“But you were hung with it, up here alone. So you needed a patsy. A fall guy. A sucker to burn while you spent all the money in freedom. You ran the car out of sight, after calling me. Got it all set up. I’d get hung with a corpse on my hands. You’d see to that. You’d see too that the cops heard the right kind of story.
“Even if I managed to skin out of it, they’d never be able to hang it on you. The elements would have been all confused, the circumstances all upset. But that was remote. There was a very definite chance I’d get it in the neck for a double killing that was supposed to have netted me a pile of money and a beautiful dame.”
I looked at her and saw the last veil drop away. What was left was pretty horrible to look at.
She mouthed a curse. Then she whirled and ran toward the house. I remembered that revolver lying on the table in the living room.
I was right behind her. But I couldn’t quite catch her. I just managed to close in and grab her arm when she fired the first shot. It hit the ceiling. She fought like a tigress, squeezing the trigger until the gun was empty. Then she sank her teeth in the back of my hand. I tore loose and ran down the hill.
The outboard fired, and I shoved the boat away from the pier. I had one last look at her before the underbrush along the river became a curtain between us. She was standing halfway down the hillside, her long blond hair tousled about her face, shrieking at me.
My hand bled all the way upriver. I never would forget the way that blood looked. I heaved the boat in at old Mac’s dock, cut the motor, and yelled for him.
I scrambled out of the boat, ran down the pier. He was coming out of his cabin with his rheumatic gait.
“You got a phone?”
“Yeah,” he said, “is something wrong?”
“Plenty. There’s been some trouble down at the Grayson lodge. You’d better called the sheriff.”
He raised his brows, hobbled hurriedly toward his cabin. I stood there a moment, breathing deep and hard, just letting the sun hit my face.
“Mac.”
He stopped in the cabin doorway.
“I found out where your river flows.”
“Yeah?” he said.
“You ever hear of a woman named Salome?”
“Seems that I have,” he said. “She was so beautiful and evil the devil himself must have been afraid of her.”
“That’s the one,” I told him. “And your creek flows right past her front door.”