I can’t say I saw it coming. Because I didn’t. Not even though it was the broadest of broad daylights. Wyoming at four o’clock in the afternoon on a summer day is about as light as you can get.
These things happen for different reasons. Some of them happened because Rita Riker trusted Brandy. Either that or she didn’t expect her to bounce back so fast. I hadn’t trusted P.J. but he was the last one I should have worried about. I’d taken too many things for granted.
The worst thing I took for granted was that Las Vegas was buried beneath the dynamited mass of the Riker cabin. He wasn’t.
He suddenly loomed right in front of me as big as a barn door and twice as formidable. He had a Winchester braced in his fingers and his face over the barrel wasn’t quite pleasant. He had appeared like a genie from somewhere behind us and circled around like an Indian until he had all three of us lined up like targets. He was between us and the girls by the plane.
I saw him first, too late to do anything about it. Which was precisely the time that Brandy tripped Rita Riker headlong and started blazing away with the horse pistol Rita had brought along for the ride.
She blasted away three times. And P.J. screamed like a frightened schoolboy behind me.
Brandy wanted his scalp real bad.
19
The shooting party didn’t last very long. It couldn’t. Brandy was the only one who felt like fireworks. And she had only six shots to play around with. The big Colt in her hand boomed and blammed three more times and that was it. Las Vegas got up off his knees and leveled the Winchester at us again.
“Okay, get ’em up and leave them there. Forget about P.J., Riker. He’ll live.” Rita was wrestling Brandy around again but I didn’t see anymore. I turned to find Mr. Riker scowling at Las Vegas. P.J. had his left hand jammed into his right shoulder, stanching a red flow that had spread magically across the front of his T-shirt.
Las Vegas didn’t take his eyes from us as he yelled at the girls. “You two stay put where you are and don’t make any trouble.” The girls stopped what they were doing and just stared at us.
Las Vegas was a healthy ghost. His blue denims and shirt were a little dusty and trail dust clung to his dark face but his saturnine mug was as I remembered it under the wide sweep of the Stetson jammed on his head. His smile looked like it would never go away.
“Sorry you’re still alive,” I said.
He showed me his teeth. “Ain’t it the truth. Well, we won’t be in each other’s pockets much longer. Don’t try anything at all, Noon. I’m pulling out of here in a hurry and I won’t stop to kill you if you leave me alone.”
“Fair enough. What’s on your twisted mind?”
Las Vegas poked the rifle at us and moved off a little. “Now P.J. Come over here. Start packing those gold bags in the plane. And snap it up. Brandy only winged you. When we get to where going, you’ll sleep in silk silk pajamas and have all the girls you want.”
Mr. Riker lumbered forward angrily, his big hands looking like they wanted to close around Vegas’ thin neck. “Leave the boy alone, Las Vegas. He’s sick.”
“Sure, sure,” Las Vegas snickered. “Sick as a weasel and crazy as a fox. You with me, kid?”
P.J. laughed, forgot about his shoulder and clapped his hands together. “Haha — what a joke. We take the gold and they take nothing. I like that. Old Charley had the right idea. Will you let me buy another plane, Vegas?”
“Sure,” Las Vegas smiled, looking at me. “A jet you can have. Now go get that gold.”
“A jet?” P.J. didn’t wait for him to change his mind. He whirled and raced back into the cabin ruins. Pretty soon he came running back, straining under as many brown bags as his arms could hold. He wanted to still talk about the new plane but Las Vegas shooed him to the old one with the comment that they had to clear out before the law showed up or there wouldn’t be any gold and any new plane. This was talk that P.J. could understand. He dragged off to the Cub, running as fast as he could. Old man Riker stared after him sadly.
“Las Vegas, it is wrong what you are doing. That gold would build a fine tabernacle. The boy belongs in an institution.”
“Shut up,” Las Vegas said. “You’re breaking my heart. The best part of this whole deal is I won’t have to listen to your Bible gook anymore.”
I shook my head. “Let him go, Mr. Riker. How far can he get before the cops nail him? Take it easy. No sense in having more blood spilled around here.”
Las Vegas rubbed his thin nose with one hand, brushing off dust. “That’s good sense, Noon. After all, what’s money?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “What’s money?”
I watched P.J. scramble into the plane. Brandy wanted to go for him again but Rita held her securely.
Mr. Riker shuddered. “I can’t let you do this, Las Vegas.”
“How you going to stop me?” Las Vegas sneered. “One 30-30 in the chest and you’re dead, Mr. Riker.”
I stepped between them. Like I said, there’d been enough shooting and killing.
“Don’t try to stop him, Mr. Riker. He’s already gone all the way. Another murder won’t mean anything to him.” I indicated P.J. who was rushing back, darting by us without a look as he went for more sacks of gold. “He tried to hang the murder of Charley Redwine on P.J. But it didn’t work. Fixed up the cabin with something only a mad kid would think of. Like hanging the old guy from the ceiling and tossing knives at him. The funny part of it is Brandy burning the cabin down. If it hadn’t been for her, the crime would never have looked like the work of P.J. anyway.”
