Jack and Susan in 1933

  “I’ll visit you tomorrow,” said Blossom. “And bring you news of your close friend, Mrs. Beaumont.”

  “You’re sure we can’t tie her up?” Colleen asked with a sigh.

  “Good night!” Susan called. “And thank you!”

  The horses disappeared around the sharp turn in the canyon, and were lost to sight. A few moments later the echo of their hooves on the loose rocks was lost as well. Susan stood in the doorway and watched.

  “Good-bye!” she heard two voices call in the distance, and she wished they hadn’t—simply because they sounded so far away.

  Susan looked up at the sky, a narrow slash of stars seen between the high dark walls of the canyon.

  She listened, and heard nothing.

  Then a short rattling of loose stones somewhere.

  Then nothing again.

  She turned, and went back to the cabin, shutting the door behind her.

  There wasn’t time for her to be fearful of the isolation and loneliness that night. She extinguished the lamp, and without even having the energy to remove her clothes, fell instantly asleep on the cot nearer the fire. When she woke, Scotty and Zelda were waiting impatiently, but in complete silence, by the door. They were very glad to see Susan get up.

  Susan had a breakfast of cheese and biscuits. She rebuilt the fire and made coffee. With Scotty and Zelda she ventured out to the mouth of the canyon. Behind her the mountain rose precipitously and moodily. She had forgotten to ask Blossom its name, but she was certain it was Dead Man’s Mountain, or Mt. Superstition, or Dragon’s Head, or some other appellation appropriate to its appearance. Before her was an uneven rocky plain, with scraps of brownish-green herbage that looked dismal and parched, even for desert vegetation. In the near distance was a small range of mountains as ugly as the one that rose directly behind her, and another range of uglier mountains behind that. She saw no trace of human habitation. In fact, she couldn’t even see an indication that any human being ever came this way.

  For a novice fugitive, she hadn’t done badly in finding a place off the beaten track.

  But how long would she have to remain here?

  And, if she was safe and hidden from Barbara and the police, she was also hidden from Jack.

  What if he didn’t love her?

  What if she’d been taken in by some perfidious bit of lawyerliness?

  What if he’d sent her into hiding for the express purpose of intensifying the perception of her guilt?

  What if Barbara’s being in Reno were part of the sham, and she and Jack were not divorcing at all?

  “What if I kill myself and just have done with it all?” she said aloud to herself. “And save the state of New York the cost of the electricity it would take to execute me?”

  Scotty and Zelda peered up at her from the shade of the boulder where they’d taken refuge from the noonday sun.

  “Well, I can’t very well kill myself with two dependents, can I?” she concluded.

  “She’s everything you made her out to be,” said Blossom. “Even if I didn’t know what she’d done to you, I’d be more than half tempted to tie her up for six weeks on general principles. I never knew that any one person could cause as much trouble as that one woman did in her first hour at the ranch.”

  “Oh no,” cried Susan anxiously. “She found out I’d been there.”

  “No,” said Blossom, “she didn’t mention you, and if she knows we’re cousins, she didn’t mention that either. She’s just causing trouble out of pure meanness of soul. She had a fight with the man who drove her up here because he overcharged her and he scratched one of her suitcases in taking it out of the trunk. Then she didn’t like her room, so I gave her another one. Then she pitched a fit because she had to share a bath. Then she had to have her first room back because it was farther away from the stables. Then she got Wesley very upset because she asked him if he’d mind fixing her hair after dinner this evening, and Wesley is very sensitive about his past and thought she was ridiculing him, so he’s off in a purple funk.”

  “But she didn’t mention me or make any snide references to murderers who also happen to be husband-snatchers?”

  “Not to me,” said Blossom. “But I’ll keep my ears open, and Colleen will, too, and I hope you don’t mind, but I told Wesley a little about you, and I think he’d do anything now to get back at Mrs. Beaumont.” Blossom shook her head. “Wesley hasn’t done hair in years.”

