There we were, in the desert, fifteen miles from anywhere, with the damn horse tied nearby, watching, and she was asleep now, still naked, the sweat drying on her body!
It had been fantastic! In all my life I had never made love like that, in the open, under a steel blue sky, on sand, with the heat boiling up around me. Nothing had ever been this good before.
Now Rosita loved me, and she was asleep beside me-and the only thing wrong was that I couldn't escape the feeling that maybe she would want to kill me when she woke up!
I was travelling more than ninety miles an hour when it happened.
Cruising along the highway like that with the western countryside slipping by, it never occurred to me that anything could slow me down, much less make me stop. Of course, at that moment my mind wasn't on my driving.
I was thinking about Grace and remembering what had happened the night before. Some women might call it rape. The way everything turned out, some men might call it the same thing, too.
Anyway, I was remembering what happened last night just as we stepped into her apartment. We'd both been to the premiere and to the party afterwards at the Beverly Hilton; and now it was almost three o'clock in the morning. Up to that moment we'd been formal. Real formal.
I was wearing my tux, and Grace had on a beautiful ice-blue gown that was really molded to her. Her shoulders were bare and there was a slit up the left side of it so she could walk. If it hadn't been there, she would have had to hop around all night as though she were riding a Pogo stick. The dress was that tight on her. She had long blonde hair, light blue eyes, that cool and serene beauty that makes you gasp the first time you see her.
Except for taking her arm occasionally and helping her into the car, I'd never touched her. Don't think for a minute I hadn't wanted to, but all it took was one glance from her and an invisible shield seemed to drop down in front of her. Grace was engaged, but she'd gone to the premiere and the party with her agent because her fiance had been delayed getting back to Los Angeles. Her agent had asked me if I'd mind dropping her off on my way home. You bet I didn't mind, and here we were.
She slid the lush chinchilla coat off her shoulders and let it fall on the rug in the front room. "Come into the kitchen and fix us a drink, Clarke."
"I'd better run along," I said. "I'm leaving for Wyoming in about four hours. Vacation."
"And I'm getting married in about eleven hours," she said. "Don't be a party-pooper." She smiled when she said it.
"Lead the way." I slipped off my jacket and tossed it onto the couch.
She kicked off her shoes, and I followed her across the big carpeted room, through a hallway, and into the room that was evidently the kitchen. She knew the way but I didn't, and it was purely accidental, but my fingers punched her right in the breast. In the next second her hand had grabbed my arm and she'd slammed herself up against me.
In the darkness and with the surprise of it all, my mouth hit hers a little off-center. But I slid my lips onto hers real quick. Her body was still a little stiff and resistant in my arms, and her lovely lips were champagne-cold, but a second later they were wonderfully warm and wet and willing and all of her had willowed in tight.
Just as quickly she pulled her mouth away from mine and threw her head back. "No," she....
1
I was travelling more than ninety miles an hour when it happened.
Cruising along the highway like that with the western countryside slipping by, it never occurred to me that anything could slow me down, much less make me stop. Of course, at that moment my mind wasn't on my driving.
I was thinking about Grace and remembering what had happened the night before. Some women might call it rape. The way everything turned out, some men might call it the same thing, too.
Anyway, I was remembering what happened last night just as we stepped into her apartment. We'd both been to the premiere and to the party afterwards at the Beverly Hilton; and now it was almost three o'clock in the morning. Up to that moment we'd been formal. Real formal.
I was wearing my tux, and Grace had on a beautiful ice-blue gown that was really molded to her. Her shoulders were bare and there was a slit up the left side of it so she could walk. If it hadn't been there, she would have had to hop around all night as though she were riding a Pogo stick. The dress was that tight on her. She had long blonde hair, light blue eyes, that cool and serene beauty that makes you gasp the first time you see her.
Except for taking her arm occasionally and helping her into the car, I'd never touched her. Don't think for a minute I hadn't wanted to, but all it took was one glance from her and an invisible shield seemed to drop down in front of her. Grace was engaged, but she'd gone to the premiere and the party with her agent because her fiance had been delayed getting back to Los Angeles. Her agent had asked me if I'd mind dropping her off on my way home. You bet I didn't mind, and here we were.
She slid the lush chinchilla coat off her shoulders and let it fall on the rug in the front room. "Come into the kitchen and fix us a drink, Clarke."
"I'd better run along," I said. "I'm leaving for Wyoming in about four hours. Vacation."
"And I'm getting married in about eleven hours," she said. "Don't be a party-pooper." She smiled when she said it.
"Lead the way." I slipped off my jacket and tossed it onto the couch.
She kicked off her shoes, and I followed her across the big carpeted room, through a hallway, and into the room that was evidently the kitchen. She knew the way but I didn't, and it was purely accidental, but my fingers punched her right in the breast. In the next second her hand had grabbed my arm and she'd slammed herself up against me.
In the darkness and with the surprise of it all, my mouth hit hers a little off-center. But I slid my lips onto hers real quick. Her body was still a little stiff and resistant in my arms, and her lovely lips were champagne-cold, but a second later they were wonderfully warm and wet .and willing and all of her had willowed in tight.
Just as quickly she pulled her mouth away from mine and threw her head back. "No," she said, "no." She kept repeating the same word while I held her close and kissed the warm perfumed hollow of her shoulder.
The next moment she'd reached around me and flicked on the light.-She was still shaking her head, squirming her shoulders, and her eyes were closed. And she was saying 'no, no', pretty regular. That's what she was saying all right: but the lower part of her that was tight against me was telling me the exact opposite. You know which part I listened to.
I relaxed my arms a bit finally, and she slipped away from me, moving back a step. I shoved the fingertips of both hands into the hot front of that lovely dress, and that really started her squirming and fighting. I held on tightly and let it rip. I don't know how long it had taken her to get into that dress, but you can be sure I set a record getting her out of it. It tore beautifully right down the front and with no shoulder straps holding it up, gravity took care of the rest.
Now she was completely nude, an exciting blonde goddess, and her crown was a little diamond-studded tiara in her hair. Her pedestal was the kitchen floor with the ripped dress crumpled in folds at her feet, her background was the refrigreator, and her spotlight was the overhead kitchen light.
There was a fierce and smoldering look in her eyes as the tip of her tongue probed erratically at the puffed red lips. She was breathing heavily, the tips of her lush, hard-nippled breasts surging forward and upward with each intake of 'breath. All of her was wonderfully soft and pink, delicately curved at the waist, with the hips rounded classically and tapering downward to the long perfect legs.
This time when I went for her she almost knocked me down, meeting me halfway. She tore the buttons off my shirt getting her hands and arms inside of it, and when she felt my bare skin her fingernails dug and grabbed as though she were trying to rip me to pieces.
I put her off just long enough to get out of my clothes and then in the center of the kitchen we came together now, her scalding and delicious body writhing against the front of me while we held each tightly and our mouths became locked with our tongues beating each other and then finally we were using our teeth, biting each other on the lips, inside the lips, each jolt of pain sending the blood rocketing through my veins and building the pressure inside of me.
"Come with me," she murmured huskily, and she stepped away, but holding my hand and leading me quickly into the front room.
When she got to the chinchilla she kicked it a couple of times so that the furside was outside and then settled onto it, still holding onto my hand and pulling me downward with her. My knees and toes and elbows came in contact with her wealth and softness.
She was very eager, and urgently came forward to meet me more than halfway again, and when we'd met and united all of her enveloped me completely with her arms and legs and golden passion in a long and trembling moment. And then I was caught up in her perfume and the agonizing tightness that was both stimulating and luxurious. It was as though the most exciting drug had taken control of me and now it was moving me through the world of her millions and urging me to explore the source of her wealth, the golden mine.
I moved forward through the glorious passageway, finding that it lead nowhere, pulled back and started forward again, finding this time that the roofs and sides were coated with a million drops of honey dew that burst like rockets as I approached and showered me with their sweetness and ecstasy, and then as I continued I discovered I was again in a blind shaft, retreated and started anew.
From far off I heard her calling my name and it seemed as though she were somewhere ahead of me although I couldn't see her, and now the heat had begun, first the warmth that suddenly seemed to have erupted into open flames and I was being seared and restricted by the wonderful closeness.
There was uncontrollable urgency now to get to the very end, to get to her the things that her cries were demanding; and I began to scramble and power my way forward, viciously and recklessly and the moment I began everything became more excruciating in its wonderment.
The world began to shift and gyrate under me, swaying and lashing at my progress and I was continually swept up in wracking shudders that erupted and I was caught in deluges of the cloying, searing honey, flecked with gold, until I boomed through the last constricting passageway and then I found her and kept repeating her name.
The rumbling and thundering had begun inside me now to match all that which was going on around me, and suddenly from afar I became aware that our world was turning into one massive explosion and we clung to each other and held tightly and fought to the very last moment until the entire enclosure had crumpled around us, and when the mist and wonderful hues had disappeared and the adventure had ended, I glanced downward and saw that her lovely face was in repose, with her eyelashes resting beautifully on her cheekbones and all I could do was to say "Grace."
And that's what I'd been thinking about while I was rolling down the highway at ninety miles an hour. One moment I'd been wondering whether she'd tack the chinchilla onto the wall as a hunter might put up a trophy, and the next second my thoughts jumped back to the present and I was riding the brake and easing the car over to the shoulder of the highway.
When it started it had sounded like a pigeon fluttering around the motor and trying to get out from under the hood. When I got out and peeked inside I found the fan belt had broken. I'd gone through a small town about twenty miles back, and there was nothing around but one farm after another.
I'd never had a fan belt break before, and I wasn't carrying a spare in the car. Most other people don't carry one in their cars either, so I knew it wouldn't do me much good to flag down any of the cars that were going by. The oil on the highway was sticky from the heat, even though it was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon. Even if I lost an hour getting a new fan belt, I could still make it to the Tetons that night. My best bet was to get to a phone and call a garage.
"That's what I thought. But as it turned out, the broken fan belt was the thing that started off the whole mess. I should have pushed, pulled, or lugged the car out of there on my back anything to get away in a hurry. But I didn't. At the moment everything seemed peaceful enough.
Up the highway was a small driveway, and set in about two hundred yards was a big red barn, a couple of weather-beaten sheds, and a corral. Off to the right was a grove of cottonwoods. I could barely distinguish the farm house sitting in their shade. Two wires from the telephone line paralleling the highway led towards the house. I figured if I followed them I'd find a phone.
There was a car coming along the highway at the moment, and so I pressed up against my car and waited for it to pass before I crossed the road. The guy driving it stared at me as he passed, and I stared right back. He looked pretty prosperous and so did his car, except for the strip of chrome missing along the left side. As I crossed the highway and headed for the driveway I heard a screech of tires. The guy had just missed running off the highway, looking back at me. Maybe that was the way he'd lost the chrome the other time, watching somebody else while he was driving.
There were a few chickens and a cat in the yard, and over the top pole of the corral a sorrel horse watched me walk up to the front door of the farmhouse. Except for the drone of a tractor coming somewhere behind the barn, everything seemed pretty quiet. Maybe all the hands were out in the fields.
I rapped on the screen door and hoped the lady of the house wasn't in the garden. Nothing happened. I rattled the screen door this time, noting that it wasn't latched from the inside. The inner door was open. There was nothing to prevent me from going in and making my phone call. But I didn't want to do that, not even out West where the latch string is always out.
I decided to go out and talk to the man on the tractor. Cutting through the yard, I passed a small garden cultivator and a cistern. It had a concrete top about thirty feet in diameter, and in the center was a built-up wooden box about five feet square and three feet high. There was a galvanized bucket and waslitub sitting next to it. A tomcat was sitting there, too, but he was watching some sparrows in the shrubs near the outhouse.
Coming around the barn I saw the tractor that was mowing a field of alfalfa. I waited until the man had completed his circle and returned to where I was standing.
He stopped the tractor, backed it up a foot, and after he'd set the throttle, he hopped to the ground. He shoved his right hand between his knees and used them to pull off the leather glove. He didn't have a glove on the left hand. In fact, he didn't have a hand, just a bare shiny hook.
He squinted at me under the brim of his straw hat and waited for me to open the meeting.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi," he said, and then his right hand got real busy. It plucked a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth. Then it picked a match out of the same pocket. Its thumbnail set it on fire, touched the tip of the cigarette; and then the hand sent the match buzzing off in a big arc. Now we were evidently ready for the first speaker.
I took the floor. "I broke my fan belt outside your house. I thought I could call a garage from the house but nobody's home."
He shot me a questioning glance. "There isn't?"
"No."
"She's probably visiting her sister."
"Well, maybe I could call from the house anyway."
"The phone's out of order," he said. "What kind of car are you driving?"
When I told him he shook his head. "The fan belt I've got in the shop won't fit it."
"Well, I'll have to look for another phone."
"That's right," he said. "Nearest one is on her sister's place." His thumb pointed westward.
I saw the house in the distance. "It's quite a way."
"Only about three quarters of a mile if you cut across the fields. But go back out the highway and follow it. Easier walking."
I started walking. The sun was beating down and that little exertion getting back to the car sent the sweat running down my face. Before I started walking that three-quarters of a mile I decided to take one more look at my car. Maybe I could drive it that short distance.
I had my head stuck under the hood when I heard another car stop. When I straightened up I saw the shiny pickup truck, and I wanted to kiss the guy for stopping.
"Can I be of any help?" He was middle-aged, and he looked neat and friendly.
"Yes," I said, and as he pulled over and parked in front of me I was certain he could solve any problem. As soon as I explained what had happened he said, "I have a fan belt at home. I'll tow you there and the hired man can put it on your car in no time."
He towed me up the highway, and when we passed the house the guy on the tractor had pointed to me, I felt like an aristocrat. After a few more miles he towed me into a driveway and we parked near a freshly-painted wooden granary.
When the hired man went to work on my car my benefactor asked, "How about some lemonade while you're waiting?"
I couldn't have spit if I'd wanted to. I was that dry. I grinned and we headed for the house.
"Betty's at the club this afternoon," he confided, "but I know where she keeps it."
It was cool inside the house. "By the way," he suddenly said, "I'm Bill Cook."
"Able," I said. "Clarke-Able."
We sipped lemonade and chatted about the heat and the crops, and some politics. I told him I was on a vacation and that I couldn't wait to get in some trout fishing. I mentioned my con cern when the fan belt broke and not finding anybody at the house, and learning from the man with the hook that the phone didn't work.
Then he told me about the farms being under irrigation, the land being the best in the country, and by that time the hired man had fixed my car.
I offered to pay for the fan belt and the work done by the hired man, but neither one would hear of it. So I thanked them both and got into my car.
I stuck my hand out the window. "So long, Bill, I hops I can do something for you some day."
He grinned. "Maybe you can."
As I drove out the driveway I glanced into the mirror and I saw him climbing into the pickup. For a moment I had the feeling I'd seen Bill Cook somewhere before.
2
I turned onto the highway and I thought no more about him, only about the time I'd lost.
After about five minutes I started feeling sick. It didn't take long for me to figure out the reason I had been hot, and the lemonade had been ice cold, and I'd swilled it like a pig.
The sun was so low it was hitting me in the face through the glass by that time, and I nearly missed, but at the last minute I saw the roadhouse with the motel cabins in the back. I whipped off the highway and skidded to a stop beside the gasoline pumps.
By the time I came out of the men's room, I was feeling a little better, and the attendant had dumped some gas into my car and added a few new streaks to my windshield. Standing in the shade of the canopy I found myself looking at a row of cabins shaded by the poplars. Instead of driving on I decided to get an early start in the morning.
When somebody flipped on the GRANADA INN neon over the roadhouse, I asked the attendant if he had a vacant cabin. He told me to see the boss inside.
Coming out of the bright sun I couldn't see anything inside momentarily, but I heard the rattle of pots and pans from the kitchen. Then I saw a man in a white coat behind the bar. There was a juke box and a number of small tables strung along one wall. A woman was sitting at one of them working at a stack of menus.
She glanced up as I walked towards her. Now the neon outside made a lot of sense. She wore huaraches, a flame-colored skirt, and a blouse that dipped low in the front.
I said, "I'm looking for the boss."
She placed a slender hand at the top of the blouse, obstructing a fine view. "You won't find him in there."
"Ole," I said softly. There was just a bit of an accent to her words; and her voice was low and sexy. "Where would I find him, then?"
She put the last menu on the stack and stood up. Through the long lashes I saw that her eyes were green. "You have found him." A dimple appeared near the right side of her mouth.
"I should have known," I said. "All bosses have dimples like that where I come from."
"Where do you come from?"
"The Pampas."
She came back with a paragraph of Spanish words, and then she arched an eyebrow and waited for my answer.
I said, "If that means you've got a vacant cabin for the night, I'll take it."
After I'd gotten settled in number four I lingered long in the shower. By that time I was feeling as though I'd never drunk a gallon of cold lemonade. And I was as hungry as a threshing hand.
When I entered the roadhouse again a number of people were already having dinner at the tables. I slid onto a bar stool and ordered a Scotch and water from the bartender.
She came out of the kitchen a few minutes later, and when she saw me she stopped at my end of the bar. "Spending lots of money? That's good."
"You're greedy," I said.
"No, I'm a businesswoman." The dimple started to show again but abruptly it disappeared as the front door opened.
I glanced around and saw the Highway Patrolman entering, and he was practically blocking the entire doorway out. He was that big. Everyone in the place had stopped eating and they watched him come over to the bar.
"Hi, Rosita," he said.
She nodded curtly. "How are you, Brady?"
He was standing next to me now and I could have flipped cigarette ashes on the .45 in his holster. "I'm fine," he said.
"Rosita, do you have a man named Clarke Able registered here?"
You've got to admit it, sometimes the Law is amazing-the way they can get names mixed up, mispronounce, and things like that.
"He's driving the car with the California license," Brady added:
I had another sip and then set down my glass. Rosita was watching me, and I thought she seemed a bit disappointed.
The patrolman wasn't. Eagerly he asked me, "Are you Clarke Able?"
I nodded.
"Did you stop at the Clutch place this afternoon?"
"I don't know. I'm just passing through."
"But you stopped at Cook's place and got your fan belt fixed."
I nodded. So what did he want, a receipt for the work done?
"I wonder if you'd mind coming with me, Mr. Able." He stepped back so I'd have plenty room to get off the bar stool.
"Yes, I'd mind," I said.
He didn't like that. "Then I guess you'll have to anyway."
"Is this an arrest?"
He began putting on his leather gloves. "We just want to ask a few questions."
"About what?"
"You'll find out when we get there."
"Where are we going?"
"Back to the Clutch place." He had his gloves on. "Ready?"
I wasn't. I never am when it comes to ac companying the Law somewhere. Not that I'm a criminal-I hadn't even gotten a traffic ticket in the last three years.
"Save me a nice steak, Rosita," I said. "About a foot thick and the size of an acre."
"I will," she said.
The people at the tables were so absorbed in the little drama they were letting their food get cold. I gave them an Oscar performance. On the way out I let my cigarette droop from my mouth and shuffled my feet. Some day this Patrolman was going to thank me for making him look this good.
He asked me to follow him and minutes later I was right back where I'd started with the broken fan belt. This time there was more activity out in the yard than a box social.
I didn't recognize anyone in the group except the man with the hook, and Cook. The patrolman made certain I'd met the right people. He took me inside where it was real exclusive.
"This is Clarke Able, Sheriff."
He was a bald headed man with a bad complexion and a skinny neck. Paunchy, about five feet tall. A Benedictine bottle with a star.
"Sit down," he rasped.
I slid into one of the dining room chairs and he took another one. The patrolman swung a leg over the top of an easy chair, settled into it and began taking off his gloves.
Just to get friendly, I guess, the sheriff asked me to tell him something about myself. Briefly, that is.
Briefly, I did. Farm boy who moved to the big city, with a short period as a private investigator, then into public relations. Living in Los Angeles and presently on vacation.
The sheriff nodded. Had I stopped at the Clutch place that afternoon?
I said, "You know I did, otherwise you wouldn't have brought me here. Now you tell me why you've brought me here."
He glanced at the patrolman and didn't get any help. Finally he said, "Somebody died here-under unusual circumstances. We want to be sure it wasn't murder."
"Well," I said.
He asked, "Would you tell me exactly what you did and saw when you stopped here?"
I gave it all to him, just exactly the way it happened. He got to his feet then and said, 'Thanks for dropping in." He shoved out his hand.
"What happened?" I asked.
He pondered about it for a moment and then he replied, "Molly Clutch fell into the cistern sometime this afternoon. She drowned. We just want to be sure she wasn't pushed."
I remembered the concrete cistern top with the square wooden box in the center, and the fact that no one had been at the house. I must have been walking over a corpse that afternoon and didn't know it.
The patrolman stayed inside and I went outside. I said 'Hi' to Bill Cook, and then I walked over to the man with the hook.
"My condolences," I said. "I'm sorry to hear about your wife."
"I ain't her husband."
I was getting ready to apologize when a lit tie old lady took my arm. "Mr. Able," she said, "this is Mr. Rider." She peered up at me. "Guy works for my daughter and her husband."
Guy grunted something and put out his hand. Good thing he didn't grunt when we shook because as it was he damned near crushed my hand.
"Sorry I goofed, Guy."
"It's okay," he said.
"May I walk to the car with you?" the old lady asked.
"I think I can find it by myself. But thanks anyway."
She began moving me along. Give her credit, she must have been about sixty-five but she was very strong. She didn't let go of my arm until we got to my car.
"I'm Molly Clutch's mother," she said. "Beaulah Kress."
There was just enough light that I could see her. She wore a faded summer dress and a green faded half-apron. Her snow white hair was coiled in a bun at the nape of her neck. She had deep lines on her forehead. Her many years must have been difficult.
"I never met your daughter," I said, "but I'm sorry about it."
She sniffed. Only once. "I can take death, because that's inevitable. But not murder."
