfully.
“Ah, I intended to ask you last night, Mike. Did you ever
study chemistry?”
“In high school,” I said, puzzled. “By the time I got to
college I knew better. Why?”
“It isn’t important. You’re a chemical engineer in this
little venture we have in mind, and a slight knowledge
of chemistry would, of course, be no great liability.”
“I’m glad you told me,” I said. “I used to know that
salt was sodium something. Remind me to look it up
sometime.”
Nothing in Her Way — 24
He smiled soothingly. “As I say, it doesn’t matter. The
secret of a thing of this kind, Mike, is never to talk shop
with people who do know. And, since you are to conceal
the fact that you’re a chemical engineer, you should
encounter no difficulty.”
“Then there’s nothing to it,” I said. “It’s easy. I’m not
a chemical engineer, but I’m pretending to be one, so I
can pretend I’m not one. Is the rest of the scheme that
simple?”
Bolton was boredly reading a copy of Fortune. Cathy
was listening and watching us, but without much
interest. They both knew the whole thing by heart, of
course.
Charlie delicately tapped the long ash from his cigar.
“A quite—ah—understandable bewilderment, Mike. At
first glance it might seem a little involved, but there is
a very good reason behind it. Now, to begin with, you
go to Wyecross alone. The entire first act—aside from
what has already been done—is yours, and I need not
add, of course, that the success of the whole venture
depends upon you. Miss Holman is driving to San
Antonio tomorrow to visit friends, and no doubt she
would be glad to have your company for that part of the
journey. Beyond San Antonio, I suggest you travel by
bus. Mr. Bolton and I shall be in Houston until later
developments necessitate our appearing on the scene.
You will, of course, have our address.
“Now, to get to the core of the matter. Mr. Goodwin,
who is a man of about forty, is cashier of the
Stockmen’s Bank, the only bank in Wyecross. From his
father he inherited a large block of the bank’s stock, in
addition to some fifteen thousand acres of land lying
just east of Wyecross. Practically all this land is utterly
unfit for anything, being nothing but a sort of Sahara in
miniature, an endless waste of sand dunes. I have
observed it from the club car of the train, Mike, and a
more utterly desolate landscape I never hope to see.
My only hope is that, since you will be there some time,
you don’t go stark mad.”
“Never mind the description,” I broke in. “What’s all
this got to do with it?”
Nothing in Her Way — 25
He raised his eyebrows. “Everything, my boy. Now,
upon your arrival in Wyecross, you will go to Frankie
and Johnnie’s Kottage Kamp.” He closed his eyes and
shuddered slightly, and then went on. “You will go to
this revolting caravansary and engage a room, or a
court, as I believe it is called.”
He went on talking, and he told it well. After a while I
began to see the basic pattern of it, and had an idea of
what he was aiming for, and it was a sweet piece of
work. There was one hitch to it, however, and that was
I couldn’t make out where the money came in. The way
it was set up, it didn’t make sense. I broke in and asked
him, and when he told me, I saw the poisonous beauty
of it all at once like a light coming on. It was really
rigged.
It wasn’t just a simple matter of having it explained to
me once. I had to be coached in it. We went over it for
hours. We adjourned for lunch, and then came back and
went at it again. I went out in the afternoon and visited
the bank, and bought the few props I’d need, and
returned to my hotel to pack.
Bolton disappeared somewhere. Charlie and I took
Cathy out to dinner, and I stayed with her until she was
back in her hotel. I was still thinking of Donnelly. We
didn’t see anything of him.
We left early in the morning. She was driving a ‘51
Cadillac, and she rode it hard. We talked very little. She
was concentrating on the driving, and I was trying to
stay off the “do-you-remembers.”
Once she said, “You’re not sorry, are you, Mike?”
“About what?” I asked.
“That you came in with us?”
“No. Of course not. I want Lachlan as badly as you
do. And Goodwin too, for that matter.”
“That’s the only reason, then?”
I turned and looked at her. “I don’t know,” I said.
“We had a lot of fun, didn’t we, Mike?”
“And a lot of fights.”