  “I hope—” Susan began, then left off.

  “You hope what?”

  “I hope you and Colleen and Wesley aren’t going to be too—overt—in keeping watch over Barbara.”

  “She won’t notice a thing,” said Blossom with confidence. “She’ll have enough to do to keep alive till morning. There’s already a cabal against her. The other ladies think she showed up for the express purpose of making them look fatter than they are. But Colleen or Wesley or I’ll be out here at least once every day, bring you food and news. Food and news…”

  Susan laughed. “What more could I want?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  WHAT MORE SUSAN could want was something to do during the days, which were very nearly as tedious as the hours she spent on Park Avenue in the first few weeks of her marriage. It was difficult to believe that was only a few months ago. She’d been lonely then, too, and not known what to do with herself, no longer fretting over the two dollars that would see her through the week. She didn’t have to worry about the two dollars now because everything she needed was brought to her by Blossom or Colleen or Wesley in a daily visit about the middle of the afternoon. She wasn’t as lonely now with Scotty and Zelda for company. The pair was the one thing in the world she was grateful to Barbara Beaumont for, and Susan was certain it would send the woman into paroxysms of frustration if she knew how much of a comfort the two dogs were to her.

  Other than eating and walking about the confines of he narrow canyon, and talking to Scotty and Zelda, and reading the dreadful romantic novels that Colleen had collected for the cabin, there was nothing at all to do.

  Susan waited for each afternoon’s visit with an eagerness that seemed as strong as any emotion she’d ever felt. She dreaded the visit with almost equal intensity, for she invariably expected to learn that Barbara had said something or done something to indicate she knew of Susan’s hidden presence on the ranch.

  But Barbara never said anything about Susan.

  “It’s hardly surprising, however,” Blossom said, “since nobody will talk to her. Most women, when they come here, manage to make friends. It makes the time pass more quickly, and, hell, there’s nothing else to do in this damned desert.”

  “Barbara doesn’t have friends,” Susan observed. “She has acquaintances who haven’t yet turned into enemies.” She was silent a moment, and then asked, “You haven’t heard from Jack, have you?”

  Blossom smiled. “I would have told you, you know.”

  “I do know, but I just couldn’t help asking.”

  “Do you think he’s deserted you?”

  “No,” said Susan. “I don’t. But it’s hard being alone so much. I start thinking strange things. Even when I know they’re not true.”

  “Find something to occupy your time,” Blossom suggested.

  “Out here?”

  “Look over your property. Practically everything around here is yours. The invaluable and inexhaustible Dirt Hole Mine, in particular, of course.”

  Both cousins laughed.

  “Oh, well then, I suppose I must go and visit it, for after all, the Dirt Hole has made me rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I owe everything I have to that hole in the ground, but I don’t even know where it is.”

  “I’ll draw you a map,” said Blossom. “Or I’ll take you out there day after tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m going to Reno to pick up a couple of new arrivals.”

  “No, no, draw the map. Please. If I spend another day as boring as this one…”

  “Oh, it is boring out here after all.?
??

  “Well, it is now that I can imagine there’s something else to do.”

  So Blossom drew out a rude map to lead Susan to the Dirt Hole Mine. “The place is a bit of a legend around here,” Blossom said, “because the only thing that was ever brought up out of it was dirt. And the dirt had to be thrown away, because it was salty and killed anything that was planted in it. I wouldn’t go far inside if I were you. The place hasn’t been worked in twenty years, and whatever is in there can’t be holding up any too well.”

  “I have no fondness for dark, enclosed places,” said Susan. “In fact, I think I could safely say that I have a horror of them. I hate closets and train tunnels and cellars, and all that sort of thing. I’m always afraid I’m going to get trapped. You don’t have to worry about my going too deeply into the Dirt Hole Mine.”

