“Well, you know she went sight-seeing with some of her party today. She and five others are staying up at Glacier Point Hotel for dinner and to watch the firefall, and they’ll drive back afterward.”
He could see Glacier Point from where he was sitting. It was across the Valley, a huge wedge of granite rearing up more than three thousand feet. Glacier Point Hotel was up there. If you had wings it was only a couple miles away. If you had wheels it was thirty miles by a winding mountain road.
He said nervously, “Isn’t that a tough drive to make in the dark?”
“They have one of the hotel’s cars and a chauffeur. To a guy who knows the road and takes it easy, that drive isn’t bad at night. You don’t have to worry, Mr. Lawrence.”
“Okay,” he muttered. He took out five dollars and gave it to the kid. “Let me know when she gets back.”
He watched the bellboy vanish down the path to the hotel, and tried to read a couple of pamphlets on cone-bearing trees of the Park and on the Yosemite Indians. They didn’t hold his interest. His glance kept wandering to the jutting mass of Glacier Point. Last night he had stood among the trees keeping an eye on
Holly, who was watching the firefall. High up on Glacier Point the Rangers built a fire and slowly pushed the embers over the cliff. The glowing torrent fell almost a thousand feet. That was a long drop.
The phone rang in his cabin. It threw his nerves into a short circuit until he remembered that it might be somebody on the hotel staff calling on quite innocent business. He went in and picked it up.
“This is room service,” a high-pitched voice said. “In regard to your order we—”
“My order came all right, thanks.”
“Was everything satisfactory?”
“Yeah. Sure. Fine. You can pick the tray up any time.”
The voice slid down a couple of notches. “Isn’t that sweet? How about picking you up sometime, Bill?”
His hand locked around the phone until the knuckles creaked. “This is George H. Lawrence,” he said hoarsely. “You have the wrong party.”
The man snickered. “Don’t give me that stuff, Bill. I ought to know your voice. I used to hear it enough over an intercom.”
It was Domenic. The guy would love something like this. You could picture him cuddling up to the phone, eyelids drooping over hot black eyes, a smirk lifting the corner of his mouth. Domenic had been a good crew chief except he always wanted to make a big production out of whatever he did. This would be a wonderful chance for him.
“Hello, Domenic,” he said. “I’d ask what’s on your mind but I’m not sure you’ve got one.”
“Don’t be like that. After all the trouble I had locating you. Would your lousy hotel give out any information? No. So what do I do? I call up and say as I was driving out of the parking lot I happened to nick the fender of a convertible. I don’t know whose it is but here’s the license number and I’ll be glad to send the owner a check for the damage. So they finally say they’ll connect me with a guy named Lawrence and I pull that room service gag to make sure it’s you. Cute, huh?”
“Yeah. Swell. Hang on a moment, Domenic.” He put down the phone and took a quick look outside the cabin. Nobody was in sight. No figure was slipping toward him through the trees. He went back into the cabin. “Okay,” he said. “Go on telling me how smart you are.”
“Little nervous, huh, Bill? Making sure Cappy wasn’t peeking over your shoulder? Relax. We have no idea what room you’re in.”
“I wouldn’t advise you to come sneaking around anyway.”
“What would we sneak for, Bill? We got nothing to hide. Besides, all we want is a little talk with you. Maybe we can iron things out.”
“Go ahead and talk. I’m listening.”
“We can’t settle this over a phone. How about sitting down with Cappy and me?”
“I’ll think it over.”
“How about tonight, Bill?”
“I won’t have my thinking done that fast.”
“Don’t play so hard to get,” Domenic said softly. “Let’s make it tonight. Up at Glacier Point.”
The telephone began to get slippery with sweat from his hand. “That’s a long way off.”
“It’s not so far…straight down.”
He gripped the telephone as if he had Domenic’s throat. “What are you trying to say? If you have some idea that—”
“Wait a minute, w-a-i-t a minute, Bill. We just think you ought to get up to see Glacier Point. They build a fire for the firefall right out close to the edge. They have iron railings around the edge but if a person ever slipped he could go right under the bottom rail. There’s always a little crowd up there watching the firefall and of course there are no lights except the fire and flashlights and it’s a wonder nobody ever falls. You know how careless people can get, running around not looking where they’re going. Do you know any careless people, Bill?”
