“Well, I’ll be—” Earl said suddenly, interrupting Milt Jerks. He pointed, and then took off his hat to cheer. Over the brow of a hill came Ned and Robb and Bert, riding at full speed, racing the car.
“We’ll see about that,” Milt Jerks said, with a grin, and stepped on the accelerator.
“Goodbye,” Carla called, although they couldn’t possibly hear her. She waved wildly, as all the others were waving.
Then the car twisted out of sight, leaving Ned and Bert and Robb grouped together on the hillside. They were waving too, sweeping their hats in wide circles above their heads, while Ned’s piercing cowboy yell echoed across the valley.
30
THE WAITING HOUSE
So she wants a memento of the West, Chuck said reflectively. He looked at the antlers, he looked at Jackson, and then he looked at the rest of the cowpokes who had gathered round.
“Memento,” Jackson repeated. “That’s what Carla said.”
“She meant a souvenir, something to remember us by,” Robb explained.
“Sure wouldn’t want to disappoint her.” Chuck studied the large box which Jackson had unearthed in the storeroom and dragged up to the corral. He eyed the antlers again. “I think they’ll look kind of lonely in there. Better make it a real good memento.”
The others nodded.
Bert looked round the corral for inspiration.
Ned looked too, picked up a worn horseshoe, and flung it neatly into the box.
Robb found part of an ancient bridle and added that.
Ned discovered two large nails, bent and rusted. “Real genuine antiques,” he said.
Jackson found an old saddle blanket, with more holes than pattern left.
Chuck added two empty cans of Sheridan Export and a can of baked beans.
Robb produced a cracked stirrup and a piece of frayed rope.
Bert returned from his voyage of exploration with six inches of horse’s tail, tied with a piece of string and decorated with a stalk of Indian paintbrush.
Chuck next arrived, with some corral sweepings on a shovel. “Just to give the right aroma,” he said, as he emptied it into the box.
“Atmosphere,” Bert said. “That was one of Mimi’s favourite words. Used to think it meant something you breathed. Seems that words mean a lot of different things in different places.” “Darling,” for instance. “Angel,” for another.
Chuck thought over atmosphere. Weren’t no useful kind of word. “Memento.” Well, “memento” might do. You goddamned sonofabitchn old memento, you. That was a good word, come in right useful. It had a real sound to it.
“She’s as full as she’ll go,” Jackson said. “Okay?”
“Close her up,” Chuck said.
They roped the box thoroughly. And they solemnly nailed on a large label, while Ned searched in his little diary for Mimi’s address.
“Hey, Jim, will you step over here for a minute?” Bert called, as Jim and Sally came up to the corral for their evening ride. “It’s Carla’s memento,” he explained, while Jackson found a pen.
Then they all grouped round Jim as he printed the address. “It needs just a touch more,” he said, and he decorated the label with a bowlegged man, a laughing horse, and a contemplative cow.
* * *
No, Mrs. Peel had said after dinner, she really didn’t feel like riding tonight. And so Sally and Jim, trying not to look too relieved, had set out by themselves.
Mrs. Peel sat in front of the fire, rearranging her life. There was, she had discovered, a considerable amount to be rearranged. But perhaps it was good for one to have a general overhaul in plans every now and again. Then, through the quiet hall, came the sound of laughter from the kitchen. She recognised Jackson’s deep voice. Jackson... How was he going to fit in to all these new plans? She rose and went towards the kitchen. He was talking about some memento which he had brought down to the house, all ready for delivery to New York.
“Jackson,” Mrs. Peel said, “I’m so glad to be able to see you. We’ve a few things to talk about. What about your vacation? And after that?” How can I start telling him I can’t afford to pay him any more, she wondered miserably.
“Well...” Jackson said. And then he stood, turning his hat in his hand as if his thoughts were moving in a similar circle and he hardly knew where to cut through the chain to find the first one. He looked at Mrs. Gunn for help.
“No, you do it,” she said.
Mrs. Peel stared at Jackson’s face. “Why, Jackson, do you want to stay here? Always?”
He nodded.
“But won’t you find it lonely?”
He smiled, shaking his head. “Not lonely here. Enough people. Enough time. Real friends.”
“And to think I’ve been worried about you all these weeks! I’ve been avoiding you, I didn’t want to hear that you were leaving. For we couldn’t have done without you, Jackson.”
“That’s the one thing that’s worrying Jackson right now,” Mrs. Gunn said. “If he stays here, how are you going to set out travelling for California?”
“I’m not going there. Oh, yes, I know we were travelling there when I insisted on taking the wrong road. Remember, Jackson? But I’ve changed my ideas, just like Jackson. I’ll wait here for the wedding, and then I’m going back to New York and finish some work.”
“We’ll miss you,” Mrs. Gunn said.
Mrs. Peel looked at her quickly. “But I’ll be back here in the spring.” Then she half smiled. “I’ll certainly come back every summer for a visit,” she said. Then she looked at Jackson again. “Can Jim give you a job?” she asked anxiously.