I said, "The sheriff said she fell into the cistern."
"He would, and he will-it's less work for him." Looking up at me she said, "I need your help, Mr. Able."
"Help?" I shook my head. "I'm not much of a haying hand, Mrs. Kress."
"Not for that, we've got all we need. I want you to find out who killed my daughter."
It was time for a cigarette. "Isn't that the sheriff's job?"
"That Oscar Bugle," she snorted. "He wouldn't call it murder if somebody shoved his nose in it. Oh, he's nice all right, but he just hadn't got the drive you need for the job."
"What makes you think I have? I'm no policeman."
She stepped closer and lowered her voice. "But you're experienced in things like that. You were a private investigator."
I flicked the ashes off my cigarette. Grandma had pretty big ears.
"At least you're honest about it."
"I'm fair and honest in everything I do. Mr. Able. I guess that's why I want a fair and honest investigation of Molly's death."
She was easy to figure. She was probably widowed, loved her daughter more than she cared to admit, and now that she was gone the mother couldn't accept the fact. Her children just didn't die that young. It had to be murder.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Kress, but I'm on vacation. Tell the sheriff what you want done, and I'm sure he'll work at it."
Shi shook her head. "You don't know him, but I do."
I opened the car door. "Goodbye, Mrs. Kress." I glanced in the mirror as I drove away. She stayed in the yard until I reached the end of the driveway and turned onto the highway.
By the time I got back to the Granada Inn the place was pretty deserted. Just a couple of young kids sitting in one corner, drinking a coke and listening to the juke box.
Rosita was standing at the bar. "Should I kill that cow for you now?"
"Quickly," I said. "I'm starved."
She nodded and hurried into the kitchen. A moment later she came back out again and saw the bartender making my Scotch and soda.
"On the house." She told him.
He nodded and went back to reading his paper at the other end of the bar. "Thanks," I told her. "Where's your drink?"
"I never drink on duty."
"None of your business." Her dimple started acting up again. "You're getting fresh french fries instead of a baked potato."
"Okay," I said.
When she put her arms onto the bar and leaned forward, I took a good look into her blouse. Just to be sure the boss wasn't hiding in there after all. I couldn't see him, only the top of the valley between the dusky mounds.
"So Molly Clutch fell into the well," she said thoughtfully.
I shook my head. "No, it was a cistern. How did you know?"
She flicked her glance to the phone on the wall. "Party line. Sometimes the phone is busy when you try to use it."
"That's life," I said.
"Who pushed her?" she asked.
"The wild Matador," I said. "When he came out to look over the bulls he found a hollylock over Molly's ear. That was all the Matador need ed, but when Molly saw his pics and whistled he shoved her into the cistern. But with finesse and feeling!."
"Carramba!" Rosita said. "I would like to meet a matador like that."
I was getting ready to show her my cape work when some tourist came in looking for a cabin. By the time Rosita had taken care of him and a couple of others, I'd finished my steak.
I was having my coffee when she came over to my table. I complimented her on the dinner and asked her to sit down.
"Thank you." She took the drink the bartender brought over to her. On his way back to the bar he dropped a coin into the juke box and punched a couple of numbers.
"Off duty now, Rosita?"
She nodded. "No more food in the kitchen. No more vacancies."
"Then let's have a fiesta."
She laughed. "I like you. You make me laugh, and that's good."
"Things get a little dull around here?"
She nodded and sipped her drink.
"Then why don't you leave?"
She shrugged. "Maybe I will some time."
I had the bartender bring me another drink, and then I asked Rosita to dance with me. She was hot and smelled good and we danced close.
I liked it. So did she.
3
Rosita told me she was the daughter of a Mexican sugar beet worker, and that she used to live with ten brothers and sisters in this area, and in an old box car. When she was sixteen she ran away from home and eventually got down to Tijuana. She married a Mexican policeman but he got killed and she was a widow with a memory. She worked in Los Angeles for a while, saved a little money, and then came back here to see her folks.
The people her folks had worked for owned the cabins and the roadhouse, and they asked Rosita to manage it for them. One of the sons eventually inherited it. When he shipped out for Viet Nam he told her she'd get the property if he didn't come back. He was killed, and now she owned it.
We'd had several drinks by that time; and I asked her to dance with me again. The bartender was still on duty but he was working a crossword puzzle; and the rest of the place was now deserted. We danced slow and we danced close, and with our hips shoved forward and pressing inti each other I felt the violent buildup down below until it was beginning to hurt. She had her mouth close to my ear and her breath was ragged and coming fast, and every once in a while she'd bite the lobe of my ear and of course that made everything worse than before.
Then who should stroll in but Mr. Guy Rider.
Rosita hissed under her breath, pushed me away, and went over to greet him.
Guy was ready to do the town, or whatever it is they do on the farm when the chores are done and it's excitement time. He had on front ier pants, a gabardine shirt, and a gloved hand instead of the hook. He didn't wear a hat and through the sparse hair on the top of his head his skin was about six shades lighter than the tan on his face. And right now his face was grim. You could practically hear the crackling of the flames that flickered in his eyes.
"How are you, Guy?" Rosita was asking. A little nervously she glanced at me. "This is Mr. Able."
"We met," he said. His glance was quick and cold. "Didn't you expect me tonight, Rosita?"
"Yes," she said, "I was waiting for you."
What a way to wait for a boy friend, but he bought it because she took his arm, pressed up against him and brought him over to the table. Over her shoulder she told the bartender to bring a round of drinks.
Things were a bit strained. Guy must have had a couple of drinks already, and he put away the shot of bourbon the moment it was delivered. Rosita and I were trying to get a little chatter going, but he just sat and scowled.
Finally I stood up.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"I was going to the men's room," I said, "but on second thought I think I'll go to bed."
"Didn't the sheriff tell you, you could leave?"
"He did."
"Then why are you still hanging around here?"
"Guy," Rosita interrupted, "can I get you another drink?"
He shrugged her hand aside. Roughly.
"Look," I said, "I don't think it's any of your business why I'm still hanging around here."
He jumped to his feet. "You're a smart son of a bitch, aren't you?" Rosita stood up and tried to restrain him but he shoved her aside. "Maybe you shoved Molly in, just so you could laugh about it."
"Go to hell," I told him.
His face got darker. I saw the fist forming up and starting my way.
The pain was so tremendous in my fist when I hit him I was afraid I'd broken it. But he went down. And he stayed down.
"Good night, Rosita," I said. Then I went out the door and went to bed.
My hand pained for a while and I had trouble getting to sleep, but finally things got a little better and I dropped off.
Then I was suddenly wide awake again. Ly-fing on my back, I lay quietly, staring up into the darkness and wondering what it was that had awakened me and how long I'd been asleep.
There wasn't a sound in the cabin, but then I heard a faint click, as though the door was being eased shut. It must have been the breeze from the door opening that had awakened me.
I remained motionless, scarcely breathing, knowing there was somebody else in my cabin. The only bright spot was the night coming through the window next to the door. I held my breath, and then a moment later I heard the squeak of the floor as the foot eased down on it.
I'd snaplocked the door from the inside; and whoever was inside now had used a key. And then in one second everything was clear.
Very clear.
I saw Rosita's silhouette passing in front of the window. And I saw the knife blade flicker as it came down and she dove at me. I lunged for her arm and caught her wrist but the blade nicked my forearm. With the other arm I grabbed her and pulled her down on top of me.
"I'll kill you," she hissed, and then she was talking in Spanish and fighting my grip on her arm. She had the same blouse on she'd been wearing that evening and as I held her close to my chest and felt her hot breath on my face and heard something rip. Twice, I didn't care if all her clothes fell off, and I only wanted to keep that knife from slicing me open.
But she was wild as a jumping bean and very strong for a woman. With my right arm holding her tightly against me my left one was fighting to control her hand with the knife. And then the damndest thing happened.
There was a loud ripping sound again and her hard, hot breast tumbled out of that blouse as though it had been shot from a cannon. Into my face. I opened my mouth and the nipple popped right in. So I started chewing on it as though it were a grape, not too hard but hard enough and using my tongue the way you dig the seeds out of one of those Concords. Mind you, this is all going on while we're still fighting for that knife that's flicking around in the dark like a pesky mosquito.
And then I felt the knife skid along my forearm and a second later I heard it hit the floor. She tore her wrist out of my fingers. I expected to get the nails from that hand in my face. Instead she ripped the blouse off the other shoulder and then I had two breasts shoved against my face. Then she was moaning and twisting and talking about 'Toro' and the nails were slicing me. Not my face, but my bade.
I tore the single button off the side of her skirt and started digging for the zipper. Her flesh was as hot as a griddle, and she was flopping around on top of me as though we were being burned by fire. Zippers are normally fine, but you've got to remain fairly motionless for them to work.
I shoved three fingers inside the waist of her skirt and I cut two of them coming down the zipper track. But I didn't stop there. One more swipe and I'd split the seam down the side as though my fingers were slicing water. She didn't have any clothes on underneath. When I flopped her off me and onto her back, the skirt fell away as though it were lace.
All that exertion left us both fighting to catch our breath, and during the few moments that she was motionless I sucked in air and then moved so that I could work on the nipples again. That set her off even worse than before, and she was grabbing at me and holding me tightly and helping me and when we came together finally it felt as though I'd entered a pit of roaring flames.
Fast it began and fast it ended with violent eruptions and seething heights, and when it was all over we were stuck together by the heat and dampness as though we'd been welded.
She was stroking my hair now and she was soft as a kitten. "Carramba," she said, "that was a fiesta."
She twisted like a cat that's relaxed and enjoying the sun beating down on its belly, stroking me here and there and finally we rested with a cigarette.
When I'd gotten out of bed I practically stepped on her weapon. It was a butcher knife. I eased it under the bed with my toes, waiting for a reaction from her, but she evidently didn't hear it, or she didn't care.
Now after we'd smoked for a while I asked, "Why did you come after me with the butcher knife?"
After a moment she said, "I was going to kfll you."
"Why?"
"Because you told the sheriff that Guy pushed Molly into the cistern." She sat up and glared at me. "That's a lie! I kill liars!"
That was loyalty for you. "What makes you so sure he didn't?"
"Because I know him."
"All your life?"
"No. Almost a year."
"And you were with Guy all afternoon yesterday. That's why you can swear he didn't have the tractor, walk to the house, and push her in."
"He didn't do it!"
I suddenly remembered that I hadn't even told the sheriff to look to Guy, and that Guy must have told that lie to Rosita. Not only that, I was unconsciously trying to figure out who might have shoved Molly into the cistern. What in hell was I getting involved for?
Rosita was saying how, "No, I am not sure about all those things. But I am sure Guy didn't do it."
"You think a lot of him. don't you?"
"Yes. But it is not like it was with Mike the one that was killed in Viet Nam. And it is not like it is with you." Her fingers began tugging at the hair on my chest. "I do not do this with Guy, or others. I am not like that."
Okay, I thought, if that's what you want to tell me. She didn't say anything else. Her fingers continued to fiddle with my chest in a sort of detached way.
"Where is Guy from?"
Somewhere around Chicago."
"How did he lose his hand?"
"A hunting accident."
Her hand had begun to creep down to my stomach and when she did that I forgot about Guy and everything else except that I had to touch her again and have her again.
Wordlessly we began stroking each other and the buildup came fast and this time we took our time, and she was very passionate and delicious in her movements and murmurs, and when the time came for the completeness, it formed up huge and peaked and remained there long until I was swept up in the finality, to then sink down into the exquisite softness that was Rosita and her perfume and the bottomless pit of sleep.
It was after eight before I finally awoke, and Rosita was gone. I had a big breakfast and I didn't see her until I was easing the car away from the cabin.
"Have a good trip, Clarke."
I nodded. "Thanks Rosita."
"Will you come back this way on your trip home? For another fiesta?"
I shrugged. "One never knows." Then I drove out and turned onto the highway.
After about fifteen minutes I glanced into the mirror. The highway patrolman was driving as though he was stuck to my rear bumper. I glanced at the speedometer and saw that he had me cold. He must have noticed me getting a bit nervous because he gave me the light. I pulled over to the shoulder and stopped.
It was the big guy again, and when he came up to my car he wasn't taking off his gloves. I waited for him to pull out his book and write me up.
"Damned thing really rolls, doesn't it?" he asked.
I nodded. What can you say at a time like that?
"I've got to bring you back with me, Mr. Able."
"Can't you just write the ticket? I'll send you a check."
He shook his head. "It isn't that. The Sheriff thinks he's got a red hot clue in the Clutch drowning."
Just a dirty word with an "Oh" in front of it. That's all I said.
"I don't blame you." He shrugged. "But you know the sheriff." He walked back to his car.
This time he led me to another farmhouse. It was the one next to the Clutch place, the one Guy had recommended I walk to. The house was small and white, the farmyard like any other one.
Well, not quite. This one had something extra.
I slammed the car door shut and then looked her over. Her hair was cropped short, almost black, but her legs were long and slender as a colt's. Her shorts were white, and so was the halter. And the latter was having a tough time holding in a pair of tremendous breasts.
One hand was carrying a towel, and the other was holding a magazine. She was walking in the general direction of the machine shed, but now she stopped and looked at me through a pair of big sunglasses. Then she turned away, and with her fanny doing amazing things as she walked she disappeared from sight.
Damn, the sun was hot.
When I glanced at the patrolman I saw that he was moping his brow. "Sheriff's inside," he said. "I'd better be running along."
I walked up to the front door as the patrolman drove away, and I saw Beaulah Kress beaming as she opened it for me.
"Mr. Able," she said, "please come in."
4
While Beulah Kress was bringing me into her house she said, "I'm so glad they caught up with you, because Oscar, here, has a few things to ask you."
The sheriff was seated on the couch, and there was a pitcher of something' red and two glasses on the coffee table in front of him.
He said, "Hello again, Mr. Able."
"Hi, Sheriff."
"Sit right down there beside Oscar," Beullah urged. "Can I pour you a glass of Kool-Aid?"
I sat down and shook my head.
"It's ice cold, Mr. Able."
"No thanks." After that stuff I'd drunk yesterday I was on the wagon.
"Maybe a cup of coffee?"
"All right," I said.
On her way out of the room she said, "You go right ahead, Oscar, while I heat up the coffee."
Oscar fidgeted a little and then he asked, "Could you go through your story again, Mr. Able-from the time your fan belt broke until you were towed away?"
This was for the birds. "You know I can't repeat the story word for word."
"I don't expect you to. I just want to check on something."
I had the urge to tell him where he could go. And then I got myself under control. If I made it good, maybe this time I'd definitely be on my way. And so I gave it to him again.
When I'd finished he asked me a couple of stupid questions; but I answered them and he kept nodding his head.
Finally when I was finished I asked, "So what does that prove?"
He acted as though he couldn't wait to answer. "It proves that you were at the house a bout the same time that Molly Clutch died."
"Well, I didn't hear the splash, if that's what you want to know."
He started to write that down and then caught himself. Beulah returned at the moment and set a cup of coffee, cream and sugar, in front of me.
"There you are, Mr. Able," she said. "Oscar, more Kool-Aid?"
He shook his head. He put away his note book and stood up. "I'd better be going. I've got a lot of things to do."
He glanced at her, at me, back at Beulah again, and then he held on me. "I'm going to ask you to stick around for a while, Mr. Able, until I get things straightened out a bit." Then he added weakly, "It'll just be for a couple of days."
I jumped on my feet and he stepped back a pace. "I'm on vacation, Sheriff. And I'm not a suspect. You can't keep me around here just to keep asking stupid little questions."
He pulled himself up, looking like a Bantam rooster. "I'm the sheriff of this county, and if I have to lock you up to keep you here I will." Then he tried to smile. "But I'd hoped you might like to stay here for a while. No restrictions. And you might enjoy yourself."
Enjoy myself. Like having cocktails with a horse, or shooting a little golf with a foursome of cows. Great.
Then Beulah spoke up. Really, it won't be so bad, Mr. Able. You could even stay here. There's a nice spare bedroom, and I cook reason ably well."
She was too eager. She was too well-prepared for any argument. Everything was suddenly clear. She'd gotten to the sheriff, and the two of them had fixed everything. She wanted my help in checking out the murder and Oscar had no pride. He'd even appreciate help with his sex problem.
I felt the anger beating at my temples because I was getting screwed by the two of them, and I whirled about ready to let her know how I felt. She was standing there, quite brave and erect, but the tears were in her eyes, and there were little wet streaks on the wrinkled cheeks.
It must have hurt her to get the sheriff to pull this deal on me.
Quietly she said, "Why don't you let Mr. Able go, Oscar? I think he'd rather.
The sheriff's glance went everywhere but to me. "Well, all right, if that's what you want, Beulah."
"Forget it," I said. "When you want me you can find me at the Granada Inn. I guess I can take it for a couple of days."
"Have your coffee," Beulah said, "before it gets cold."
I heard a door closing behind me and when I glanced about I saw that the sheriff had gone.
"Mrs. Kress," I said, "you're obviously convinced that your daughter was murdered."
"Call me Beulah," she said. "I know Molly was killed."
"All right, Beulah. There has to be a motive then and a suspect."
"There are all of those things," she said defiantly.
I suddenly realized I was believing her, and more than that, my pulse had quickened when I found myself already contemplating how I'd go about to try to find the truth. It had been years since I'd gone that route, but because I had to stick around anyway the project would prevent my getting bored.
She was watching me closely. "Do you want to do-what I asked you last night?"
"I don't want to insult the sheriff, Beulah. I don't want to make him look bad."
"You won't. I know Oscar. His term is about up. He doesn't care. I know Oscar, and I've known him for a long time. No, there wouldn't be any problem there. Will you find out for me who killed Molly?"
"I think we have to establish first that she was murdered."
"Oh, there's no doubt about that," she said. "I'll pay you for it Clarke."
"Forget about that." I settled into the chair. "Now you tell me who killed your daughter and why."
"Matt killed my daughter, Molly. Matt that's Molly's husband."
"Let's start at the beginning. Tell me how she died, when, and so forth."
That started her talking, and with a question here and there I got enough information to give me something to work on. This is the way I finally got everything chronologically out-lined.
Beulah had been widowed for six years. She had two grown sons now residing out of the state, and a daughter, Joy, aged twenty-one and the baby of the family who lived with Beulah. Molly had married Matt Clutch five years ago; nd for a wedding present Beulah had given the 60 acre farm to Molly. Matt, with the hired man, Guy Rider, farmed that one as well as Beulah's place of 80 acres. Every year she got a share of the crops. It was a small share but she didn't mind as she had a little money saved and the only income she needed was for the taxes.
Beulah hadn't ever really approved of Molly's marriage to Matt, and for that reason she'd made sure that the farm title stayed in Molly's name. From the very beginning that had rankled Matt. He tried to talk Molly into selling the farm and moving out to California, but Molly didn't want to leave her mother, and she didn't want to sell.
Matt should have understood her wanting to stay and help out her mother, but he didn't. So they didn't get along too well. If Matt walked out on Molly he wouldn't have a cent. But if Molly died he'd get the farm. And that's why he'd pushed her into the cistern.
Beulah knew that Molly hadn't fallen, because it wasn't the first time that Molly had drawn water from the cistern. They had running water in the house all right, but during the summer months their well got a little low. Consequently, to conserve that water they used the water out of the cistern for the washing. And because they had the other water supply, Matt had never put a pump on the cistern.
There was still the built-up wooden box in the center with a lid on it. They had a rope with a snap buckle on the end that they fastened to the bail of the bucket. You dropped the bucket into the cistern, filled the bucket, and then pulled it up by the rope. While you were filling the bucket you were always bent over. If you weren't prepared for it, even a child could give a little shove and you'd topple in.
Cisterns are usually circular and about twenty feet deep. The sides are cemented smooth, as well as the bottom. If a cistern is about half-full there's no way to reach the top and nothing on the sides to hold onto.
"Molly couldn't swim a stroke," Beulah said. "And Matt knew it."
From the sheriff she'd learned that the time of Molly's drowning had been about four o'clock in the afternoon. Give or take thirty minutes.
I asked, "Where was Matt at that time?"
"He said he was irrigating here on my place," she said. "But I don't remember seeing him here."
Guy Rider had been a lot closer to the house, and he'd probably know where Matt had been.
"When was the last time you saw Molly alive?"
The wrinkles deepened on Beulah's forehead. "Three days ago."
"Did she seem upset about Matt? Maybe unhappy?"
Beulah shook her head. "Not any more than usual."
I pushed aside the empty coffee cup and stood up. She'd told me a lot but none of it was very important. There was a lot of work to be done. I said, "Thanks for all the information."
"It will help you, won't it?"
"Sure," I said.
"Are you going to see Matt now?"
"Perhaps. But don't you worry, I'll talk to somebody."
She nodded and went to the door with me. "Good luck, Clarke."
I'd need a lot of that. I thanked her and went out the car. Well, there it was. A rusty private-eye on a farm, stumbling' through the corn rows and trying to find out if Molly Clutch had been murdered; and if so, who did it.
I'd read a few novels of private eyes working on big country estates where you suspected the butler, chauffeur, or the maid, while the folks frolicked around a pool and sipped long drinks. But these were plain farm folks who hired help during the busy season if they could afford it, took a dip once in a while if there was a swimming hole available, and drank beer or straight bourbon out of shot glasses.
Before I drove away I glanced around the yard hoping to see the girl in the bathing suit, but she wasn't in sight. Maybe if I followed her sometime the two of us could frolic in the swimming hole together.
Rosita was glad to see me when I got back to the Granada Inn, but when I asked her for a cabin for a couple of days, her eyes slitted and she wanted to know why I'd returned.
"The sheriff thinks I'm the bold Matador. He wants me to stick around while he checks out my M.O."
She frowned and shook her head as though she didn't understand.