It could be a coincidence that Holly was up there too. It was possible that Domenic and Cappy didn’t know she was there. But the mocking note in Domenic’s voice said it was no coincidence and that they knew all about the girl. “No,” he said trying for that million-to-one shot, “I don’t know any careless people. Do you?”
Domenic murmured, “She’s right out there now leaning over the edge.”
His stomach felt as if it were falling through space. “All right,” he said thickly. “I’ll come up.”
“It’s just about eight, Bill. It’s a thirty-mile drive. The firefall is at nine. Maybe around nine-thirty there might be another fall, if you’re not here.”
“Where will I meet you?”
“You can park near Glacier Point Hotel. That’s close to the firefall. It’ll be dark by then. Sit in your car and blink your lights on and off three times. Repeat it every minute or so until we show up.”
“All right. I’ll see you.”
“Just one thing more,” Domenic said. “There’s only one telephone line coming up here. Cappy’s gonna take it out as soon as I hang up. So don’t bother calling.”
The phone clicked in his ear. He signaled for the operator, got her, asked for Glacier Point Hotel. There was a long wait filled with static from the phone and the waterfall roar of blood in his head. The operator came back finally and said, “There must be some trouble on the line. Will you try a little later?”
He said no thanks and dropped the phone and ran out of the cabin. He couldn’t help looking off and up to his left. Glacier Point leaned over the valley as if ready to topple into it: billions of tons of sheer granite with long gray scars where embers had burned away the darker lichens. It would be a nice safe job. You would walk up behind a girl in the dark, after the fire-fall was over, and slug her in the head with a rock and roll her over the edge. Afterward nobody could prove which rock hit her first.
Of course this was an obvious trap. Cappy and Domenic had fixed up one of those deals where one party to a dispute goes away satisfied and the other goes away dead. Maybe they had set a trap along the winding mountain road to Glacier Point. Or maybe they would let him have it when he reached the place. He had made a mistake thinking they would sit back waiting for him to make the first move. They had worked out a very nice double-or-nothing offer: see if you can win your girl back without both of you getting killed.
He ran down the path to the hotel and into the lobby, looking for his bellboy. He spotted him at the entrance, ran up to him and said, “You got a car? Here?”
“Yeah, sure, Mr. Lawrence. Something wrong with yours?”
“I want to rent yours for tonight. Hundred bucks. Okay?”
“Yes, sir! I’ll bring it right around.” “Swell. Make it fast.”
He stood at the entrance, sweating, until the bellboy drove up in a battered coupe. He handed the kid his money, jumped in.
For the first fifteen minutes he had to drive at a maddeningly slow rate through the traffic of the valley. Then he reached the Wawona Road slicing up the south wall of the valley and began
driving fast. The car was much lighter than the big convertible and on some of the turns it wanted to take off like a kite. He roared through the long Wawona Tunnel and reached the turn-off to Glacier Point and skidded into it. It was twenty to nine.
The road burrowed through trees where night came early. He had fifteen miles to go. That wouldn’t have been much on the flat but the only flatness up here was straight up and down. Driving fast on this road was like wrestling with a judo expert. Sometimes the road twisted and wrenched at the car. Sometimes it flopped limply in front of him to coax him to relax and then tried a bone-breaking series of tricks. Every now and then he almost lost the road and saw his headlights fan over green blankness and by instinct twitched the wheel the right way and got back on the beam. The best thing was that Cappy and Domenic weren’t watching for a battered coupe. The worst thing was that he wasn’t averaging thirty miles an hour. He broke out of the trees finally and into a bare dark world. Up ahead lights pricked holes in the blackness. The road swung toward them and threw one last skidding curve at him and then tied itself into a meek loop in front of the hotel. He jammed on brakes, jumped out, ran up a path toward the top of Glacier Point. The firefall was over and people with flashlights were straggling back to the hotel. He reached the summit, looked for Holly. The flashlights had fogged his eyes and it was hard to see. Here and there people moved and talked—a dozen of them, maybe—and any one of them could be Holly. Any of them could be Cappy or Domenic. He didn’t have time to waste.