Las Vegas scowled. A scowl that changed to satisfaction as he saw the heavy burden that P.J. was lugging on his second trip to the plane. He whistled but when he looked back at me, his eyes held a grudging admiration.
“So how’d you know it was me, sucker? I didn’t drop no glove or leave any calling cards that I can remember.”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t rate a medal, Vegas. You lashed the old man to the cross beam that held up the roof. It had to be a tall guy for the job. Somebody at least your height. Even standing on a chair, P.J. could never have managed it. He’s too short. I don’t even think he’s strong enough. But his height ruled him out. Once I met you and listened to your money-hungry conversation, it wasn’t hard to set my sights on you. You’re just the type.”
Las Vegas laughed.
“You really are a detective, pal. I gotta hand you that.”
“I don’t know everything. I can’t for the life of me figure out why you killed a blind old Indian.”
“Can’t you?” Las Vegas had good eyes. He was able to keep us in focus and still concentrate on what P.J. was doing at the same time. Periphery vision, that’s what it was. I hoped Rita and Brandy weren’t going to cut-up again. I really had had enough. Let Las Vegas fly away with the gold and the kid. There wasn’t anything in it for me but bullet holes.
“No, I can’t,” I said. “I would like to know why. I think Mr. Riker would too.”
Mr. Riker was happy. He’d put Charley Redwine’s corpse at P.J.’s door and suddenly to find out he’d been wrong and unfair meant more to him than all the lost gold of a Virginia City wagon train.
“Lord forgive me. My son’s hands are bloodless. Praise the Lord —”
“Don’t start him off again, Noon,” Las Vegas barked. “That crap gives me an earache.” P.J. scooted by swiftly.
“Just one more load, Vegas —” He made buzzing noises again and flew toward the hidden cache once more. Las Vegas chuckled. Then he frowned again, his pencil mustache arching.
“Ah, that old Indian beetle. I figured he was holding out somehow. I didn’t like the way he sat around and laughed to himself. When you talked to him, he looked so damn wise and old. You know what I mean. Got on my nerves. Guess I suspected something like this all along. Him sitting on the pile all the time having the horselaugh of his life at our expense. When he gave me the map in Rock Springs, it looked like the goods. Out here, it looked like a runar
ound. Well, I came to the cabin yesterday morning to have it out with him. He laughed again and I hit him. I’d forgotten he was over a hundred years old. He hit his head when he fell out of the chair. Then I got the jerky notion of pinning it on P.J. Charley’s knife collection on the wall gave me the idea. Hell, P.J. had messed with Brandy and all. Then I got back to Agreeable Wells in the afternoon. Where you met me. But hell — the guy’s over a hundred. He couldn’t have lived forever anyway. He had his life. Besides, where the hell did he come off giving us the runaround?”
He ended his confession to see P.J. come puffing back with another pile of bags. P.J.’s pockets were crammed full too. “That’s it,” the kid wheezed, his face sweaty, his bushy hair damp with dew. “Come on now, Vegas. You ain’t going to renege are you? Let’s get out of here —” He went on by us without even a glance for his father. Mr. Riker looked at the ground.
Las Vegas chuckled.
“You oughta be grateful I’m getting that looney out of your hair.” He took a last look around. “Okay, Noon. Stay put. You and Riker. Once the kid flies me out of here, that’s it. Don’t be a hero and nobody will get hurt.”
“I’m really glad to say goodbye to you, Vegas,” I said. “He was too old a man, Charley was, for you to torture with knives to make him tell the truth. I’ll never know why you felt you had to kid me about that. Nobody ever would have suspected anything about a man that old falling down and dying. You hung him up and tortured him to get the truth. But he was strong and you never found out anything. Goodbye, Las Vegas.”
He backed off, his face as dark as a cloud, still leveling the Winchester. His eyes were mad with anger but he wasn’t going to lose his head again.
“Go to hell, Noon,” he called out. “We might have made a good team, at that. See you in church, Mr. Riker.”
“Goodbye, Las Vegas,” Mr. Riker intoned solemnly as if he were Moses saying farewell to one of the erring flock.
Las Vegas kept on backing up till he came abreast of the plane. P.J. yelled something, thumbed his nose at Brandy and disappeared into the cabin. Soon the motor coughed into life and choked, then burst into a full-throated roar. The propeller ticked over, then revolved dizzily in a blinding arc. The grass under the propwash flattened out in fright. Rita and Brandy stood off from the Cub and watched Las Vegas climb in. The door closed. The engine thundered with sound now, booming over the flatlands.
Well, that was it. Nothing to do but stand by and watch as P.J. taxied slowly ahead for about five yards and then turned in a wide, gradual circle until the nose of the ship was pointed toward more than a mile of flat green airstrip. P.J. might have been a kooky kid but he knew how to fly. Behind the Cub lay the gigantic mountain range which the plane could never have cleared.
The Cub was whipping along the grass like a mechanical toy as Rita and Brandy came running toward us. Rita was waving her hands excitedly. And pointing. I looked.
Off to the west, just close enough so you could make them out, horses and riders were bearing down on us. The cavalry was coming to the rescue. Too late to do anything about the Indians though.
