Roberta screamed.
Bill Eldon, who had been sitting motionless, squatting on his heels cowboy-fashion, straightened himself with sinewy ease. “Now, don’t be frightened, ma’am,” he said. “I just wanted to talk with you.”
“You— You— How did you — find me here?”
“Now, take it easy,” Bill Eldon said, his eyes smiling. “I just thought you and I should have a little talk.”
“But how did you know where I was — where you could find me — where I was going to be? Why, even I didn’t know where I was going.”
Eldon said, “Figure it out, ma’am. This game trail follows the stream. The stream follows the canyon, and the canyon winds around. When I cut your tracks back there in the trail, I knew I only had to walk up over that saddle and come down here to gain half a mile on you. Now, suppose you sit down on that rock there and we just get sociable-like for a little while.”
“I’m sorry, sheriff, but I don’t feel like—”
“You’ve got to tell me what frightened you yesterday,” the sheriff insisted, kindly but doggedly.
“But I wasn’t frightened.”
Bill Eldon settled back on his heels once more. Apparently he was completely at ease, thoroughly relaxed.
With the peculiar feeling that she was doing something entirely against her own volition, Roberta sat down.
Bill Eldon said, “Lots of people make a mistake about the mountains. When they’re out in the wilds with no one around they feel they’re hidden. They’re wrong. Wherever they go, they leave tracks.”
Roberta Coe said nothing.
When Bill Eldon saw she was not going to speak, he went on. “Now, you take that trail yesterday, for instance. It carried tracks just like a printed page. I came along that trail and saw where you’d been running. I saw where Frank Ames had put down his fishing rod and his creel and hurried after you. The way I figure it, you must have screamed and run past the hole where he was fishing just about the time he had a big one on.
“By getting up on the bank, looking down in the pool, I could see the submerged branches of that dead tree. Sure enough, on one of those branches was part of a leader, just wrapped around the snag, and a hook was on the end of the leader. Because I was curious, I took off my clothes, worked my way down into the water and got that fly out. Gosh, it was cold.”
The sheriff reached in his pocket, took out a little fly book, opened it, and showed a section of leader and a Royal Coachman fly.
“Same kind Frank Ames uses,” he said. “You can see a little piece of the fish’s lip still stuck on the hook. The way I figure it, Ames hadn’t hooked him too solid, but he had him hooked well enough to land, but as soon as the fish got in that submerged tangle of branches and wrapped the line around a branch, he only had to give one jerk to tear the hook loose. Now, Ames wouldn’t have let that fish get over in the submerged branches unless something had distracted his attention. That something must have been something he heard, because his eyes were busy looking at the water.”
Abruptly Bill Eldon turned to look at her. “What made you scream?”
She pressed white knuckles against her lips. “I’m going to tell you,” she said.
“I’ve known that, ever since I — ever since I left Frank Ames. I was just walking to... well, the mountains seem to do so much for him — I wish I could feel about them the way he does. Sometimes I think I’m beginning to.
“I was just out of college,” she continued, “a naive little heiress. This man was working for Harvey Dowling. He was both a secretary and general assistant. His name was Howard Maben. He was fascinating, dashing. Women simply went wild over him. And I fell in love with him.”
“What happened?”
“We were secretly married.”
“Why the secrecy?”
“It was his idea. We ran away across the state line to Yuma, Arizona. Howard said he had to keep it secret.”
“Did you know Harvey Dowling then?”
“Yes. Harvey, and Martha, his wife. It was her death that caused the scandal.”
“What scandal?”
She said, “I don’t know if I can explain Howard to you so you’ll understand him. He’s a dashing, high-pressure type of man who was a great favorite with women. He loved to sell things, himself included. I mean by that he liked to make a sale of his personality. I don’t think there’s any question but what he’d get tired of home life within the first thirty days.
“Well, anyway, I guess — it’s something I don’t like to talk about, but... well, I guess Howard had been— Well, Martha Dowling was attractive. She was an older woman. Harvey was always busy at the office, terribly intent on the deals he was putting across, and— Well, they fooled H. W. and they fooled me.
“Apparently Howard started going with Martha Dowling. They were very discreet about it, pretty cunning, as a matter of fact. They’d never go except when Harvey Dowling was out of town, and... well, I guess they stayed at motor courts. It was a mess.”
“Go ahead,” Bill Eldon said.
“Harvey Dowling was on a two weeks’ trip. He was in Chicago, and Howard made certain he was in Chicago, because he’d talked with him that morning on long-distance telephone. Then he and Martha went out. They looked over some property that Harvey Dowling wanted a report on, and then... well, they went to an auto camp. They didn’t like to be seen in restaurants. Howard had brought a little camp kit of dishes and cooking utensils, one of those outfits that folds up to fit into a suitcase.”
“Go ahead.”
“Martha Dowling got sick, some form of an acute gastroenteric disturbance. Well, naturally, they didn’t want to call a doctor until after she got home. She died in Howard’s car on the road home. Of course, Howard tried to fix up a story, but the police began to investigate and put two and two together. Harvey was called from Chicago by his wife’s death and talked with the servants and... well, you can see what happened.”
“What did happen?”
“Howard knew the jig was up. It seems he’d been left in charge of Dowling’s business. He was already short in his accounts. So he embezzled everything he could get his hands on and skipped out.
“Dowling left no stone unturned to get him. He spent thousands of dollars. The police finally caught Howard and sent him to prison. No one knows that I was married to him. I was able to get the marriage annulled. I was able to prove fraud, and... well, of course, I’d been married in Arizona, so I went there and I had a friendly judge and a good lawyer and — there you are. There’s the skeleton in my closet.”
“I still don’t know what made you scream,” the sheriff said.
“I saw Howard. You see, his sentence has expired. He’s out.”
“Now, then,” Bill Eldon remarked, “we’re getting somewhere. Where was he when you saw him?”
“In the deep shadows of a clump of pines, well off the trail. I saw just his head and shoulders. He turned. Then he whistled.”
“Whistled?”
“That’s right. Howard had a peculiar shrill whistle we used to have as a signal when he wanted me to know he was near the house where I stayed. I’d let him in by the side door. It was a peculiar whistle that set my teeth on edge. It affected me just like the sound of someone scraping his nails along rough cloth. I hated it. I asked him to use some other signal, but he only laughed and said someone else might imitate any other call, but that whistle was distinctively his. It was harsh, strident, metallic. When he whistled yesterday, I felt positively sick at my stomach — and then I turned and ran just as fast as I could go.”