“Holly!” he called sharply. “Holly!”
Way off an echo bounced back at him. That was all. His tongue felt like an old hunk of cloth gagging his mouth. This couldn’t be it. An echo couldn’t be all that was left of a bright-haired girl who skipped through life as happily as a kid at recess. He took a deep breath to yell again.
A hand came out of the darkness. A soft warm hand that pressed against his mouth and stopped the yell. A girl whispered, “Bill! Be quiet!”
He grabbed her arms, stared down into the pale oval of her face. “Holly?” he said. “It’s you?”
“Of course it’s me! You’re crazy, coming here screaming my name. I thought you were somewhere safe by now. Don’t you—”
He shook her a little. “Shut up,” he said. “They laid a trap for you. Cappy and Domenic. You were going over the edge in a few minutes. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“And…you came back for me?”
“I didn’t go away. I’ve been at the hotel all along, trying to keep an eye on you. I was afraid they’d try something. Come on!”
She gasped, “You’ve got to listen to me first. Carson Smith is up here. And that sheriff of his from Cheyenne. They’ve been spying on me. They must be waiting for you to show up. And Bill, they must have heard you call my name.”
“Where are they right now?”
“They were here a little while ago. It’s hard to tell now in the dark. I can’t see anything. Can you?”
He took a careful look around Glacier Point. Nobody was within a hundred feet of them at the moment. That is, nobody he could see. But the place was studded with black lumps that could be rocks or crouching men. Maybe they could make a dash back to the car, maybe they couldn’t. He made a sudden decision and picked the girl up in his arms.
“Bill,” she whispered, “What are you doing? What—”
“We’re going to find the sheriff.”
Her body tensed in his arms. “You can’t. He’ll arrest you.”
“Don’t give me an argument. I should have done this a couple days ago. This is no game for you to be playing. Remember to tell the cops that story I worked out for you and you’ll be in the clear.”
“Put me down! I won’t have you doing this. I—” She struggled a little. He tightened his grip and let her squirm. After a few moments she began crying, went limp. He started walking toward the nearest people. Cappy and Domenic might be up here but they would never suspect a man carrying a girl in his arms; they would be looking for two people running. The first people he approached turned out to be strangers. He headed toward another couple and then, quite a way beyond, saw a couple of shadowy figures wearing broad-brimmed hats. They were leaning against the railing that fenced off the big drop. He stumbled toward them and when he came close saw a glint of starlight on badges and holstered guns. Good. It was a relief to get this over.
“Hello, sheriff,” he said. “This is Wayne. Looking for me?”
The shadows jerked as if he had stabbed them.
Carson Smith said, “Well, can yuh tie that!”
“What did I tell you, Carse?” the sheriff said. “I told you if we watched this girl we’d get Wayne. But I shore didn’t think it’d be like this. Tired of hiding, Wayne?”
“I’m tired of getting this girl in a jam. She’s on the level, see? She was trying to help me and didn’t know the score. Right now a couple of guys are gunning for me and I don’t want her to catch any bullets by mistake. This is the only way to make sure she doesn’t.”
“Well, now,” the sheriff said, “that’s mighty noble of you, Wayne. Just stand there quiet while we see are you heeled.”
“Yep,” Carson Smith said. “Mighty noble.”
There was something queer about the way Smith said that. Bill peered at him. He saw the guy reach lazily for his gun and lift it and bring the barrel down in a glittering arc across the back of the sheriff’s neck. The sheriff dropped without a sound.
“Mighty noble,” Smith said, crouching. “Now let’s see what it will get you.”