  “Good,” said Blossom, “because if you did, and you got lost, I’m not the one who’d come in after you. I hate those places, too. I’ll send Colleen out here with a horse for you tomorrow—the mine’s only a couple of miles from here—but I’d feel a great deal better if you’d ride there instead of walking. Just in case you twisted your ankle or something.”

  When Susan acquiesced to this plan, Blossom prepared to return to the ranch. “And if there’s a message awaiting me from your husband’s lawyer—no matter how unpleasant it is—I’ll ride out tomorrow evening and give it to you.”

  “I didn’t want to ask,” Susan confessed. “But I wanted very much to ask…”

  Neither Colleen nor Wesley showed up the next morning with the promised mount, and Susan didn’t want to put off the excursion to Dirt Hole Mine either. The canyon and the cabin within the canyon had apparently shrunk to dismally narrow proportions recently.

  Scotty and Zelda came with her, of course. Susan took two canteens of water, food for herself and the dogs, a candle and matches, and a compass. Of what use this last item might be if she got lost, she had no idea, since she hadn’t any conception of where she was.

  The one other thing she brought with her—and the thing that seemed most important of all—was the hope that Blossom would find a message from Jack awaiting her at the post office in Reno.

  She simply followed the outline of her mountain, as she’d come to think of it. She’d learned its name from Blossom, not Mt. Superstition or Dragon’s Head, as she’d suspected, but the obvious yet entirely inappropriate Mt. Bright.

  She felt exposed as she circled the base of Mt. Bright, even though she saw nothing living but a few large birds that looked to have carrion on the breath, a few tiny toads that looked shriveled and burned and unhappy, and now and then something furry poking up out of a hole in the ground.

  The map led her to another canyon on the far side of Mt. Bright. It was shallower, narrower, and rockier than her own, but at the end of it a kind of ramp had been leveled out. This raw roadway led upward along the side of the mountain. So many rocks had slipped down from higher up in the last twenty years that the way to the mine was hardly recognizable as manmade.

  The way was steeper than it looked. Susan’s labored breath told her that, and when she stopped and looked around, she was startled by how far she could see.

  She could see very far across the desert, but there was little to hold her attention other than that range of ugly mountains, and the uglier range of mountains behind that.

  She continued to climb. The road hairpinned, and Susan found herself walking into the sun. She bowed her head so that the brim of her hat would shield her face. She’d blistered once since she’d been here in Nevada, and didn’t want to go through that torment again.

  Scotty and Zelda walked inches behind her, employing her as a sunshade.

  She came across something metallic and glinting— nearly buried in the earth. She kicked at some earth around it and saw it was a length of narrow rail.

  She was getting closer, and she ventured to look up into the sun.

  She was already there, it turned out. Here was the entrance to the mine. If there had once been a sign, it was gone now. The entrance was only a natural cave opening that had been widened sufficiently to lay the tracks inside.

  She looked around and saw evidence that this was indeed the Dirt Hole Mine. Sun-bleached boards from some sort of exterior buildings. The crumbling cement foundations for those buildings, nearly buried now, too, in the earth. A twisted piece of metal, a rusted wheel, more bits of twisted metal, broken fragments of something that had been painted green, shards of green glass from beer bottles.

  Susan shaded her eyes and peered into the entrance to the mine.

  It was less than inviting, and looked rather like the hideout of a fugitive being pursued for murder— a fugitive who was guilty and quite deserved to die a miserable death trapped in such a place.

  That seemed a good reason not to go inside.

  She went inside anyway.

  It was very black, so she immediately turned around and looked back out into the sunlight.

  “If I can do it, you can do it,” she said very loudly.

  Scotty and Zelda crept forward into the cool darkness of the cave.

  Susan went a few feet farther in. She ran her right foot along one of the rails, figuring that this would be the string to lead her out again if she got lost in the three or four yards she’d decided she’d venture in.

  “This is probably a very stupid idea,” said Susan aloud.