"Don't frown like that, Rosita. He's checking up on how I usually rape senoritas, drop pennies in dime paper slots, and push the blind and lame off haystacks."
That started the dimple acting up again. She assigned me cabin number one this time, the one on the far end of the line. After I'd checked in and had a bottle of beer and a sandwich I got ready to leave.
I asked Rosita. "When is Molly Clutch's funeral?"
"Tomorrow afternoon."
"Then I'd better pay my condolences this afternoon, I said. "Don't wait up for me-I'll throw my guitar onto your balcony when I get back."
She said something in Spanish as I went out of the door.
When I pulled up in the Clutch farmyard this time, everything was quiet and deserted, the same as the day before. The tractor was still droning in the distance. A black coupe, several years old, was parked near the door.
When the man answered my knock I saw that he was apparently going somewhere. He was about six feet tall, and he had straight blond hair. It was all slicked down, and he wore a pair of brown slacks and a beige sports shirt. He was handsome, except for his eyes. They were large, protruded a bit, and they reminded me of a frog's eyes.
"Matt Clutch?" I asked.
He nodded and held the screen door open, waiting for me to continue.
"I'm Clarke Able."
"I know."
"I wanted to stop by and tell you how sorry I am to hear about your wife's death."
He frowned. "Well, those things happen, I guess. Can't figure out why it had happen to her. She was a good kid."
I glanced at the open screen door.
"Come in," he said. After I'd stepped inside he said, "I was just getting ready to take her mother to the-funeral parlor."
"Then I won't keep you."
"That's all right," he said. "She can wait a couple of minutes."
I said, "It's too bad I wasn't here a little earlier yesterday. Maybe I could have stopped it.
"Stopped what?"
"Stopped her from drowning."
He relaxed a little then. "Yeah, that would have been wonderful. Sit down." While we were seated he added, "Tough, right at the busy season, too."
"Good crop this year?"
"Beans are wonderful."
"Seed or Great Northern?"
His eyes widened. "Pintos. I thought you were from the city-Los Angeles?"
"I am, but I was raised on a farm."
"How come you left it?"
"I got tired of the long hours, one big night a week, and I like the bright lights.
"I know what you mean," he said. "It gets a little monotonous."
"Well, now you can do what you really want to."
A little light flickered briefly in his eyes, and then he was getting to his feet. "It's something to think about."
I started to leave. "Sorry to have detained you, Matt."
He checked his hair in a wall mirror before we started for the door. "I'm glad you stopped in, Clarke."
When we were outside he asked, "When are you taking off on your trip?"
"I don't know, Matt. The sheriff won't let me leave."
He stopped as though he'd walked into a wire. "Why not?"
I shrugged. "He thinks I'm a suspect." I made it sound like a joke. "He thinks somebody pushed her in."
There was a small pebble at his feet and he kicked at it angrily. "That stupid son of a bitch! I told him she fell in. One of those dizzy spells of hers. What the hell does he need?" When he remembered I was still there he quieted down. "I'll have to talk to him again."
I gave him a big sigh of relief. "That sure would help me. I can't wait to take off."
"I will." He got into his car and drove away.
After he was gone I walked over to the cistern. There was a lid on top of the wooden box in the center and when I lifted up one side it slid off and fell on the cistern top because the hinges had pulled loose long ago.
I peered down into the cistern. It was pretty dark but I could see the water level about twelve feet below. There were a few leaves and twigs floating on the top, otherwise it was clear. The sides of the cistern were smooth, offering nothing to hang onto. If you fell in you either had to swim, or else. I thought I saw the bucket rope lying on the bottom but it was vague, and so I leaned way over to get a better look.
It wasn't the rope. It was a little dark furrow in the concrete on the bottom. I Was just beginning to straighten up when I thought I heard footsteps behind me. I whirled around.
I could have reached out and touched Guy Rider. He was standing that close. And now his right hand was getting that cigarette going again.
5
"Do you sneak up like this all the time, Guy?"
"What do you mean?" He was still nasty.
"People stick their heads in a cistern opening and you come up behind them." I put the wooden lid back in place.
"Still the wise guy, aren't you?"
"No," I said. "I'm just getting annoyed because people like you shoot their mouths off to the sheriff about maybe I pushed Molly Clutch into this cistern. Now I have to stick around here because he isn't so sure it was an accident."
"Oh, hell," he said, rubbing his chin. "I was just kidding."
"Well, so was I. That's why I told him you pushed her in."
His teeth clamped down on the cigarette and then I noticed the pink above his ears. "You did?"
I nodded. Now to really get him mad. "That is why I'm holed up at Rosita's for-you never know how long."
His voice was as hard as that steel hook. "I never shoved anybody down that cistern. How in the hell could I, mowing that field of hay that wasn't ready? You saw me out there yesterday."
"Sure," I said. "But you were close enough to walk to the house like today."
"I came to get a drink of water."
"And you probably did it yesterday, too. Just about the time Molly was leaning over, dipping a bucket of water. Did you try to take her from the back, Guy?"
"You bastard!" he said angrily.
"I've got proof about my ancestors," I said, heading for the car. "When you have proof about yesterday, tell the sheriff." I opened the car door.
"Wait a minute, Clarke." I waited and he walked over to the car. "What are you snooping around here for, anyway?" he said.
"I'm not snooping. I stopped to pass on my condolences to Matt. That's probably something you never heard about."
"But you were snooping around the cistern."
"I was looking for Batman."
"Look-Molly Clutch fell in-even if I shot my mouth off. Nobody had anything against her. I'll even tell the sheriff that I said that about you, only because I was sore at you."
"You do that, Guy, if it'll make you feel any better. And it probably will, if he lets me leave. But I don't want to go. I kind of like it at Rosita's."
That brought the glint of anger to his eyes. "Stay away from her, Clarke."
I got into my car and drove off without answering. He was still standing there in the hot sun watching me as I pulled onto the highway.
It was still hot by the time I neared Beulah Kress' place, but I saw somebody who really knew how to combat the heat. It was White Bathing Suit sprawled out in the shade of the cottonwoods, reading a magazine.
She put it down now, sat up, and watched me as I drove in and got out of my car. I stopped walking when I got to the edge of her blanket.
"Hi," I said.
The big sunglasses stared up at me. I stared right back. Not at the sunglasses, but at the cleft and the goodies in the halter top. She had, without a doubt, the biggest and lushest breasts for a girl her size I'd ever seen.
"I'm the traveling salesman," I said. "Who are you?"
"I'm the baby of the family."
"Got a room for the night?" She shook her head. "You'll have to sleep in the barn."
"Where does baby sleep?' "None of your damned business."
"And I didn't even make a pass at you." She was all through with the small talk. "So you're Clarke Able."
I nodded. "And you're Joy Kress?"
"How did you guess."
"I've been talking to your mother. Is she around?"
"No. She left with Matt. They went to the funeral parlor."
"Why didn't you go with them?"
She picked up a cigarette pack and searched the blanket for matches. "Why should I?"
I lighted the cigarette for her. "Molly was your sister, wasn't she?"
She sent twin jets of smoke through her nostrils. "I don't like funeral parlors and that jazz."
"Neither do I. Let's talk of something pleasant."
She tossed the sunglasses aside. "That's a good idea." Her eyes were brown. "You're from Los Angeles, aren't you?"
"Yes. Ever been there?"
"No. But I'm going some day."
"I guess all girls want to go there. City of opportunity, stardom, and that sort of thing."
She stretched out, long and supple, and propped her head on one hand. "How would I do out there?"
With a body like that, she would do all right. For a while, anyway. "I don't know," I said. "What are your interests?"
"Don't get me wrong. I'm not like all those girls who want to go out there and get in the movies. When I go I want a pocketful of money, or go with somebody that has, and just be out there and live in a nice place. Just a nice living in a nice city. Get off the farm for a change."
"I said, "And you want a swimming pool of your own."
"Certainly."
"Where do you go swimming around here?"
"There's a swimming hole in the big ditch. In the irrigation canal."
"Go by yourself?"
From under hooded lids she studied me. "Who would I go with?"
"Me," I said. "Like a couple of eels we could be."
"I'm afraid not."
"You got a fella?"
"You're pretty nosey."
"No, I'm just trying to be friendly." I let my glance work her over good. From head to foot, and in between. She reacted as though I'd just crowned her Miss Irrigation Ditch.
Even in the shade I could feel the heat coming off her and the blanket.
"You probably won't be around that long, Mister."
"Oh, I don't know," I said. "The sheriff won't let me leave. He thinks your sister was pushed into the cistern."
She sat up quickly. "Not really!"
I nodded. "So you see, we might have some fun together."
"Who'd want to kill Molly?"
I shrugged. "I don't know."
"You meant it's not settled, that it wasn't an accident?"
"No."
She began fidgeting around on the blanket, arranging the sunglasses, cigarettes and magazine. "Good Christ," she finally said.
"Good Christ what?"
She brought her glance to mine, and everything had cooled off. "Oh, get the hell out of here.'"
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing!" she said. "Why doesn't he leave Molly alone?"
"He's got to be sure."
She grabbed her cigarettes and jumped to her feet. "If that isn't a hell of a mess!"
"Just for me," I said. "I'm the one who has to stick around."
"Oh, shut up!" She hurried away and the next moment I heard the screen door slamming shut.
I stared down at the empty blanket and thought about her reaction. I'd talked to her and two other people, and every time I mentioned that Molly's death wasn't an accident each one got upset. Maybe Beulah Kress wasn't so wrong after all.
I remembered I was out of shaving cream so I drove into town and bought it and a few other things then dropped into a bar for a glass of beer.
Bill Cook came in shortly afterwards. He looked good in his cream-colored Stetson, new Levis and white shirt. The streaks of grey in his hair made him look like the governor, at least. When he saw me he got a surprised look on his face and then came over to me.
"Well," he said, "did you break another fan belt?"
"No," I said. "I've been waiting here to buy you a drink."
"All right. I'll have a beer."
We made a little chit-chat until he got his drink Then I said, "Actually, I have to stick around for a couple of days until the sheriff finishes his investigation of Molly's death."
He nodded. "Those things take time, Clarke."
I said, "Yes, but I wish it wouldn't take so long."
"Are you staying at Rosita's?"
I nodded, and he said, "She's a wonderful girl. A square-shooter."
I remembered the butcher knife. "Don't mention anything that pertains to violence to me, Bill."
He was serious as he circled his beer glass on the bar. "No, I mean she's all right. She was in love with that boy. Too bad he got killed."
"Then I'm glad she found Guy."
"He's been seeing her, but I don't think it is the real thing."
Maybe she should ask Guy about that. I asked, "How long has Guy been around here?"
"About a year or so. Ever since Matt hired him-right here in this bar."
"Here's to more employment offices like this," I said. "Have another beer, Bill?"
"No thanks. Betty should have her groceries by now. We have to get home.
"I'll see you, Bill."
"Look, if you get bored-come over any time. You have a standing invitation for dinner."
"I may take you up on that," I said.
Because I was in town anyway I decided to eat there, and later I took in a movie that I'd been wanting to see for years. By the time I got back to the Granada Inn it was almost midnight. There was still a light showing in the roadhouse but it was very quiet, even though there was a car parked next to every cabin. I parked mine beside number one, and then went into the roadhouse for a nightcap.
There was no one inside except Rosita, and she was behind the bar at the cash register. She glanced up quickly and when she recognized me, she flashed a dazzling smile.
"Hey, Matador! You're back early."
I thought it was late, considering the locale and the lack of action. But I adjust easily.
"Yes," I said. "I hurried back for the fiesta."
Her eyes slitted briefly as she studied me. Finally she said, "But when I mentioned it this morning I did not believe you would return so soon."
"That's what I like," I said. "Excuses." My glance went behind the bar and I saw that all the glasses were washed and that she was closing. On second thought, I decided not to have a nightcap after all.
"Well, I'm going to turn in, Rosita. Good night."
"Good night," she said softly as I went out the door.
After I'd showered leisurely I slid into bed and looked at the paper I'd picked up in town that day. The big thing on the sports page was a local town's rodeo, and even most of the comics were foreign to me.
Just as I'd turned out the light and settled down again I heard the key being fitted into the door, and a moment later, like the night before, the breeze told me that someone was slipping into my room.
I also remembered the knife from the night before and I was starting to ease out of bed when I heard Rosita's voice.
"Matador?" she asked softly. "I do not make excuses." The next moment I saw her silhouetted next to my bed, seductively taking off her robe.
"Then what do you make?"
"I'll show you," she said. At the same time she swept aside the sheet covering me, and a moment later I felt her hands fiddling with my chest the way they'd fiddled once before.
I shoved out my hands and felt the soft heated skin along her flanks and stomach, then the lush full breasts, suspended like ripe fruit from the limb, and when I cupped them and felt the nipples grow and harden in my palms she groaned huskily, and because it was deep in her throat it sounded like approaching thunder.
"Si, I'll show you," she repeated, and then her hands and lips and fingertips and tongue were a million sensations that touched me and covered me and enveloped me until the thunder had arrived and crept inside of me and I could no longer restrain myself.
Grabbing her arms I pulled her and brought her close to me, all of her, relishing the complete passion that was now heightened by her delicious warmth and squirming within my arms. Tenderly we came together and it was exquisite in our excitement, and now as the thunder drummed inside me and was transferred to her it quickened her movements, coming rhythmically with mine.
They were leisurely and tender, and complicated and violent movements, and the moments at first were long and intermingable, and then they became shorter and shorter and faster and faster until they were now nothing. In dimness of the cabin's interior she was a dusky savage silhouette that brought me up and up, until we came to the climax, and then we clutched and scrambled and fell into nothingness.
6
While I was having my third cup of coffee and a cigarette after breakfast, Guy came striding into the roadhouse. He was all dressed up, wearing a blue suit this time. With his white shirt and tie with the collar unbuttoned he still looked hot and uncomfortable. He barely glanced in my direction as he bought a pack of cigarettes from the machine and then he disappeared in the kitchen. About fifteen minutes later he came out again. He paused a moment and then came over to the table.
I kicked out a chair. "Sit down and cool off."
After the waitress had brought him a bottle of beer and he'd had a long pull on it, he said, "I saw the sheriff last night. I told him I'd been kidding about you pushing her into the cistern."
"Thanks," I said.
He continued, "He said he'd told you that you could take off anytime you wanted."
When I didn't answer, he added, "So why are you still hanging around here?"
"Because I want to. Because you accused me of something I didn't do. Because maybe you did it, and you wanted to put the blame on somebody else."
"I didn't shove her in! Maybe somebody did, but I didn't do it!"
"Hey," I said, "that's a different story than you told me yesterday. You said she fell in."
He blinked thoughtfully. "I didn't mean it like that."
"Why wasn't that alfalfa ready to cut day before yesterday, Guy?"
He jerked his head back. "Who told you about that?"
"You did. You said it wasn't ready to mow."
"Well, it wasn't," he said. "Because the twenty-acre patch was due-it was already in bloom. But she was being the boss again."
"Hardly worth arguing with Molly Clutch about that."
"I didn't argue with her, Matt did."
"And you took Matt's side."
He jumped to his feet. "You bastard! What are you trying to do? Trying to build a noontime argument into murder?"
"No," I said. "You are. You were there, but it must have been heated enough to make you think that it could have been the cause for murder."
He looked at me for a while and his face was about as expressionless as a wooden door. "All right," he said, "if you think that. But I'm just a hired hand. I don't give a damn who tells me what to do." Then he got up and stomped out the door.
I watched him get into a year-old sedan and just miss the black coupe that turned into the roadhouse driveway. Matt got out of the latter, also wearing a dark suit and white shirt. When he came inside he walked over to where I sat.
"How's everything?"
"Glad I ran into you," Matt said sliding into the chair just vacated by Guy. "I just came by to get some cigarettes before the funeral."
"Care for a drink?"
He shook his head. "No, thanks. I've got to pick up Beulah and Joy pretty quick."
"That Joy's a doll."
Those frog eyes didn't leave my face. "How do you mean?"
I grinned. "She's got a great-" this was funeral day-"a great future, I think."
"When did you see her?"
"Yesterday afternoon. We had a little chat."
He nodded. "Yeah, she told me."
What the hell was he double-checking her for?
He said, "I wanted to tell you that I had a talk with the sheriff yesterday afternoon. I told him about Molly, how she had these dizzy spells every once in a while. They'd come on her when she least expected them. I took her to the doctor, oh, maybe a couple of months ago, and he said it was her blood. Low pressure, or something like that. He gave her some medicine, but she wouldn't take it. Pretty stubborn about some things. So she kept having those dizzy spells right along. I guess that's what happened the other day. Drawing water for the washing it hit her as she was leaning over. So the sheriff's convinced it was an accident. Tough."
"Didn't anybody else know about Mary's dizzy spells? Her mother? Joy?"
"Just Joy. Not her mother."
"The sisters were pretty close then?"
He shook his head. "Not especially. I told Joy."
"Then you and Joy are pretty close."
He was staring at my face again as though I had a fly on it. "What do you mean by that?"
"I don't mean anything by it. A lot of in-laws get pretty friendly."
"Yeah," he said. "That's right."
"And a lot of times guys don't get along with their mothers-in-law."
"I got no complaints."
"Yes," I said, "Beulah's pretty nice."
"A little tight with a buck, but all right."
"Like mother, like daughter."
"Not quite. Molly wasn't tight. Just stubborn."
"Some women try to wear the pants," I said, and I saw him nodding in agreement. Then I told him about a woman I knew who bossed her husband, they fought times, and because she had ulcers or a bad stomach she'd get sick after the argument and be in bed for days.
Matt's eyes brightened. "How about that? Same way with Molly. Have a little fight and the dizzy spells would come along."
"No kidding?" I got real friendly. "Did you have a little fight the day she-"
"Yeah. She wanted Guy to mow one field of hay, and I wanted him to start with the other one."
"Who won?"
"She did!" He jammed the cigarette into the ash tray and mangled the butt. When he saw me watching him he stopped it, wiped his fingers on his trousers and said, "Tough."
"By the way, Matt, where were you that afternoon-when it happened?"
He grew wary. "Me? I was putting water on the beans, on Beulah's place."
After that he told me about his crops and his beans and offered to take me out and show them to me some time, and he even explained which farm was his and the boundaries of the one belonging to Beulah Kress.
Matt had been gone only a few minutes when Bill Cook drove up, and he needed cigarettes, too. We stood outside exchanging pleasantries, and then he asked me if I was going to the funeral.
"No, I don't think I will, Bill. I'm a stranger here."
"I hear you're getting around and seeing everybody," he said. "Everybody thinks you're real friendly."
"I'm just a country boy at heart, Bill."
"Are you planning to stay around for a while?"
"It's up to the sheriff," I said.
He said, "Everyone knows he's not holding you anymore. You don't have to stay if you don't want to."
"That's right." I grinned. "But I'm enjoying myself here."
He liked that. He put his hand on my shoulder and let it rest there for a second. "I'm glad to hear that. I always said this was the best part of our noble state."
Noble. For a second he sounded like a congressman.
He glanced at his watch. "I'd better get those cigarettes."
Three guys on their way to the funeral had needed cigarettes and they'd all had to get them here, and everyone was so eager to see me leave. The entire thing had become so intriguing that they couldn't have chased me away from there now.
Guy ran to the sheriff to convince him all was a mistake, and Matt made sure everyone knew about Molly's dizzy spells. Even Joy had forgotten to stick out her bust when I mentioned Molly might have been murdered.
Was Matt living not by bread alone? Maybe Molly was also the boss in bed, and Joy understood Matt's frustrations. Had Matt wanted out? I wondered whether Beulah had told me everything, or did she even know that Joy and Matt were playing house. Or were they?
In a year's time a hired man could notice a lot of things if he kept his eyes open. Even a neighbor such as Bill Cook might catch sight of diddling in the bushes. Of course, none of that gave me a motive for the murder of Molly. Was she really murdered?
Little facts I needed were lying as quietly as pheasants hiding in a field. And to bring pheasants out into the open you have to flush them out, otherwise you can walk right by them and never see them.
When I glanced up now I saw that Bill Cook was coming out again with two packs of cigarettes in one hand. "Bill," I said, "do you think Molly Clutch's death was an accident?"
He furrowed his brow and thought about it. "I hadn't given it much thought. Have you?"
"Yes. And I have the feeling you wouldn't be surprised if it might be murder."
"What made you think that?"
I said, "Yesterday, when I mentioned to you that the sheriff wanted me to stick around until he completed the investigation of Molly's death, you didn't seem surprised."
"I guess I wasn't."
"A few people got upset about it when I told them that."
He chuckled. "Well, I guess it's because I've been around a little more than some of the others. I know something like this takes time." He squinted against the sun as he looked at me. "It's bothering you a little, isn't it? This doubt in your mind as to what really happened to Molly?"
"Yes," I said. "I think while I'm here I'm going to look around a bit-just to satisfy my own curiosity."
"What about your vacation?"
"Oh, I can make a vacation out of this," I said.
"Have you ever been a policeman?"
"No. Never."
"I think it's a good idea," he said. "Many a crime has been uncovered because of somebody's hunch. You hear about newspapermen doing that all the time."
"Sometimes they get roughed up, too," I said.
"I'm sure you can take care of yourself," he said. "But if you need any information, background, anything, let me know."
"Thanks," I said. "Thanks very much."
I watched him get into his car and drive away. Before the funeral had ended everybody would now know that I was going to be looking around. Unless Bill Cook had a reason for keeping it quiet.
I went to my cabin and dug out an old pair of shoes. After I'd locked the door and dropped the key in my pocket I saw Rosita coming out of the roadhouse.
It was the first time I'd seen her this morning, and just standing there and looking at her I got a nice little glow throughout my body. She was wearing a little dark suit with flecks of white that looked like silver in the sun, and a hat with a veil.
I finally remembered to breathe. She could have put on a gunny sack covered with coal dust and she still would have looked too sexy for a funeral.