Nothing in Her Way — 26
“Do you know why I’m going to San Antonio?” she
asked.
“Why?”
“We might get to see each other once in a while. It’s
not too far to Wyecross. And, of course, I couldn’t stay
in Wyecross with you, because Charlie thinks I’m
Goodwin’s niece.”
“You hope.”
We got into San Antonio around eight p.m. She went
to a hotel, while I took my bags around to the bus
station and checked them. The next bus going west was
at ten-forty-five. I met her in the lobby and we went out
for dinner, both of us a little quiet.
Afterward we climbed down the steps at the end of
one of the bridges and walked along beside the river. It
ran through the middle of the city in a series of little
pools and falls, with stone walks and benches along the
banks. The night was brilliantly clear and a little frosty,
and straight up beyond the glow of the city you could
see the cold shine of desert stars.
She was wearing a gray fur coat with the collar
turned up against her cheek, and a crazy little hat was
perched on one side of the tousled red hair with a sort
of schoolgirl carelessness. She was very lovely.
We stopped and watched the shine of lights on the
water.
“Mike, do you remember—” she began.
“No,” I said. “I have a poor memory.”
“Why?
“It broke down. Overload, I think.”
“It’s too bad.”
“Isn’t it?”
According to the best scientific theories, a girl has no
glamour, enchantment, mystery, or attraction for the
man who has known her since she was three years old
and who has fought with her and played cowboys with
her and swum off sand bars with her under the blazing
sun on tropical rivers the color of coffee and who has
been married to her and has fought with her again and
Nothing in Her Way — 27
who has been divorced from her and has forgotten her
entirely in two years. It’s very scientific. I made myself
watch the lights.
“What time does your bus leave, Mike?”
“In about an hour.”
“Do you have to go tonight?”
There wasn’t anybody else around. I turned away
from the lights on the water and they were shining in
her eyes until she closed them, and the lashes were
very long like shadows on her face when I raised my
head after a while and looked at her.
“No,” I said.
Nothing in Her Way — 28
Four
When I began to see the sand I knew I was almost
there. Beyond the rusty strands of barbed wire it
stretched away toward the horizon on both sides of the
highway in desolate and wind-ruffled dunes, with only a
tumbleweed or gaunt mesquite here and there to break
the monotony of it. Then I could see the water tank up
ahead.
Wyecross was a bleak little town lost in the desert
like a handful of children’s toys dropped and scattered
along the highway. It was afternoon now under a sky
like a blue glass bowl, and the three blocks of the
business district were half asleep in the glare of the
sun. I climbed down at the bus station and stood on the
high sidewalk while the driver dug the two bags out of
the luggage rack. A gust of wind slammed up the street
like a balled fist, pushing at me, and I could taste the
grit.
I took the bags and went into the restaurant that was
also the bus station. The coffee was bitter with alkali.
There was a jukebox at the other end of the counter
and it was crying the same dirge the other one had, in
that bar in New Orleans. I thought of Donnelly. He
couldn’t find her in San Antonio. Couldn’t he? He’d
Nothing in Her Way — 29
found her in New Orleans, hadn’t he? The coffee didn’t
warm the cold ball of uneasiness in my stomach.
I turned and looked out the big flyspecked window in
front, past the shoddy Christmas decorations that had
never been taken down, and the cardboard signs
propped against the glass. They were blank on this
side, but you knew they advertised Coca-Cola and some
brand of cigarettes and maybe what was playing Sun.,
Mon., Tues. at the only movie in town.
I saw it then. It was diagonally across the street, on
the corner. It was like a thousand others between
Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, with two marble or
imitation marble columns in front and the name and
assets written on the window in gold leaf. Stockmen’s
Bank, it said. The door was closed now, because it was
a little after three, and a small blind was pulled down in
back of the glass. They’d still be at work, though, and I
thought of him inside there, not knowing that after
sixteen years I was right across the street from him.
Lachlan had always been the one, because he was the
top boy, the brain, the one who’d engineered it. I hadn’t
thought of Goodwin for a long time, and in fact had
even forgotten his first name was Howard. But now that
I was so near and had actually caught up with him, I
began to feel that same old hatred for him that I’d felt
so long for Lachlan. He was just as guilty. I wanted to
cross the street and see him, just look at him, but I
didn’t. That wasn’t the way to do it. I’d meet him when
the time came, but it had to be done according to plan.
