But the wind-pushed fire had a shorter distance to go. When I finally slewed to a stop near the top of the crevice the smoke was a black pall that darkened the mountainside and the fire was in the canyon below; a raging, savage thing that made a noise like the roaring of a river as it swept on up the canyon. It was already past the crevice. Nothing but black, smouldering desolation lay in its wake and a bright tongue of flame was racing up the crevice, itself.
For a long moment I stood motionless and frozen, not breathing. It seemed to me that the entire world stood still, even that raging wall of flame. I felt a sense of loss that no words could ever describe and in my mind I heard the grim and terrible accusation:
You fool — you let her die!
Then I heard the panting cry from below me; from under the overhand on which I stood:
“Bill — where are you?”
I dropped down into the crevice and put my arm around her. She was shaking, almost helpless with exhaustion, the crevice’s brushfire only yards behind her. I half carried her to the top and lifted her onto the seat of the pickup.
“The fire—” she said in her labored panting. “I ran — but it ran faster—”
“It’s all over, now,” I said. I kept my arm around her shaking shoulders and brushed the tangled hair back from her little face that was now so grimy with ashes and smoke and perspiration. “It’s all over and nothing is ever going to harm you again, Doris. I promise — not ever again...”
We reached the head of Box Canyon a few minutes after the fire had died in one last billow of smoke against the barren cliffs. The fire in the crevice had died out the same way and Sandy Wash had stopped the fire below the mouth of the canyon.
Everything was over but for the rendezvous, the revelation, and the execution.
I had the pickup hidden behind a high outcropping of granite. The head of Box Canyon was only two miles from the Reese place and I could see Jack’s jeep already coming. I had known that he would want to make sure that the fire had made a clean sweep to the head of the canyon and that Doris was definitely dead.
Doris stood beside me, question burning on her face.
“I’ll tell you now,” I said. “Jack started the fire. He wanted to kill you. You probably still won’t believe it.”
Her face paled under stains of ashes and smoke. “But — but he couldn’t have, miles away — and why should he?”
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Listen when he gets here, to what he and I say to each other. And don’t — in the name of God — don’t let him see you.”
I was standing near the rim of the canyon, looking down at the black, smouldering things that had been green life a few minutes before, when I heard his jeep stop behind me. I turned around.
He was staring at me with a glare of suspicious question. I saw that one hand was near the rifle which was still in its scabbard.
“What in hell are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I tried to get up along the rim of the canyon fast enough to save Doris,” I said. “Your burning glass set the fire quicker than I thought it would.”
His mouth dropped open. Then it snapped shut and he was suddenly out of the seat, the rifle held waist high and a deadly look in his eyes.
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“Why, Jack,” I said, “I knew last night that you had hoped to murder Doris by plugging the barrel of the cheapest, most dangerous rifle you could find in Phoenix. But there were no deer to cause her to fire it — so you took her magnifying glass yesterday afternoon and set it up as a burning glass in that brush thicket. Later, when the sun had moved enough for it to no longer be in focus, you came back and put dry grass — and probably match heads — under it so that at noon today it would set the canyon on fire.
“And Doris, at your request, would be up the canyon where she would burn to death with no chance for escape.”
He stared at me, gripping the rifle, the hatred shining in his eyes, no longer the least bit handsome.
“Do you think the law would believe a wild story like that?” he asked.
“That suicide rifle you bought for her, with that cement plug, is enough, alone, to show the law you tried to murder her. When they look at the place you set up the burning glass” — I implied seeing something that I had not seen — “and find the lens with part of that bright red plastic handle still not melted to show that it was the glass of Doris’s that disappeared out of the glove compartment when you were pretending to be getting a wrinkle out of your sock...”
“All right, fool,” Jack said. He smiled at me; a smile that was thin and vicious with hatred and anticipation. “You have just blabbered your way into hell.”
He lifted the rifle chest high and I said, “Do you think you can get away with a double murder today?”
He laughed. “You’re going to be the victim of an innocent hunting accident. I’ll go back and sadly report to that old woman, ‘I went out to look at the fire, thought I saw a deer through the trees, and shot it. It was Bill — poor Bill — best friend I ever had...’ Then I’ll get worried about my wife, drive down and dispose of the remains of that glass, then go back, shocked and grief-stricken, to tell the old woman that my wife is dead.”
I saw a movement thirty feet behind Jack. It was Doris, who had walked up silently on the carpet of pine needles. But now she was stopped, one hand on the tree for support, her blue eyes enormous in her white face, her hand to her mouth, as she heard the cold, brutal words.
“Then you’ll have her money, to live in the style that you would like to be accustomed to living in?” I said.
“It’s my money now and there won’t be anyone to try to keep me from having fun with it, the way she has been doing.” He laughed again and I saw that in his triumph he was not quite sane. “I’ll even use part of my money to give her a big, showy funeral.”
I flicked another quick glance at Doris. She was still frozen by the tree and even at the distance I could see the horror in her eyes as she listened to the thing that she had once loved as a man.
“And then you’ll be on your way to hit all the gay spots between Las Vegas and Paris, I suppose?” I asked.
“And then I’ll be on my way,” he said. He raised the rifle higher. “And this will be the first step. I’d like to gut shoot you a few times, just for kicks, but this is supposed to be a hunting accident. So how about a good, clean shot in the forehead?”
He swung the rifle up and the muzzle of it was a big, black hole that suddenly seemed to be large enough for me to shove my fist into. His finger was on the trigger as the sights swung in line with my forehead.
I was aware of Doris being away from the tree, of her running toward Jack with protest on her face and her mouth open with the beginning of a scream.
He never heard her. He was already pressing the trigger and her scream was drowned by the shattering blast of the rifle.
He was hurled backward to the ground, the rifle flying from his hands. He kicked spasmodically, the breech bolt buried almost all the way in what had been his eye socket.
I caught Doris and swung her away from him, not wanting her to see any more of the ugly sight. I hurried her to the pickup and circled wide of Jack’s body as we started for the Reese place.