As she came towards me I saw the dimple through the veil. The lips behind it said, "Hey, Matador."
"You keep talking like that and you'll never get to the funeral."
"You are not going?"
I shook my head and stuck out one of my feet. "I'm going to be a farm boy this afternoon. Get hay in my hair, manure on my shoes, and the farmer's daughter on an ant hill."
"Hey, you like that ants in the pants action?"
"You run along now, and stop talking like that."
The gas station attendant brought her car up then, and she slid under the wheel. Even he enjoyed the flash of that nylon-clad leg. He closed the door and went back to his pumps, or maybe home to chase his wife into the bedroom.
"See you tonight," she said, driving away. She knew it.
I drove leisurely down the highway and turned into the Clutch driveway. I didn't know exactly why I'd come here, but I sat there a moment looking around the yard. It was still deserted, still the same. Today there wasn't even the sound of the tractor.
I saw the torn cat sitting smug and satisfied in the shade of the built-up box in the center of the cistern, and he was watching some birds twittering around the outhouse. Just like the first afternoon.
The bucket and galvanized wash tub had been moved since then, but otherwise it was like seeing a re-run movie. Everything looked the same. The wooden lid was still in place I was out of the car now and I ran over to the cistern opening. The wooden lid had been in place the day I'd come looking for a phone. As I'd noticed yesterday, the cistern lid just sat on top. If you came from the entrance to the house, the hinges were hanging down on the left side, rusty and useless. Along the right side of the lid I could see where the wood was a little worn from the many hands that had lifted it up and shoved it to one side. I put my hand there, lifted the left. It slid off the opening and then leaned up against the wooden built-up box.
If Molly Clutch had fallen in, she never would have pulled the lid in place after her.
I'd missed that yesterday because Guy had come up behind me.
Matt had left the door unlocked and I wandered through the house but I found nothing very startling. Then I drove my car up the dirt road that led through Matt's fields until I came to the southern boundary of his farm.
I crawled through a barbed wire fence, climbed a weed-covered bank, and then I looked downward and saw the water moving along clear and easy in the big ditch. It was about twenty feet wide at that point and the water must have been several feet deep. From the direction of a lone cottonwood I could hear a roar of water, and I worked my way along the bank until I got to it. It was a concrete drop; and it was the largest I'd ever seen.
When they build the big ditches they put in concrete, sometimes wooden, drops wherever the water runs fast because it's coming down a steep incline, otherwise the water would make a waterfall of its own. Concrete drops slow down the flow of water and also keep the water level high enough so that it will run into the small ditches leading to the various farms. The water here plunged downward about ten feet to a concrete ledge and then plunged again to another ledge about fifteen feet lower.
The water dropping twenty-five, thirty feet made a hell of a racket, like a miniature falls, and the water below was as foamy and white as milk. A big swimming hole had been made below the drop by the water swirling around and losing its momentum.
I skidded down the grassy bank to the water level. I didn't have any swimming trunks, but what the hell. Everybody was at the funeral.
It took me a second to kick off my shoes, then shuck my pants and shirt. Just as I was listening to the roar of the water and stepping out of my shorts, I saw a couple of grass stems jerk about ten feet away from me. I peered downward and didn't see either a mouse or snake, and then tossed my shorts onto my pants and waded out into the water.
Then I stopped. Right in front of me the water split and sent up a little spout. I hadn't heard the sound of the gun but somebody had shot at me.
I jumped out of the water and calmbered up the bank like a monkey. Maybe I even looked like one. When I got to the top I looked upstream. I saw a guy wearing faded overalls running away, with a rifle in one hand and one shoulder hunched lower than the other. After a second he disappeared in a clump of willows. I knew I'd never be able to catch him now without shoes, and so I went back to put them on along with the rest of my clothes.
He must have shot twice. The first time he'd put the slug in the grass, and I'd mistaken it for a mouse or a snake. He was either a very poor shot, or he was merely trying to scare me. I tried to figure where he might have been from the angle of the shot and went up there and searched the grass. I finally found it. It was a .22 calibre long rifle cartridge, and I could smell the fresh-powder.
Walking back to my oar I remembered that only two people knew that I was going to be wandering around in the fields this afternoon. Bill Cook and Rosita.
Before I slid behind the wheel and drove away I was convinced that the guy running a way with the rifle had not been Bill Cook's hired man who had repaired my car the first day.
7
When I got back to the Clutch farmyard I noticed that Guy's car was parked near the house. He came out of the door now, dressed in his working clothes. I stopped the car and got out.
"How was the funeral, Guy?"
His face was as hard as a board. "Get your ass in that car and get going, Able."
I kept my ass right where it was. "Hey, for a hired hand you're taking on a lot of responsibility. Or did you inherit the manure pile behind the barn?"
He walked towards me, the pink starting to show above his ears again. "Let's get something straight. I hate your guts. The sunlight flickered on the hook as he shifted it about. "And they will be hanging in the sun if you don't stay away from here."
"Matt asked me to drop around anytime. A nice guy, that Matt, and he owns this place."
"Okay," he said, "if that's the way Matt wants it, that's the way it is. But if you get in my way-" He turned his head as Matt's car turned into the driveway. Guy walked towards the barn.
I watched Matt get out of his car. He didn't look too broken up, I thought. Just enough.
"Hi, Clarke," he said quietly.
"I dropped by to see if there's anything I could do for you."
He started towards the house, and then stopped. "It seems as though you're pretty busy as it is."
"Just fighting the boredom by wandering around, trying to be a good spirit."
Matt said, "I didn't get that impression from Cook."
"What impression did you get?"
"That you and he decided that Molly was pushed into the cistern, and that somebody should find the murderer. Namely, you."
"Well, that's partly true," I said.
"Look, Able, Don't go off half-cocked with Cook. He's just a nosey son of a bitch, always trying to help out, always sticking his nose into something that's none of his business.
I said, "I think he just wants to be sure justice will be done, and that sort of thing."
"That's stupid," Matt said. "What the hell, I found her. I know she fell in."
"Okay," I said. "Where was the cistern lid when you found her?"
The pause was short and thoughtful. "Leaning up against the side, the way it always was." His glance was on my face, waiting for my reaction.
Suddenly he looked past me and when I turned around I saw Guy, who'd been watching us, duck behind the barn. Matt frowned and shook his head.
"Matt," I said, "I'm convinced Molly was murdered." He was staring at the ground, and I continued, "Being her husband, you might want to find out who did it."
First he glanced in the direction of the barn and then he looked at me. "Sure. We'll talk about it tomorrow. This hadn't been a holiday for me."
I apologized for my lack of consideration and left him then, and drove by to see Beulah Kress. She was the picture of grief but she was eager to talk to me.
She asked, "When are you going to tell the sheriff to arrest Matt?"
"I'm convinced Molly was killed, but I'm not convinced it was Matt."
"You will be." She was still definite about him.
"Tell me about the afternoon-who found Molly, and so on."
"Hank found her," she said quietly.
He'd had a few minutes before milking time when he came home from the fields, and so he decided to bring in the water for Molly. She'd told him she was washing the next morning. When he looked into the cistern he found her.
"Had Molly been feeling all right?" I asked.
"You mean, was she sick?" Beulah snorted. "Molly was as sound as a dollar. She never had a sick day in her life. All my children are healthy."
I thought of Joy. She sure was. Then I asked, "Does your daughter, Joy, live with you all the time?"
"Just in the summer. The rest of the year she lives in town. She works as a secretary. I've told her she should work right through the summer months, but she doesn't want to stay away all the time." She sighed. "I've got good children."
"Who gets the farm now, with Molly gone."
It was getting pretty dark in the room but I could still see the frown on her face. "Matt. And there's no way I can stop it." The anger in her voice surprised me. "When he's punished for what he did, he'll leave here without a cent."
We said goodbye at the door and she went inside again. As I was driving away I met Joy walking in the driveway. I stopped and she came over to the car.
The corners of her mouth were turned down a little but otherwise she didn't seem to be in mourning. Beige pedal pushers, a tan well-filled blouse, and sandals.
"Hi," she said.
"Want to go for a ride?"
She glanced at the front seat and then at me. "Sure why not?"
I tried to make light chatter but she smoked a cigarette and stared out the window.
Finally I said, "I almost took a dip in your swimming hole this afternoon."
"I wish you had, and then drowned."
"Maybe I will, next time. Take a dip I mean."
She snapped the butt out the window and swung around to face me. "What are you trying to do-be a shining knight in armor, and crap like that? What are you trying to prove?"
"I'm trying to find out who killed your sister."
"That's a hell of an excuse for sticking around so you can fool with that Mexican broad."
I wanted to belt her in the mouth but I kept both hands on the steering wheel. "Molly was murdered. Face it."
She acted very bored about the entire thing until I accused her of murdering her sister.
Then she said, "You dirty bastard."
"Where were you the afternoon Molly was killed?"
"At the swimming hole." Those brown eyes showed a flicker of concern. "I wouldn't kill my sister, but I know who would. Guy Rider."
"Why would he?"
"Because he hated Molly! She was always assigning work for him to do, contradicting the orders he got from Matt. Matt would tell Guy to do one thing and she would tell him another. Guy doesn't like to take orders from women and he especially didn't like to take orders from Molly."
"Then why didn't he quit?"
"Guy? You know he doesn't run away from trouble. I think he enjoys it. In fact, if you'd check up on his Chicago background you might find that he once mixed up in the rackets. He's the type. He'd get a laugh out of killing somebody."
"Oh, come on, Joy. Stop your kidding."
"I mean it. You might even be careful now. He's pretty upset about you playing around with Rosita."
"I'm not playing around with her," I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her stare at me and I knew that she didn't believe me. But by that time we were back at the house and she got out without saying another word.
I stopped off at Bill Cook's, met his wife Betty, and they invited me in for a delicious fried chicken dinner. Afterwards Bill and I talk ed some about Molly Clutch and, although Bill didn't come right out and state it positively, he felt that Joy had killed her sister. The eternal triangle. Joy was in love with Matt, and she wanted to marry him.
It was after midnight when I thanked my hosts for the dinner and hospitality and left the house. Driving back to the Granada Inn I recalled the things Bill had told me and the way Joy had described Guy. At the moment, if I weren't positive that the lid had been on the cistern that afternoon when I arrived, I would have sworn Molly Clutch had merely fallen in.
The inn was dark, which meant the bar was closed, so there was nothing to do but go to bed. I parked the car, unlocked the door and stepped inside.
I flipped the light switch but the bulb must have burned out because I was still without ligths. Then something crashed against the side of my head and I had plenty of light behind my eyeballs.
I had the Northern Lights, rockets, sparklers, and Roman candles. I felt my self falling, tried to stop myself, couldn't, knew vaguely that a fist had connected and realized there was only one fist like that in the area.
The fist of Guy Rider.
Then I hit the floor with my right shoulder. That snapped off the lights but my ear was still ringing and the deck was pitching.
The vague outline of Rider looming over me helped me get up. The room was reeling and I felt myself lurching to one side.
Guy's punch missed me. It fanned the other ear going by, and his grinning face was in front of me. I shot my right at his teeth; but he jerked up his hook arm, deflecting my punch. My knuckles cracked against the hardness of the stuff at the wrist and the pain shoved a yell into my throat.
It never got past my tongue because his fist socked into my guts. I felt like a wet rope hanging over a fence.
Guy was panting. "You get the hell out of the state."
I tried to raise my arms but they were dead weights. Then I felt the point of his hook underneath my chin. I jerked my head back so that the hook couldn't punch a hole in the skin where I shaved.
"Get going!"
I think he said more but I didn't remember. A twenty-pound sledge couldn't have been any harder than the fist that slammed against my jaw.
And the breath of angels couldn't have been any softer than the hands stroking my face when I finally woke up again.
"Hey, Matador," Rosita said, "you finally wake up. It is good."
A smile drove the concern from her pretty face, and then I could see her shifting back and forth in front of me as though she were swinging on the end of a string.
Shutting my eyes I fought down the nausea in my stomach and took a few deep breaths.
"You go back to sleep again. Fine."
I snapped my eyes open. "Like hell I will." My jaw was sore and I felt the cold pack she'd fit against the side of my head. I was lying on the bed in my cabin, Rosita was in a chair beside me, and somebody had even gotten the lights working again. Like merely screwing the bulb back into the socket. I was ready to bet Guy wasn't around.
"It's all right," she said.
"You're an angel," I said.
"With a bottle." She reached over to the night table and dumped some Scotch into a glass. "Drink this."
With Rosita helping I pulled myself up, took the glass and drank the Scotch. For a moment I thought it was coming back up again but I gritted my teeth and kept control.
"Now you take it easy." She smiled and brushed the hair away from my forehead. She was close to me and I could smell her and the perfume clinging to her. Her hair was a bit mussed up as though she'd just gotten out of bed. She was wearing a green bathrobe. There was a belt snugged around her waist but it didn't keep the upper part of the robe together. She was wearing nothing underneath.
Hospital administrators could well give a little thought to providing nurses with uniforms like that, I thought. Patients would hop out of bed overnight.
I asked, "Where's Guy?"
"He's gone. Don't worry."
"I'm not worried. Just tell me what happened."
"I heard the noise in your cabin just as I'd gotten into bed. When I got here you were on the floor. Guy was standing over you."
I'd been aware of a dull, throbbing ache in my left side but I hadn't paid much attention to it because I thought I'd probably bumped against something. Now I knew better. Guy apparently kicked when he got you down, and Rosita's arrival had kept my ribs intact.
She continued, "When he saw me and the others that had come out of their cabins, he left right away. I got rid of the others, took care of you, and here we are."
"Thanks, Rosita."
"It is nothing. As long as you feel all right."
"I'll feel a lot better after I've talked to Guy."
"No." She sat down on the edge of the bed, facing me. "Let it be. It is probably all my fault. We had a fight earlier tonight, a bad one, and he got very angry. Oh, he is a jealous one. And when he gets angry he gets very mean. I know. So leave everything as it is."
"Sure," I said.
"You are not convincing me."
I saw the corners of her mouth tighten and the worry creep into her eyes. Her beauty, the fact that she cared about my well-being and wanted to take care of me, everything about her socked me in the chest and it became a gush of heat that welled over my chest. My arm went around her and I pulled her against me.
My mouth found her soft, warm lips while my left hand slipped into the top of her robe and found her right breast. My hand was cupped, the fingers not moving, and I was letting her lovely breast sit in the palm of my hand like a precious jewel.
I firmed my fingers and squeezed lightly. I heard her suck in her breath and felt the tremor shake her. Then she moved away from me but she didn't push aside my hand.
She said, "You need-rest and sleep."
"Yes," I said.
"And you must forget about Guy."
"Of course."
"Promise?"
"No."
"But I have to go now."
"Really?"
"Yes. And you have to get to sleep."
"All right."
"Good night," she said standing up. "Good night, Matador."
She turned out the light and the next moment she was gone.
8
I stared up at the darkness, only vaguely aware of the throbbing sore spots because I was thinking about Guy. I knew what I was going to do, already at that moment. Maybe I hadn't planned all the details, but I knew where I was going and whom I was going to see. I glanced at my watch and the luminous dial told me I had at least three hours to wait. I couldn't risk taking a nap and not waking up in time, and so I just lay there, smoking and thinking.
When I finally got up I put on my old walking shoes again. After I'd slipped quietly out of the cabin I started up my car and idled out to the highway before I turned on my lights. I drove past Bill Cook's farm, Beulah's, and the Clutch place. About a half mile further I'd seen a small clump of willows growing along the fence line, just below the shoulder of the highway and parked beneath the willow. The car was not hidden but it wouldn't be too obvious from a distance when daylight came, and by the time folks got curious about it being parked there I'd be back anyway.
I slipped through the barbed wire fence and started walking through a patch of beans, moving between two rows and always in the direction of Matt Clutch's barn.
It was fairly dark but the air was almost tropical, heavily scented with the plants and damp soil. Here and there I could hear a quick rustling nearby that could have been a mouse coming home from a party, and in the distance I caught the faint roar of the water going over the drop.
By the time I'd arrived at the barn it was showing light and roosters around the countryside were making a big deal out of it.
I slipped into the barn, and after I'd eased the door shut again, I checked the time. It was now almost four o'clock. As they say, I was at the office and waiting for business.
I found an old milk stool, a four-by-four with a flat board nailed to one end of the seat. I sat down on it and let my back rest against the wall next to an old set of harness. In front of me was a stall for a horse that obviously wasn't being used much anymore with the tractors taking over. Further to the rear of the barn were a couple of stalls for the cows. At the spot where I was sitting the ground was covered with a fine layer of ground-up manure and straw and even though it was powder-dry and didn't smell much, it was still manure.
On my left a barley fork leaned up against the wall, a gib fork with its tines about five inches apart at the open end and getting smaller towards the handle.
Outside I could hear the horses snuffling and walking around, the cows grunting and belching, roosters crowing, and sparrows twittering around the horse corral and waiting for someone to serve up a steaming breakfast.
Then I heard a door slam.
I jumped up and peeked out through a dust-covered pane in the window. Matt had just come out of the house. He stretched, looked up at the sky. He picked up a shovel and headed for the fields, his rubber boots clumping hollowly with each step.
A half hour later I heard the door slam again and this time when I looked out the window I saw Guy coming towards the barn. He was carrying two milk buckets, and he was spitting and coughing and trying to clear his throat.
I picked up the milk stool I'd been using and hefted it in my hand. It was heavy and solid and it felt just right. I pressed myself against the wall beside the door and waited as he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Then I tapped him behind the left ear with the four-by-four end of the milk stool.
"Surprise," I said, but I don't think he heard it because of the clatter of the milk buckets hitting the ground. Guy had fallen forward onto his stomach, not unconscious but merely stunned.
I grabbed the barley fork and aimed it so that his red neck was right between two of its tines. I shoved the tines into the ground and stomped on the top of the fork, driving the points in deep.
Guy stirred and tried to get up. I leaned on the pitchfork handle and pressed downward, decreasing its angle to the ground. One tine was pressing into his Adam's apple and the other one was pushing hard against the back of his neck.
He dropped his ear into the manure again and I let up on the pressure. He jerked his head up, trying to get free, and this time I really leaned on the handle. I could see the tines pressing into his skin and his face turned crimson.
He collapsed and lay still, staring up at me with one eye. "You bastard-achoo!" His sneeze blew up a big cloud of the dry manure and sent it swirling around his face.
"Gesundheit," I said, watching him batting his eyes, his tongue swabbing at his lips, spitting and trying to get that nasty stuff out of his mouth. That got him mad.
He lunged to his knees, tore at the fork tines, and tried to grab my legs. I began easing down on the fork handle, worried that he might suffocate.
But he didn't. He suddenly slumped to the ground. I raised the handle. He was making whistling sounds as he sucked in air. Every time a piece of manure or straw caught in his throat he'd have to cough.
When he was feeling better I said, "Now let's talk, Guy."
The two words he threw at 'me were pretty vulgar, but they didn't bother me because I'd never let him do that to me, anyway. I let him know I was through kidding by pressing down on the fork handle. I damned near choked him but he talked, and he told me everything I wanted to know.
He said he'd jumped me because he didn't want me around, specifically around Rosita. He thought I'd teamed up with Matt and we were trying to frame him for the murder that Matt had committed. Guy admitted he knew all about the fun Matt and Joy were having in the hay. He'd known about it for a while and he'd made a deal with Matt to keep his mouth shut. Guy told me his wages and now I understood why he was driving a new car and Matt was driving the old one. Molly had been unhappy with the wages he was being paid, but Matt couldn't fire him or knock down on his wages because Guy would talk. Matt had killed Molly because he and Joy wanted to get married, Guy insisted. Everything would have been fine if I hadn't begun snooping around. When I did, Matt turned to me for help, for a fee, to frame Guy.
"But I didn't kill Molly," Guy said, with his ear still in the manure. "So help me! Matt killed her."
"Did you see him?"
"No. I was out mowing that patch of hay. Matt was supposed to have been out irrigating but he could have sneaked home and shoved her in and I wouldn't have seen it. The barn blocks out the house."
"Oh, sure," I said.
"You've got to help me, Able, and keep me from getting stuck with that murder."
"Last night you should have thought about winning friends and influencing people."
"Rosita made me so damned mad." He swallowed a few times. "I'm sorry."
I'd never expected to hear that from Guy, but I'd never chatted with him while he had his ear in the manure either. "If you're innocent you've got nothing to worry about." I pulled the pitchfork out of the ground. "You'd better get the milking done."
Stepping out of the barn I saw that it was very light now. Matt was coming back from the fields. I waited for him at the pumphouse.
When he neared he asked, "What the hell are you doing here this early in the morning?"
"I want to talk to you."
He took the shovel from his shoulder and stuck it into the ground. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Then why are you here?"
"You told me you'd help me find Molly's murderer. Here I am."
"I've got work to do, man. A thistle got stuck in the head-"
"-oh, shut up!" I said.
"Now you just wait a minute!"
"I'm through waiting on you and everybody else around here!" the anger was building up inside of me, throbbing at my temples and pushing against my eyeballs. With no sleep, hungry, the sore spots throbbing, and getting nothing but a bunch of lies from everyone, I'd had it.
More than that I was discovering that I wasn't the hot-shot in this sort of a thing that I thought I was.
Facing the facts cooled me off a bit and I said, "You, of all people should wonder whether your wife was murdered."
"I didn't kill her."
"Who did?"
"I don't even have to talk to you." He started moving away. "She fell in. It was an accident."
"The lid was on the cistern that afternoon, Matt."
"So?"
"It wasn't an accident. When are you and Joy getting married?"
He shook his head. "Getting a little on the side is no motive. Especially when I kept it in the family."