I picked up the bags and walked back along the
sidewalk the way we had come in. It was only two
blocks to the edge of town. The sidewalk ended
abruptly, as if it had got scared and quit when it saw
the desert. There was a gas station on the left, and just
beyond it, on the right, was the motel. It was about a
dozen frame cabins painted a scabrous brown and
grouped in a hollow square with the open end facing
the highway. The sign on the arch over the driveway
said, “Frankie & Johnnie’s Kottage Kamp—Vacancy.”
The first cabin on the left was the office. I walked
across the gravel and rang the bell.
Nothing in Her Way — 30
Frankie or Johnnie was a fat man somewhere around
forty who hadn’t shaved for two or three days. He had
on cowboy boots, and his paunch hung out over the top
of a pair of skin-tight Levis apparently held up by the
friction on his legs and backside. The eyes were muddy
brown and questioning. “Yessir?” he said.
“Vacancy?” I asked.
“Sure thing.” The eyes went beyond me, sweeping the
driveway, and then looked down at the suitcases. “You
got a car?”
“I came on the bus,” I said.
“Oh.” He considered this. Apparently nobody had
ever stopped here before without a car. “Sure. We can
fix you up. Just for tonight, huh?”
I shook my head. “I’ll probably be here for some time.
I’d like to have it by the week, or month, if I could get a
rate.”
We arrived at a deal after a few minutes’ haggling,
and I paid him a month in advance and signed the
register as Julius Reichert of New Orleans. I could see
the curiosity working on him. He got a key and we
walked up the gravel drive.
It was a small cubbyhole as bleak as a Grosz drawing.
The front of it was furnished with an iron bedstead and
a shaky night table and an old rocker, while at the rear
there was a sink and a two-burner gas stove on a table.
He bent down and stuck a match to the open gas
heater, which had flakes of asbestos up the back behind
the flame. The asbestos turned red in the heat.
“Don’t go to sleep with it burning and all the doors
and windows closed,” he said. “It’ll suffocate you.”
“All right,” I said. I put the bags down.
He paused on his way out, with his hand on the door.
“Salesman, I guess, huh?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t sell anything.”
“Oh.” He went out.
I sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. The gas
heater burned with a slight hiss, and outside I could
hear the wind searching restlessly around the cabins. I
Nothing in Her Way — 31
tried to think about it. It had gone all right. In less than
a week the whole town would be as curious as he was
right now. Why would a man—and an obvious
Easterner, at that—come to a whistle stop like this in
the middle of nowhere, take a cabin by the month, and
just stay here, doing nothing at all? And if they thought
that was odd, they would have their hands full when
they began to get the rest of the act.
Then I wasn’t thinking about it. I was thinking about
her. I could see her. I could almost feel her there in the
cabin. The hell, I thought; it wasn’t this bad before,
when we split up. I’d missed her, but not like this. It
was just the bleak loneliness of this God-forsaken
outpost at the end of nowhere. That had to be it.
Before, there had been the gambling, and big cities,
and other girls, and always the horses running. Sure,
that was all it was, just the loneliness.
I could see I didn’t want much of this—this sitting
around here thinking how it had been in San Antonio
and listening to the wind. I wondered how long it would
take. A month? But we couldn’t rush it. That would be
fatal. He had to come to me. All I could do was set out
the bait and wait for him. But she was going to drive up
Saturday night, a week from tomorrow. It was only
eight days.
I went into the cold bathroom and shaved. I looked
strange with the crew haircut and the steel-rimmed
glasses. Dr. Julius Reichert, I thought, the dedicated
chemist who doesn’t know a compound from a mixture.
We were taking long chances. Would Goodwin go for it?
After I changed clothes I walked back to town and sat
around the drugstore, reading magazines. Around six I
picked out the most likely-looking of the town’s three
restaurants and ate dinner—pork chops and applesauce
—thinking of the bisque d’ecrevisses at Antoine’s. Since
it was Friday night, the movie was a Western. I walked
back to Frankie and Johnnie’s in the windy dark and
thought of Sunday and shuddered.
