‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked.
‘No... Let’s listen to a tape recording instead.’ I told him how to open the back of the radio and to rewind the reels.
‘Neat little job,’ he commented. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘Had it specially made, two or three years ago.’
Walt grunted, and switched on. The head wrangler banged on Yola’s door and told her that the mares and stallions were out. Walt’s face lifted into a half grin.
The recorder played twenty seconds of silence after each take, and began again at the next sound. The next piece was very short.
‘Yola?’ A man’s voice, very loud. ‘Yola! Where the hell is everybody?’ A door slammed. Silence.
‘That’s Matt Clive,’ I told Walt. ‘He came back before breakfast.’
The voices began again. Yola speaking, coming indoors. ‘... say the tracks go straight up the hill, but he turned back at the high patch of scree and came down again.’
That was a bit of luck.
‘They’ll just have to go on looking,’ Matt said. ‘Yola, for God’s sake, we can’t lose that horse.’ His voice was strained and furious. ‘I’ll go over to the house and see if any of those kids had a hand in it.’
‘I don’t think so. Not a darned one of them looks nervous.’
‘I’ll try, anyway.’ His footsteps receded.
Yola picked up the telephone and made a call.
‘That you, Jim? Have you seen any horse vans coming through Pikelet since last night?...
‘Well no, I just wondered if you’d seen one. Not this morning, early?...
‘No, it was just a chance. Sure. Yeah. Thanks anyway.’ She put down the receiver with a crash.
Walt raised his eyebrows. ‘Pikelet?’
‘Couple of shops and a filling station where the Clives’ own road joins the main road to Jackson.’
‘Just as well we didn’t...’ he began, and then changed it to, ‘Is that why you insisted on the long way round?’
‘Partly,’ I agreed. ‘I wanted it to look as if Chrysalis had gone off by himself. I wanted to avoid them realizing he’d been deliberately stolen. Keep them guessing a bit, give us time to get well clear.’
The tape began again. Matt came back running.
‘Yola. That man. That damned man.’
‘What man?’ She was bewildered.
‘The man that pulled Teller out of the river. How long has he been here?’
Yola said almost in a whisper, ‘Here?’
Matt was shouting. ‘Here. Having breakfast. Staying here, you stupid bitch.’
‘I don’t... I don’t...’
‘I saw him at Reading too,’ Matt said. ‘He called to see Teller in the hospital. They let him in past all the watchdogs. I saw him looking out of the window. How the hell did he get here? Why in God’s name didn’t you spot him, you stupid, stupid... He’s the one that’s taken the horse. And I’ll damn well make him bring it back.’
‘How?’ Yola said, wailing.
‘Excuse me,’ said the voice of the girl who waited at table. ‘Excuse me, Miss Clive. Mr Hochner wants his bill.’
‘There on the desk,’ Yola said.
‘Which is Hochner?’ Matt, urgent.
‘The German in cabin three.’
‘Where was he sitting at breakfast? What does he look like?’
‘He had his back to the door from the hall,’ the girl said. ‘He’s wearing a blue-and-white check shirt, and he’s quite tall and has dark brown hair and a tired sort of face.’
‘Give him the bill then,’ Matt said, and waited until she had gone. ‘Hochner!’ The voice was almost incoherent with rage. ‘How long has he been here?’
‘Since... Tuesday.’ Yola’s voice was faint.
‘Get your rifle,’ Matt said. ‘If he won’t give us that horse back... I’ll kill him.’
There were small moving about sounds, and the tape went quiet. The time they had spent in my cabin telescoped into twenty seconds of silence; and the recording began again.
‘He was right, Matt,’ Yola said. ‘We should have let him go.’ Her voice had gone quiet with despair, but Matt’s still rode on anger.
‘He had his chance. He should have told us what he’d done with Chrysalis.’
After a pause Yola said, ‘He wasn’t going to do that. He said so. Whatever you do, he said, you won’t recover the horse.’
‘Shut up,’ Matt said violently.
‘Matt.’ A wail in her voice. ‘He was right. We won’t recover the horse and his friends will come looking for him, like he said.’
‘They’ll only find an accident.’
‘But they won’t believe it.’
‘They won’t be able to prove any different,’ Matt insisted.
After another pause Yola said almost without emotion, ‘If he got the horse clean away... if someone else has him now, and he’s on his way back to Teller... they’ll know we had Chrysalis here. We’ll be arrested for that.’
‘Hochner wasn’t going to say he’d stolen the horse from here.’
‘But you wouldn’t listen.’ Yola suddenly flared into anger of her own. ‘He was right all the time. We should have let him go. We’d have lost Chrysalis... but this way we’re in terrible trouble, they’ll never believe he died by accident, we’ll have the whole FBI here and we’ll end up... we’ll end up in...’
‘Shut up,’ Matt said. ‘Shut up.’
‘He might not be dead yet... can’t we go and stop it?’ Her voice was urgent, beseeching.
‘And have him accuse us of attempted murder? Don’t be such a fool. No one can prove it isn’t an accident, can they? Can they?’
‘I suppose not...’
‘So you leave him, Yola. You just leave him. He had his chance. I gave him his chance... You just wait for some of the guests to see the smoke and come and tell you, like we said. Don’t you try going up there. Just don’t try it.’
‘No...’
‘And I’m going back on the mountain with the wranglers. Chrysalis went across the bridge. His tracks are there. Well... I’m going tracking. Mr Clever Hochner might be bluffing all along the line. He might have Chrysalis tied to some tree up there, and he might not have told anyone where he is, and no one will come asking.’ He convinced himself that this view of things was reasonable, and in the end Yola halfway agreed.
‘We’ll have to tell Uncle Bark,’ she said finally.
There was a blank pause while they considered this.
‘He’ll blow his top,’ Matt said gloomily. ‘After all that planning.’
‘He’ll have to know,’ Yola said.
‘I’ll call him this evening, if we have to. But we might have found Chrysalis by then.’
‘I sure hope so...’
Matt went away then on his search, and presently, after Yola had left to go back to the ranch house, there was continued silence on the tape.
Walt switched the recorder off and looked across at me with a complete absence of expression.
‘What did they do?’
I told him.
‘Would it have passed as an accident?’
‘I expect so. Neat little picture: man lighting cigarette, throws match absentmindedly in tub of pep instead of waste basket, panics, spills the stuff, steps wildly back from flames, trips over stove and knocks himself out. Bingo.’
‘Do you smoke, though?’
‘Sometimes. They used my own pack from the bedside table. And my own matches. It was impulsive, unpremeditated. They just looked round and used what came to hand. They’re quite good at it.’
‘Lucky you woke up in time,’ Walt said.
‘I suppose so.’ I shut my eyes and wondered how he would react if I asked him to go out for some codeine.
‘I’ve worked with one or two people like you before,’ he said. ‘And I can’t say I like it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said sardonically. No pills.
‘With your kind,’ he said, ‘dying comes easy. It’s living takes the guts.’