He grinned and then became overly patient. "Guy would naturally tell you about Joy and me to throw suspicion off him. Guy is your-man. I'll vouch for anything Joy told you last night. Molly treated him like dirt, and he was mad enough to kill her that noon when they had the argument about which field to mow. Now you've even got a motive." Walking away he said, "Well, back to work."
I went back to the Granada Inn and tried to eat breakfast but it was no good. I was disgusted and all of me ached and throbbed and I kept thinking about sleeping and getting the hot sun's therapy.
On an impulse I grabbed my trunks, left my car at the highway and then walked through the fields to the big ditch.
I walked downstream until I was below the drop and then I slid down the grassy bank. I pulled off my clothes, and while I was slipping into my trunks I could feel the sun burning my skin as well as the cooling touch of the fine mist thrown off by the falling water. There was no breeze down here and even though it was midmorning, it was still haying weather and the sun was turning it on early.
Stepping into the water I was surprised to find it warm. Then I remembered that the night air had been almost tropical. I waded upstream and finally dove into the swimming hole, that part of the ditch dug out by the water crashing over the drop. I swam some and then dog-paddled, and before long I felt my self relaxing, getting tired in a delicious sort of way. I got out and walked downstream about twenty feet. There was a sandy strip of ditch bank there, about ten feet wide and located between the water's edge and the grass. I stretchd out on my stomach in the sun.
It was exactly what I needed. The roar of the water was very soothing, the sun was wonderful, and I lay motionless with the side of my face on my forearm. A foot away from my face I could see a couple of ants stroking each other with their antennae, and then it seemed they liked it so much that they ran away together.
I closed my eyes and wondered whether it was true what I'd heard about Matt and Joy. If it were, where did they run to when they ran away together? To this swimming hole? Maybe out in the cornfield. You could really hide in a cornfield. But it was too damned hot in a cornfield. No breeze on the ground between the rows of corn. Too damned hot in a cornfield for loving. Too damned hot for even thinking about it.
Did I know about cornfields? Lying there in the hot sun, I remembered the day I'd finally gotten Maureen into the field of corn that had been growing on our neighbor's farm. How old had I been? Fifteen? Maureen had been a year younger than I.
We'd been playing around together for a number of years. That meant playing tag, mumbly-peg, pulling the wings off grasshoppers to see how much tobacco juice they'd spit, and things like that.
Maureen was the neighbor's daughter, with long yellow, stringy hair, and thinking about her now, I remembered that she didn't have much of a figure but it didn't make any difference to me at that time. It didn't make any difference how she looked or shaped up because it was a lot of fun for me just touching and wrestling with her on occasions.
I remembered we used to go out to the old straw stack that was in the fields, and we'd crawl up to the top of it, and after we were there, we'd lie down, grab hold of each other, facing each other, hold on tightly, and then we'd roll down the side of that straw stack. Jolting and bouncing down the side, we'd get all mussed up and covered with straw, but it was a lot of fun juit rubbing against each other.
I remember too, a couple of times I'd ask ed Maureen whether she didn't want to do a little loving the way the grownups were doing it, but she didn't want any part of it. That was the way you got babies, she thought and she wasn't ready to be a mother.
Then one day in the middle of the summer we'd gotten permission to go swimming in the big ditch. That swimming hole was only about three feet deep because the folks were afraid that in any deeper water we'd drown. We both had our swimming suits under our arms on that particular afternoon, and on the way to the swimming hole we cut through the field of corn.
It was hot. Particularly in the cornfield where there wasn't any breeze. We walked along for a while and then I got so damned hot I pulled off my shirt, and I was pretty proud about my bare skin being right underneath, because the week before I'd finally been allowed to go without wearing an undershirt. Maureen was pretty impressed about that too, because her little brother was still having to wear his undershirt. She saw the little nipples on my chest now and she thought they were really something, and when she touched them with the tips of her fingers they stood up as hard as dried peas. I asked her if she had anything that matched mine.
I almost fell over when Maureen pulled off her blouse and showed me what she had. Oh, she had a pair of nipples on her chest, and they were even a bit bigger than mine. Because she'd touched mine, I had to do the same to hers. She giggled real funny when I did that and I got a hell of a kick out of it, just touching those little nubs.
Of course, she had to rub my nipples every time I rubbed hers, and before long we were just standing there between the corn rows, rubbing each others nipples at the same time. And the more we rubbed and the more we giggled the hotter it seemed to be getting, and before long I told her it was just too damned hot for me, and that I was going to keep cool by pulling off my clothes. I told Maureen that unless she did the same thing she was a sissy and if she were a sissy I wasn't going to have anything more to do with her, ever. Smart.
So Maureen took off her blue jeans, and she was standing there in her little cotton panties and I said that was a hell of a way to be standing around because I was going to be a nudist, the way I'd heard they were running around out in California.
I still had on my shorts because I felt a little funny getting out of them right there in front of Maureen, but she took my dare, slipped out of her panties and she was standing stark naked in front of me and I'd never seen a girl standing around like that without any clothes on and I just looked and looked at what I saw and it was pretty terrific and I'd never felt so good looking at anything like that in all my life.
"Come on," Maureen said, "take your shorts off." She kept on. "You're a sissy if you don't take off your shorts. You're a sisy, you're a sissy." She began chanting it.
"I'm am not neither no sissy," I triplenegatived.
"You are too. Unless you get all undressed."
I really wanted to get undressed but I also wanted to be coaxed a bit more.
Finally I shoved my shorts down to my ankles, stepped out of them and kicked them aside. Maureen was watching me closely and when I was naked as Adam she was staring at the spot below my belly button and it was a strange look on her face. But by that time it didn't make any difference to me how she looked because I was burning up and I wanted to do something, even though at that moment I didn't know how to go about it.
I wanted to get close to her but I was afraid if I'd just come right out and say it she might get scared and bawl and tell her mother, and the whole thing would finally get back to my old man. My brain was working furiously. I got a great idea.
I said, "Let's rub our chests together, Maureen. But instead of using fingers we'll just use our chest, just chests, no hands."
"Well, I don't know," Maureen said relucttantly.
"I never thought you were a sissy."
"I am not a sissy!"
"And you're scared!"
"I am not scared!" She marched right up to me with her chest puffed out and smacked it against mine. I grabbed her and held her tightly and helped her match up her nipples so they'd touch mine, and we rubbed together for a while. That had been a hell of a feeling before, but now as we didn't have any clothes on I caught on quick that the best feeling was the one I was getting down below. I never thought Maureen's skin could be that soft and hot.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Playing," I said. I was trying to get something done that I knew could be done, and should be done, and I thought I could get it done.
I could feel the heat of her against the bottom part of my stomach, and the sweat on her skin, and I was so hard it was burning between my legs. Maureen was whimpering now, and I was trying my damndest to do what I wanted to do, and I jabbed and probed, but I don't know, there was a little pain every now and then, and I was beginning to feel a little guilty about everything the way Maureen was screwing up her face each time, I stabbed.
Then I felt ashamed because I'd started something I didn't know enough about, then a bit afraid because I knew Maureen's old man and he was pretty mean with black eyebrows. The sweat was pouring off my forehead and running into my eyes, and the thing I had between my legs was now beginning to sting, and-all of a sudden I just backed off and gave up.
"Let's go swimming," I said.
"All right," Maureen agreed quickly.
We got into our clothes real fast and then we went to the swimming hole and we had a lot of fun.
9
I remembered some of the other things Maureen and I had done, and before long the sun had taken over and I fell asleep.
I don't know how long I slept but when I awoke I felt a lot better. Then I rolled over onto my back and I saw her, sitting not more than three feet away from me.
"Hi." Joy said.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. When I saw that Joy was still there and watching me, I knew I wasn't dreaming. My surprised reaction at seeing her must have been pretty funny because I could see the laughter in her brown eyes.
She was wearing a two-piece bathing suit, but it had changed color since the last time I'd seen her dressed like this. This outfit was powder blue, and the parts of her visible were beautifully tanned.
"What time is it?"
"About eleven."
Her glance went from my bruised side to my face. "Did you get into a fight?"
"Yes," I said. "Do you have a cigarette?"
She handed me her pack and after we'd lighted up and I asked, "What are you doing here?"
"I always come here about this time of day. Did you have a good nap?"
"It was terrific."
"I'm glad." She stretched out on her side, with her head propped up on one hand, smoking her cigarette. My glance savored the tremendous bust, the tiny waist, and the showgirl legs. She watched me watching her, her hips shifting slightly as though I were stroking her. And then with a little distance separating us I pursed my lips and planted three imaginary kisses on her. Three spots of the little triangle.
She sat up, "Where did you learn to do that?"
"Do what?"
"Kiss like that?"
"In Italy," I said, being the man of the world.
"They kiss like that over there?"
"Sometimes."
She shifted her butt to get it comfortable in the sand. "I'd like to go there sometime."
"Just for that?" I rolled over onto my side and that moved me closer to her. "It's the same all over the world."
"You're sure about that?"
I nodded and kept watching those great breasts, straining and surging against the restricting hatter.
"Sometimes I wonder."
"Don't let anyone kid you," I said. "There are only so many ways to do it and after that it reverts back to the fundamentals. Blocking and tackling. If you haven't mastered the fundamentals you don't score."
"Oh, hell," she said disgustedly. "What a lousy comparison."
"Then you explain it to me." I sank down on my back again, but this time I arranged it so that we were touching, hip against hip, my shoulder against hers. We didn't stay that way very long because she suddenly propped herself up on one elbow and she was tight against me, her face near mine, and her free hand began stroking my chest.
She was on the make, and she'd done a complete switch since yesterday. Not that I complained about it, but it didn't make sense.
I reached up and slid my fingers into her hair at the back of her head. "You're pretty terrific, do you know that?"
"As terrific as Rosita?" Her hand moved down to stroke my stomach just at the top of ray trunks.
"You women are all alike," I said, "always comparing things. If it isn't hats, its dresses, or shoes, or mink coats, or men."
Her mouth came down on mine and her lips were hot and moist and eager, and the tip of her tongue slid into my mouth and searched and tickled and probed and sent little shivers down my back. I held her against me, feeling her good hard breasts against my chest. She'd shoved the tips of her fingers inside the waist band of my trunks, and now she was moving her hand back and forth.
When she finally pulled her lips from mine she looked down at me, her hair falling forward and tickling my face. We were both breathing heavily; and I could see the little beads of perspiration that had appeared on her upper lip, and I could feel the moistness of the skin on her back with my fingers.
She whispered, "Let's go swimming."
"Now?"
She nodded. "Without our clothes." She brushed her lips across mine. "Come on."
"Somebody might see us." We were whispering, and I didn't know why. There wasn't anyone around, and besides, our lips weren't that far apart.
"Not close to the bank over there, no one will see us. We'll be hidden."
I asked, "What if Matt should come by?"
"He won't."
"He might not like it."
"I don't care," she said.
I kept my fingertips of my hand lightly stroking the spot just above her hip, letting it make erratic patterns. "But you care about Matt," I said.
A slight nod was her only reaction, and she was hurting me slightly the way she was kneading and pinching the skin on my stomach. "Don't you want to?"
"Sure." The moment I started to get up she pulled away and jumped to her feet. Her thighs were on the same level as my eyes.
"Beautiful," I said.
"Look at them later," she said urgently.
I got up and walked over to where I'd left my clothes. I picked up my pants and started going through my pockets.
"You aren't leaving?"
"Of course not," I said. "I want to try something." I found the loose change in my pockets, fortunately there were three quarters and I took them and went back to her. "Now stand with your legs together."
She did. "What are you going to do?"
"Your legs are as perfect as any show girl's I've ever seen."
"Do you really think so?"
I slipped one of the quarters between her calves and it stayed there. The next one went between her knees and it didn't fall. The third quarter I tried to slip between her warm thighs, about halfway up. I had a little trouble with that one because she was trembling, her thighs were getting hotter, and I wasn't too steady. I finally got it to stay in place, and then I stroked lightly all the way up before I brought my hand back.
"Oh," she said, and her voice sounded choked.
I stepped back and admired her. "Some producers pick showgirls like that," I said. "You certainly pass the test."
"I don't want to be a showgirl. I want to go swimming now."
I took her hand and we walked towards the water. The quarters dropped to the ground and neither one of us stopped to pick them up. Hand in hand we waded in the water towards the swimming hole, and when it was deep enough, Joy let go of my hand and dove in. I dove in after her.
She'd gone down deep and for a moment I didn't think I'd find her. But I did. We grabbed each other and clung tightly to each other and for the first time our bodies were really touching. Our legs got all tangled up, our hands were busy, and we were kissing about six feet below the surface and by the time I'd run out of air we came to the top.
Joy flipped over and began swimming towards the far bank. The water had been running at flood level. There was a little ledge there now about a foot above the water level, and about ten feet square with a soft bed of grass.
Joy had already reached that spot now and she was pulling herself out of the water and on to the ledge. Her hands went behind her back and the halter suddenly fell into her lap.
I had to suck in my breath. The reaction surprised me because there aren't many breasts that I'll suck in my breath for, and I kept on treading water and looked.
Classic they were. Firm and good and true, a gentle curve on the undersides but so taut they tipped upwards in the front, the nipples hard and pink in their huge brown fields, and her breasts were much lighter than the rest of her tanned body and that made them even more exciting.
Now she was unbuttoning her bottoms, squirming and sliding out of them with those long legs wiggling and waving in the air. She slid them down to her ankles, off her feet, and then she pulled them over her toes and tossed them aside.
I swam over to the ledge and started to crawl onto it. I was almost onto it when she set a bare foot against my shoulder and shoved. My fingers slipped off the grassy sod and I fell back into the water. Before I went under I caught a glimpse of her laughing at me. I tugged and pulled at my trunks until I'd gotten them off and when I came up I tossed them onto the bank. Then I went after her.
This time when I began pulling myself onto the ledge I didn't give those kicking, flailing legs an opportunity to knock me into the water again. I was finally on the ledge beside her, and she suddenly flopped over onto her stomach with her legs pressed together, all of her rigid and firm, lying perfectly still and laughing quietly.
I smacked her across the ass with the flat of my hand and it made her howl like a hound dog that has caught the scent. She flipped onto her back and I dropped my one-hundred and ninety three on top of her.
"You were saying-about fundamentals." She exploded then, becoming a squirming, fighting demon under me. She was exceptionally strong, but that's a country girl for you. She twisted and fought and kicked and arched her back and tried to buck me off, but I stayed right with her. Her body was getting hot to the touch; and I could feel her soft skin getting slick from perspiration.
I got my arms around her shoulders and crushed her against me, feeling those hard breasts throbbing against my chest; and I got my face down into the side of her neck and I bit her on the shoulder. That stilled the top part of her but down below she was swivelling and rocking her hips, and her legs were crossed.
I tried to shove my feet in between her calves and get those legs pried apart but she was still resisting, and I decided to let the weight of by body tire her out. I jerked my head up and then ground my lips down onto her hot, wet mouth, and she bit my tongue hard and I jerked my mouth away again. I came right back and when I found her mouth this time I bit her lower lip and clamped down. I hurt her and I felt her legs relax for a quick moment.
I had both feet in between her legs now; and I pried them open enough for me to slip in between them. Our mouths joined and her arms were around me now, pulling me against her in stead of trying to keep me away. Her hips were still twitching and shifting and but they were moving very helpfully now, and I found the wonderful silky softness, the moist urgent hotness and then the welcome splendor of her paradise.
I eased forward and finally our stomachs touched, and I hammered home and she squealed and those fine long legs scissored tight and all of her erupted as though we were lying in a bed of bees. We began panting and struggling, the legs holdings me in a vise, but now I wasn't trying to resist their pressure.
She became a furious mass of action, strong and delightful, and vigorous in every moment, a wild slippery country girl who bucked and arched and returned every thrust with renewed violence and screams that split through the roaring of the water nearby, and as the tempo increased I found that she was responding in rhythm and urgency and when we hit the end of the line she came off the soft bed of grass in a savage arc and held it and I dumped six tons of coal down the chute and she finally collapsed.
After a while we just relaxed on the ledge, lying on our back and looking up at the sky, not saying much but the things we said were personal and complimentary. Then I noticed that her eyes were closed and before long she'd dropped off to sleep.
I dove off the ledge into the water. When I surfaced I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye.
I looked up and saw him sitting on a horse on the high bank, a pitchfork with curved tines resting on his shoulder. His face was very dark and he was grinning down at me from under the brim of a straw hat. I knew he couldn't see Joy on the ledge, but I had no idea how long he'd been there.
"How's the water?" he yelled down.
"Pretty good."
We were yelling to be heard over the roar of the falling water.
"It looks good," he yelled back.
"It is. How's everything otherwise?
"Can't complain."
"I'm glad to hear that," I said, trying to make conversation.
He sat there looking down at me for a while as though he were trying to think of something to say. Finally he yelled, "Well, I've got to be going." He reined the horse around and rode away.
I swam over to the ledge and crawled up besids Joy. She'd awakened and slipped into her halter and shorts While I'd been talking to him. Now she was sitting oross-legged on the grass.
"That goddamned ditch rider is a 'Peeping Tom," she said. "He comes by here a couple of times every week so he can see who's swimming." She was mad.
"I don't blame him," I said. I kissed her on the mouth but there was no reaction. "He's gone now."
"But sometimes he turns around and comes back, just hoping he can see some girl's bare ass."
"He won't be back," I said. "I don't trust him."
"Don't worry about it." I reached around behind her and started to unfasten her halter. "Don't keep them hidden, Joy."
"Don't." She moved my hand away.
I thought the ditch rider had killed an encore, but then she was suddenly in my arms, smashing her mouth against mine and I was crushing her against me and massaging one of her firm cheeks.
She jerked her mouth from mine. "Oh, I do want to again and to do it lots of times with you but I don't want to now because I'm afraid that he might come back and I don't want to have to worry about him. I want the next time to be perfect."
"So do I." She wasn't getting an argument from me.
"Tonight we can, as long as we want to. And as often. Tonight. After it's dark we can, and nobody will be around, and we'll be all alone and then we can, can't we?" She was talking fast, the words were running together, and she was excited. It excited me just listening to her.
"Yes. Tonight."
"Here. Right here," she said. "After dark I'll meet you here. Make it ten o'clock. It'll really be dark then. Is that all right with you, ten o'clock? I'll meet you up there on the bank by the drop."
"It's a date."
"You'll really come?"
"I'll come," I said.
She sighed. "I can hardly wait. But I will. And it will be so much better that way, won't it? Waiting and looking forward to it the next time?"
"Yes."
Suddenly she asked, "How did you come up here?"
"I came up through the cornfield, west of here."
"Good," she said. "Nobody saw you then?"
"Nobody."
"Go back that way again, will you?" I asked, "Are you afraid Matt might find out about us being here together?"
"A little," she said.
"How bad is it, between the two of you?"
"We see each other once in a while."
"How do you keep it a secret?"
"No one knows about it-except Guy. And he won't talk. Especially now, he won't."
"Why not now?"
"The day-the afternoon of Molly's death, I was here, the way I told you. When I came up on the bank, getting ready to go home, I saw Guy leave his tractor in the field and walk towards the house. It was a little after three in the afternoon."
"And?"
"And that's it. I know that now about him and he knows about me and Matt. A stand-off."
It was obvious she could give me a lot of information if I could only get her to talk. "Why don't you tell me everything you know about Molly's death, and the people involved?"
She squirmed and pulled away as the tip of my tongue probed her ear.
"You could be a big help to your buddy."
"Tonight," she said. "Tonight I'll tell you anything you want to know."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
I kissed her tenderly and then got to my feet, and went over to my clothes. "Then I'd better leave and get rested up for our date."
She was clasping her knees with her arms. "Don't forget to bring your fundamentals."
"Don't worry, I won't."
10
I ate lunch at the Inn, and it was almost two o'clock when I'd finished. I didn't see Rosita about but the waitress informed me she'd gone into town that morning.
I went back to the cabin, smoked a cigarette and wondered how I could kill the time until my date with Joy. Most of the soreness was gone from my body. My head was still a little stiff but otherwise I felt pretty good. I had no leads to work on, nothing further to do until I talked to Joy.
Bill Cook knew about Joy and Matt, and so did Guy Rider. There was no motive for Guy to kill Molly. Matt and Joy each had a good motive.
Joy had been at the swimming hole and Matt was supposed to have been out irrigating. What if Joy and Matt had set it up? With Joy watching from a distance, Matt had gone home and pushed Molly into the cistern. At that moment Guy decided to get a drink of water at the house.
Matt, seeing him coming, panicked, put the lid on the cistern and hid. Then Joy and Matt got together, and when I started insisting it had been murder, they had an ace. Both of them had seen Guy going towards the house. It was natural for Guy to think I was on Matt's side, helping Matt with the frame, because Matt and Joy had already hinted it to Guy.
At that moment I heard a knock on the door of my cabin. I got off the bed, walked over and opened the door.
"Hi, Clarke." , Rosita was standing outside, a vibrantly beautiful woman in the sunshine. Her pretty face smiled at me from under the brim of a black flat-topped hat, the kind worn by the Spanish dons. She had on a pair of tight Levis, and a pale green short-sleeved shirt open at the throat.
"You look lovely, Rosita."
"Thank you. How do you feel, Clarke?"
"Wonderful."
She pulled a pair of soft brown leather gloves from her hip pocket. "I'm going horseback riding." She blushed a little when she said it. "I wanted to invite you to come along, if you have nothing better to do this afternoon. I don't want to bother you-but I thought if you'd like to-"
"-Let's go, Rosita!"
She was very happy, and the little dimple near her mouth was having a ball. "I think you can ride a horse, no?"
"Yes. I haven't ridden for years, but I'm ready."
There was a small shed about two hundred yards behind the Inn and a small corral with two horses in it. They were both blacks, and we had them saddled in a few minutes. Rosita had even brought along a canteen of water.