“We’ll be taking on some new hands next spring,” Mrs. Gunn said. “We’ll be needing them. And in the winter—well, we need a good handyman around the place. Chuck thinks he will retire for the bad months this year. He’s got a nice little cabin outside of Sweetwater, and he’ll take it easy there for the real cold weather. Ned’s going to Arizona for the winter. And Bert thinks he’ll get himself a job there, too, as corral boss on a dude ranch. Guess he figures dudes are easy after this month. So Jim has asked Robb to stay on here and help keep things going. And there’s room for Jackson too.”
“But won’t you all be isolated? When the snows come?”
“Once the snow-plough clears the road we can get down into Sweetwater. Jackson’s aiming to do that quite a lot, aren’t you, Jackson?”
For the first time in her life Mrs. Peel saw Jackson blush. Then she looked at Mrs. Gunn’s laughing face. Jackson, confused but smiling, said he was needed at the corral.
“Funny thing about weddings,” Mrs. Gunn said cheerfully, as she looked after Jackson walking quickly towards the ranch, “as soon as one happens several happen. As if they were catching, like measles.”
“Jackson? Married?”
“Oh, it will take him the winter to make up his mind. But I’m thinking he’s caught this time. She’s a nice girl. Lives over in Sweetwater. Wish Ned would look at that kind.” Mrs. Gunn shook her head dolefully.
“Is Ned in trouble again?”
“Sure. Didn’t you see her sitting over by the chutes at the rodeo on Saturday, with Ned perched beside her on the rail? Pretty as anything. A blonde with blue eyes. Wants to be a rodeo star some day. Ned was disappointed your guests were all going away, as she could have come out here to help me.”
“Perhaps this one will marry him,” Mrs. Peel said. “But, of course, it is just possible that Ned doesn’t really want to marry anyone. Isn’t it?”
“Could be,” Mrs. Gunn agreed. “Anyway, we’re back to normal again.” She began arranging the newly cooked doughnuts on an outsize platter. Tomorrow the boys would be in here for breakfast.
* * *
Mrs. Peel went into the garden. She walked there for a little. Then she looked at the house, and she stopped walking to stand hesitatingly before it. In the quiet evening it loomed dark and lonely.
Yes, I know, Mrs. Peel answered it. You aren’t the kind of house that sho
uld be left dark and silent. You like people. And you could have people: you could have Jim and his wife and their children and all their friends. I don’t amount to much, compared to all that, do I? I’m not very good for you all alone by myself. Of course, I could have guests here in the summer. But I’ve always depended on Sally to cope with a house full of guests. (And, what’s more, I’ve got to spend more time on working and less time on people.) From now on Sally is going to have her own life quite apart from mine. And I must shape my own life quite apart from hers. But what about you? Jim can’t buy you back—not yet. And he won’t live here until he can. Solve that problem for me, will you?
She began to pace slowly back and forward, stopping now and again to look at the house. There’s one possible way, she thought... If only I can make it sound practical, intelligent, and cheerful. You’ve got to help me, she told the waiting house.
She heard Sally’s voice down by the bridge, and then Jim laughed. She waited beside the house. They were taking a long time to come. Mrs. Peel smiled. Well, she could always bury herself in work until the wedding; and then, after that, New York was a safe distance from a newly married couple. She waited patiently until she saw them stroll leisurely on to the lawn. “Sally, Jim!” she called, and surprised them, for they had not seen her in the shadows. They probably wouldn’t have seen anyone, even in broad daylight.
“Hello,” Jim said, “what are you doing out here? You’ll catch cold, Margaret. The dew’s heavy tonight.”
“I’m too excited to catch cold,” she said, smiling. “I’ve just had the most intelligent idea, and it’s so simple I just can’t think why it never dawned on me before. Jim, would you buy back this house? I don’t want all the money at once, for it would all get used up too quickly I know. What I need is a steady income for the next eight or ten years. So if you would buy the house, and pay me a certain amount every year until you’ve bought it completely, I’d be so happy. You see, with a steady income for the next few years, I could work as I want to work. I’d be able to write what I want to write.”
“But, Margaret,” Sally said, “you’ve never loved a house as much as you’ve loved this one. Perhaps you’ll have a success with this play you are writing, and you won’t have to worry about a steady income.”
“But I also love travelling,” Margaret Peel reminded her. “And I’m beginning to feel the most awful homesickness for New York. Don’t laugh. It’s perfectly true.”
“I don’t like the idea of you being alone,” Sally said worriedly.
“Why not? It will be a completely new kind of adventure. I’m looking forward to it, frankly.”
Sally looked at Jim. She was a little hurt, a little bewildered. But it was true: Margaret had always liked change. “I had hoped you’d settle here, and perhaps write. You’ve never given yourself much time to do that.” Then she stopped persuading, simply because their long friendship had been built on freedom of choice. For years their inclinations had coincided. Now they were separating.
Margaret turned to look at the house. “It needs lights. It needs voices. It needs people. Do you see what I mean?”
Sally and Jim could say nothing. The house answered for them.
