“Hiding?”
“Yes,” I said, “so they can trap the kidnapers.”
George Ringley shrugged his shoulders.
“I guess it’s okay,” he said in a voice that showed tired resignation, for all of its attempt to make itself audible above the roar of the motors.
He sat back in the comfortable cushioned chair, looking down at the city and the farms of the countryside as it unwound below us like some huge panorama which was being run by clockwork. His eyes closed, and he started to nod his head.
He’d been pretty drunk and the booze was wearing off.
The nose of the plane was pointed toward the desert.
III
A Long-Eared Caddy
Few people know very much about the country between Palo Verde and Ogilby.
There’s supposed to be a road that runs through there. The maps vary. Some of them show the road as being impassable; some of them show it as an abandoned road; some of them show it as a road that traffic can get through on.
Over to the west is another road which runs between Niland and Ripley. In between is a big triangle of waste desert, with the Chocolate Mountains rearing their deeply washed sides in a shimmering atmosphere of intense heat.
Up toward the apex of the triangle, where the two so-called roads run together, is the city of Blythe, a few miles west of the Colorado River, and on the main highway which runs from Mecca to Phoenix.
Sally Ehlers met us at Blythe. She looked George Ringley over.
“I can see a resemblance to your father,” she said. “I knew him back ages ago when I was a little girl.”
George Ringley surveyed her with eyes that were keenly appreciative.
“Not so awfully long ago,” he said.
She nodded.
“So long ago I hate to think of it,” she said. “So you’ve come out to represent your father in re-locating the Chuckwalla claims, have you?”
George Ringley looked over at her and grinned.
“I guess that’s what I came out here for,” he said. “Bob Zane wouldn’t tell me. He only told me that he was acting under secret instructions from my father, and that what we were going to do was to be shrouded in the utmost secrecy.”
Sally Ehlers met my eyes.
“It’s a good thing you figured on keeping it secret, Uncle Bob,” she told me. “Big Bill Ordway knows what’s happening.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“He happened to remember about that big low-grade proposition that you and Pete Ringley brought in seven years ago. You remember, at the time you didn’t know just how much it was going to run. Then, when you found out that it would cost at least a dollar and a half a ton more to work than you could get out of it, you told it around as a joke — the big bonanza that fizzled out.”
“And Ordway remembered it?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “Ordway figures that you’ll be starting out to re-locate it. He hasn’t said anything, but I know what’s on his mind. He’s hanging around town, but he’s got an outfit all ready to start. He’s got an automobile all packed and provisioned, and then he’s got a string of burros so he can start on a minute’s notice.”
“But why do we have to keep it a secret from Father — what we’re doing, I mean?” George asked.
Sally Ehlers looked at me.
“You do whatever Bob Zane tells you,” she said, “and you’ll come out all right.”
“Has Bill Ordway got any men with him?” I asked.
“I think so,” she said, “but I don’t know who they are. But there are five saddle burros in the string, and three pack burros. All of them are fast walkers. He’s been holding them here in town ever since you left for the East.”
“Has he been trying to pump you at all, Sally?” I asked.
She nodded her head. “He’s been asking lots of questions. They seemed like aimless questions,” she said, “but I knew he was fishing around for something.”
“You think he remembers the whole thing then?”
“I’m sure he does.”
I looked about me at the blue vault of the cloudless sky, at the shimmering heat waves which radiated from the horizon. The Palo Verde Valley was a veritable oasis, with irrigation water transferring the desert soil into green fields of alfalfa, with huge shade trees breaking the direct rays of the fierce sun and casting welcome pools of deep shadow. But out beyond stretched the desert, a vast shimmering waste of sand, broken here and there by clumps of greasewood or sage. Out toward the Chocolate Mountains there was no travel. The desert waited with white-hot arms, and swallowed those who entered into a silence that was like that of the grave.
Occasionally, figures returned from the desert. Sometimes they did not return. When they did not return, the shifting sands of the cruel desert covered that which had happened. Occasionally, some prospector would blunder upon a pile of bleached bones. Sometimes trail-wise eyes would decipher that which had happened; sometimes there would be a scribbled note left by the hapless victim of the desert. More often there was nothing.
George Ringley’s tone was casually optimistic.
“Oh, well,” he said, “we’ve got nothing to worry about. We can go out there and make the location and get back inside of a day or two, can’t we, Zane?”
I shook my head.
Sally Ehlers smiled. Her eyes were black as chunks of wet obsidian and as expressionless as those of an Indian, but now there was a tolerant smile in them which even George Ringley could decipher.
“Oh, I know I’m green to the country,” he said, “but, after all, the desert isn’t like it used to be. I’ve read books about it. You can drive an automobile almost anywhere now.”
“Not where we’re going,” I told him.
“No?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “We’re going to go by the most direct method. We’re going to go right to the claims we’re going to locate. Then I’m going to come on back and record the location notices. You and Sally are going to stay on the ground and hold the claim against all comers.”
“You want me to go?” asked Sally.
I nodded.
“Particularly,” I told her.
Her eyes had a frowningly thoughtful expression.
“Just why?” she asked.
“Because,” I said, “you’re a notary public.”
She remained thoughtfully observant.
“Just the three of us?” she asked.
“Just the three of us,” I told her.
“When do we start?”
“Sometime within a day or two,” I told her. “I want George to get toughened up so he can stand the desert.”
“Oh, don’t mind me,” he said. “I play a pretty good game of golf now and can toddle around for thirty-six holes when I have to. I can tire the caddies out, if it comes to that.”
“The desert,” I told him, “isn’t like a golf course.”
He looked out at it and made a grimace.
“I’ll say it isn’t,” he said. “What does a man do for a bath out there?”
“You’ve got a perpetual shower bath,” I told him.
He looked at me uncomprehendingly.
“The perspiration,” I said, “streams out of your skin and is evaporated by the sun.”
He rubbed his hand over his moist forehead.
“It comes out faster with me,” he said.
“After you’ve been here awhile,” I told him, “you dry out and get so you don’t sweat all the time. You get accustomed to the desert.”
“Like a mummy?” he asked.
“Like a mummy,” I told him.
“I don’t think,” he said, “I’m going to like the desert.”
“You never can tell,” I told him, “until you get out in it. Then you either love it or you hate it. And if you hate it, your hatred is bred of fear, nine times out of ten.”