Even Lucille Cole had to hide a smile. They all knew that Fred Platt would carry his laden truck on his back up to the top of The Needle if he thought there was a customer on that aerie. It was an obsession with Fred to serve his customers, and it was certainly not to his discredit.
Pete Cole reached for the coffeepot. "I heard that Asesino was looking for some cartridge-reloading equipment for that old rifle of his," he said casually.
"Well so happens I got a set of secondhand Lyman reloading gear," said Fred quickly. He hesitated and looked quizzically at Pete. "Did you say 'Asesino'?"
Pete grinned. "I was only joshing you, Candyman."
"That ain't a thing to josh about, Pete! No offense to you, but some people might want to know how you found out."
"About the reloading equipment?" asked Pete in delight. He burst into laughter. "You don't believe I actually heard that, do you?"
"Pete is only teasing you, Candyman," said Lucille.
The peddler turned slowly to look at her. "I don't like being teased about him," he said. He glanced quickly toward the closest window as though someone might be eavesdropping.
"The man is long dead," said Pete seriously.
"No," said the peddler. "Asesino is still alive."
"You've talked to him lately?" asked Pete. "Sold him a packet of needles? Come now, Candyman!"
Fred's face was pale and taut. "There have been times I know I've been watched — the times when I camped too close to the canyon mouths. Once or twice I saw someone moving about on the canyon rims. I'm pretty sure it was him, Pete."
There was a skeptical look on Pete Cole's face. "Come off it, Fred," he said. "Don't start wild stories about him. There are people who believe he is still alive, you know."
Fred leaned closer to Pete. "I knew him years ago," he said quietly. "I couldn't be mistaken."
"Over thirty years ago?" echoed Lucille Cole. "Do you really think you'd know him after all those years?"
Fred straightened up. "Well, I might as well tell you. I think I seen him no later than yesterday morning!"
"Where?" asked Pete.
"I was camped east of the mountains. Not too far from that plugged up canyon there. I had parked my truck close under a cliff so as to get out of the sun. That was late Saturday afternoon. Had a quiet night. Didn't do much Sunday morning except laze around and look for geodes and the like. I get a good price for them from rock hounds. I wandered quite a ways from the truck, leaving it open to air out. Well, I was getting tired, so I started back. I wasn't one hundred yards from the truck when I seen him…"
Gary felt the cold creeping of fear over his body. He remembered all too well his own feelings when he was in a canyon and thought he was being watched.
"He was standing by the rear of the truck as calm as you please, eatin' something out of a can. I was scairt I tell you! I turned to run and kicked a rock lying there. I looked back. He was standing there looking right at me…"
Somewhere out in the stillness of the desert night a coyote howled softly. Lucille Cole shivered a little.
"His eyes was like coals of fire!" said Fred in a louder voice. "He was ragged and dirty but he moved like a cat! His rifle was leaning against a rock! He run for it, and I run the other way! Then I fell down, and when I had the nerve to look back, he was gone. Nothing on that empty ground but my old truck! He had vanished like a ghost!"
Gary glanced at his father. Pete seemed intent on what Fred had been saying. The man wasn't known to be a liar. The fact was that no man in Gary's knowledge and in that of his father as well had actually claimed to have seen Asesino in the past ten or fifteen years, although there were plenty of rumors that he had been seen, but no one ever seemed to know who had seen him. If Fred's story was true then here was concrete evidence that the feared outlaw was still alive.
Fred hitched his chair closer to the table and refilled his coffee cup. "When I got to the truck I found three empty cans lying there."
"What had he been eating?" asked Lucille.
Fred looked up with an odd little smile. "Peaches! Not them little cans! The big ones! Three whole cans of Elberta peaches, Mis' Cole. That was another reason I was sure it was him."
Gary had become tense. He stared at the talkative peddler. Elberta peaches! Some of the cans in the mysterious cave he had entered that very day had once been filled with the luscious fruit. "Why did that convince you it was really him, Mr. Platt?" asked Gary quietly.
The peddler smiled knowingly. "I said I had known him years ago. If there was one thing Asesino loved, besides killing that is, it was Elberta peaches! Don't ask me why." He smiled again. "It's a cinch he ain't buying his peaches up in the Espectros!"
"What did he really look like?" asked Mrs. Cole.
"Like a ghost! An espectro! Cries out like one too."
"Cries out?" asked Gary quickly. "How?"
"Well, I can't make it sound exactly like he does it, but it's some thing like this." Fred threw back his head, cupped his hands about his mouth, and gave voice to a wailing, eerie cry; a mournful thing, thin and haunting.
Gary paled. It was much like the sound he and Tuck had heard that night in the canyon.
"Elberta peaches," said Pete. He shook his head. "Anything else missing?"
"Yeh. A box of cartridges. Kind'a odd caliber too: .50/110 they was. I used to carry them for Old Man Mills some years ago. He never came into town so I carried them as a sort of service for him. Well, when he died, his son came out from Albuquerque, took one look around, then put the place up for sale or lease and went right back to Albuquerque! Guess he either left the old rifle in the place or else took it with him. Well, I carried that box around such a long time I was almost glad to get rid of 'em. Ain't many rifles that caliber still being used."
Fete nodded. "It is an odd caliber, though not quite as rare as you'd think it would be. Came out in the Winchester Model 1886 repeater. Probably one of the smoothest level action rifles ever manufactured. It was usually a heavy-caliber gun in .45/70, .38/56, .40/82, and .45/90 calibers. The .50/110 was the largest of them."
"Say," said Fred admiringly. "That's all right!"
Gary smiled proudly. "Dad is a gun crank. Anything you want to know about guns you just ask him."
"It was a .50/110 slug that killed my horse and dumped me down to the bottom of a canyon," said Pete quietly. "I ought to know it."
"Sure could make a hole in a man," said Gary.
Fred looked quickly at Gary. "What do you mean?"
Gary looked at his father. "Can I show Fred that skull I found?"
Pete Cole smiled, and then looked at his wife. "Not in here, Gary."
"I'll serve coffee and cake in the living room," said Mrs. Cole hastily.
Later, as Fred Platt examined the bullet-punctured skull he nodded. "Large-caliber slug all right."
"You remember those two prospectors who went into the Espectros about twelve years ago, Fred?" asked Pete.
"Yeh. They found one of 'em with a bullet hole in the back of his head. They never did find the other one."