The bank was open a half day Saturday, but I didn’t go near it. I’d do that Monday. I read the rest of the magazines and listened to the coveys of jail bait chatter around the drugstore. The waitresses in the restaurant were beginning to recognize me. I didn’t talk to them except to agree to whatever they said about the weather.
I awoke at dawn on Sunday, and could hear the coyotes somewhere out on the prairie. It was funny, I thought, remembering, how only two or three could sound like thirty. After I’d eaten breakfast I put on the boots I’d bought, dressed in khaki trousers and a flannel shirt, and went for a long walk, taking a couple of the little cardboard boxes in my coat pocket. A half mile east of town I left the highway where the dunes began and went out across country, skirting the edge of the sand. It was clear, with a cold wind blowing and making a lonely sound in the telephone lines. I thought of what Charlie had said. He hoped I didn’t go mad.
There was no danger of getting lost, with the highway always to the north and the haze-blue shadows of the mountains far off in Mexico as a landmark to the south. The highway was out of sight, but I could still see the telephone lines after I’d gone a mile. I sat down in the sun on the south side of a dune, out of the wind, and smoked a cigarette. It was lonely and wild and desolate, but it was better than the cabin or the town.
Before I went back I filled the two boxes with sand and stowed them in my coat pocket. They were about the size of the boxes kitchen matches come in, but stronger, and I had three dozen of them and some about twice as large in one of the bags in the cabin. When I got back I wrapped them in brown paper for mailing and wrote on them the address Charlie had given me. It was an actual address, some friend of his who knew about the deal.
Early Monday morning I took them down to the post office and mailed them. Neither the clerk nor the usual post-office loiterers paid much attention to me. As soon as it was ten o’clock I went around to the bank. I had a cashier’s check for six hundred dollars made out to Julius Reichert, which I had bought in New Orleans.
There were two desks in the railed-in area up front, before you got to the tellers’ cages. They were both empty. I cursed myself for coming too early. I’d wanted to get a look at him, at least. Well, it didn’t matter too much. I’d be in and out often enough. As I went past, toward the tellers’ cages, I sneaked a look at the names on the desks. The rear one was his. H. C. Goodwin, it said.
I deposited the check and made out a signature card to open an account. The teller gave me a checkbook. As I started to turn away, he asked, “Are you new here in town, Mr. Reichert?”
“Yes,” I said shortly.
“Going to make Wyecross your home?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
As I moved away from the window I saw a man entering the gate in the railing up front. I slowed, waiting to see which desk he went to. He hung up the Western-style hat on a rack and sat down at Goodwin’s desk, the rear one. I turned, very casually, and looked at him, feeling the hard beat of the pulse in my throat. This was one of them, at least. Not the big one, but one of them. There was nothing about him that I remembered at all, but then I had seen him only two or three times, sixteen years ago. He had a square, tanned face with sun wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. The eyes themselves were brown and alert behind gold-rimmed glasses, and his hair, which was also brown, was thinning out high on his temples. It wasn’t a hard or unpleasant face any way you looked at it. Well, I thought, Charlie looks like a well-fed angel or an archbishop, when he hasn’t got his hand in your pocket.
It was a little hard to connect the bank cashier and big landowner with the bull-o’-the-woods on a construction job in an O. Henry banana republic of sixteen years ago, but as Charlie had said, he came here originally and had more or less inherited the bank job along with the bank stock and land when his father died.
I went on out. The next stop was a hardware store in the next block. It had a small sporting-goods department in the rear. I walked back and stared owlishly at the half-dozen rifles and shotguns standing on a shelf behind the counter. In a minute a clerk came over.
“Yes, sir?” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh,” I said, “I was just wondering. When can you shoot jack rabbits?”
He smiled, a little pityingly. “Any time you see one, and got a gun.”
“Then they don’t have any closed season on them?”
“Nope. On cottontails, yes; but not on jacks.”
You could see him thinking: Dumb dude.
“I see,” I said. “Well, I’d like to buy a gun. A twenty-two.”
“Sure.” He reached back on the shelf and picked up a little slide-action pump. “This is a nice job.” Then he stopped and looked at me with inspiration. “You really want to blow up some jacks? Let me show you something.”
He put the .22 down on the counter and reached back again. This one was a bigger rifle with a long telescope sight.
“Look,” he said. “Here’s a job. It’ll explode a jack at two hundred yards like a bowl of Jello. It’s a two-twenty Swift, a custom deal with a ten-power scope. Man it was ordered for never did come back. I’d buy it myself if I had the money.”
“How much is it?” I asked innocently.
“Let you have it for three hundred. It costs more.”
I winced and shook my head. “I’ll take the little one.”
“Sure thing,” he said, a little disappointed. “I guess you’re right. This other one’s too much gun unless you really got the fever.”
I bought a box of .22 rifle ammunition, and as I started to leave, he said, “You can tell a jack from a cottontail, can’t you? I mean, you got to have a license to hunt cottontails.”
“Oh, certainly,” I said. “I can distinguish them. Jack rabbits have longer ears.”
When I was out on the sidewalk I shot a quick glance through the window. He was talking to another clerk and laughing.