We went through a gate and headed north, following a narrow dirt road going through somebody's farm with a patch of alfalfa on the left, a patch of wheat on the right. Dead ahead of us lay the prairie, looking dust-grey and barren in the summer sun. I could see the shimmering heat waves in the distance, but it didn't feel hot because there was a gentle breeze.
Rosita admitted that some of the people kidded her about riding out onto the prairie when it was so hot, but she explained she didn't mind what anybody said because she liked being out alone like this and she really enjoyed the dry, hot weather.
We let the horses walk, and I began telling her about the farm I'd grown up on, and little incidents in my life. The private eye segment came up and I told her about my interest in trying to find out who killed Molly Clutch. I out-lined what I'd learned and then I asked her for her thoughts on the matter.
At that moment we came to another gate in the barbed wire fence. I dismounted, opened the gate, and after we'd both moved our horses through it I closed the gate, again and mounted. We were now in the prairie with nothing around us but scrubby sagebrush, ant hills, cactus, and a flat expanse of land that stretched on for miles.
While we headed north Rosita told me that she thought Matt had killed his wife. He'd always wanted to sell out and get away from there; but Molly wouldn't have it. They didn't get along at all, and Rosita thought Matt would kill to get free.
She knew that the Clutch place was one of the best farms in the area, and selling would be no problem. She'd even heard about a year ago some wealthy rancher from Denver had been trying to buy Beulah's place, Bill Cook's place, and Matt's place. A package deal because they all bordered each other and they'd decided not to sell. It was common knowledge that Matt had been overruled in the matter.
Then Rosita told me about Cook, what a fine man he was, a great citizen. He's served as county commissioner for a number of years and then he'd been a state representative for one term. When he ran for re-election he'd been defeated. That had been about two years ago.
I said, "I had a hunch he was a politician. He keeps expounding on the noble state."
Rosita laughed. "It is. I like it very much."
About a half hour later we came to a gash in the prairie. It was an old stream bed, twisting and curving through the prairie, the sides of the cut not too steep but dry and powdery. The stream bed itself was about twenty feet below the level of the prairie.
When we were going down the bank, our horses slipping and sliding in the soft dirt, Rosita said, "This is called Dry Creek."
It was a good name for it. There wasn't a drop of water to be seen, the ground wasn't even moist But evidently there had been water here once upon a time, maybe years ago, and apparently now the stream ran only in the springtime.
At the edge of the old creek bed stood one lone cottonwood. Big and green, the old gnarled trunk twisted and gashed and worn by the weather, and about three feet in diameter.
"Here is my brave one," Rosita said, dismounting.
You had to give that tree a lot of credit.
"Whenever I feel depressed or a little low and sad, I just take a ride out here and look a that tree. No matter .how bad things seem to me they are not so bad when I see that this tree doesn't give up, or complain about life."
I understood exactly what she was trying to say. After I'd dismounted I took the reins o Rosita's horse and tied the two blacks to a big sagebrush bush. I tied the knots real good be cause I didn't want to walk those eight or ten miles back to the Inn.
Rosita had taken the canteen off her saddle We walked over to the tree and sat down in it shade. After Rosita had taken off her hat and tossed it aside she took a drink of water than passed the canteen to me. I drank, and when was putting the cap back on I could taste the lipstick I'd gotten off the neck of the canteen
"Your lipstick tastes like raspberries, Rosita."
"It's a lot better when it isn't secondhand.' "You like it?"
"Hey, Matador, you're a pretty fresh fellow."
"I'm not really fresh," I said. "I'm jus honest. Nothing compares with the genuine article. See?" I leaned forward and kissed that wonderful mouth, and the way I might kiss m sister.
"Let's say it started out that way until Rosita's arms slid around my neck and pulled me towards her and held me that way until she sank backwards and her shoulders settled on the ground.
"I can't stay away from you," she whispered. "I can't keep from touching you." Her cool fingers were caressing the sore spot on my temple.
My left arm was underneath her and her soft hair was spilled across my forearm. My right hand was on the side of her neck, my fingertips stroking the smooth, warm softness of her skin. "I don't mind it at all, Rosita. You're a very exciting woman."
"Are you still being honest?"
"Yes. Very honest."
Her eyes moistened but I could see the happiness in them.
"Then I will also be honest," she said. "I feel-like a little muchacha with her first boy friend. Happy and afraid and bashful at the same time. And all because of you and when you came to the Inn and that night...." After a moment she continued, "It was such a long time. Ever since my husband. And I was afraid everything was dead for me, afraid that it wasn't, not knowing, and wondering, and then...."
"You don't have to tell me all that, Rosita."
"But I want to. And I like to. It makes me happy that I waited, and it makes me happy that I can tell you that I did wait. To you, a man, it is maybe nothing to you. But to me it is very important. It is everything to me, perhaps the best thing in life."
I stopped her from saying any more because I'd stilled her lips with mine. We were lying there kissing tenderly, and carefully, and fitting our lips together very lightly, making love to each other quietly, and without words, and not hurrying, and just enjoying and savoring every moment of our closeness.
Then Rosita took my hand very gently away from the side of her neck and firmed it down on top of her left breast.
"Now," she said, "I want you to undress me, and kiss me, and hurt me, and love me, and I want you to do all those things to me and I don't care in what order."
I started undoing the buttons that ran down the front of her shirt, watching my fingers trembling, and feeling the way my heart was beginning to pound and push all the blood into my chest and clog up my throat. When the shirt fell open I saw her brassiere, the mounds looking very beautiful and white against the dark smoothness of her skin.
I lifted her up to a sitting position with my left arm; and she slipped her arms out of the shirt sleeves, very slowly and very helpfully. I dropped the shirt onto the ground behind her and unfastened the brassiere in the back, and she slipped her arms out of the straps. She was limp in my arms, and her eyes were closed, and it was like a mother undressing her child who has fallen asleep and is now completely relaxed, and lovable, and not stubborn or resisting in any way.
I let her settle down again with her back upon the shirt. Her mouth was open a little so that I could see her fine white teeth, and her eyes were slightly open, looking up at that tree. I could see a little vein pulsing on the side of her neck, and her chest was moving up and down as she gasped for breath.
I was on my knees beside her, and finally I let my glance follow the soft line of her throat, her chest, until her breasts finally came into full view, two luscious, soft mounds, creamy-tanned, with their rounded chocolate-covered summits, and the nipples that were firm, and pink, and tender, and still rather small with a few tiny wrinkles.
I leaned forward and kissed a spot on her warm smooth stomach just below the valley of her breasts, and I heard her suck in her breath and felt her move a little under my lips. After that I kissed the tip of each hot breast, in turn, feeling the little nipples squirm and awaken quickly, arise, swell, and harden under my lips, my tongue, and between my teeth. They were huge now, swollen so tightly that with the pressure of my lips I could feel the pounding of the blood against their fiery skin until I was afraid they might burst open.
Rosita's arms were on the ground near her head; and now she clasped her hands together, and her eyes were now screwed shut tightly and she was moving her head urgently from side to side, moaning and crying in her exciting way as her body began to shift and squirm under the touch of my kisses.
The skin of her stomach was almost searing to the touch when I sent my fingers down and began unbuckling her belt and the buttons of her Levis. I stood up then and pulled off her shoes, then her Levis. She was wearing red, silken panties. Leaning forward I hooked my fingers under the elastic and began pulling them down over her generous hips, and along her slim thighs, with Rosita squirming and shifting and begging me to hurry.
I tossed the panties aside and straihtened up. Right there in the middle of the prairie, as barren and desolate as it was, deserted and lifeless and unattractive, I looked down at her wonderfully nude body, admiring everything about her, and it was one of the most beautiful sights I'd ever seen.
Then the fire overwhelmed me and it was overpowering, and then I began to get out of my clothes, trembling, and trying to hurry, and while I was doing that Rosita got to her feet, and then she was there helping me and kissing me on the neck and shoulders.
Finally when I'd tossed aside the last piece of clothing we both stepped back slightly and there was only a few feet separating us. For a few moments we stood like that, motionless as statues and as naked as the good Lord had made us, just staring at each other, and then our glance met and held and it was bringing us together.
We moved slowly, agonizingly, until our fingertips touched each other, our arms slid around each other into the wonderful embrace, and finally I could feel the hard burning tips of Rosita's breasts touching my chest. I grabbed her then and socked her against me.
She screamed low in her throat and she was squirming and fighting and yet pressing against me while her fingers were tearing and digging at my back; and I was hurting her by mauling her against me, and then I was kissing the side of her neck, the hollow of her shoulder. She suddenly released me and drooped backwards and I had to hold onto her so that she wouldn't fall onto the ground.
Her breasts were now shoved forward and upwards, offered to my searching, nuzzling lips, and this time when I returned to them I could 'eel the heat and urgency drumming in my ears and roaring through my guts. I fed on them ravenously and viciously, then moved on to the wonderful flatness of her stomach, and then as the turmoil became worse we settled down upon the clothes we'd discarded and every urgent, searching nuance and touch became a violent screaming in my throat that demanded an acceleration that turned into a searching frenzy.
She was uncontrollable now, all of her damp and enflamed, and it was time to love and we loved. We loved fast and frantically and we loved slowly and easily; we loved with the experience of the old and the impatience of youth, with the awareness of time but without it. It was painful and delicious, and it was life and death; and it was perfume, it was dust, there was silence, and there were cries, it was good, it was wonderful, it was everything.
We found it, found it all, all of it, every bit of it, all, all, all, rythmically, the middle, the middle, the middle, now the end, the end, the end, faster and faster, the end, the finality, the passion, the end, the ultimate the great, big, wonderful, fantastic end.
Later we were lying in the shade of the tree, unclothed and spent, Rosita with the back of her head resting on my chest, and neither one of us moving or saying a word. Looking straight ahead I could see the creek bed outside the circle of shade, the sides of the cut, barren and grey, looking almost white in the sun and in the desolation.
We were alone in the middle of nowhere, and we had made love with only the horses watching. My glance went to them now and I saw that they were dozing in the sun and they'd probably been dozing that way ever since we'd arrived.
Rosita and I were the only two people left in the world it seemed, with our tree, with the wide open spaces of the west around us. Indeed it was a noble state, just as Bill Cook had said.
Then I remembered that before too long we'd have to start back to the Inn because I had a date at ten o'clock. I remembered, too, the things that Joy had promised me. I'd probably be dead before the day ended, but what a way to go.
Very quietly I asked Rosita, "Are you asleep?"
"Yes," she answered immediately. She moved slowly, shifting herself into a sitting position so that she could look down at me.
Her glance was tender as she used it to caress my face; and then as her hand began stroking my chest I saw the tiny flames appear in her eyes, and then she was watching her as it moved lightly down my stomach.
With her touch and caresses she enveloped me with a velvety heated web that quickly closed about me, deliciously and completely, so wonderful that I could only call out her name, and repeat it time after time, then the beautiful stimulation made me grit my teeth and shut out the sight of the sky overhead and let myself be swept upwards into a miraculous world, a universe, where all was pleasure and pleasure was infinitesimal and enduring.
I timed the evening and my departure from the Inn so that I'd arrive exactly at ten o'clock at the drop of the big ditch. Earlier in the evening there had been a sliver of moon in the sky but now it was gone, leaving only the stars to illuminate the night. It was pretty dark and I stumbled over clods and grass clumps several times as I walked through the fields.
As I followed the big ditch, the noise of the water roaring over the drop seemed louder and more vicious to me than ever before. It was probably due to the fact that it was night and all other sounds had stilled, I told myself.
I arrived at the spot, at the location Joy had promised to meet me, but I couldn't see her about. Maybe she'd decided to arrive late so that she wouldn't appear to be too eager. Maybe she'd even changed her mind about the entire thing. I decided to wait a little while and see if she'd show.
The roar of the water going over the drop was pounding in my ears; and I could feel the cooling mist of the water on my face. The ditch was running full, and I wondered whether I could see the water crashing over the drop. I stepped up on its concrete side and looked downward. I could vaguely make out the whiteness of the foam the thirty odd feet below, but between that spot and me I couldn't see the water hitting the two concrete, ledges.
There was nothing, only a black, hissing, and roaring void. I knew the width of the drop was only about ten feet, and I idly wondered whether I could jump it if I took a run at it. Not that I planned to do it. I wasn't going to take any chances on falling in. I remembered, as a kid, I'd seen a dog trying to jump across a drop and he'd fallen in. His mangled body had been almost unrecognizable after the water had slammed him against the concrete.
I couldn't stop myself from glancing downward one last time, feeling more fascination than fear of the danger below.
Then I felt myself falling. A split second later I realized I hadn't fallen. Someone had pushed me. Hard. Right between the shoulder blades.
I was suspended in mid-air that quick moment, with the sound of the water booming louder and louder into my ears. Hurtling through the air only lasted a fraction of a second but my mind was filled with crazy thoughts, thousands of them. Stupid jerk. Me. I'd walked into a trap.
Joy had pushed me. Or she'd sent someone to do it for her.
Then I was remembering it was only about ten feet to the water level and the concrete ledge was only about five feet deep. Like a guy in the carnival diving into a tankful of water.
But the concrete sides of the drop were rough and unfinished. If I hit with my head against the concrete I'd be killed. For one short moment I was ready to accept the end. And then I decided to fight and save myself.
I smacked into the water and everything happened quickly. The sound of the water rumbled in my ears, swirled around me as I was driven downward. I hit the bottom of the ledge, spread-eagled, felt the force of my fall jar my chest and stomach and forehead, knocking the wind out of me, and I was momentarily stunned. The moment I recovered, I panicked.
I was caught in the swirling vicious maelstrom of water and it was spinning me around, roaring at my helplessness. I felt myself being slammed up against the sides of the concrete, but I didn't feel any pain. The water kept smashing down on top of me, and its force was holding me under.
I fought and kicked, felt the urge to breathe, made my mind fight that need, and tried, to get to the surface. I tried holding myself away from one side of the concrete ledge with my hands, but it was too difficult. I was being spun about by the water.
Then I was threshing with my legs, trying to push myself upwards against the force of the pounding water. Suddenly I felt myself surging upwards, but because I was dizzy and weak and confused I was afraid I was really going deeper because I no longer knew which end was up.
Suddenly my head broke through the surface. The air was clogged with spray, but I sucked air into my lungs, coughed and spit out water. I realized that I was treading water and that I was behind the curtain of the falls. The fear that had gripped me lessened' a bit, and as my head cleared I was able to concentrate on my problem.
I hadn't broken any bones, I hadn't drowned, and I was still alive, but I was weak and afraid I might not be able to tread water like this much longer. I had to get out of there before I was completely exhausted.
I couldn't go up the back or the sides. It was concrete with nothing to hang onto, no way for me to pull myself out. There was only one exit. Down. I had to drop down to the next ledge. That one was about ten feet below, and it also had the same churning, swirling five feet of water in it. I was tiring quickly. I would have to fight the water in that ledge the way I'd fought it in this one, and I had to do it before I was completely exhausted.
I sucked in air and then shoved myself forward. The falling water hit me, pounded the top of my head and tried to shove me under again. I .thought I'd had it, and then the tips of my fingers caught the top edge of the front of the ledge. I pulled myself up, got my feet up on the ledge, and then I was able to get my head out and into the air.
I clung to the top of the ledge with my fingers and arms and legs and toes and filled my lungs with precious air while the falls tried to knock me over. Then I held my breath. I let my legs drop down, while the force of the water was trying to loosen my fingers. There was no turning back now. I let myself drop.
It seemed an eternity before I hit.
The water smacked into my nostrils and then there was no sound except its dull rumbling in my ears, and finally my feet hit the bottom of the ledge. I felt no pain, just a numbness in my legs, and it became weariness that enveloped me. I wanted to quit, to give up.
But even while I was thinking like that I was kicking and thrashing my arms and fighting the swirling force of the water again, fighting the rough, hard sides of the concrete and trying to get up to the surface. I finally felt the top of the ledge with my fingers, and I pulled myself upwards against the force of the water. I hauled myself onto the ledge, over it, the water battering and knocking me in half circles. It bumped me, rolled me over, and then suddenly the force of the water began to decrease and I know I was finally out in the deep part. In the swimming hole.
I managed to get my head up and kept it above the surface as I swam towards the grassy bank. By the time I'd reached it I could barely move my weary arms and legs; but I kicked and scrambled, and finally I'd dragged myself up onto the bank. I lay quietly, completely worn out.
It was a wonderful feeling being able to breathe. Suddenly my entire body began trembling as I began to realize how close I'd been to death.
I lay there for a long time unmoving. Slowly, the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach disappeared and the trembling began to subside. My hands felt strange and stiff and when I brought them up close to my face I saw that the palms and insides of my fingers appeared dark. I knew they were bleeding because I'd scratched them open on the rough concrete.
I turned onto my stomach and dropped my hands into the water, letting the blood wash away. The water from my hair was running down the front of my face, over my eyelids, and trickling down the bridge of my nose. Then I felt something trickling down my left cheek, and when I brushed at the spot with the back of my wrist I felt the wound. The side of my face had been cut open by the concrete.
I must have stayed there another half hour, using my handkerchief and part of my shirt tail to stop the bleeding in my hands and on my face. Finally I got to my feet, realizing only at that moment how the fight had weakened me. I managed to stand up, rather shakily. One foot was a bit sore, probably from hitting the bottom of the ledge, but I didn't think there were any broken bones. I had been very lucky.
Then it hit me. I felt as though someone had turned a blowtorch on me. I was on fire. And mad. Mad at the dirty son of a bitch who'd tried to kill me. I said many unkind words about Joy, and then I finished up with the unknown who'd shoved me in.
Matt. It had to be Matt. Joy had set up the date, and Matt had been waiting for me. I knew he wouldn't be around now, and so I decided to go looking for him.
11
When I got to Matt's house I found the front door unlocked. I went inside and moved across the porch until I felt the open doorway leading into the kitchen. I located the wall switch and turned on the light. Then I marched into the dining room and switched on that light. I looked across the room and saw my reflection in the mirror on the far wall. The shock was almost too much for me.
My trousers were baggy, my torn shirt tail was hanging loose around my waist, and the front of my shirt was covered with blood. The side of my face was a mass of dried blood and the matted hair was hanging over my forehead.
"What-"
I spun around to the right. Matt was standing in a doorway, wearing only his shorts. His eyes were bugged, his face white, as though he'd seen a ghost. And that was probably What he'd expected to see.
"Come here, Matt."
He started walking towards me, staring at my face as though he were walking in his sleep. "What-what-" he kept mumbling.
I waited and when he was close enough the back of my hand rapped him across the bridge of the nose.
His head flew back and the dazed look left his face. "Now, wait a-"
I let him have it the same way with the back of the other hand. That did the trick.
"Why, you bastard-"
He came at me and I was ready. We were both the same size and about the same weight, and as they say out West, everything was f'r and sq're. We knocked over the table and upset the chairs, and my hands started bleeding and Matt was getting bloody and I was getting bloody and I was getting stronger the longer we fought, and feeling a lot better every time my fists busted him in the face or slammed into his guts.
Suddenly, the fun had ended.
Matt was stretched out on the dining room floor. He was motionless and not saying a word. To remedy that situation I went out into the kitchen, looking for some water. I didn't see any pots or buckets around that I could fill with water, and I didn't feel like searching. I noticed the dish pan full of dirty dish water that Matt had left in the sink. I carried it into the dining room and dumped it over his head.
He coughed, stirred, and after a few moments he sat up. He had a couple of noodles sticking in his hair.
I set the pan down, pulled him up and plopped him into a chair. His lower lip was swelling up and the right eye was closed.
"All right," I said, "let's hear all about it."
Matt sniffed, wiped his nose on his forearm, and that left his arm streaked with blood. He was covered with blood, most of it was probably mine. My hands had begun oozing again; and I ripped two more pieces off my shirt tail and balled them up in my fists. Then I said, "Well, Matt?"
"I didn't," he said, "honest-"
I stepped closer to him. "-honest, I didn't! I didn't kill her. I was a!; the swimming hole that afternoon with Joy!"
"Sure you were."
"So help me! We were both there and we saw Guy stop his tractor and walk to the house. At the time we thought he was going for a drink of water." He frowned. "Don't you believe me? You've got to-"
"-go on, Matt."
He swallowed. "And later on when I came home and went out to draw some water, I found her in the cistern. She was dead. I'll admit I was pretty happy about it. But I did not kill her!"
"Was the lid on top of the cistern?"
"Sure it was."
"So you knew right away it hadn't been an accident. You knew she'd been murdered."
He nodded. "I told you I was happy about it. I was glad I'd finally gotten rid of her and I didn't care whether she'd drowned or if somebody had pushed her in. Now I could sell the place to Bill Cook and get the hell out of here with Joy."
"You and Joy, huh?"
"She-" he faltered, "-we had to do something. She's a little bit pregnant."
"Oh. Did Guy know that?"
"Not that part of it."
"But he knew you and Joy were diddling in the ditches?"
"Yes. He caught us once."
"And you paid him extra wages to keep it from Molly?"
"I was paying him real good."
I said, "And you still insist he was the one who killed Molly?"
"We saw him go to the house! He didn't go to the house for a drink of water."
"But Guy had everything to lose when Molly died," I pointed out. "That would be the last thing he'd want to do-kill her."
"But it had to be him! We saw him go to the house!"
I glanced down at my hands and saw that they'd stopped bleeding. I tossed aside the blood-speckled pieces of cloth.
"Fine," I said. "Now tell me about tonight."
"Tell you what about tonight?"
"Why you shoved me in?"
"Shoved you in-"
"Into the drop!" The anger I'd felt was building up again. I saw Matt getting to his feet, his forehead furrowed.
"Is that why you're all banged up? Somebody did that to you?"
I nodded.
"I didn't do it. I've been here all night."
"With Joy?"
"Alone."
"You should have had her with you," I said. "Then the two of you could lie for each other!"
"I haven't seen her all day."
