That was the way he wanted the world to end for her...
Later that night, when I was sure that everyone was asleep, I got up and went to the jeep. I made a check that showed, very definitely, that I was right. Then I took her rifle and put all the cartridges back in it.
This made me feel much better and I was asleep, myself, a few minutes later.
Jack was still pretending to be sick the next morning. “We’ll wait a little while,” he said, “in case I get better.”
I went outside, to wander around restlessly in the bright sunshine. I knew why he was waiting — if Doris and I left too soon it might upset his murder schedule.
At 11:30 I went back in the house. Jack gave me the wan smile of a martyr — Mom was watching — and said, “I’ll be O. K. in a couple of hours but I’ve already caused enough delay. So you and Doris go on. I want Doris to get that big buck I told you about — I want her to get the best trophy of any of us.”
He stepped over to put his arm around Doris and hug her while Mom beamed from the kitchen doorway with the usual approval. “And nothing, Doris, could make me more proud of you.”
Mom turned back to her cooking and Jack’s arm dropped away from Doris. “All right, Bill,” he said, “you’d better get a move on — it’s almost noon.”
I went out and got in my pickup. Doris came out a few seconds later, the expression on her face telling me that Jack had continued to ignore her after Mom was no longer watching. She got her rifle out of the jeep and sat down beside me, looking back to see if Jack was going to come to the door and tell her good-by. I waited.
He came to the door, impatient question on his face.
“Won’t that thing start?” he asked.
“We’re just going,” Doris said. She lifted her hand in a gesture of farewell. “Good-by, Jack.”
He glanced at her as one might glance at a passing stranger. And to him she was a stranger — or far less than a stranger. To him she was a woman already dead. He didn’t even reply to her.
Instead, he looked at me with a thin smile and said, “Good hunting, Bill — I have a feeling this is going to be a day you’ll remember.”
Then he turned and went back inside.
Doris sat moodily silent beside me for the first mile. I knew why and I said, “Why do you keep trying so hard?”
“Because—” She hesitated, as though trying to find the right words. “Because I loved him, and I thought he loved me — because, so many times, he still seems to love me.”
“When someone is watching.”
“Yes... I know. But there are things to show he cares — like the time when I was so hurt I told him I was going to get a divorce and give him his freedom. He hugged me and told me he was sorry he had hurt me and that if I got a divorce he wouldn’t have anything to live for.”
Well... that was understandable. A divorce would forever put her money beyond his reach.
“So I want to try a little longer,” she said. “I’m a coward, I guess — the world can be such an empty place when you have no one to love you or care what happens to you. I don’t want to call quits to our marriage until I’m sure there’s nothing there.”
I felt the bitterness of still loving the girl who had not been able to see me for the handsome face of Jack and I said, “But Doris — a girl with lots of money should never find the world an empty place.”
“Money!” She spit out the word, the sparks of sudden anger in her eyes and something that seemed close to tears. “Money solves everything, doesn’t it? But did you ever actually try to find out how much happiness money can buy for you?”
“I was never rich enough to try,” I said. “But did you ever lose something you wanted very much — something that neither love nor money could get for you?”
She looked away from me, down at her hands in her lap. When she answered it was in a strange, small little voice, so low I could hardly hear it:
“Yes.”
Neither of us said anything more until we stopped below the mouth of Box Canyon. Doris picked up her rifle but did not get out at once. I knew that in the darkness of her dejection she had no interest whatever in hunting a deer — she was only doing it in the forlorn hope that it might cause Jack to think more of her.
The Reese place was in plain view up the mountain’s slope behind us and I knew that Jack would be watching us with his binoculars. He would want to know for certain that Doris walked alone up that canyon of death.
And her time of grace was now growing dangerously short.
“Forget the deer,” I said. I heard the harshness of tension in my voice. “Listen to what I say — your life depends on it.”
Her eyes widened with surprise and question.
“You’ll have to go up that canyon — you’ll die later on if you don’t. You’ll have to trust me, and do exactly as I say.”
“But Bill—” she protested, question and incomprehension and a touch of alarm mingling on her face. “How could I be in danger? What is—”
“There are things you wouldn’t believe if I told you now. Later, you will understand everything, Will you trust me and do as I say?”
She answered without hesitation, “Whatever it is, you should know I trust you, Bill. But—”
“Then head on up that canyon. As soon as you get around the first bend go into a fast trot...” I told her how to find the hidden crevice up the canyon, which so few people knew about, that led up to the top of the canyon’s south rim. “Get to this crevice and up on top as fast as you can,” I finished. “Stop for nothing on the way — absolutely nothing.”
She hesitated and I gave her a little shove. “Out — on your way,” I said. “Wait for me on top if I don’t meet you before then.”
She slid out of the pickup. “All right, Bill,” she said, and walked swiftly away.
I put the pickup in gear and started for the mouth of the adjoining canyon, Spur Canyon, Some distance up it was a place where I could drive up out of it and cut back to Box Canyon and the upper end of the crevice.
I kept turning my head to watch her, feeling a cold apprehension. I wanted to go with her, to make sure no harm came to her, but there was absolutely no way I could do so without being seen by Jack. It was imperative to my own plan that Jack, in the very near future, should think she had died.
I could, within two minutes, completely wreck his murder scheme. But he would see me do so and he would promptly devise another murder plan; one to be carried out in Phoenix or some other place where I could not be near her to watch over her.
If I did not interfere with his plan — and if I had not erred in my own counter-plan — he would never again try to harm her. He would be dead.
I resisted the urge to hurry, not wanting to arouse Jack’s suspicions, until I was out of his sight up in Spur Canyon. Then I romped on the accelerator. According to my calculations I would have no time to spare in getting up and around to the crevice, then down it and on down Box Canyon to meet Doris and make sure she made it safely the rest of the way.
But, fifteen minutes later, the bright sunlight suddenly faded. I looked back and felt the chill of near-panic as I saw the reason.
Rolling high into the sky from what would be the lower end of Box Canyon was a great, black column of smoke.
The fire had started more than twenty minutes sooner than I had expected. Already it would be a solid sheet of flame, ten feet high and reaching from wall to wall of the canyon as it rushed toward Doris. Once around the bend, with the west wind behind it, it would go roaring up the canyon faster than a horse could run...
As I look back, I have only a hazy memory of the rest of that ride. Mainly I remember the frantic urgency to get to Doris before the fire caught her and T remember shoving the accelerator to the floor and holding it there. I remember my prayer that the old pickup would not fail me and I remember the answer; the way it went smashing through brush and young trees, careening through boulders and across ditches, hurling rocks behind as it scrambled up steep banks, pawing and bellowing like a wild bull all the way and never once faltering.