Sixteen
This ought to be a bad dream. It was only in bad dreams that you did the right and logical thing and found it was horribly wrong and stupid. Maybe in a moment somebody would wake him and tell him to stop screaming. You didn’t remember bad dreams very long. A few hours after awaking there wouldn’t be much left except a vague memory of a haunted top-of-the-world landscape where one had almost been caught by faceless things.
Nobody was going to wake him this time, though. He had to yank himself back to reality. He started slowly, pinning his attention on small understandable things: the way starlight smeared on the barrel of Carson Smith’s revolver, the thin stripes of the railing against black space, the glint of a ring on the sheriffs limp right hand.
He heard Holly say to the man in front of them, “You must be mad!”
“Yeah?” Smith said softly, “You can’t hate Bill this much,” she said. “No?”
He was awake again. This was real and made sense. Answers were clicking into place in his mind like the wheels of a slot machine. Click: the first wheel stopped on China. Click: the second wheel stopped on Philadelphia. Click: Glacier Point. He could have hit this jackpot long ago if he had done some hard thinking. But there had been a sign in his head announcing: Quiet, please. Brain at rest. Holly had given him the answer long ago but he hadn’t paid any attention. There had been a sixth guy in the crooked deal that started back in China. It was Carson Smith.
“You can’t get away with it,” he said huskily. “A dozen people are in earshot. A couple must be Rangers. Pull that trigger and you invite them over.”
“You’re wanted for murder,” Smith said. “There’s a warrant out for you. Jump me and I got a right to shoot.”
Holly gasped, “How can he jump you? He—” “Shut up,” Bill said. “You don’t get the idea. Look,
Smith, it’ll be messy. You can explain a bullet in me.
But you’ll have trouble explaining one in her.” “Will I?”
“I’m going to put her down,” Bill said. “I don’t have a gun. I’m not going to make any sudden moves. Don’t you make any either. Now listen, Holly. Move slow and easy. Don’t make a sound unless he jumps us. But if he does, scream and run.”
“Watch it, Wayne,” Smith said, his voice starting to rise. “Watch it.”
Brother, he was watching it. This was like teasing a rattler. They had only one thing in their favor: Smith didn’t want noise. Bill tensed to
catch the first flicker of action from the crouching man. He bent his knees slowly and let his arms down until Holly’s feet touched rock and the weight eased off his arms. She straightened carefully and stood up and he put an arm in front of her body and moved her a slow step to one side. He wasn’t quite sure how he had managed to get away with it. A couple of times Smith had teetered right on the edge of leaping. But something had held him back. Something—
Bill said, “We’re moving straight ahead to the railing. Jump us and you’ll get screams.”
“Stay right there,” Smith snapped. “I’ll plug you.”
Bill took a deep breath and tried to let it out in slow calm words. “You won’t plug us,” he said. “What have you got to lose by waiting? This place is getting more deserted every minute. All we want to do is take four steps to the railing and turn around and talk. So you don’t want to shoot. Come on, Holly. Very slowly. One step. That’s right. As long as we don’t yell you’re okay, Smith. We aren’t going to yell if we don’t have to. Now a second step. Easy now. A third. In fifteen minutes there won’t be anybody around to bother you, Smith. So take it easy. Now the fourth step. There. Now we keep watching Smith and turn with our backs to the railing. That’s it.” He let the last bit of breath hiss from aching lungs. Sweat stung his skin. He hadn’t thought they would make it.
“Got away with it, didn’t you?” Smith said.
“Yeah. Thanks. I don’t like people sneaking up behind me. You want to call Cappy and Domenic now?”
Beside him Holly started to tremble. “Oh no,” she whispered.
“Wise guy,” Smith said, spitting out the words. He raised his voice slightly. “Come on, you dopes.”
Two shadows stirred in the rocks twenty feet away, edged forward.
Bill called softly. “Don’t rush us. We aren’t going over this railing without a lot of noise.”
“I think I’ve gone crazy,” Holly said in a choked voice. “Those two men and Carson and…and what does it all mean?”
“It’s kind of complicated,” Bill said. “Hello, Cappy. Hello, Domenic. Stop there or I’ll yell.”
Say It With Bullets Page 17
