The Murder
Sam’s first plan, after he and Hubert had made a quick ride to the
cabin and back with no sight of Gaby, was for the two of us to go down
the road in the sedan. Fortunately, he decided at the last minute to
have John come with us to drive. Danny came along with John. Chad and
Hubert Hand were to scout around the place on their ponies. Mrs.
Ricker stayed at home with Martha.
As soon as we had started, Sam said, in a cocksure, overbearing way he
never has except when he is not as certain of himself as he’d like to
be, “We’ll not have to go far. Not more than a mile, I reckon, to find
the fresh tire tracks of the machine that came up here to meet her.
After the breeze and the shower this morning, the fresh tracks will
show up like mud on a new fence. Whoa! What did I tell you? See
there.”
Tire tracks, sure enough; but they were the tracks made by the sedan,
patterned like a snake’s back, and showing, plain as print, on top of
the dim tracks made by the outfit’s departure for Telko the morning
before. We rode along, watching the four long trails; two for John’s
trip to town, and two for his trip back to the ranch. The only breaks
were the spots where, as it was plain to be seen, John had twice had
tire trouble.
Our road—and it is that, since Sam had it graded himself, and pays for
having it kept up—runs north, straight as a string, with Sam’s fields
and fences on one side of it, and sagebrush covered deserts on the
other side of it, for ten miles to where it joins the Victory Highway.
Sam has a sign at the junction with the highway; so no one has any
reason for using this road unless he has business with the Desert Moon
Ranch.
We drove to the highway before we turned around. We had come back
about a mile, when the wind, that always ushers in a storm in these
parts, came howling up, blowing the sand and dust in thick clouds,
jerking and snapping the sage and the greasewood, chasing and bouncing
the tumbleweed balls. The sky turned black. The thunder growled, mean
as a threat, in the distance.
John drove fast; but we barely made the ranch before the storm broke.
When we came out of the garage doors, the first drops of rain, big as
butter cookies, had begun to fall; and, just as we reached the front
porch, the rain came pouring down as if all the sky were the nozzle of
a big faucet and someone had turned it on, full force.
“This will bring her in,” Sam said, as we ran up the steps. “She’ll be
there, high and dry, when we get in.”
She was not. Chad and Hubert Hand had come in, and they acted as if,
since we had set out to get news of Gaby, it was a wonder we had not
done it. Martha was awake, and sobbing because she could not have the
fireworks. Mrs. Ricker was showing a little last minute sense by
hurrying around and getting the house closed against the storm. She
should have done it when the wind first came up.
Sam went and touched a match to the fire, ready to be started, in the
fireplace. I ran upstairs and closed the bedroom windows, and turned
the fans off. I don’t care for buzzing fans during one of our
electrical storms. I had come downstairs, ready to take my rest, when
I remembered the attic, with all its windows wide to the drenching
rain.
My corns had been hurting me all day; so, Chad being handy, I asked
him to go and close the attic. He went up the stairs, and almost at
once came back to the head of them to call down that the attic door
was locked.
One of my principles is, that if you ask a man to do anything about
the house for you, you do it twice yourself. I thought, again, how
true that was, as I went on my aching feet up the stairs to prove to
him that the door was not locked, never had been locked, and, likely,
never would be.
It was locked. Chad stood by, pleased as Punch, when it would not give
to my shaking and pulling. He walked off, saying that he would see
whether someone downstairs had locked it and had the key, or, if not,
whether he could find another key to fit it.
I stood there waiting. I put my hand in my pocket for my handkerchief.
There was a key. It fitted the lock. I opened the door.
About half way up the steps, Gaby was lying in a huddle of pink wrap.
Her hat had fallen off. I thought that she was asleep. I spoke to her.
She did not answer. I ran up the steps and put an arm around her,
trying to lift her. Her head rolled to one side. I saw her throat. It
was saffron color, with great blue black bruises at its base. I
touched her swollen face. It was cold.
For an instant, my only sensation was one of violent nausea. I tried
to scream. My throat had closed. I must have shut my eyes, for I
remember thinking that, if I did not open them, the dizziness would
sweep me off into unconsciousness. I opened them. I saw, there on the
red carpet of the steps, something that shocked my reeling senses into
sanity. Dropped all over the bright beaded bag, lying there, were the
burned tobacco and the ashes from Sam’s pipe.
All of my horror concentrated into a frantic desire to get those ashes
cleared away so that no one else could see them. I shook them from the
bag to the carpet. I brushed them from the carpet into my
handkerchief. Just as I got to my feet from my knees, Chad came up.
“Call the others,” I said. “Gaby is here—murdered.”
I stuffed the handkerchief filled with ashes into my pocket, and, for
the first and last time in my life, I fainted dead away.