Erle Stanley Gardner
The Clue of the Screaming Woman
Original appearance in “Country Gentleman,” issues of January through April 1949
Part One
Frank Ames surveyed the tumbling mountain torrent and selected the rock he wanted with great care.
It was on the edge of the deep water, a third of the way across the stream, about sixty feet below the little waterfall and the big eddy. Picking his way over half-submerged stepping stones, then across the fallen log to the rounded rock, he made a few whipping motions with his fishing rod to get plenty of free line. He knew only too well how much that first cast counted.
Up here in the high mountains the sky was black behind the deep blue of interstellar space. The big granite rocks reflected light with dazzling brilliance, while the shadows seemed deep and impenetrable. Standing down near the stream, the roar of the water kept Frank Ames’ ears from accurately appraising other sounds, distorting them out of all semblance to reality.
The raucous abuse of a mountain jay sounded remarkably like the noise made by a buzz saw ripping through a pine board, and some peculiar vagary of the stream noises made Frank Ames feel he could hear a woman screaming.
Ames made his cast. The line twisted through the air, straightened at just the right distance above the water and settled. The Royal Coachman came to rest gently, seductively, on the far edge of the little whirlpool just below the waterfall.
For a moment the fly reposed on the water with calm tranquillity, drifting with the current. Then there was a shadowy dark streak of submerged motion. A big trout raised his head and part of his body up out of the water.
The noise made by the fish as it came down hard on the fly was a soul-gratifying “chooonk.” It seemed the fish had pushed its shoulders into a downward strike as it started back to the dark depths of the clear stream, the Royal Coachman in its mouth.
Ames set the hook and firmed his feet on the rock. The reel sounded like an angry rattlesnake. The line suddenly stretched taut. Even above the sound of the mountain stream, the hissing of the wire-tight line as it cut through the water was plainly audible.
The sound of a woman’s scream again mingled with the stream noises. This time the scream was louder and nearer.
The sound knifed through to Frank Ames’ consciousness. It was as annoying, as much out of place, as the ringing of a telephone bell at four o’clock in the morning. Frank desperately wanted that trout. It was a fine, big trout with a dark back, beautiful red sides, firm-fleshed from ice-cold, swift waters, and it was putting up a terrific fight.
That first time there had been some doubt as to the sound Ames had heard. It might have been the stream-distorted echo of a hawk crying out as it circled high in the heavens. But as to this second noise there could be no doubt. It was the scream of a woman, and it sounded from the trail along the east bank of the stream.
Ames turned to look over his shoulder, a hurried glance of apprehensive annoyance.
That one moment’s advantage was all the trout needed. With the vigilance of the fisherman relaxed for the flicker of an eyelash, the trout made a swift rush for the tangled limbs of the submerged tree trunk on the far end of the pool, timing his maneuver as though he had known the exact instant the fisherman had turned.
Almost automatically Ames tightened on the rod and started reeling in, but he was too late. He felt the sudden cessation of the surging tugs which come up the line through the wrist and into the arm in a series of impulses too rapid to count, but which are the very breath of life to the skilled fisherman. Instead, the tension of the line was firm, steady and dead.
Knowing that his leader was wrapped around a submerged branch, Ames pointed the rod directly at the taut line, applied sufficient pressure to break the slender leader, and then reeled in the line.
He turned toward the place from which the scream had sounded.
There was no sign of animation in the scenery. The high mountain crags brooded over the scene. A few fleecy clouds forming over the east were the only break in the tranquil blue of the sky. Long sweeps of majestic pines stretched in a serried sequence up the canyons, their needles oozing scent into the pure, dry air.
Ames, slender-waisted, long-legged, graceful in his motions, was like a deer bounding across the fallen log, jumping lightly to the water-splashed stepping stones.
He paused at the thin fringe of scrub pine which grew between the rocky approach to the stream and the winding trail long enough to divest himself of his fishing creel and rod. Then he moved swiftly through the small pines to where the trail ran in a north and south direction, roughly paralleling that of the stream.
The decomposed granite dust of the trail held tracks with remarkable fidelity. Superimposed over the older horse and deer tracks that were in the trail were the tracks made by a woman who had been running as fast as she could go.
At this elevation of more than seven thousand feet above sea level, where even ordinary exertion left a person breathless, it was evident either that the woman could not have been running far, or that she had lived long enough in this country to be acclimated to the altitude.
The shoes she was wearing, however, were apparently new cowboy boots, completely equipped with rubber heels, so new that even the pattern of the heel showed in the downhill portion of the trail.
For the most part, the woman had been running with her weight on her toes. When she came to the steep downhill pitch, however, her weight was back more on her heels, and the rubber heel caps made distinct imprints. After fifty yards, Ames saw that the tracks faltered. The strides grew shorter. Slowly, she had settled down to a rapid, breathless walk.
With the unerring instinct of a trained hunter, Ames followed those tracks, keeping to one side of the trail so that his tracks did not obliterate those of the hurrying woman. He saw where she had paused and turned, the prints of her feet at right angles to the trail as she looked back over her shoulder. Then, apparently more reassured, she had resumed her course, walking now at a less rapid rate.
Moving with a long, lithe stride which made him glide noiselessly, Frank Ames topped a rise, went down another short, steep pitch, rounded a turn in the pine trees and came unexpectedly on the woman, standing poised like some wild thing. She had stopped and was looking back, her startled face showing as a white oval.
She started to run, then paused, looked back again, stopped, and, as Ames came up, managed a dubious and somewhat breathless smile.
“Hello,” Ames said with the casual simplicity of a man who has the assurance of complete sincerity.
“Good afternoon,” she answered, then laughed, a short, oxygen-starved laugh. “I was taking — a quick walk.” She paused to get her breath, said, “Trying to give my figure some much-needed discipline.” Another pause for breath. “When you rounded the bend in the trail, you... you startled me.”
Ames’ eyes said there was nothing wrong with her figure, but his lips merely twisted in a slow grin.
She was somewhere in the middle twenties. The frontier riding breeches, short leather jacket, shirt open at the front, the bandanna around her neck, held in place with a leather loop studded with brilliants, showed that she was a “dude” from the city. The breeches emphasized the slenderness of her waist, the smooth, graceful contours of her hips and legs. The face was still pale, but the deep red of sunburn around the open line of the throat above the protection of the bandanna was as eloquent as a complete calendar to Frank’s trained eyes.
The sunburned skin told the story of a girl who had ridden in on a horseback pack trip, who had underestimated the powerful actinic rays of the mountain sun, who had tried too late to cover the sunburned V-shaped area with a scarf. A couple of days in the mountains and some soothing cream had taken some of the angry redness out of the skin, but that was all.