I went out that afternoon with the rifle. Not too far from the highway I set up a rusty can for a target and shot at it for a while. Then I went for a walk, circling toward the dunes. When I came in I had two more boxes of sand in my coat pocket. I wrapped and addressed them in the cabin, exactly as I had before, and took them down to the post office the next morning.
I kept it up all the rest of the week. I spent most of every day wandering around in the dunes, carrying the gun and a little canteen of water, and when I came in I’d have the boxes of sand in the pocket of my coat. The next morning I’d mail them. On Thursday I deliberately skipped going to the post office, and on Friday I mailed five.
The rifle and jack-rabbit idea was a good one. They couldn’t help wondering what kind of screwball it was who didn’t have anything better to do than hunt jack rabbits. And from there it was only one jump to wondering what kind of stupid screwball it was who’d hunt for them in the only place in the county where there weren’t any. There was no life of any kind in the sand dunes.
And there was one other angle to it. Goodwin belonged to a rifle club.
* * *
I had already located the rifle range. It was about a mile south of town, on a dirt road going toward the border. I went by it a couple of afternoons during my walks, but there was nobody shooting. I had an idea, though, there would be on Saturday or Sunday.
By the time Saturday came I was so full of the fact that I was going to see her that night that I had a hard time concentrating on anything. I went to the post office and mailed the two boxes. This time the clerk stared at me curiously, and when I went out two of the loafers who had been talking near the door broke off abruptly and fell into an awkward silence as I walked past. Somebody had begun to wonder if I was sending my laundry home a sock at a time.
After lunch I took the gun and started east of town on the highway, swung off it before I got to the dunes, and circled toward the rifle range. Before I got there I could hear the big rifles. It was an open flat with a low ridge about four hundred yards behind it to stop the lead.
As I came across the road I could see there were four of them taking turns on the firing line, shooting at a two-hundred-yard target. They had a spotting scope set up to check the shots.
When I got near enough to see them, I knew I was in luck. One of them was Goodwin. Another was the clerk from the hardware store. I didn’t know the other two. I sat down on the ground well back out of the way and just watched, smoking a cigarette.
The clerk looked back after a while, and when he recognized me he grinned. “Got any jacks yet?” he asked.
“Not a one,” I said. “Can’t seem to hit them.”
“They’re tricky.”
He came over in a few minutes and asked for a light. “Your name’s Reichert, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Mine’s Carson.”
I got up and we shook hands. He called to Goodwin, who wasn’t shooting at the moment. “Hey, Howard, why don’t you let Reichert here shoot that bull gun once? I’m trying to sell him a rifle.”
Goodwin came over and I shook hands with him, keeping my face still. It wasn’t easy. There’s a lot of Spanish blood in the family.
He was very pleasant, and there was a quiet sort of self-possession about him. “Here,” he said. He slid a cartridge into the chamber of the gun and handed it to me. “Try it.”
“You don’t mind?”
He shook his head and smiled. “If I did, I wouldn’t have asked you.”
I walked over and lay prone on the sand, sliding my arm into the sling.
“You’ve shot them before?” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Only in the Army,” I said.
“Hold right on,” he said. “It’s sighted for two hundred.”
I didn’t ask him about the trigger pull. It was lighter than I’d expected, and I missed the bull. It didn’t matter. I didn’t want to look like a sharpshooter. I worked the bolt, throwing the empty shell out on the sand, and watched to see if he picked it up. He did.
“Oh, you save those?” I asked innocently.
He grinned. “Sure. I reload them.”
“You do?” I did a big take on it, as if I’d never heard of it.
“Yes. It’s cheaper. And you can put up just the load you want.”
“I never thought of that,” I said. “It sounds interesting.”
He agreed politely that it was, and I let it drop. To hurry now would be stupid and dangerous. But I had found the opening I was looking for.
Five
The night was still and cold, and the sand looked like snow in the moonlight. I flicked the cigarette lighter and looked at my watch. It was seven-ten.
I was standing near the highway about two miles east of town, where a dirt road turned off and ran south through the dunes I was supposed to meet her here at seven. Having her come into town would be too risky, since she had spent a week there talking to practically everyone in that phony survey of hers. We couldn’t be seen together.
A few cars went past, going very fast. I waited. In about five minutes I saw one coming more slowly. I watched eagerly. It might be Cathy, looking for the turnoff. It was. I was on the inside of the turn so the lights wouldn’t swing across me, just in case it was somebody else. The car pulled off and stopped twenty or thirty yards from the highway. I could see the Cadillac fishtails and the New York license plates. I jumped into the ruts and started trotting toward her.
The second pair of lights almost hit me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw them swinging as the other car made the turn, faster than she had, and I dived for the brush. I made it off the left side of the road just as they straightened out and spattered against the rear of the Cadillac. And then the car was beyond me and sliding to a stop almost bumper to bumper with hers.
I came to my feet and onto the road, running toward them. There had been no time to think. It might be Charlie or Bolton, or both—but why another car? They’d have been with her. I couldn’t even make myself say the other name. I was still eight or ten yards away, running desperately and silently on the sand, when the car door opened and a man got out. He was a small black figure in the moonlight and he was carrying something in his hand.
