“Yes.”
“How many have you had?”
“I don’t think Mr. Breckinridge would like to have me tell you that.”
“Look, Dolores,” I told her, “we’re both of us working for Breckinridge. Now, this conversation is designed to keep relations harmonious and happy.”
“You’re afraid you might be poaching on Breckinridge’s preserves?”
“That’s one of the things I have in mind.”
She thought that over.
“I’d hate to do anything that would jeopardize our jobs,” I said. “They’re good jobs for both of us. Breckinridge isn’t a fool. He sent me down here on an experimental run, so to speak... Now, you’ve had other people before in my place. What happened to them?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “They didn’t come back. It was a one-time proposition.”
“Exactly,” I told her. “I don’t want to be a one-time proposition. I’ll see you tomorrow, Dolores?”
She stood hesitant for a moment, then said softly, “Good night, Donald,” and walked away.
Melita Doon’s cabin was already dark. She had turned in half an hour ago. Evidently she didn’t waste much time getting into bed. She wasn’t the sort who would have a long ritual of beauty treatment before turning out the light.
I took a good long look around my cabin, exploring it. There was a porch, a little sitting room, a bedroom and a bath, a large closet, a vented gas heater and a small back porch.
The architecture suggested that during the fall and winter there were cold mornings and evenings, and that at one time there had been two wood heating stoves — one in the little sitting room and one in the bedroom. That small back porch had been built to hold a supply of firewood. Then, with the advent of gas, vented radiant heaters had been put in and there was no longer any need for the back porch or the wood box.
The distance between my cabin and the one occupied by Melita Doon was about ten feet. Her bedroom window was opposite mine, but staggered m such a way that I couldn’t see into it except for a comer of the bedroom.
Melita was evidently not only in bed but was something of a fresh-air fiend, because the window was open, and the lace curtains had been looped to the side so there would be a circulation of the fresh desert air.
I undressed, showered, got into pajamas, crawled into bed and went to sleep.
I don’t know exactly how much time had elapsed when I awoke with a start. Some noise, or something, had awakened me.
A bright light was shining into one corner of my bedroom.
I jumped out of bed and had started for the bedroom door, before I realized that the source of the light was coming cater-corner from Melita Doon’s bedroom window.
By standing close against my window, I could look into the corner of her bedroom.
I saw a shadow moving, then another shadow. Very definitely there were two shadows.
I heard the voice of a man, a low-pitched insistent rumble. I heard a woman’s voice say something, short and fast. Then the man s voice again. This time in a peremptory order.
Suddenly Melita Doon came into the corner of the bedroom and into my line of vision.
She was wearing a thin nightie with some sort of filmy fluffy robe thrown over it that was apparently sheer to the point of being diaphanous.
A man’s hand reached out and clamped around her wrist.
I couldn’t see the man. All I could see was the hand but I saw a ring. It was a heavy gold ring. There was a ruby in the center. I saw the red fire of it.
I couldn’t swear to it in the brief glimpse I had, but it looked like the ring that had been worn earlier that evening by Helmann Bruno.
The Doon cabin was suddenly dark. The lights had been on for not more than two minutes after I awakened.
I gently raised my window but could hear no sound of voices. I tiptoed to the front door and left it open so that if Bruno left the place I would be able to see him and see how he was walking, whether rapidly and with a normal gait or whether he was still groping his way along with a cane.
After some ten minutes when he didn’t come out, I tiptoed out to my back door, stepped on the porch and looked over at the adjoining cottage.
There was a back door there that was exactly the same as the one on my cabin, and the porch arrangement was the same. It would have been readily possible for him to have left that cabin by the back door, then turned to the right instead of the left so that he would have circled away from my cabin and been concealed until after he had moved over to the service road.
The service road was unpaved. It was simply a dirt road that they used in delivering furniture or provisions to the different cabins. It wasn’t particularly dusty because the soil had a lot of decomposed granite in it, but it didn’t have a hard surface.
I dressed, slipped a small flashlight in my pocket and eased out of the back door of my cabin. I surreptitiously worked my way through the shadows until I came to the service road, then I took off my coat, used it to shield the beam of my flashlight, and checked the road for tracks.
Sure enough there were the tracks of a man’s shoes going down the road in the direction of the Bruno cabin.
I didn’t dare follow them all the way but I did follow them far enough to see that the man was taking good, healthy, normal strides.
There was one thing I couldn’t control and that was my own tracks. In a road of that sort, everything that moves leaves a track, and a skilled tracker can detect those thin indentations and follow them.
I could, of course, have eliminated my tracks by brushing my palms over them and smoothing the dirt, but that would have attracted even more attention than the tracks themselves.
Cowpunchers have to track saddle and pack horses in the morning in order to find out where the stock has strayed during the night. They have to track cattle. They not only become expert at reading tracks but at noticing anything that is out of the ordinary.
I turned around and walked back along the dirt road, making no effort to conceal my tracks. I doubted very much that Bruno would know someone had tried to track him but I knew that the first cowpuncher who rode down that road on horseback would notice the tracks. If he came along in a jeep or a pickup, he wouldn’t be so apt to pick them up. I’d probably be suspected of philandering. I had to take that chance.
I worked my way cautiously around the cabins, through the shadows, back to my own cabin and went to bed.
Chapter 5
Kramer had told me that they fed the horses around six o’clock started saddling up at a little after seven, grooming the horses and getting them ready for the morning ride which started around eight-thirty on normal days. On the two or three mornings a week when they had breakfast rides, the rides started earlier.
There was no breakfast ride scheduled, so I was up and down at the stables a little after six-thirty.
About six-forty-five the wranglers came out from the dining room where they had been having their breakfast.
Kramer looked at me in surprise. “What in the world are you doing?” he asked.
“The curse of a nervous disposition,” I told him. “No matter what time I go to bed at night I wake at daylight, and after I wake up I want to get up and get into action.
“If I’m in the city, I can sometimes control the impulse but out here where the air is pure, it seems positively wasteful to spend daylight hours in bed.”
He grinned and said, “I guess you’re right. I don’t know. I’ve never been able to find out. I’d like to try it sometime.
“Look, Lam, you’re a good enough rider so you can go out by yourself. If you want, I’ll throw a saddle on your horse and you can take him out and give him a little exercise.”