Rex Stout - The Mountain Cat

The phone buzzed. Tuttle reached for it, spoke into it briefly, mostly with grunts, shoved it back and got to his feet. “You seem to have company,” he observed. “Anyhow, that was Ed Baker, and he wants me to haul in Squint Hurley and have him ready for a talk as soon as he gets through with the Brand girl.”

The Sheriff of Silverside County stowed away the packet of fine cut, arose and stretched. “I guess I’ll go along.”

“If you do you’ll keep your mouth shut.”

They went out together.

Wynne Cowles, with a heavy automatic pistol in her hand, sat on a rock, peering intently around the edge of an enormous boulder which was perched on the rim of a narrow canyon. The pistol, rock, boulder and canyon were all her property, all being within the confines of Broken Circle Ranch which she owned. It had been a dude ranch at the time of her first arrival at Cody two years ago and, taking a fancy to it, she had bought it. The energy, acumen, time and money Wynne Cowles had expended on whims might have built a railroad.

Impatience stirred within her. Leaving her ambush behind the boulder, she crept to the edge of the precipice to see if the sheep’s carcass was in fact there; and saw it, unmistakably, a grayish blur at the bottom of the canyon. The bait was all right; why didn’t they come? She returned to the ambush and resumed her vigil, glancing at her wrist watch and noting that it was nearly five o’clock. She would give them thirty minutes more. But not half that allowance had gone when her keen eyes detected a group of black dots moving far up against the blue sky. She watched them, releasing the safety on the pistol and hugging the boulder. The black dots descended moving in wide graceful circles, then narrowing into spirals of shorter radius, becoming not dots but things with wings — wings that did not flap but only banked and steered. They came lower, centering on a point in the canyon directly beneath her, and now they were huge and she could see the nakedness of their necks and almost the greediness of their sharp glittering eyes. Her own eyes gleamed with distaste; she disliked vultures because they disgusted her. She waited until they got almost to her level, circling into the canyon’s mouth, then drew a deep breath, leveled the pistol with nerveless aim and fired. Nothing stopped the bullet. She fired again and one of the vultures, at least a hundred yards away, keeled over, seemed to hang suspended for an instant and then fluttered into the canyon like an enormous black leaf. The wings of the six or eight others were flapping now and they were moving off. She fired four more shots, but the distance was so great that only luck could have guided the pistol bullet to its moving mark. She stepped to the edge of the canyon and saw that one down there, not twenty feet from the carrion, flopping on the rocks like a decapitated chicken.

A voice sounded behind her. “That’s too bad, boss. Honest it is. Them turkey buzzards keep a place clean.”

She turned and saw a wiry little man with good-humored eyes. “I only got one, Joe. Did you see it go? Riding the air like an eagle and then suddenly losing it, turning loose of its grip on the air. I’m sick of popping gophers because I never miss any more. What are you doing out here?”

“Got a message. Do you know Ed Baker, the county attorney?”

“No. Should I? What about him?”

“He just phoned he wants to see you. At his office in the courthouse any time before midnight, or he says he could drive out here. He said to tell you he’s interviewing everybody who talked with Dan Jackson the day he was killed. I told him I’d call him back.”

“But I thought—” Wynne Cowles frowned. “Oh, hell. I don’t like being interviewed.” She returned the pistol to its holster on her belt. “At that, maybe I can get in a lick for that kid. That Brand girl.”

“You were going into town for dinner anyway.”

“I know it. Come on.”

She found her horse in the shade of the towering brown rocks where she had left it. His was there too, and together they rode the mile to the ranch house, past corrals, outbuildings and irrigated fields. The house was low, painted white, had a patio and was surrounded by trees. A tiled veranda was shaded with a bright green awning, and a similar awning covered the entire expanse of a first-class tennis court, near which was a large enclosure containing a dozen pronghorns. On a low forked limb of a tree near the veranda, startlingly life-like, a cougar crouched in readiness to leap, seemingly onto a table below which held a stack of magazines, a bowl of fruit and a carved bishido cigarette box. Broken Circle Ranch was a picturesque and expensive layout, but it was also an efficient going concern; Joe Paltz was the best sheepman in northern Wyoming. Wynne Cowles turned her horse over to him on the path at the corner of the veranda, went to her suite overlooking the patio, removed her clothes and gave her body an approving glance in a Tronville mirror, and stepped into the shower cubicle.

Lem Sammis, at his mahogany desk in his office on the top floor of the new Sammis Building, was saying irritably, “I tell you, Harvey, that don’t matter. Dellie Brand is out of it and no thanks to you either. What we’ve got to do is shut Ed Baker off!”

Harvey Anson offered mildly, “The governor said he’d see him this evening and Ollie Nevins—”

“Phut! Talk! More talk! Have you lost all the sense you ever had?” Sammis hit the desk with his fist. “Do you know what’s going on or don’t you? That squarehead Carlson has decided to use this for a showdown. Do you understand English? He has picked on this because he thinks he can force it and he knows I’ve got to fight at a disadvantage. He knows I can only handle it one way on account of Amy. The dirty coward, getting at me through my daughter! He knows me, all right. I won’t permit it! I won’t have it, right here in my own state, my daughter dragged into a public mess, maybe questioned in a courtroom, about her married life with that polecat! Good God, when I think what I’ve kept out of courts and newspapers, you tell me I can’t keep this out?”

“This is murder, Lem.”

“You talk like a Sunday School teacher!”

“No, I don’t.” Anson spread out his palms. “Now here. The fact that it’s murder and the people want it gives Carlson a chance to put pressure on Baker to see that they get it. Everybody in this county has heard talk about Jackson and various women, and here is their chance to get the details, and they want them. His wife being your daughter doesn’t make them any less eager, either. Baker can’t possibly hush it up. Carlson could run him right out of the state. I stick to my advice: don’t try to force Baker to a jump he can’t take, or he’ll grab the bit in his teeth. He’ll have to. Play with him. Give him all the help he wants in his investigation and tell Amy to do the same, with the understanding that he keeps everything under the lid that he doesn’t have to use in court when he gets it lined up. That’s another thing, he may never get it. It looks doubtful to me.”

“You mean let him pry into my intimate family affairs? My daughter’s?”

“I mean let him investigate whatever he wants to, with the understanding—”

“I won’t do it! That little squirt that used to bellyache around for a hundred dollar fee!”

“Have it your way, Lem.” Anson shrugged. “I know you’re bullheaded, but I’ve seen you pull in your horns when you had to. I’ve seen you throw in many a bum hand. Why are you playing this one up against your chin? Maybe my advice is no good, but if so it’s only because I don’t know all the facts, and I’m beginning to suspect that’s the case.”