“What a cute little place! How snug and cozy!”
“You think so?” he asked, his face showing surprised relief.
“Heavens, yes. It’s just as neat and spick-and-span as — as a yacht.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about yachts.”
“Well, what I meant was that — well, you know, everything shipshape. You have a radio?”
“Yes, a battery set.”
“And a gasoline reading lamp and a cute little stove and bookshelves. How wonderful!”
He suddenly found himself thoroughly at ease.
Abruptly she said, “Tell me more about this mental tranquillity. I want some of that.”
“You can’t saw it off in chunks, wrap it up in packages and sell it by the pound.”
“So I gathered. But would you mind telling me how one goes about finding it? Do you find it at outcroppings and dig it up, or do you sink shafts, or...?”
“I guess it’s something that’s within you all the time. All you do is relax and let it come to the surface. The trouble is,” he said, suddenly earnest, “that it’s hard to understand it because it’s all around you. It’s a part of man’s heritage, but he ignores it, shuts it out.
“Look at the view through the window. There’s the mountain framed against the blue sky. The sunlight is casting silver reflections on the ripples in the water where it runs over the rapids by the gravel bar. There’s a trout jumping in the pool just below the bar. The bird perched on the little pine with that air of impudent expectancy is a Clark jay, sometimes called a camp robber. I love him for his alert impudence, his fearless assurance. Everything’s tranquil and restful and there’s no reason for inner turmoil.”
Her eyes widened. “Say, when you warm up to something, you really talk, don’t you?”
He said, “I love these mountains and I can talk when I’m telling people about them. You see, lots of people don’t really appreciate them. During hunting season, people come pouring in. They come to kill things. If they don’t get a deer, they think the trip has been a failure. What they see of the mountains is more or less incidental to killing.
“Same way with the fishing season crowd. But when you come to live in the mountains, you learn to get in time with the bigness of it all. There’s an underlying tranquillity that finally penetrates to your consciousness and relaxes the nerve tension. You sort of quiet down. And then you realize how much real strength and dignity there is in the calm certainty of your own part in the eternal universe.
“These mountains are a soul tonic. They soothe the tension out of your nerves and take away the hurt in one’s soul. They give strength. You can just feel them in their majestic stability. Oh, hang it, you can’t put it in words, and here I am trying!”
The interest in her eyes, the realization of his own eloquence made him suddenly self-conscious once more.
“Mind if I smoke?” she asked.
“Certainly not. I’ll roll one myself.”
He took the cloth tobacco sack from his pocket, opened a package of cigarette papers.
She said, “Won’t you try one of mine?”
“No thanks. I like to roll my own. I—” He broke off and said, “Something frightened those mountain quail.”
He held a match for her cigarette, rolled his own cigarette and had just pinched the end into shape when he said, “I knew something frightened them. Hear the horses?”
She cocked her head to one side, listening, then nodded, caught the expression on Frank Ames’ face and suddenly laughed. “And you’re afraid I’ve compromised your good name.”
“No. But suppose it should be your companions looking for you and...”
“Don’t be silly,” she said easily. “I’m free to do as I please. I came up here to explain to you about yesterday. I–I’m sorry.”
The riders came up fast at a brisk trot. Then the tempo of hoofbeats changed from a steady rhythm to the disorganized tramping of horses being pulled up and circling, as riders dismounted and tied up. Ames, at the door, said, “It’s the sheriff, the ranger, and a couple of other people.
“Hello, folks,” he called out. “Won’t you come in?”
“We’re coming,” Bill Eldon said.
Frank Ames’ attitude was stiffly embarrassed as he said, “I have company. Miss Coe was looking over my bookshelf.”
“Oh, yes,” the sheriff said quite casually. “This is James Logan, the coroner, and Leonard Keating, the deputy district attorney. They wanted to ask you a few questions.”
Keating was patronizingly contemptuous as he looked around the interior of the neat little cabin, found that the only comfortable chair was that occupied by Roberta Coe, that the others were homemade stools and boxes which had been improvised into furniture “Well,” he said, “we won’t be long. We wanted to get all the details, everything that you know about that murder, Ames.”
“I told the sheriff everything I know about it.”
“You didn’t see anything or hear anything out of the ordinary yesterday afternoon?”
“No. That is, I—”
“Yes, go ahead,” Keating said.
“Nothing,” Ames said.
Keating’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t up around that locality?”
“I was fishing downstream.”
“How far below here?”
“Quarter of a mile, I guess.”
“And the murder was committed half a mile upstream?”
“I guess that distance is about right.”
“You weren’t fishing upstream at all?”
“No. I fished downstream.”
Keating’s eyes showed a certain sneering disbelief. “What are you doing up here, anyway?”
“I’m— Well, I’m just living up here.”
“Were you in the Army?”
“Yes.”
“In Japan?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“I was a prisoner of war for a while and then I was held there a while before I was sent home.”
“Picked up some gems while you were there, didn’t you?”
“I had a pearl and— What do you mean I picked up gems?”
Keating’s eyes were insolent in their contemptuous hostility. “I mean you stole them,” he said, “and you came up here to lie low and wait until things blew over. Isn’t that about it?”
“That’s definitely not true.”
“And,” Keating went on, “this man who was killed was a detective who was looking for some gems that had been stolen from Japan. He looked you up yesterday afternoon and started questioning you, didn’t he?”
“No!”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Ames was suddenly on his feet. “Damn you!” he said. “I’m not lying to you and I don’t have to put up with this stuff. Now, get out of here!”
Keating remained seated, said, “Sheriff, will you maintain order?”
Bill Eldon grinned. “You’re doing the talking, Keating.”
“I’m questioning this man. He’s suspect in a murder case.”
“I’m suspect?” Ames exclaimed.
“You said it,” Keating announced curtly.
“You’re crazy, in addition to the other things that are wrong with you,” Ames told him “I don’t have to put up with talk like that from you or from anyone else.”
Keating said, “We’re going to look around here. Any objection?”
Ames turned to Bill Eldon. “Do I have to—”
Roberta Coe said very firmly and definitely, “Not unless you want him to, Frank; not unless he has a search warrant. Don’t let them pull that kind of stuff. Dick Nottingham is an attorney. If you want, I’ll get him and—”