"Then you don't know that she and I were having a little get-together at the drop tonight? No clothes, just lots of passion." I watched him closely for his reaction.
His face had whitened. "That little bitch."
Apparently he didn't know about our date. Therefore, it hadn't been a trap set up by the two of them. Who was her partner this time? Guy? Or had she personally shoved me in?"
I asked, "Where's Guy?"
"Isn't his car outside? He left right after supper, and he hadn't come back when I went to bed."
I went outside and looked around but I didn't find Guy's car. When I came back inside Matt had slipped into a shirt and a pair of pants. Now he was tying his shoes.
He said, "I'm going to have a little talk with that little bitch."
"I'm going with you, Matt."
We got into his coupe and when we arrived I waited nearby as Matt pounded on Beulah's door. A few minutes later a light showed at one of the windows. The door finally opened.
Beulah peered out at us. She was wearing an old grey robe and a sleeping cap. Her glance shuttled between us and then she asked, "What's the matter?"
Matt said, "I've got to talk to Joy."
"Well, I don't know, this time of the night." Beulah glanced at me and her eyes became large as she apparently caught sight of my chewed up face.
I said, "It's best we talk to her, Beulah."
"Well, if you insist. Come in, and I'll call her."
We went inside and Beulah shuffled out of the room. "That little slut," Matt muttered angrily.
Beulah was back now. "She's not in her room," she said. "She's not at home at all."
"When did she go out?" I asked.
"She didn't go out tonight," Beulah said. "She went to bed at the same time I did. About nine, I guess."
"Sneaked out," Matt said quietly. "That's what she did."
"But why should she do that?" Beulah was asking me.
"I'm not really sure, Beulah. We'll find out though. Come on, Matt.
"You let me know-" she called out after us.
"You can count on it," I assured her.
When we were in Matt's car he asked, "What's on your mind?"
"Do you have any lanterns or big flashlights?"
When he nodded I said, "Let's get them. Maybe she's still up at the drop."
Matt got the car onto the highway and headed it back to his place. I was beginning to get a strange feeling about the entire set-up. I believed Matt when he said he and Joy hadn't planned on knocking me off the drop, and I believed him when he said he hadn't talked to Joy all day.
She'd meant to Mil me, or she'd set up the trap with someone else. I briefly recalled our morning together. I didn't consider myself a ding-dong Daddy, but I felt that she really wanted to get me on that grassy ledge tonight.
Could someone have gotten to the drop before either of us? I was beginning to hope now that nothing had happened to her.
Matt had two large flashlights, and after we'd driven the road up into the fields, we got out and searched around the drop. After about a half hour and three hundred yards below the drop Matt began insisting she'd run off with somebody and we should give up.
That's when I spotted something light-colored at the edge of the ditch, under a big willow that was growing on the bank. It was a cream-colored pedal pusher floating just inside the willows shadow. Joy was still in it.
Matt and I jumped into the water, and we pulled and tugged until we'd finally gotten her clothes unhooked from the roots.
She wasn't beautiful anymore. She was bruised and battered, and her face was pretty bad. Her cheeks and hands were covered with the same scratches that were on mine. But Joy was dead.
"Someone pushed her in, too, Matt!"
"Goddammit!" That was Matt's only comment.
We carried her to the car and put her inside, and then we took her to Matt's house and put her on the bed in the spare bedroom. Matt just stood there, looking down at her. I took his arm and led him out of the room and shut the door.
"Matt."
When he finally looked at me I said, "Is there anything else you think you should tell me now? Is there anything you might have forgotten to tell me before?"
"There's nothing," he said. "I told you the truth and I told you everything I know. Now maybe you'll believe me when I say that sonofabitching Guy killed Molly, and now her, too."
I got him out of the house and asked him to take me up the road where I'd left my car. While he was driving I told him, "After you've dropped me off, you go back to Beulah's and phone the sheriff. I'll be back before long."
He nodded a little vaguely.
"Have you got that, Matt?"
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to look for Guy."
It was after two o'clock when I got back to my cabin. I went inside, put on fresh clothes and then walked around to the back door of the Inn and tried the door. It was locked.
I tapped on it, loud enough for Rosita to hear and yet soft enough not to awaken the guests in the cabins.
I saw a light go on behind one of the drapes; and I heard someone beginning to move around inside. A moment later the outside light went on, and Rosita peeked outside. When she saw me she unlocked the door and swung it open.
"Not again you're hurt, Clarke."
I nodded. "I'm just clumsy."
She flipped off the outside light and took my arm and brought me inside. She made me sit down in a chair before she got the first-aid kit. She was wearing that same robe, and she was barefoot, moving quietly as she got the pan of water and towels and brought them over to me.
While she was wringing out the towel and getting ready to bathe my face I pulled her down to me and kissed her on the lips. Then I said, "Hello, lovely one."
That made her smile. "I like that. Now I know you're not hurt badly."
Gently she began scrubbing the side of my face. Her hands moved deftly, and there was only the sound of the water dribbling into the pan whenever she wrung out the towel. She didn't ask what had happened, where I'd been, or how I'd gotten beat up like this. She was only gentle and understanding, and sweet. Some pretty wonderful characteristics in a woman.
Finally I asked, "Was Guy here tonight?"
"No. I haven't seen him since-when he was in your cabin."
The touch of her hands on my face and the salve, or Whatever she was applying, felt wonderful. She said, "There will be no scars."
"That's good." Then I told her what had happened, from the moment I was shoved into the drop until Matt had dropped me off at my car.
She said, "I still don't think it was Guy either the other day with Molly, or the one who pushed you tonight."
"We'll see."
When she finished I got up. She asked, "Are you going to bed now, the way you should?"
"No. I'm going back to the Clutch place." I smiled at her. "Thanks, Rosita."
She came up on her toes and offered her mouth, and I slipped my arms around her and brought her in close and held her tightly as I kissed her. Her lips were moist with honey and sweetness, and with a slight urgency and eagerness, her body a heated suppleness that willowed and clung to me.
"Be careful," she said finally.
"I will. I'll see you later."
I was headed for the door when she suddenly called out, "Hey, Matador." When I turned around her glance was piercing.
"Is it the only reason you went tonight to meet Joy-to get a little information from her?"
Women are strange creatures, but very soft and warm. I grinned. "She'd promised to tell me everything I wanted to know." Then I winked and went out the door.
While driving back to the Clutch place I thought again about being shoved into the drop. Who'd wanted me out of the way? Had that same individual shoved Joy in, too? I was willing to bet it had been the same person. According to Matt, he hadn't known about Joy's date with me. I had to rule out Matt. What about Guy? Certainly he could have known about our meeting, and he could have been waiting for us. But why, and what was his reason?
Could Joy have made a deal with him? Payment, a little sex. And then when he'd wanted a double payment for the score she'd resisted and he'd gotten rid of her. That still was no motive for Molly's murder.
I went one step further and thought about the others. Even Beulah Kress. She certainly knew her way about the farm, and she was strong enough to shove someone into the drop. Had she found out about her daughter's illicit romance and decided death was better than dishonor? But why pick on me? And she wouldn't kill her own daughter, Molly.
Bill Cook? Certainly he could have been at the drop. Why should he shove me in? Because Joy had been willing to meet me. Maybe he'd propositioned her some time ago and she'd turned him down.
Rosita? I didn't want to think of her being involved in this, but as long as I was going down the line, I had to include her.
I had told her that afternoon that I was going to the drop to meet Joy because she'd promised to give me some information about Molly's death. I didn't like it. Rosita was very much involved.
She'd been Guy's girl friend, maybe she still was. Maybe they were working together on something. Maybe she was on her own. I remembered her anger for me and the loyalty for Guy the night she'd slipped into the cabin with the knife. Jealousy could have made Rosita sneak up to the drop and shove Joy in and then give me the same treatment.
I suddenly remembered, too, that Rosita hadn't seemed surprised when she saw me a short while ago. She hadn't been particularly inquisitive as to where I'd been and what had happened. Did she have a reason to get rid of Molly Clutch?
By that time I'd arrived at the Clutch place and I let it go at that. Turning into the yard my headlights hit the sedan parked in the yard. At first glance I thought Guy had returned, but it wasn't his car.
Bill Cook was coming out the house as I crawled out of my car.
"Hi, Clarke," he said.
"Bill. What are you doing here?"
"The phone ringing for central woke me up," he said gravely, "and a call that time of the night always means an emergency. I listened in on the party line and heard Matt calling the sheriff. Knowing something had happened I came down here right away to see if I might be able to help."
"That's good of you, Bill."
"I've been inside with Beulah. She's taking it pretty hard."
"I can imagine," I said.
We were now at the door of the house, standing in the light coming through the screen. He asked, "Say, what happened to you?"
"Somebody shoved me into the drop, Bill."
"They told me about it, but I didn't think you'd gotten mangled like this."
"It's nothing serious."
As we went into the house he asked quietly, "Anything new on the Molly murder?"
"Nothing," I said. "Joy had promised to give me some information, but I didn't get to talk to her."
"What a shame," he said.
We found Beulah sitting in a chair. Matt was bringing her a glass of water. He handed her the glass, then waited beside her while she drank. When she'd finished she said, "I see you are back, Mr. Able." There was no friendliness in her voice.
"I'm sorry about Joy, Beulah."
Her old face was set, almost wooden, and I saw the distrust in her glance. I had the feeling she wasn't putting on that front just for the benefit of the others who didn't know that she'd asked for my help. Beulah Kress had suddenly turned against me.
Finally she said, "The sheriff will be here soon to talk to you."
"Good," I said.
Nobody said a word after that, and we just stood around. Matt went over and began arranging a pillow behind her back. We all heard the sound of the car pulling into the yard. A moment later the sheriff came inside.
12
Oscar, the Sheriff, glanced about the room, sixty inches of important lawman. After he'd nodded and spoken to each in turn he asked, "All right, what happened?"
Everyone was looking at me. I said, "I can probably tell you best, Sheriff."
"Want to sit down?" Bill moved out a chair for Oscar. He sat down on it and his toes were barely touching the floor. Then he began digging out pencil and notebook.
I said, "I'd rather talk to you alone."
"Certainly." He was watching me strangely.
Matt said, "Why don't you take my bedroom?"
The sheriff and I went inside and I closed the door. He sat down on the edge of Matt's mussed up bed and I sat down on a pink, cloth-covered dressing chair.
"I'm a little surprised to find you still here, Able."
I told him why I was still there. I began by telling him that I'd wanted to help out Beulah Kress and that my personal pride had also been a big factor in my decision. Then I told him everything that had happened since I last saw him. He sat there and listened, never stopping to ask questions and not taking any notes. I purposefully kept my voice low so that the big ears in the next room wouldn't be able to hear a thing.
I finished up by saying, "As you can see, I've accomplished absolutely nothing. Matt admitted he found the lid on the cistern. So we have a murder. He, or any one of the others could have done it. Now Joy is dead and that complicates everything."
After a long wait he finally said, "I notice you didn't include yourself in the list of suspects."
"I didn't Mil anybody."
He nodded thoughtfully. "Quite a bunch of suspects, aren't there?"
I nodded.
Then he asked, "Where, and with which suspect shall we start, Able?"
"You'd better count me out, Sheriff. I hate to admit it, but I'm a poor detective."
"I'd like to have you help me. I'd like to have you keep right on with what you've been doing."
"All right," I said.
"So, with whom do we start?"
"Why don't we start with Guy Rider?"
He hopped to his feet. "Where is he?"
The little sheriff was asking some big questions. I said, "Why don't you put out the word to have him picked up? I'll go back to your office with you and try to get some information on his background."
"Let's go."
We went into the other room and found the others leaning forward in their chairs, the way they'd been straining to hear through the door.
The sheriff said, "I'm taking Able in with me.
He'd said it like a real western sheriff, too. I was watching the faces of every person in the room. Beulah Kress nodded and sat back in her chair as though it pleased her. Matt seemed confused about everything. Bill Cook shook his head as though he couldn't believe it.
Bill Cook was the first to recover. "If there is anything I can do, Sheriff, any help you need, just let me know."
"Thanks," the sheriff said. Glancing at me he asked, "Shall we go?"
"Yes."
Bill said, "I'll help Beulah and Matt make the funeral arrangements."
"Oh, Oscar," Beulah called out, "may I see you a moment?"
I went outside by myself and waited for the sheriff. It was light now, and the sun would be up within the hour.
The sheriff had parked his car next to Bill's. It was clean and freshly-polished; and while I was waiting for the Sheriff to finish inside I set my weary back against Bill's car.
I was a hot-shot? No. A smart-ass? No. I should have kept on going the morning Oscar had given me the light, and at this moment I'd be having the vacation that I'd planned. There was a pebble near the toe of my foot and I kicked it disgustedly.
At that moment I heard the sheriff coming outside and as I stepped away from Bill's car, I suddenly had the answer. To everything.
I'd found the key that unlocked the entire mess. It was a minor thing, but I'd overlooked it from the very beginning.
"Able," the Sheriff said, coming towards me. He glanced over his shoulder and then lowered his voice. "Beulah just told me that if you said anything to her about wanting to help her out, it was a big lie. She initially asked you for help but she turned you down when you finally agreed."
I stared at him, not believing what I'd heard. "Did she say-why she turned me down?"
"She said she knew I could take care of everything in this county, the way I always have."
Now I wondered about Beulah Kress.
While I followed the sheriff's car to the county seat I tried to analyze the meaning of Beulah's latest comments to the sheriff. They made no sense in relation to what I'd decided while I'd been waiting for the sheriff to come out of the house.
I had plenty of questions to ask when we arrived at the sheriff's office. I came up with a lot of answers. I talked to a number of people in the morning when the offices opened, and when the sheriff let me read the wire from the Chicago police concerning Guy, I had everything I needed.
I had lunch with the sheriff and then I left the county seat. I was on my way back now, to pinpoint the murder of Molly Clutch, and Joy.
Driving by the Clutch place I saw that Matt's ear was gone and that no one was out in the fields. When I passed Beulah's house I noticed that Matt's coupe was parked in her yard. I kept on going and saw that a crew was stacking hay in Bill Cook's fields. There was a man on top of the stack, another one on the power buckrake, and a third man was driving the stacker team of horses.
Just as I passed by the stacker was going up with a load of hay, looking like a giant arm pivoting at the elbow. A team of horses was pulling it up by a system of cables, and the horses were moving at a slow trot.
I stared at the driver. As he moved along behind the team one shoulder was dipped lower than the other. I was positive it had been the same guy who had shot at me that day. Today one hand was holding the team's lines instead of the rifle. Here was some unfinished business that I had to take care of immediately.
I jammed on the brakes, whipped the car off the highway and parked it near the fence.
After I'd crawled through the barbed wire, I began walking through the hayfield. As I neared the haystack the power buckrake was shoving another load of hay onto the stacker. I recognized the driver to be Bill's hired man, the one who'd put the new fan belt on my car that first day.
Bill Cook was on top of the stack, pitching and spreading out the hay. He saw me now and yelled down, "Hi, Able."
I waved at him and kept walking, my glance never leaving the stacker boy. He was in his teens and he always kept one shoulder lower than the other. Yellow hair stuck out from under his straw hat, he was wearing a faded blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his biceps, and a faded pair of bib overalls covered spindly legs.
Bill yelled down. "What's new?"
"Not much, Bill."
"Why don't you grab a fork and come up? Tell me how you got the sheriff to release you."
"Thanks. Maybe I will," I yelled back. "I'd better have a drink of water first."
"Help yourself. The waterbag's in the shade of the stack."
I walked close to the side of the stack until I was a few feet away from the stacker team. The power buckrake snorted and headed out into the field for another load of hay.
When the stacker boy came over to drive the team to take up that buckload of hay I grabbed his bib and shoved him up against the hay stack. The hired man couldn't see us now, and neither could Bill.
I slammed his back against the hay and I scared hell right out of him. That's What I'd hoped for. "Did you take a shot at me at the big ditch?"
He nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.
"Did Bill Cook tell you to do that?"
He was shaking his head and sweating and his mouth was working but no sounds were coming out. Finally he managed to say, "No."
There was another hot shot theory shot to hell.
I asked, "Did Matt put you up to it?"
"No."
"Who was it?"
"No-nobody."
"Why did you do it then?"
"Because-I wanted to."
"Just having fun-I guess."
"Why?"
"You get a big charge out of scaring people?"
I'll be damned if he didn't nod his head. "I like to watch 'em jump." Then he giggled, real silly.
I shoved him away from me and he picked up the lines of the team. He was still giggling weirdly as he drove them away.
I didn't think it had been that funny at all, and I was very disappointed. I had been certain either Matt or Bill had put him up to it.
The empty stacker was coming back down again now as the stacker boy backed up the team.
Bill called down, "Take a ride up, Able."
What the hell. I hadn't been on a haystack for a long time. I grabbed a pitchfork and walked over and stepped onto the stacker teeth.
"Take me up, boy," I said.
Bill yelled down, "Be careful now, Sam."
Sam nodded and started up the team. I was airborne. The stacker went up and when the arm was perpendicular to the ground it stopped and I jumped. I sailed through ten feet of space and landed on my feet in the soft hay.
Bill was grinning from ear to ear. "Ever stacked hay before, Able?"
"Sure," I said.
I set a big forkful of hay along one edge, making certain that it was even with the side. The stack was about eighteen feet high now. I said, "It won't be long before we can start topping her out, Bill."
"That's right," Bill said.
He pitched a while and then he asked, "Well, how did everything go with you and the sheriff?"
"Pretty good," I said.
"I'm glad he turned you loose. I don't know why he took you with him in the first place."
We both moved to the back of the stack as another buckload of hay came up and dropped in the front. We started pitching again and then Bill asked, "Well, what else is new?"
"I know who killed Molly and Joy," I said.
Bill said, "Well, finally, we're going to see justice being meted out around here. I'm certainly glad about that." After he set another forkful of hay he asked, "Can you talk about it-tell me who it is?"
"Sure," I said. There was no reason for me to keep the secret any longer. While we were pitching hay and building a beautiful haystack I told Bill what I'd learned and how I knew who killed the two women.
"Molly and her sister weren't killed because of triangles, arguments, or blackmail, the way everyone kept telling me. That's how I made the error of not establishing the true motive in the very beginning. But it was so obvious. On the land, people are motivated by the land. In this case the land consisted of three farms.
"About a year ago a buyer came here from Denver, offering a nice price for three farms, but he insisted it had to be a package deal. All three. You might have sold, Bill, if Beulah had sold, and Beulah would have sold if Molly had sold her place. Molly refused. She was probably being stubborn because Matt had always begged her to sell. Molly, therefore, was the one individual blocking the entire transaction.
"Now the eventual murderer got the bright idea of contacting the buyer and offering to get all three farms. Again a package deal. With a phone call this morning the buyer admitted that it had happened, and he also revealed that he'd offered a substantial commission if the deal could be consummated.
"That made it easy for the murderer. He shoved Molly into the cistern, and then he panicked and he put the lid back on. No one, except Beulah, thought it was murder because it was on record that Molly had been having dizzy spells. Matt didn't complain about a thing because his life was suddenly complete. Then with my stumbling around in the fields, the murderer became a little uneasy. Sooner or later I might get to thinking about the real motive. So he planned his next move, and it was an excellent one.
"He waited for Joy at the drop and he shoved her in. Then when I came along he thought I was Matt. We're the same size, the same build, and in the dark he couldn't tell the difference. After all, no one but Matt would be meeting Joy at the drop at night. The murderer then was going to tell Beulah that Joy had shoved Matt in because he was trying to run out on her, and that Joy committed suicide because she was pregnant and depressed. But when Matt turned up alive the murderer had to change his story for Beulah's sake. He did.
"He told her that Joy had killed her sister because Joy was in love with Matt. Now when Joy expressed her love to Matt, he told her it had been all in fun. Joy, disappointed and depressed, had committed suicide. Beulah got shook up about that, but she believed it, because Matt never said a word and told her differently.
"Beulah, specifically this morning, was ready to forget about the whole thing. She was sick of what she'd heard and what she'd been afraid to guess for a long time. She was ready to sell her place, and Molly's, and just get out of here, and she was so disgusted she was ready to sell at any price.
"Now the murderer made the deal for the two places, and you decided to sell, too, Bill. The murderer was delivering the three farms to the buyer, making a fancy profit because he'd bought them for less than the buyer had originally offered, plus he was getting the promised commission.
"The day my fan belt' broke, Bill, you were the driver of the sedan with the chrome missing who almost ran off the road looking back at me. You probably had just remembered that you'd put the lid back in place in your rush to get out of there, and now it was too late to do anything about it because I was going into the yard. Maybe you were afraid, too, that she might be yelling or splashing around in the cistern. You hurried home, hopped into your pickup and came back.
"You took me to your house and asked enough questions to be sure I hadn't noticed anything unusual. You knew all about Molly's dizzy spells and you knew Joy was pregnant. Dr. Tubbs was a bit unethical in telling you those things, but, after all, you kept secrets and you were a good, trustworthy friend of his.
"You had the chrome fixed on your car the day we had a beer in town, but I didn't see your car again until this morning. That started me remembering everything. When I left your place that afternoon I had a feeling I'd seen-you somewhere before. I had. That started me thinking in the right, direction this morning when I leaned up against your car."
I looked over at Bill Cook. "That's the way everything is, isn't it?"
"It's a very good story," he said. "Logical, and all that, but there's no proof that I killed anyone."
"I forgot to mention that part. Guy doesn't have a record in Chicago. In fact, I don't believe he was ever arrested before last night. He got drunk and tore up a bar in town and the night marshal locked him in jail. The sheriff and I talked to Guy this morning. Guy was going to nudge you for a little shakedown later on, but we persuaded him to look at it differently. Anyway, Guy told us what he saw that afternoon. While he was mowing hay he saw you shove Molly into the cistern."