My eyes went back to the Cub. It had risen in a smooth rising climb that brought it up high and mighty. The copper-colored slim hull shone sleek and beautiful in the sun. As pretty as a picture postcard, P.J. banked and the ship came around in a searching turn. It would be nosing back over us in a space of seconds once P.J. had the desired altitude.
Old man Riker stared up into the blue skies, heedless of the blazing ball of sun setting slowly in the west. His tall, proud figure was as immovable as rock. Rita walked up to him slowly and circled an arm around his waist and looked with him. Brandy stood next to me, breasts heaving, eyes still frightened at the man-made thing that ruled the heavens. I didn’t put my arm around her though. She still looked mad enough to kill.
The roaring sound of the Cub thundered overhead.
“The kook,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. “Most kooks are just odd, screwy characters. But not that boy.”
Rita Riker had heard me even with the roar of the plane. “You mean P.J.?”
I nodded. “A brutal kook. Must be a new breed.”
There was nothing more to say. You could just only stand there and wait for the cavalry to arrive with the heroine, Mary Lou. But I didn’t know how right I was about P.J.
The plane was just passing overhead when something fell from it. Realization stabbed me so hard my heart jumped into my mouth. The bomb bay doors had opened and tricky, cunning, cute, terrifying P.J. had played his last and biggest joke. The only decent thing about the whole business was that it all must have seemed like a bad dream to Las Vegas.
He came hurtling down like a rock from better than two thousand feet. Getting bigger and bigger as his free-falling body plummeted closer and closer. It was a ghastly thing to watch but you couldn’t take your eyes off it.
Rita Riker screamed. A long, terrible scream that seemed synchronized with the falling, end-over-end drop of Las Vegas’ flailing body. I turned my head instinctively at the last second.
Las Vegas came down with an awesome thump of sound somewhere on the wide expanse of grass in front of us.
All the king’s horses and all the gold dust in the world would never put Las Vegas together again.
20
Jingo’s Garage in Rock Springs was a work of art. The latest in gas pumps and grease pits. He’d fixed the whole thing up to look like a nice place to bring your car.
I didn’t have a car but I had Mary Lou. The beautiful blonde had explained everything to her handsome, friendly young fiance and he was lending me a ’59 Plymouth to drive to California. Jingo had been in on the ride with the sheriff too. So he didn’t need any explanations about the weird things that had happened at Agreeable Wells.
Mary Lou waited with me in the office while Jingo went to make some last arrangements about the Plymouth. I’d be shoving off as soon as it was ready.
“Gee, Ed,” Mary Lou sighed. “It’s gonna be dull around here without you.” She was wearing a bright green print dress and her bubbly blonde hair lay long and under control by virtue of a permanent at the Rock Springs Beauty Shoppe. She’d told me all about it. I’d had no idea permanents were so involved.
“You’ve got Jingo,” I said. “The way he looks at you, things should never be dull for you.” I was smoking one Camel after another. One whole day without the weed had been murder.
Mary Lou giggled like the young girl she was. But she suddenly sobered. “Rita told me to say goodbye to you. She didn’t want to come see you off. Besides, Pa’s taking it pretty bad about P.J.”
I looked at the long scar on Mary Lou’s pretty face. Jingo would take care of that too, But I knew nothing would take care of the memory of P. J. for Thaddeus Riker.
“It’s better it ended the way it did, Mary Lou. Your brother being inside four walls wouldn’t have been any picnic for your father. It’s better this way — believe me.”
Mary Lou shuddered.
“But it’s so awful to think of — P. J. losing blood at the controls of that plane — and then passing out — and —” I nodded to show her I understood. The picture of the smashed Cub that had kissed a mountain range had made all the front pages of the Rock Springs gazettes. There hadn’t been a piece of wreckage bigger than a postage stamp. Paul Joseph Riker, the small man, had made big headlines. P. J.— the poor jerk.
The Virginia City gold dust had gone with the fickle wind.
We were quiet for a while. I rubbed my hand along my smoothly shaved face and remembered the soft look Rita Riker had given me when she and her husband had said goodbye. I didn’t know how she was going to tell Mr. Riker about Brandy having a baby. But it wasn’t my problem, was it?
Jingo came back, swinging a set of car keys. He was a tall, broad-shouldered handsome kid who made me feel like Old Ed.
“All set, Ed. She’s all yours.” He threw the car keys. Mary Lou looked as if she wanted to cry.
&nbs
p; Jingo grinned. “You know, honey, if I didn’t know you met this lug just two days ago and if I were the suspicious kind —”
“Why, Jingo Anderson!” she said angrily.
“I was only kidding —”
“If you don’t take back what you mean —”
They were still having their first argument as I discreetly slid out the office door and walked toward the Plymmouth. It gleamed like a sapphire on the side street of the garage.
The Rock Springs weather was glorious as I parked behind the wheel and lit another cigarette. My vacation had really started now and I was raring to go. California, here I come.
Besides, I didn’t want to say goodbye either.
I don’t know how.
THE END
Lust Is No Lady Page 11
