Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

Hadley was out of view when I spotted Ranger Benson lumbering round the bend as I came to the little stand of pines. “Well, isn’t this a regular convention here,” I called out. Old pasty-face didn’t improve on coming close.

“We’re conducting a federal investigation here,” he snapped at me without preamble. “What are you doing here?”

“This here is a national park, or it was last time I noticed, and I’m a private citizen just enjoying the view.”

“I can run you out for disturbing the peace. It would be your word against mine.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Hadley said. He must’ve circled back through the pines because he’d come up behind Benson real quiet-like.

“You’ve got no jurisdiction here,” Benson snorted.

“Maybe this says I have,” Hadley replied, slapping his holster.

Benson huffed and puffed, but he couldn’t seem to get any words out. I stepped between them and said, “Maybe you could give us some general information, you being a forest ranger and we being interested tourists, so to speak.”

“Like what?” He eyed me suspiciously.

“Like what’s a blowout?”

His chest seemed to swell, and the little toad even took on a superior grin. “A blowout’s a firestorm, I thought everybody knew that. The air gets so hot everything bursts into flame. Then the winds whip up because there’s a temperature gradient...”

“Speak English,” Hadley interrupted. Benson looked offended and I thought he was going to clam up.

“We haven’t had your schooling,” I interjected.

Darned if the little toad didn’t puff up some more.

“If there’s cooler air coming in from somewhere, then there’s a temperature gradient, a difference between the cool air and the superheated air. The difference causes the hot air to rise, sucking in the cooler air. There’s literally a tornado of fire. It’s called a firestorm.” He grinned. He thought he was lecturing idiots.

“You must know a lot about fires,” I prompted.

“I’ve fought a few. Took care of one all by myself, right here, the day before.”

I was confused. “You mean yesterday?” There didn’t seem that much left to burn.

The self-satisfaction seemed to drain from Benson’s face. “You ask too many questions,” he replied and stumped back off down the trail.

When I got back to my office a woman was waiting for me outside the door. She was wearing a worn, faded dress that looked like it had been washed too many times and she clutched a cheap leatherette handbag with hands that would be a poor ad for Palmolive. They were red and callused, one finger adorned with a wedding ring. She was somebody’s hard-working wife.

“Mr. Traveler?” she asked in an anxious kind of voice. I wondered how long she’d been standing there.

“Yes ma’am, were you waiting for me?”

She nodded mutely and I ushered her in. She didn’t sit down when I pulled out the client’s chair and that left the two of us standing sort of stupid-like in the middle of the room.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she said and turned as if to go.

That’s women for you, never wanting what they have, only what they can’t get. “Well, you’re here now, ma’am,” I said in my softest voice. “It would be a shame to waste all that time you spent waiting for me, wouldn’t it?” I could tell she was the kind of woman who hoarded up the minutes and was careless of the years.

After I settled her down, I asked, “Now, ma’am, what can I do for you?”

She dithered some, but finally came out with it. “It’s Harold Torvilson, he’s going to kill my husband, I know he is.” She turned on the waterworks and for a minute I thought I was going to have to give her my only clean handkerchief, but she fumbled in her battered purse and came up with one of her own.

I let her get hold of herself before I continued. “Mrs. Ferguson — it is Mrs. Ferguson?” I asked. Who else was everybody saying Torvilson was getting set to kill, I thought. “What makes you think that Mr. Torvilson is going to kill your husband?”

“He hired you, didn’t he?”

That took me back some. “I can assure you, ma’am,” I said in my best country-lawyer imitation, “except for the war, I’ve never killed a man in my life.”

“Edgar Benson called. As soon as I picked up the receiver I knew it was trouble. Ed and my Jim haven’t spoken for years. I gave the phone to Jim and went over to my neighbor’s place as quick as I could. We’re on the party line, you know. She let me listen, no questions asked. She’s been a good friend to me through all our troubles.”

I let her take her time thinking about her good friend, maybe her only friend about now. In times of trouble women will stick together like glue. Pretty soon she started up again. “Edgar said that Mr. Torvilson had gotten himself a hired gun and that he... uh, you were coming after my Jim.”

The puffed-up toad, why was he stirring things up? I wondered.

“Mr. Traveler, I don’t have any money, but please take this.” She twisted the gold band from her finger, struggling to get it past her work-swollen knuckle. “It’s got to be worth something?”

I put my hand over hers. “Now don’t you fuss, ma’am. That ring is worth a whole lot more to you than it is to me. Your man’s in no danger, leastways not from me.

“Mr. Torvilson, he’s cut up real bad,” I continued, “but I don’t see him taking the law into his own hands.” I hoped I was right. “He asked me to hold a watching brief, make sure things were done right. I’m sure your husband would want the same.”

“I can tell you this, he wasn’t expecting no fire at Hardscrabble Creek. He had a radio with him and nobody’d reported it.”

“Ma’am, I’m sure your man must be waiting supper about now. He’s probably worried about where you’re at.”

“He has bad dreams,” she continued. “He calls out in the middle of the night, ‘This way, over here.’ He told me he can see them, in the dream, the same as real life. They don’t listen to him. Every last one of them boys. They go on by. And every last one of them boys got themselves killed and now the blame’s on him. Oh, it just isn’t fair.”

She continued to fuss some, but I assured her that I would come over next day and have a little chat with her husband. I’d been planning to see him anyway.

I closed up the office and shepherded her out. Barney Chester was just putting up the Evening Telegraph on the racks of his newsstand as we entered the lobby. I heard a small mewl like a kitten might make and I turned to look at my companion. She was white as a sheet and starting to wobble. Barney rushed over to my side, spilling the remainder of the papers, whose headlines screamed, “Forest Ranger Murdered,” as Mrs. Ferguson slid to the floor.

“So I didn’t catch her — she’s all right, isn’t she?” I protested, the following day, to Anson Horne. We were having a cup of java at the Snappy Service lunch stand just up from the police station. Horne preferred talking to me on neutral territory.

Horne laughed. “You don’t have much luck with women, do you, Martin?”

“She had no cause to faint, wasn’t even her husband involved.”

“Don’t blame her much. Who would have thought that Torvilson would get the wrong man? You can’t say I didn’t try to head you off. You could see that canker working on him. Hiring you must have shoved him over the edge.”

“Funny, I don’t see it that way. Anson, you’re a student of human nature and so am I, and after five years of butting heads with you I think I’ve got to know you pretty good.”

“So?”

“I know you’re fiercely loyal to your men. I know you don’t like guys like Torvilson yammering that you’re not doing your job. So I know that sometimes you put two and two together a little faster than you ought.”