“All right, sweetie,” he said. “Pile out.”
I heard the low-throated rumble of power as she gunned the Cadillac. The rear wheels spun for an instant and sand flew up like spray. He shouted something, and was bringing up the thing he held in his hand. Moonlight glinted on it. It was too big to be a revolver, and now he had both hands on it. I was still a long leap from him when I saw what it was. The car was moving now, at last, as he swung it, and then I fell on him.
I fell on him all over at once. It was like tackling an empty overcoat. He was just a bagful of light bones inside and he folded like a swatted spider. One barrel of the sawed-off shotgun went off with a roar as we crashed down, and then it was either under us or loose somewhere in the sand. I got to one knee, grabbed him by the shoulder, flipped him onto his back, and swung. He jerked and straightened out. It was Donnelly. In the moonlight he looked like a child who’d been starved to death.
I was raging, throwing my hands in every direction, trying to find the gun. It was right in front of me, oily-shining and black and deadly against the white gleam of the sand. I’d been to wild to see it. I grabbed it up and rammed the sawed-off barrels into his face. I heard a tooth let go so I shoved it, hard, and groped for the triggers. Then I thought a mountain lion had jumped on me.
My face was full of fur. I seemed to be wrapped in it. It was in my eyes and mouth, cool and suffocating and smelling faintly of perfume, and a voice was screaming in my ear. “Mike! No! Stop it, Mike!”
I had forgotten about her. She had her shoulder against my face and was trying to push me back while we grappled for the gun. I had sense enough left to throw it before we fell on it. Then I grabbed her.
“He tried to kill you!” I raged.
“You hot-headed Spanish idiot!”
“Are you hurt? Cathy, are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt!”
“Well, stand back. Look the other way if you want to.”
“Mike, stop it! Oh, my God, can’t you see—”
“See what? He tried to kill you, didn’t he?”
She straightened up, trying to get her breath. Her hair was wildly tousled and the big eyes were flashing angrily. “Listen, for the love of heaven, Mike. We’ve got more important things on our minds than that stupid hoodlum. Do you want to ruin everything?”
“You want to let him keep on till he gets lucky someday and hits you?” I asked furiously.
“He probably wasn’t trying to shoot me. He was trying to scare me. That’s how stupid he is.”
The anger was turning against her now. At bottom, of course, it wasn’t anger at all; it was fear. I’d been so scared when I saw him swinging that shotgun after her I was sick at my stomach now. “Well, do you mind,” I asked coldly, “if I unload his gun before I give it back to him? I mean, if I’m very careful not to scratch it?”
She was suddenly contrite. “I’m sorry, Mike,” she whispered. “Forgive me for screaming at you like that. But I didn’t want you to kill him. I was scared.”
I grabbed her. “You were scared?” That was as far as I got.
It was a few minutes before I thought of him. I looked down. “What are we going to do with this?” I said, and then suddenly became conscious of something I’d been hearing for the past minute or two. It was a freight train, laboring across the desert to the north of us. I heard it whistle for the yards at Wyecross. It was westbound, and it would probably stop there for water.
“Wait here,” I said to Cathy, and stooped down for him.
She put a hand on my arm. I turned, and I could see her eyes go wide in the moonlight. “What are you going to do? Mike, you’re not—”
“No,” I said. “You’re right. I’m just going to put him in the mail. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
I pulled his big overcoat toget
her in front for a handle and picked him up like a bundle of old rags. He probably didn’t weigh over a hundred pounds. The door of the car was still open. I heaved him in and pushed him over, away from the wheel. He sagged, and I leaned him against the other door.
“Be careful, Mike,” she said anxiously.
The road was too narrow to turn around in, but there was enough moonlight to see my way out, backing. There were no cars in sight. I rammed out onto the highway, stopped, and shot ahead toward Wyecross. Just before I got into town I turned off to the right and went north toward the tracks. I could see the train and hear the brake shoes squealing as it slowed.
There wasn’t anything out here except an abandoned work train on a siding. The water tank and station were several hundred yards to my left. I cut the lights and stopped. The freight was passing the other side of the cars on the siding, but I could hear it bumping and shuddering to a stop.
It won’t be good, I thought, if I get caught loading something like this on a train. I got out of the car and looked carefully around. I could see the running lights of the caboose about a hundred yards away to my right, and a swinging lantern going up the other side of the train as a brakeman headed for the front end. He’d be past in a minute.
I opened the door and dragged Donnelly out. He was so limp he was hard to handle. I got him across my shoulder and hurried toward the work train. If I went around I’d pass too near the caboose, so the only thing to do was go under. I was panting now, and sweat was breaking out on my forehead. It was hard getting him up onto the roadbed with the ballast turning under my shoes.
I set him down at the end of one of the work cars. We were in shadow now, and I looked around again to be sure no one had seen me. The moonlit plain was empty except for Donnelly’s car. As I bent down to roll him under the coupling between two cars he groaned and tried to sit up.
“What the hell?” he mumbled. Then he looked up. “Hey, you—”
“Remember me?” I asked, and swung. He didn’t see the hand.