The bank was open a half day Saturday, but I didn’t
go near it. I’d do that Monday. I read the rest of the
magazines and listened to the coveys of jail bait chatter
Nothing in Her Way — 32
around the drugstore. The waitresses in the restaurant
were beginning to recognize me. I didn’t talk to them
except to agree to whatever they said about the
weather.
I awoke at dawn on Sunday, and could hear the
coyotes somewhere out on the prairie. It was funny, I
thought, remembering, how only two or three could
sound like thirty. After I’d eaten breakfast I put on the
boots I’d bought, dressed in khaki trousers and a
flannel shirt, and went for a long walk, taking a couple
of the little cardboard boxes in my coat pocket. A half
mile east of town I left the highway where the dunes
began and went out across country, skirting the edge of
the sand. It was clear, with a cold wind blowing and
making a lonely sound in the telephone lines. I thought
of what Charlie had said. He hoped I didn’t go mad.
There was no danger of getting lost, with the highway
always to the north and the haze-blue shadows of the
mountains far off in Mexico as a landmark to the south.
The highway was out of sight, but I could still see the
telephone lines after I’d gone a mile. I sat down in the
sun on the south side of a dune, out of the wind, and
smoked a cigarette. It was lonely and wild and desolate,
but it was better than the cabin or the town.
Before I went back I filled the two boxes with sand
and stowed them in my coat pocket. They were about
the size of the boxes kitchen matches come in, but
stronger, and I had three dozen of them and some
about twice as large in one of the bags in the cabin.
When I got back I wrapped them in brown paper for
mailing and wrote on them the address Charlie had
given me. It was an actual address, some friend of his
who knew about the deal.
Early Monday morning I took them down to the post
office and mailed them. Neither the clerk nor the usual
post-office loiterers paid much attention to me. As soon
as it was ten o’clock I went around to the bank. I had a
cashier’s check for six hundred dollars made out to
Julius Reichert, which I had bought in New Orleans.
There were two desks in the railed-in area up front,
before you got to the tellers’ cages. They were both
Nothing in Her Way — 33
empty. I cursed myself for coming too early. I’d wanted
to get a look at him, at least. Well, it didn’t matter too
much. I’d be in and out often enough. As I went past,
toward the tellers’ cages, I sneaked a look at the names
on the desks. The rear one was his. H. C. Goodwin, it
said.
I deposited the check and made out a signature card
to open an account. The teller gave me a checkbook. As
I started to turn away, he asked, “Are you new here in
town, Mr. Reichert?”
“Yes,” I said shortly.
“Going to make Wyecross your home?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
As I moved away from the window I saw a man
entering the gate in the railing up front. I slowed,
waiting to see which desk he went to. He hung up the
Western-style hat on a rack and sat down at Goodwin’s
desk, the rear one. I turned, very casually, and looked
at him, feeling the hard beat of the pulse in my throat.
This was one of them, at least. Not the big one, but one
of them. There was nothing about him that I
remembered at all, but then I had seen him only two or
three times, sixteen years ago. He had a square, tanned
face with sun wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. The
eyes themselves were brown and alert behind goldrimmed
glasses, and his hair, which was also brown,
was thinning out high on his temples. It wasn’t a hard
or unpleasant face any way you looked at it. Well, I
thought, Charlie looks like a well-fed angel or an
archbishop, when he hasn’t got his hand in your pocket.
It was a little hard to connect the bank cashier and
big landowner with the bull-o’-the-woods on a
construction job in an O. Henry banana republic of
sixteen years ago, but as Charlie had said, he came
here originally and had more or less inherited the bank
job along with the bank stock and land when his father
died.
I went on out. The next stop was a hardware store in
the next block. It had a small sporting-goods
department in the rear. I walked back and stared
owlishly at the half-dozen rifles and shotguns standing
Nothing in Her Way — 34
on a shelf behind the counter. In a minute a clerk came
over.
