Jean Backus - Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

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.

He waited to see if there would be some explanation of her scream or her flight. Not for worlds would he have violated the code of the mountains by trying to pry into something that was none of his business. When he saw she had no intention of making any further explanation, he said casually, “Guess you must have come up the trail from Granite Flats about Sunday. Didn’t you, ma’am?”

She looked at him with sudden apprehension. “How did you know?”

“I had an idea you might have been in the mountains just about that long, and I knew you didn’t come up from this end because I didn’t see the tracks of a pack train in the trail.”

“Can you follow tracks?” she asked.

“Why, of course.” He paused and then added casually, “I’m headed down toward where your camp must be. Perhaps you’d let me walk along with you for a piece.”

“I’d love it!” she exclaimed, and then with quick suspicion, “How do you know where our camp is?”

His slight drawl was emphasized as he thought the thing into words. “If you’d been camped at Coyote Springs, you’d need to have walked three miles to get here. You don’t look as though you’d gone that far. Down at Deerlick Springs, there’s a meadow with good grass for the horses, a nice camping place and it’s only about three quarters of a mile from here, so I—”

She interrupted with a laugh which now carried much more assurance. “I see that there’s no chance for me to have any secrets. Do you live up here?”

Frank wanted to tell her of the two years in the Japanese prison camp, of the necessity of living close to nature to get his health and strength back, of the trap line which he ran through the winter, of the new-found strength and vitality that were erasing the disabilities caused by months of malnutrition. But when it came to talking about himself, the words dried up. All he could say was, “Yes, I live up here.”

She fell into step at his side. “You must find it isolated.”

“I don’t see many people,” he admitted, “but there are other things to make up for it — no telephones, no standing in line, no exhaust fumes.”

“And you’re content to be here always?”

“Not always. I want a ranch down in the valley. I’m completing arrangements for one now. A friend of mine is giving me a lease with a contract to purchase. I think I can pay out on it with luck and hard work.”

Her eyes were thoughtful as she walked along the trail, stepping awkwardly in her high-heeled cowboy riding boots. “I suppose really you can’t ask for much more than that — luck and hard work.”

“It’s all I want,” Frank told her.

They walked for some minutes in the silence of mutual appraisal, then rounded a turn in the trail, and Deerlick Meadows stretched out in front of them. And as soon as Frank Ames saw the elaborate nature of the camp, he knew these people were wealthy sportsmen who were on a de luxe trip. Suddenly awkward, he said, “Well, I guess I’d better turn—” And then stopped abruptly as he realized that it would never do to let this young woman know he had been merely escorting her along the trail. He had told her he was going in her direction. He’d have to keep on walking past the camp.

“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly, and then added laughingly, “Mine’s Roberta Coe.”

“Frank Ames,” he said uncomfortably, knowing she had asked him his name so abruptly because she intended to introduce him to her companions.

“Well, you must come in and have a cup of coffee before you go on,” she said. “You’d like to meet my friends and they’d like to meet you.”