“Think it over, Jim,” Margaret said. “It would suit me financially, you know. And then I could stop worrying.”
“It suits me financially too,” he said frankly. “I couldn’t manage to buy it back otherwise. But—”
“Good. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, shall we? Now I’m going to take some carrots to the corral, even if it is late. You know, Jim, I think I’ll learn to drive a car and borrow your trailer and take Golden Boy with me to New York. How would he look attached to a hitching-rail outside my apartment?” She laughed, gave a wave of her hand, and walked round the dark house to the kitchen garden.
“Do you think she really wants it this way?” Jim asked. He slipped his arm round Sally, his eyes still watching the house. Margaret was right. It needed people. That was one of the reasons why he had let himself sell it in the first place. “Does she mean it?”
Sally said slowly, “I usually can tell when Margaret doesn’t mean something. When she was talking to you I watched her face, and I listened to every inflection in her voice. And I could find nothing, except that she meant it.”
His arm tightened around her shoulders.
“Just a minute, Jim,” Sally said quickly. She reached up to kiss him quickly on the cheek, and then she left him, running towards the house. He watched the lights being switched on, one by one, in the hall, in the living-room, in the dining-room, bringing the house to life again. She must have run upstairs, for the light in the main bedroom suddenly blazed into the night. He smiled then, as he waited by the cottonwood-trees beside the creek.
She came running back to him, and as he caught her she said, “Look, Jim! That’s much better, isn’t it?” She was half laughing, half serious.
“Yes,” he said, but he looked only at her. “Yes,” he said again. And he kissed her.
Then, holding each other, silent now, they turned to look with one heart towards the house. Behind it the fields and hills had become formless shadows. The forests were lost in the solid blackness of the mountains. A faint light etched a line along the jagged edges of the peaks. Then that last sign of the invisible sun was gone, and the dark blue sky stretched over a sleeping land. The first stars glowed faintly down on shadows and silence.
Jim looked at Sally. Even she had become a shadow, something that might slip from his grasp, vanish into the darkness. He kissed her with a violence that startled her.
“Never leave me, Sally,” he said. “Never.”
For a moment the intensity in his voice frightened her. “Never,” she said. She reached up to kiss him, to seal that promise. “Oh, Jim! You do love me...”
“I love you,” he said.
Afterwards she might tease him that it had taken him three days to say these three words in that way. But not now. Now it was enough to walk, with his arm holding her, across the dark shadows to the welcoming house.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Helen MacInnes, whom the Sunday Express called ‘the Queen of spy writers’, was the author of many distinguished suspense novels.
Born in Scotland, she studied at the University of Glasgow and University College, London, then went to Oxford after her marriage to Gilbert Highet, the eminent critic and educator. In 1937 the Highets went to New York, and except during her husband’s war service, Helen MacInnes lived there ever since.
Since her first novel Above Suspicion was published in 1941 to immediate success, all her novels have been bestsellers; The Salzburg Connection was also a major film.
Helen MacInnes died in September 1985.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
HELEN MacINNES
A series of slick espionage thrillers from The New York Times bestselling “Queen of Spy Writers.”
Pray for a Brave Heart
Above Suspicion
Assignment in Brittany
North From Rome
Decision at Delphi
The Venetian Affair
The Salzburg Connection
Message from Málaga
While We Still Live
The Double Image
Neither Five Nor Three
Horizon
Snare of the Hunter
Agent in Place
Ride a Pale Horse
Prelude to Terror
The Hidden Target
I and My True Love
Cloak of Darkness
Friends and Lovers (January 2014)
Home is the Hunter (February 2014)
PRAISE FOR HELEN MacINNES
“The queen of spy writers.” Sunday Express
“Definitely in the top class.” Daily Mail
“The hallmarks of a MacInnes novel of suspense are as individual and as clearly stamped as a Hitchcock thriller.” The New York Times
“A sophisticated thriller. The story builds u
p to an exciting climax.” Times Literary Supplement
“Absorbing, vivid, often genuinely terrifying.” Observer
“She can hang her cloak and dagger right up there with Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.” Newsweek
“An atmosphere that is ready to explode with tension... a wonderfully readable book.” The New Yorker
TITANBOOKS.COM
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
THE MATT HELM SERIES
BY DONALD HAMILTON
The long-awaited return of the United States’ toughest special agent.
Death of a Citizen
The Wrecking Crew
The Removers
The Silencers
Murderers’ Row
The Ambushers
The Shadowers
The Ravagers (February 2014)
PRAISE FOR DONALD HAMILTON
“Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told.” Anthony Boucher, The New York Times
“This series by Donald Hamilton is the top-ranking American secret agent fare, with its intelligent protagonist and an author who consistently writes in high style. Good writing, slick plotting and stimulating characters, all tartly flavored with wit.” Book Week
“Matt Helm is as credible a man of violence as has ever figured in the fiction of intrigue.”
The New York Sunday Times
“Fast, tightly written, brutal, and very good...” Milwaukee Journal
Rest and Be Thankful Page 40