“Yes, sir?” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh,” I said, “I was just wondering. When can you
shoot jack rabbits?”
He smiled, a little pityingly. “Any time you see one,
and got a gun.”
“Then they don’t have any closed season on them?”
“Nope. On cottontails, yes; but not on jacks.”
You could see him thinking: Dumb dude.
“I see,” I said. “Well, I’d like to buy a gun. A twentytwo.”
“Sure.” He reached back on the shelf and picked up a
little slide-action pump. “This is a nice job.” Then he
stopped and looked at me with inspiration. “You really
want to blow up some jacks? Let me show you
something.”
He put the .22 down on the counter and reached back
again. This one was a bigger rifle with a long telescope
sight.
“Look,” he said. “Here’s a job. It’ll explode a jack at
two hundred yards like a bowl of Jello. It’s a two-twenty
Swift, a custom deal with a ten-power scope. Man it
was ordered for never did come back. I’d buy it myself
if I had the money.”
“How much is it?” I asked innocently.
“Let you have it for three hundred. It costs more.”
I winced and shook my head. “I’ll take the little one.”
“Sure thing,” he said, a little disappointed. “I guess
you’re right. This other one’s too much gun unless you
really got the fever.”
I bought a box of .22 rifle ammunition, and as I
started to leave, he said, “You can tell a jack from a
cottontail, can’t you? I mean, you got to have a license
to hunt cottontails.”
“Oh, certainly,” I said. “I can distinguish them. Jack
rabbits have longer ears.”
Nothing in Her Way — 35
When I was out on the sidewalk I shot a quick glance
through the window. He was talking to another clerk
and laughing.
I went out that afternoon with the rifle. Not too far
from the highway I set up a rusty can for a target and
shot at it for a while. Then I went for a walk, circling
toward the dunes. When I came in I had two more
boxes of sand in my coat pocket. I wrapped and
addressed them in the cabin, exactly as I had before,
and took them down to the post office the next
morning.
I kept it up all the rest of the week. I spent most of
every day wandering around in the dunes, carrying the
gun and a little canteen of water, and when I came in
I’d have the boxes of sand in the pocket of my coat. The
next morning I’d mail them. On Thursday I deliberately
skipped going to the post office, and on Friday I mailed
five.
The rifle and jack-rabbit idea was a good one. They
couldn’t help wondering what kind of screwball it was
who didn’t have anything better to do than hunt jack
rabbits. And from there it was only one jump to
wondering what kind of stupid screwball it was who’d
hunt for them in the only place in the county where
there weren’t any. There was no life of any kind in the
sand dunes.
And there was one other angle to it. Goodwin
belonged to a rifle club.
* * *
I had already located the rifle range. It was about a
mile south of town, on a dirt road going toward the
border. I went by it a couple of afternoons during my
walks, but there was nobody shooting. I had an idea,
though, there would be on Saturday or Sunday.
By the time Saturday came I was so full of the fact
that I was going to see her that night that I had a hard
time concentrating on anything. I went to the post
office and mailed the two boxes. This time the clerk
stared at me curiously, and when I went out two of the
loafers who had been talking near the door broke off
Nothing in Her Way — 36
abruptly and fell into an awkward silence as I walked
past. Somebody had begun to wonder if I was sending
my laundry home a sock at a time.
After lunch I took the gun and started east of town on
the highway, swung off it before I got to the dunes, and
circled toward the rifle range. Before I got there I could
hear the big rifles. It was an open flat with a low ridge
about four hundred yards behind it to stop the lead. As
I came across the road I could see there were four of
them taking turns on the firing line, shooting at a twohundred-
yard target. They had a spotting scope set up
to check the shots.
When I got near enough to see them, I knew I was in
luck. One of them was Goodwin. Another was the clerk
from the hardware store. I didn’t know the other two. I
sat down on the ground well back out of the way and
just watched, smoking a cigarette.
The clerk looked back after a while, and when he
recognized me he grinned. “Got any jacks yet?” he
asked.
“Not a one,” I said. “Can’t seem to hit them.”
“They’re tricky.”
He came over in a few minutes and asked for a light.
