Despite the cold, by the time they were within a block of Route Twenty, the car’s heater had made the interior of the car quite comfortable. Simmons unbuttoned his overcoat.
“Which way on Twenty?” Saxon asked.
“Southwest. You’re going home.”
This time Simmons’s enunciation was not so precise. There was a definite slur in his voice. Saxon wondered if the car heater was having an effect.
Turning right on Twenty, Saxon said, “Why are you accompanying me home? I know the way.”
“Wanna make sure you get there. Car following will bring us back.”
If it hadn’t been for the trailing car, the lights of which he could see only a few yards behind in the rear-view mirror, Saxon would have been sure this was a death ride. But if the men intended to shoot him and dump his body somewhere, there was no point in the second car. They could drive his back to Buffalo after committing the murder and simply abandon it somewhere. Saxon could imagine no purpose for the trailing car other than transportation back to Buffalo for Simmons and Benton. Which was reassuring, even though it was also puzzling.
It wasn’t until they crossed the Route Seventy-five turn-off to Hamburg that he began to get an inkling of what Simmons had in mind.
The man said, “’Bout five miles on there’s a bridge across a ravine. Pull over on the shoulder this side of it.”
Saxon knew the ravine he referred to, which was only about four miles out of Iroquois. Steep-sided, it was about thirty feet deep. The road was straight there, so there were no guard rails at the approach to the bridge. And except for the ravine, the ground was flat. A car fitted with snow tires, such as Saxon’s, with an unconscious man behind the wheel and the throttle wedged to the floor, could be aimed to go off the road just before the bridge, and would have no trouble plowing its way across the few yards of snow-covered ground before it nosed over the thirty-foot drop.
The reason for the trailing car ceased to puzzle Saxon. It was necessary for his captors’ transportation back to Buffalo, because his wouldn’t be in condition to drive. They planned to leave the Plymouth, with him in it, crushed out of shape at the bottom of the ravine.
Saxon’s mind began to race. Once he pulled over on the shoulder and stopped, he knew it would be all over. Probably the man in the back seat would knock him unconscious the moment he set the hand brake. His only hope of escape was to attempt to catch his would-be murderers off balance while the car was still in motion.
With a gun leveled directly at him, this would have been equally hopeless, except for the fact that Hardnose John Simmons was feeling his liquor. Each time the man spoke, his tongue got a little thicker. By all physical laws, the man’s rate of reaction in emergency should slow in direct proportion to his increasing difficulty with speech.
The snowfall, which had been light when they started, had steadily thickened. Also, here in relatively open country where there were no buildings to block the wind, gusts periodically tugged at the car in attempts to wrest it off the road. Because of the Thru-way, which paralleled it, Route Twenty was never heavily traveled along here, and tonight it was virtually deserted. They had met but one car going in the opposite direction since they had left Buffalo.
To suit driving conditions, Saxon had adjusted his speed from the legal limit of fifty to only about thirty, which gave him extra time to plan a course of action.
He had made up his mind before they were within a mile of the bridge. Having made it up, he concentrated on driving until the near end of the bridge’s stone railing hove into sight through the screen of falling snow.
“Pull over here,” Simmons ordered thickly.
Saxon took his foot from the accelerator. As the car started to slow, his right hand suddenly left the wheel and slashed sideways, palm down. The hard edge of his gloved hand caught John Simmons squarely above the bridge of the nose.
Saxon’s stomach convulsed against the expected blow of a bullet. Instead, there was a thump as Simmons’s gun hit the floor. The man slumped forward to crack his head against the windshield.
Saxon pushed the throttle to the floor and aimed the car at a point just to the right of the stone bridge railing.
Behind him in the rear seat he imagined that Farmer Benton was frantically clawing beneath his arm for his gun, but he didn’t have time to worry about that danger. By the time his front wheel hit the narrow, two-foot-high ridge of piled-up snow at the edge of the shoulder, the car was traveling at fifty miles an hour. It plowed right through, although the impact considerably slowed it, then surged forward again as the snow tires bit into the shallower snow covering the ground beyond the ridge.
It was only about fifteen yards from where the Plymouth left the road to the edge of the ravine. Saxon’s left hand hit the door handle and his shoulder simultaneously bucked open the door. He left the car in a headlong dive just before it ran over the lip of the ravine.
As he slid along on his face in a foot of soft snow, he heard the agonized shriek of bending and tearing metal from the bottom of the ravine. Inconsequentially he wondered if he had remembered to pay his insurance.
When he climbed shakily to his feet, the car that had been trailing them was parked on the shoulder with its headlights murkily illuminating the scene through the heavily falling snow. And ten yards away, between Saxon and the car, Farmer Benton was scrambling erect. Saxon hadn’t even been conscious of the man’s jumping from the rear of the Plymouth.
Benton spotted Saxon at the same moment. Jerking off his right glove, he shot his hand inside the front of his overcoat. The headlights of the parked car glinted on the barrel of the forty-five automatic as it came out.
Saxon took three running steps and slid down the steep bank of the ravine on the seat of his pants. Snow made it a frictionless ride. He sailed down as smoothly as if riding a child’s playground slide, landing on his feet at the bottom.
Chapter 16
The Plymouth had hit nose down and rolled over on its back. Both doors on the left side had been torn off and the other two had popped open. The headlights had been smashed, but both taillights still burned and the dome light, which was controlled automatically by the doors, was burning. These threw enough light to show that the snow was littered with shattered glass and bits of metal.
Saxon didn’t pause for a careful study of the scene, but he did give it one quick glance. Inside the front of the car he could see the huddled figure of Hardnose John Simmons.
He moved past the car through the foot-deep snow at a lumbering trot, heading away from the road. Despite the falling snow, there was enough moonlight to see where he was going.
Unfortunately there was also enough for him to be seen, too. He was perhaps ten yards beyond the wrecked car when a shot sounded from the top of the bank and a bullet swished past his ear. An instant later he rounded a curve in the ravine which hid him from the sniper.
Apparently there had been no water in the ravine at winter’s onset, for beneath the snow there wasn’t the smoothness of ice. The ground was rocky and uneven, making progress difficult. Twice as he hurried along, he stumbled over snags concealed by the snow and nearly fell.
Travel along the top of the bank would be easier, he realized. With this thought, Saxon started to look for a way up the opposite side. He spotted it almost instantly. Just ahead a section of the left side of the bank had fallen away some time in the past, leaving a gash which angled upward far less steeply than the original bank. It was an old landslide, for the bare branches of bushes which had grown there since thrust up through the snow.
Using the bushes as handholds. Saxon laboriously started to work his way up the bank. Halfway to the top he heard the blast of Benton’s forty-five and a geyser of snow leaped up three feet to one side.