  Scotty and Zelda, simply by the fact that they did not follow her any farther into the interior of the mine, appeared to concur with that assessment.

  Susan stood still and allowed her eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. Then she could make out the beams and supports here. To her relief, they didn’t appear rotted at all. In fact, many of them had been reinforced, and the metal reinforcements gleamed in the light from the entrance as if they were still new.

  She was more fearful of her own fear than of the mine itself. How was she going to cope with the rest of her life if she stopped ten feet into a cave that had probably been formed a hundred thousand years ago and hadn’t collapsed yet?

  She struck a match and lighted the candle she’d brought. She held it up and looked around.

  If I see bats, I’ll go back, she promised herself. Bats carry rabies.

  Disappointingly for Susan, there were no bats, either rabid or simply filthy and disgusting in their own healthy right. She really would have preferred a dozen or so bats flying in her face than to be forced to continue her progress.

  Four more feet in. Again she shone the candle around.

  No bats. No rotted supports. Behind her, she could still see the entranceway, a smaller arch of light than before. Scotty and Zelda had not moved.

  “Get over here,” Susan said to the dogs.

  They came reluctantly, and she watched their progress.

  “You’re not very brave dogs, are you?”

  Zelda lowered her head in apparent shame and brought it up again with something in her mouth. She offered it to Susan in appeasement for her shortcomings in the way of canine courage.

  From Zelda’s mouth Susan took an empty cigarette package.

  Susan examined it by the light of the candle. The package had contained twenty Spud cigarettes, and it looked new. She held it to her nose and could still smell the tobacco inside. The price was marked on the side of the paper in blue ink—twelve cents. Last year—when she’d been singing at the Villa Vanity, and knew of such things from the inane chatter of the cigarette girls—cigarettes, which were normally twenty cents a pack, were dropping to twelve and even ten cents, on account of a tobacco war in North Carolina. This meant that someone had been in the mine since the beginning of the year— very recently indeed.

  That seemed reason enough not to go any farther inside. Just in case the someone who had dropped the Spud cigarette package was anywhere beyond, and just in case that supposed party was someone Susan did not care to meet.

  This was a very silly fear, Susan decided.

  T
he Spud package wasn’t that fresh.

  She took a few more steps deeper into the mine. Now she came to a turn. The rails went off to the right down a wide passageway. Off to the left was a much smaller, cruder shaft. Here the beams and supports had not been reinforced. The supports bowed dramatically inward, the ceiling beam bowed dramatically downward. A passageway that had originally been six feet wide and six feet high was now not more than four feet high and perhaps a yard wide.

  She went a few feet off to the right, along the much wider passage, going just far enough to lose sight of the entrance to the cave.

  This was genuine bravery, Susan decided, and she’d had quite enough of it.

  “I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear,” she said to the dogs, “that it’s time to go back…”

  The dogs wagged their tails in apparent agreement.

  But Susan didn’t get very far, for a voice called out quite stridently from around the corner she’d just turned. “Hello! Hello, is anybody in there?”

  The voice was Barbara Beaumont’s.

  I might have known, thought Susan instantly, and without thinking of the consequences, blew out the candle.

  The consequences were that she and the dogs were plunged into darkness.

  It was on a par with the rest of Susan’s luck in the past month or so that the one day she ventured out of her cabin, the one day she had the courage to venture into a space that was close and dark and possessed of only one exit, should be the day that Barbara Beaumont decided to make what was probably her first visit ever to a worthless and abandoned mine in a place that must be considered, even for Nevada, fairly remote. Yet somehow the circumstances, once they’d presented themselves, didn’t seem surprising at all.

  Barbara’s voice came again: “I know you’re in there! But I’m not coming in, you have to come out!”

  Susan slowly shook her head. The choice between remaining in a dark cave and meeting Barbara Beaumont in the sunlight was not an agreeable one, and was possibly on a par with having to decide whether to enter hell by subway or by taxicab.