“Your name’s Reichert, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Mine’s Carson.”
I got up and we shook hands. He called to Goodwin,
who wasn’t shooting at the moment. “Hey, Howard,
why don’t you let Reichert here shoot that bull gun
once? I’m trying to sell him a rifle.”
Goodwin came over and I shook hands with him,
keeping my face still. It wasn’t easy. There’s a lot of
Spanish blood in the family.
He was very pleasant, and there was a quiet sort of
self-possession about him. “Here,” he said. He slid a
cartridge into the chamber of the gun and handed it to
me. “Try it.”
“You don’t mind?”
Nothing in Her Way — 37
He shook his head and smiled. “If I did, I wouldn’t
have asked you.”
I walked over and lay prone on the sand, sliding my
arm into the sling.
“You’ve shot them before?” It was more of a
statement than a question.
“Only in the Army,” I said.
“Hold right on,” he said. “It’s sighted for two
hundred.”
I didn’t ask him about the trigger pull. It was lighter
than I’d expected, and I missed the bull. It didn’t
matter. I didn’t want to look like a sharpshooter. I
worked the bolt, throwing the empty shell out on the
sand, and watched to see if he picked it up. He did.
“Oh, you save those?” I asked innocently.
He grinned. “Sure. I reload them.”
“You do?” I did a big take on it, as if I’d never heard
of it.
“Yes. It’s cheaper. And you can put up just the load
you want.”
“I never thought of that,” I said. “It sounds
interesting.”
He agreed politely that it was, and I let it drop. To
hurry now would be stupid and dangerous. But I had
found the opening I was looking for.
Nothing in Her Way — 38
Five
The night was still and cold, and the sand looked like
snow in the moonlight. I flicked the cigarette lighter
and looked at my watch. It was seven-ten.
I was standing near the highway about two miles east
of town, where a dirt road turned off and ran south
through the dunes I was supposed to meet her here at
seven. Having her come into town would be too risky,
since she had spent a week there talking to practically
everyone in that phony survey of hers. We couldn’t be
seen together.
A few cars went past, going very fast. I waited. In
about five minutes I saw one coming more slowly. I
watched eagerly. It might be Cathy, looking for the
turnoff. It was. I was on the inside of the turn so the
lights wouldn’t swing across me, just in case it was
somebody else. The car pulled off and stopped twenty
or thirty yards from the highway. I could see the
Cadillac fishtails and the New York license plates. I
jumped into the ruts and started trotting toward her.
The second pair of lights almost hit me. Out of the
corner of my eye I saw them swinging as the other car
made the turn, faster than she had, and I dived for the
brush. I made it off the left side of the road just as they
straightened out and spattered against the rear of the
Nothing in Her Way — 39
Cadillac. And then the car was beyond me and sliding
to a stop almost bumper to bumper with hers.
I came to my feet and onto the road, running toward
them. There had been no time to think. It might be
Charlie or Bolton, or both—but why another car?
They’d have been with her. I couldn’t even make myself
say the other name. I was still eight or ten yards away,
running desperately and silently on the sand, when the
car door opened and a man got out. He was a small
black figure in the moonlight and he was carrying
something in his hand.
“All right, sweetie,” he said. “Pile out.”
I heard the low-throated rumble of power as she
gunned the Cadillac. The rear wheels spun for an
instant and sand flew up like spray. He shouted
something, and was bringing up the thing he held in his
hand. Moonlight glinted on it. It was too big to be a
revolver, and now he had both hands on it. I was still a
long leap from him when I saw what it was. The car
was moving now, at last, as he swung it, and then I fell
on him.
I fell on him all over at once. It was like tackling an
empty overcoat. He was just a bagful of light bones
inside and he folded like a swatted spider. One barrel of
the sawed-off shotgun went off with a roar as we
crashed down, and then it was either under us or loose
somewhere in the sand. I got to one knee, grabbed him
by the shoulder, flipped him onto his back, and swung.
He jerked and straightened out. It was Donnelly. In the
moonlight he looked like a child who’d been starved to
death.
