I let her get hold of herself before I continued. “Mrs. Ferguson — it is Mrs. Ferguson?” I asked. Who else was everybody saying Torvilson was getting set to kill, I thought. “What makes you think that Mr. Torvilson is going to kill your husband?”
“He hired you, didn’t he?”
That took me back some. “I can assure you, ma’am,” I said in my best country-lawyer imitation, “except for the war, I’ve never killed a man in my life.”
“Edgar Benson called. As soon as I picked up the receiver I knew it was trouble. Ed and my Jim haven’t spoken for years. I gave the phone to Jim and went over to my neighbor’s place as quick as I could. We’re on the party line, you know. She let me listen, no questions asked. She’s been a good friend to me through all our troubles.”
I let her take her time thinking about her good friend, maybe her only friend about now. In times of trouble women will stick together like glue. Pretty soon she started up again. “Edgar said that Mr. Torvilson had gotten himself a hired gun and that he... uh, you were coming after my Jim.”
The puffed-up toad, why was he stirring things up? I wondered.
“Mr. Traveler, I don’t have any money, but please take this.” She twisted the gold band from her finger, struggling to get it past her work-swollen knuckle. “It’s got to be worth something?”
I put my hand over hers. “Now don’t you fuss, ma’am. That ring is worth a whole lot more to you than it is to me. Your man’s in no danger, leastways not from me.
“Mr. Torvilson, he’s cut up real bad,” I continued, “but I don’t see him taking the law into his own hands.” I hoped I was right. “He asked me to hold a watching brief, make sure things were done right. I’m sure your husband would want the same.”
“I can tell you this, he wasn’t expecting no fire at Hardscrabble Creek. He had a radio with him and nobody’d reported it.”
“Ma’am, I’m sure your man must be waiting supper about now. He’s probably worried about where you’re at.”
“He has bad dreams,” she continued. “He calls out in the middle of the night, ‘This way, over here.’ He told me he can see them, in the dream, the same as real life. They don’t listen to him. Every last one of them boys. They go on by. And every last one of them boys got themselves killed and now the blame’s on him. Oh, it just isn’t fair.”
She continued to fuss some, but I assured her that I would come over next day and have a little chat with her husband. I’d been planning to see him anyway.
I closed up the office and shepherded her out. Barney Chester was just putting up the Evening Telegraph on the racks of his newsstand as we entered the lobby. I heard a small mewl like a kitten might make and I turned to look at my companion. She was white as a sheet and starting to wobble. Barney rushed over to my side, spilling the remainder of the papers, whose headlines screamed, “Forest Ranger Murdered,” as Mrs. Ferguson slid to the floor.
“So I didn’t catch her — she’s all right, isn’t she?” I protested, the following day, to Anson Horne. We were having a cup of java at the Snappy Service lunch stand just up from the police station. Horne preferred talking to me on neutral territory.
Horne laughed. “You don’t have much luck with women, do you, Martin?”
“She had no cause to faint, wasn’t even her husband involved.”
“Don’t blame her much. Who would have thought that Torvilson would get the wrong man? You can’t say I didn’t try to head you off. You could see that canker working on him. Hiring you must have shoved him over the edge.”
“Funny, I don’t see it that way. Anson, you’re a student of human nature and so am I, and after five years of butting heads with you I think I’ve got to know you pretty good.”
“So?”
“I know you’re fiercely loyal to your men. I know you don’t like guys like Torvilson yammering that you’re not doing your job. So I know that sometimes you put two and two together a little faster than you ought.”
Horne took a deep breath and then another one. Since his last heart attack he’s been practicing controlled breathing. I probably should have put it to him more roundabout, but Anson’s like a mule. You’ve got to hit him with a two-by-four to get his attention.
“All right,” he growled. “Have your say. I know I couldn’t stop you anyhow.”
“You’re right about one thing, Torvilson is the murderer, but not the way you think. He didn’t pull the trigger. How about you and Hadley taking Torvilson out for a little ride. Meet me at Hardscrabble about four this afternoon.”
He didn’t say he would, but he didn’t say he wouldn’t. And sure enough, when four o’clock rolled around, the three of them were there at the head of the trail.
The heat of the day was still clinging to the stones, and the scent of pine sap from the few remaining trees perfumed the air. It wasn’t till we reached the head of the valley that you could smell the lingering acrid scent of ash. Horne had been pretty patient with me up until now, but I could tell he was getting set to dig in his heels.
I stopped and said, “Okay, gentlemen, what do you see?” The shadows were lengthening and the crosses caught the sun in golden relief.
Red was quiet and Horne looked at me like I was mad, but Torvilson took a deep breath and said, “My son’s cross is high up the rim of the valley,” just like nobody else had died there.
“Six crosses,” I answered, “and your son’s the farthest one out. Right?”
“He was a fast runner. He was the star of his high-school track team.”
“And how about your boy, Red?” I asked softly.
“Don’t have a boy, never did,” he answered.
“But your wife did. And you raised him as your own, up in Idaho, didn’t you.”
Red lit out, not back toward the road, but up the valley, mimicking the six who had died there. I knew his heart was pounding and his muscles were straining, but there was no fire behind him, only Anson Horne.
The Chief of Police did nothing.
“Aren’t you going to shoot him?” Torvilson demanded.
“You’re a bloodthirsty son of a gun, aren’t you?” Anson retorted. I noticed he was taking deep breaths. “You kept pouring acid on him every day.” He turned to me. “How’d you find out?”
“I met Hadley here yesterday. I thought he was following me on your orders. In fact, he’d been laying flowers at his boy’s cross. He made a bad mistake telling me that cross marked where Torvilson’s boy had gone down. Still, it’s no crime not wanting someone else knowing your business. It was when Benson got killed instead of Ferguson that I knew he had to be guilty.”
“Look here,” Anson interjected. “I knew about the kid when Red brought his family down from Idaho. He didn’t like to talk about it, just wanted to make a fresh start. Get the past behind him. He was doing just fine until you started coming around.” He poked Torvilson in the chest.
“All I wanted was justice,” Torvilson retorted.
“And you got it, kind of. Benson let slip that he’d put a fire out the day before the big blowup. He’d never reported it. It must have started to dawn on him that we’d noticed the slip. He tried to muddy the waters, but it was already too late. Hadley was faster than me in figuring out that Benson had committed two sins. He hadn’t reported the fire, and he’d done a sloppy job of putting it out. It must have smoldered all night. By morning it had flared up again and closed off the road.”
Torvilson interrupted, “He’s getting away.”