That was the big lie.
"He couldn't have-"
Bill Cook caught himself, then he lunged at me. The sharp, tines of his pitchfork were headed for my chest.
I whipped up my fork and caught the tines of my fork on his pitchfork handle and flipped it aside. The pitchfork flew out of Bill's hands and sailed off the haystack.
Bill's shoulders drooped, and the fight had left him. He stood there, quietly and unmoving, looking down at the hay. "What will Betty say?" he said.
"Hey, Sam," I yelled down. "Bring up the stacker. We're coming down."
I heard Sam cluck to the team and the empty stacker came up and Sam stopped it with the short teeth of the stacker leaning up against the stack.
I said, "Let's go, Bill."
We walked to the front of the stack, and we both crawled onto the stacker teeth, getting a good foothold and handhold for the ride down. I glanced to my left and saw the sheriff's car coming into the field. We'd timed the whole thing pretty well.
That's when Bill jumped.
He was suspended in mid-air for one quick second, hurtling down those twenty odd feet. In that moment I didn't think the fall would kill him, but he'd made sure he went down head first.
The top of his head chunked into one of the twelve-by-twelve wooden runners on the stacker. His legs flopped to one side and then he lay still.
The old sweaty felt hat was still on his head. He was lying on his stomach and his face was relaxed, as though he were taking a nap. Except for the fact that the hay leaves beneath him were reddening now and the spot was getting bigger, as though somebody had just kicked over a bucket of barn paint.
Sam's mouth was open, and he was motionless in terror. Suddenly he sprinted across the field, one shoulder still drooping lower than the other. The team was obviously beginning to smell the scent of blood because they were stamping and snuffling. The hired man drove up, hopped off his buckrake and ran over to steady them. When they were finally quieted down I crawled onto the stacker teeth and he brought me down.
Bill Cook was dead. I helped the sheriff put his body into the back seat of his car.
"Well," Oscar said, "if I don't see you again, good luck."
We shook hands. "The same to you, Sheriff. Are you planning to run for re-election this Pall?"
"Hell, yes!"
After the sheriff had gone I went back to Beulah's and I told her and Matt everything. I even told Matt that Guy was still in jail, hoping Matt might pay the fine.
Beulah sat there for a while after I'd finished, not saying a word but I knew she was thinking. "What do I owe you for all your help, Clarke?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." I got up and headed for the door.
When I glanced around I saw that Matt had his arm around her, helping her stand up straight.
Maybe they'd both sell now and make a buck. I'm basically optimistic.
13
When I got back to the Inn I shaved and showered, taking a lot of time, and it was after six o'clock by the time I'd gotten dressed.
I went inside and sat down at the bar, just like the first night, and ordered a Scotch and soda.
After while Rosita came out of the kitchen and stood beside me at the end of the bar and told me the drinks were on the house. Then, just like the first night, the highway patrolman came through the doorway. He nodded at Rosita, and walked right up to me.
"Able," he said ominously, pausing then while he began pulling off his leather gloves.
"What's on your mind?"
"Say, did old Uncle Oscar really figure out those two murders, the way he's been telling me?"
"Who?" I asked.
"Unc-the sheriff?"
"Oh, sure," I said. "Every last detail. A fine lawman."
"Well, I'll be damned." He turned around and walked out the door, forgetting to pull his gloves on again.
Rosita was laughing quietly and that little dimple near her mouth was having itself a ball.
I relaxed at the bar enjoying my drinks until all the tourists had finished eating. Then she and I sat down together at one of the tables. We had tremendous steaks, and wine as smooth as velvet, and we played the juke box later, and we danced, and before long we closed up the place and .we were the only ones in the Inn.
"Where's the party?" I asked.
"Come with me, Matador."
We went through the kitchen, through a hallway and a couple of doors, and finally we entered Rosita's apartment. She'd left the lights on low and in the dimness now she went over to the hi-fi and turned it on, and the first record of the stack settled down on the turntable.
At Rosita's urging I settled down on the couch while she mixed us a pair of drinks, and after we'd take a sip she suddenly excused herself.
The music was soft and romantic and I could hear the shower running faintly, and while I waited for her return I nibbled at my drink, becoming aware of the strange little thought that had been nibbling at the corner of my brain.
She'd been there when the patrolman came in, and she obviously knew that Bill Cook had killed himself rather than stand trial for the two murders, but during the dinner we'd talked of everything but about that.
I found it a bit strange that she hadn't even inquired about it because all the other times she'd seemed .especially interested in the people of the community. Perhaps she had other things on her mind, I decided, and when she came out of the shower I knew what it was.
She was wearing a robe the color of the sun, the belt knotted loosely at her waist with the bottom of the V starting here and then widening seductively as it went upwards, revealing the inner sides of her magnificent breasts. Against the lightness of the robe her skin appeared even darker than usual.
Now as she leaned forward to pick up my empty glass she smiled, and it was very dazzling and at the same time I caught the scent of her perfume. It was almost musky, enveloping me with wonderful promises and clinging to my nostrils and somehow stirring me and making my heart beat faster.
"I'll be right back," she said softly.
Even after she'd left the room the perfume remained and I couldn't wait until she returned. Then she was back, putting our drinks onto the coffee table in front of the couch before she came around and sat down.
"Now tell me about Molly Clutch and her sister, Joy. Who killed them and why?"
It had come so suddenly that I was too surprised to speak immediately, but I covered by sipping at my fresh drink, and then while we were holding our drinks I gave her the entire solution. Exactly the way I'd explained everything to Bill Cook.
I finished up by saying, "It's always a shame when somebody gets killed needlessly, but in this case it was especially bad. Two young women like that."
"Molly was a good woman," she said softly. "Little bossy at times, but a good woman. The little sister was not like that. Living here with her mother while she switched her tail around Matt like a dog in heat made her exactly that. A little bitch. Perhaps it is better now that she's gone." There was a tinge of acid in her voice.
I recalled someone else calling her a little bitch. Matt. Suddenly everyone was jumping on Joy, merely because she'd played around a bit. Rosita had sounded like a woman scorned.
But I forget about it now as I felt Rosita's hand touching my thigh, very lightly, then her hand sliding across my trousers and her fingertips working into the inside of my leg. A hot iron couldn't have burned through my trousers more searing than the touch of her hand, and I set down my glass and then took the one from her hand and put it on the coffee table next to mine.
She was already leaned towards me, the front of her robe falling open even more than it had before; and as I reached out and took her warm shoulders I felt her tremble under my touch and then she was offering me her mouth.
Her hair spilled across my hands, and I could feel the dampness in it from the shower, but by that time she was shoving herself towards me and I leaned backwards with the pressure until I was propped against the end of the couch.
She was all over me now, her hands stroking and touching and moving about, her ragged sweet breath surging into my mouth before our lips met; and then our tongues and lips told each other of our excitement and passion, and before long I had to pull my mouth from hers because I couldn't catch my breath.
"Matador," she said urgently, "you, too, were almost blinded by that little bitch, weren't you?"
Her hands were opening the buttons of my shirt and I didn't answer because I knew she didn't know about my afternoon on the grassy ledge with Joy. She apparently was referring to the night when I'd gone out to meet Joy.
And I remembered, too, the way Rosita had inquired later if my meeting Joy had been only to get information I needed. I decided that here, indeed, was a jealous woman. Jealous enough to use a knife.
I said, "Joy was just a girl caught up in something she didn't know how to handle."
"But she thought she knew how to make love. She didn't." Rosita's head was forward now, her lips and tongue making erratic patterns against my chest, moving downward as she opened each button, and I leaned back and felt the blood beginning to boom through my body, making myself keep my hands off her because I couldn't believe Rosita really felt this way about Joy. I tried to think logically.
I said, "She was probably an amateur."
"Yes," she agreed quickly. "You would have been disappointed."
And then the entire thing suddenly began to penetrate my skull. I didn't know whether it was because of all the liquor Rosita had drunk tonight or whether it was due to the fact that everything was wrapped up and I'd already told her that I was leaving in the morning. Whatever it was, she'd suddenly became a savage, domineering woman.
Rosita could have killed Joy, merely to keep Joy away from me!
Her hands were now at my waist, working excitedly at my belt and zipper and already the expectation was sending the heat drumming through my groin, and I gritted my teeth and attempted to maintain control of myself.
"I will show you," Rosita said eagerly, and there was so much passion and lust in her voice that she almost hissed it, and the next moment she'd broken me open, and now her hands became wild, frantic things that knew exactly what had to be done.
"You show me," I said. "Show me the things that Joy never knew."
"Yes!"
She'd jumped to her feet and wildly tore at the loose belt and opened it and the next moment she'd flung the robe aside, and as I came off the couch and slipped out of my shirt she came at me.
She tore and ripped at my trousers, shoving them down my legs, and the same frantic action rid me of my shorts, and while I was pulling off my socks and tossing them aside she stood motionless, and watched.
Her hair was a dark thundercloud that swirled about her face and shoulders, and with her hands on her hips that jutted forward, and with her legs spread apart, she had reverted back to her savage ancestry.
For a moment she stood there, with fire flashing in her eyes and with her lips pulled back to show her white teeth, breathing rapidly, and with each intake of breath her dusky, delicious breasts surged forward then receded as she exhaled.
It was she who'd shoved Joy into the drop that night so that Joy couldn't entice me!
It was a wild, crazy thought, but I decided I'd either get a confession out of her, or get killed with passion, trying.
She apparently had the same idea.
"I'm going to kill you with love, Matador!"
14
Vaguely I became aware that the record that had just begun was the same music they played at the beginning of every bullfight, and like the matadors coming into the ring, along with the helpers and the pics. I began to move towards her, walking slowly and watching her face and wondering whether she'd come at me or wait for me.
She waited. Haughtily and defiantly she waited, still standing with her shoulders back, her head held high, and every promise of the kill shoved forward so that I could see it plainly and imagine the glory and the agony that was waiting for me.
I moved forward until there were only inches separating her hard dark nipples from my chest. Again the same perfume overwhelmed me, but there was more to it now, there was heat and the smell of her and it was a raging fire that seared my lungs. I wanted to grab her and maul her and tear her apart, but I made myself keep control because from now on I had to bring her to that point from which there would be no return.
It was torture when I leaned forward and kissed each of her breasts in turn, because the moment my lips had touched the second one her arms lashed around my neck, socking me against her and holding me tightly. I couldn't get my breath because my nose was pressed into the wonderful heated mound, and at the same time her hands were stroking and clawing at my tearing at the skin and her fingernails were biting viciously.
I fought her arms until I was free and while I was gulping in air, she'd stepped into me, her arms came around me, holding tightly to me as she shoved herself in powerfully.
I could feel the heat of the furnace, the turbulent shifting and grinding against me, but already she'd sent her mouth up and now her teeth and lips were mauling my mouth, bringing exquisite agony that was supreme pleasure because she was biting and I could feel the edges of her teeth breaking through the skin.
Suddenly she became extremely tender, as though she were an entirely different woman, supple and warm and ever so gentle in her movements against me. Reluctantly she pulled her mouth away from mine, but she kept her lips close, almost touching.
"I am yours," she whispered. "Yours forever."
I wanted to tell her that she was all wrong, that I didn't want it, that I didn't feel the same way about her, but I couldn't because there were certain things I had to accomplish first. I needed to know something very important. About Joy.
It was unbearable now, the way her hips were coming forward, lightly, tantalizing, her heated soft skin stroking against me and then moving away again. Before long I found that I was clinging to her, my hands holding tightly to her hips, and every time she moved away I stepped into her, and again she retreated.
She laughed, huskily and provocatively. "You like that?"
"I like that," I said. "I like that, as no other. Not even like Joy."
"But you didn't have Joy."
"I have joy and paradise right here."
We clung tightly to each other now, swaying and moving in time to the music in the background, doing a wild and lustful dance while my blood boiled and I found myself weakening and giving in to her enticements.
"Rosita," I said, and I wanted nothing in my voice of the word itself to let her know how I felt, but it came out ragged. The moment I'd spoken she broke away from me. and holding onto my hand she led me over to the couch.
"Come, my Matador," she said.
She was down and I couldn't keep myself away from her, finding the touch of her skin against mine so wonderfully silken and pleasurable that I smothered her.
Her hands were a flurry of beautiful things that caressed my face, my shoulders and back, and now that we'd reach this stage everything seemed to become automatic.
Through the bewildering haze I felt myself giving in to her, felt myself going to her, and when I'd begun that she became even more gentle and voluptuous, so wonderful that I was forced to submit completely.
With a cry she had me now, holding me tightly with all of her charms, and it was so beautiful that I wanted to stay there, no, I wanted to go even farther; but at the last second I changed all that.
"No!" she wailed and then she was clawing and tearing at me, trying to bring me back to her, but I pretended that all was too soon and found her breasts with my mouth and wordless ly try to explain it to her.
She scratched my face and neck, trying to get me away from there, shifting and whipping about so that she could bring herself to me, and finally I yielded, reluctantly, and the union wrung an agonizing groan from her.
"Stay, Matador! Stay with me!"
I was trapped, caught in her web of arms and legs, and it was a helpless feeling and I wanted to remain that way but I knew that I dared not because it was still too soon and I yet had to find out what I wanted to know.
I broke free of her again, this time sitting up and making myself remain completely detached from her. Just as quickly she was on me, over me, savagely overpowering me, helping and accomplishing everything with her hands, and now she was the master.
Until I dumped her off me. When she lost her balance she fell off the couch and rolled onto the floor. Just as quickly she was on her knees, clawing at my thighs and legs and pulling herself towards me.
"No!" She screeched it this time, a voice that was almost falsetto in its delirium, painful in its pitch and intensity.
Now I became the aggressor, coming off the couch and pulling her to her feet; and in the next instant, embattled and vicious we ravaged each other with our hands and embraces, a fierce, tortured interval in which we reached the moment of truth.
In a wrenching movement she threw herself backwards, and off-balance I lost my footing and fell to the floor, falling on top of her, and this time I was completely out of control.
There Was the seething pleasure and I found it and she was screaming uncontrollably, her arms flailing and beating the rug she was lying on, an exquisite eternity in which I wanted to stay but I knew I had to leave, and before she'd captured me completely I moved away. Just enough.
She began beating at my head and shoulders, now completely irrational, a violent heaving fury that had become slippery with perspiration.
Gone now were the screams and the wails and the frenzied clutches because there were only whimpers, tiny repeated indications of the agonies that wracked her and were driving her out of her mind.
"Joy," I said quietly. At the same time I moved in deftly, letting her react. Viciously I shoved her knees apart and left her again. The whimperings continued.
"Joy, you're wonderful." I said it quickly while I was able, and then I stroked and caressed and waited. I didn't have to wait very long.
"Don't say that! I'd kill her again if I could!"
I heard it, and returned, and now I let myself go, finding immediate and violent response, a wild, savage, wrenching and shifting devil. She was a demon, a devil woman, a killer, a murderer, savage as the stock from which she'd descended, and all that time I was moving through the wonderful intricacies of her love, finding each moment more superb than the last and after that I lost all cognizance of time or existence.
It didn't matter now, nothing mattered now, it was all too good, too beautiful, too overwhelming, a fantastic moment, moments, minutes in which there was nothing else but the present, and only the present.
But there was more than that, there was the future, the immediate future, the very near future, a future that was not far away but coming closer, and closer, coming closer very rapidly now, approaching so quickly that it couldn't be stopped. But we didn't want to stop it.
At first I'd wanted to prolong it, not wanting the future to arrive, but all was forgotten now as it came even more rapidly and without warning and without really trying it came on with a rush and I was caught up in every bit of it and I helped to bring it on even more quickly.
Now we were in the future and even beyond that, and it was impossible; but there it was and it lingered, and waited, and moved and shifted, and finally, finally, there was everything. Exquisite fulfillment.
There were many words spoken after that, soft words, and personal words; and I became aware that the hi-fi was no longer playing its music, and that the only sounds in the apartment were the things that we were saying to each other.
"Matador, if I had a white handkerchief I would wave it."
"Why?"
"Because it was so beautiful. Our moment of truth together. Did you not find it so?"
"Yes. But there have been others."
I felt her tensing, only slightly and fleetingly, but it had been there, and now I knew. More than ever before.
She became silent now and pushed me aside. We did not speak to each other for many minutes. Not until we had finished with everything and now we were in her bedroom.
She was standing near the bed, caught from the waist downward in the soft glow of the bedside lamp, standing almost motionless, but still a study in violence as the muscles rippled in her stomach and along her wonderful thighs.
I said, "You shouldn't have killed Joy."
She was looking at me, but the moment I spoke I saw her eyes forming slits, the fire glinting through the lowered lashes.
"I did it for you, Matador."
I shook my head. "I didn't care for her."
"But you might have. Had you loved her that night?"
"No," I said. "I had loved her before, and I didn't care about her."
Her head drooped and I heard an angry scream, muffled deep in her throat. And then she jerked open the drawer of the bedside table.
I heard the snick of the switchblade the moment I saw it flash in the light. "For that I kill you!"
It had happened so quickly that I was momentarily frozen. In that instant I thought how ridiculous the entire thing had become. Here we were, completely nude, in her bedroom, and instead of forgetting about everything and letting the murder of Joy die with Cook, I'd had to bring it up again.
He hadn't admitted killing Joy. He'd trapped himself when I mentioned Guy had seen him push Molly into the cistern.
"I will kill you, not like a brave-bull, but like a steer that is to be pitied."
She was coming towards me now, crouched forward slightly at the waist, the knife held expertly in her right hand, while her hair shadowed most of her face. And as she came forward, her beautiful breasts were firm and hard and thrust forward magnificently.
She had her back to the doorway of the bedroom and she had me cornered, and quickly I moved backwards and around the foot of the bed.
"Come on," she beckoned with her left hand, "take me if there is any bravery left in you."
There wasn't, there never had been. I saw her glance flick contemptuously down to my groin and I knew that she'd already picked the first target for the knife. Once she'd socked it in there, whatever other targets she'd chosen next didn't make any difference.
I kept retreating and she came around the end of the bed; and she was moving towards me along the narrow aisle between the wall and the bed. Her fingers were working and tightening around the shaft of the knife. She probably knew how to throw it. I had to stop it before it left her hand.
But if I tried to leap over the bed she'd get me in mid-flight. If I stood my ground she'd get that much closer and when she did flick it, the odds were in her favor. I felt awfully bare and vulnerable and exposed, and the fear tightened my guts.
She caught sight of that reaction and her lips tightened, exposing her teeth. The skin on her face was taut now, and for the first time I saw the prominent cheekbones, the glitter in her eyes that made her pure savage.
"It is time for the kill," she said simply.
At that moment sudden pounding began at the back door. For a fleeting second she pulled back her head and her eyes widened, as though she were trying to understand the sound.
I hurtled sideways, across the top of the bed, and while I was suspended I saw the blur of her hand, then the ugly flicker of the knife blade coming at me. I wrenched my left shoulder downward, the movement turning me onto my back; and as the knife socked into the wall I hit the floor. I took the force of my fall on my shoulder blades, but the momentum carried me towards the wall and my head boomed against it.
I saw a million stars, briefly blacked out. Fighting the mist and the unsteadiness I jumped to my feet, seeing her now at the dresser, the drawer open and her hand diving inside.
When it came out again I saw the revolver, and already I'd vaulted across the room, catching her gun wrist with my hand as I fell forward and pulled her down with me.
She was as slippery and active as a trout and I covered her and tried to control her, hanging onto that wrist and keeping the muzzle pointed away from me.
In a quick motion she jerked free and the gunhand was coming down. My hand dove after it, I caught the wrist and the next moment I heard the sound of the shot. She arched viciously and then her head sagged backwards and it stayed there.
I felt the stream of the hot warmth squirt against my side, and when I glanced down I saw that the blood was welling out of the hole below her breast.
I lowered her to the floor and tried to stop the flow of blood with my hand; but she smiled, and covered my fingers with her hand.
"Don't. It's no use."
I heard the crash behind me, realized it was the back door being broken open, and when I glanced over my shoulder I saw Guy Rider appearing in the doorway.
"What the hell-?"
He must have seen all of it and understood it then because he hurried over to us, and now Rosita was tugging feebling at my hand.
"Matador," she said. "I love you. I couldn't stand her-"
Her eyes closed briefly and I clung tightly to her hand while she took a deep breath, and then I was aware that Guy had kneeled down beside us.
"Who couldn't you stand? Jo?"
She nodded. "Si. That's why I killed her, and tried to kill you. I wanted you-for-for my own."
She winced and her face then became relaxed, but with much sadness showing at the corners of her mouth.
"Mama," she called softly. "Mama."
And that was the last thing she said.
Together we placed her onto the bed and covered her, and while I got cleaned up and dressed, Guy went out and called the sheriff. Together then we sat there in the front room, smoking, and waiting for his arrival, each one of us staring straight ahead.
"If I hadn't heard it, I wouldn't believe it," Guy said. When I didn't answer him he didn't offer anything else, and we just waited, and waited, and it seemed an awful long time.
Finally the sheriff arrived and I explained it to him. Guy was my witness as to what she'd said; and the sheriff nodded silently and stared at the floor for a while.
"I came by here that night," the sheriff said. "She wasn't here and I thought it strange that she wasn't. Somehow I felt it had been she who'd pushed in Joy, but I thought too much of Rosita to press it. I liked your solution, Clarke. I hoped the secret would die with Bill Cook."
After we'd finished I went outside alone, and I saw that there was the first sign of day visible in the east, just a faint glow of light that quickly became brighter.
And while I stared at it and watched it I thought about loyalty and love and jealousy and the hate of a woman, and realizing that if I hadn't come back here tonight, then everything would have been different.
But along with all that there was also honor and integrity and if I hadn't done what I had done, then there would be little I could be proud of, and I would always remember.
A matador, a bull, or a man either had it or he didn't.