I was raging, throwing my hands in every direction,
trying to find the gun. It was right in front of me, oilyshining
and black and deadly against the white gleam
of the sand. I’d been to wild to see it. I grabbed it up
and rammed the sawed-off barrels into his face. I heard
a tooth let go so I shoved it, hard, and groped for the
triggers. Then I thought a mountain lion had jumped on
me.
My face was full of fur. I seemed to be wrapped in it.
It was in my eyes and mouth, cool and suffocating and
Nothing in Her Way — 40
smelling faintly of perfume, and a voice was screaming
in my ear. “Mike! No! Stop it, Mike!”
I had forgotten about her. She had her shoulder
against my face and was trying to push me back while
we grappled for the gun. I had sense enough left to
throw it before we fell on it. Then I grabbed her.
“He tried to kill you!” I raged.
“You hot-headed Spanish idiot!”
“Are you hurt? Cathy, are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt!”
“Well, stand back. Look the other way if you want to.”
“Mike, stop it! Oh, my God, can’t you see—”
“See what? He tried to kill you, didn’t he?”
She straightened up, trying to get her breath. Her
hair was wildly tousled and the big eyes were flashing
angrily. “Listen, for the love of heaven, Mike. We’ve got
more important things on our minds than that stupid
hoodlum. Do you want to ruin everything?”
“You want to let him keep on till he gets lucky
someday and hits you?” I asked furiously.
“He probably wasn’t trying to shoot me. He was
trying to scare me. That’s how stupid he is.”
The anger was turning against her now. At bottom, of
course, it wasn’t anger at all; it was fear. I’d been so
scared when I saw him swinging that shotgun after her
I was sick at my stomach now. “Well, do you mind,” I
asked coldly, “if I unload his gun before I give it back to
him? I mean, if I’m very careful not to scratch it?”
She was suddenly contrite. “I’m sorry, Mike,” she
whispered. “Forgive me for screaming at you like that.
But I didn’t want you to kill him. I was scared.”
I grabbed her. “You were scared?” That was as far as
I got.
It was a few minutes before I thought of him. I looked
down. “What are we going to do with this?” I said, and
then suddenly became conscious of something I’d been
hearing for the past minute or two. It was a freight
train, laboring across the desert to the north of us. I
Nothing in Her Way — 41
heard it whistle for the yards at Wyecross. It was
westbound, and it would probably stop there for water.
“Wait here,” I said to Cathy, and stooped down for
him.
She put a hand on my arm. I turned, and I could see
her eyes go wide in the moonlight. “What are you going
to do? Mike, you’re not—”
“No,” I said. “You’re right. I’m just going to put him
in the mail. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
I pulled his big overcoat together in front for a handle
and picked him up like a bundle of old rags. He
probably didn’t weigh over a hundred pounds. The door
of the car was still open. I heaved him in and pushed
him over, away from the wheel. He sagged, and I
leaned him against the other door.
“Be careful, Mike,” she said anxiously.
The road was too narrow to turn around in, but there
was enough moonlight to see my way out, backing.
There were no cars in sight. I rammed out onto the
highway, stopped, and shot ahead toward Wyecross.
Just before I got into town I turned off to the right and
went north toward the tracks. I could see the train and
hear the brake shoes squealing as it slowed.
There wasn’t anything out here except an abandoned
work train on a siding. The water tank and station were
several hundred yards to my left. I cut the lights and
stopped. The freight was passing the other side of the
cars on the siding, but I could hear it bumping and
shuddering to a stop.
It won’t be good, I thought, if I get caught loading
something like this on a train. I got out of the car and
looked carefully around. I could see the running lights
of the caboose about a hundred yards away to my right,
and a swinging lantern going up the other side of the
train as a brakeman headed for the front end. He’d be
past in a minute.
I opened the door and dragged Donnelly out. He was
so limp he was hard to handle. I got him across my
shoulder and hurried toward the work train. If I went
around I’d pass too near the caboose, so the only thing
Nothing in Her Way — 42
to do was go under. I was panting now, and sweat was
breaking out on my forehead. It was hard getting him
up onto the roadbed with the ballast turning under my
shoes.
No comments:
Post a Comment