Shirley Murphy - The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

The gray had been a good and willing companion; Lee missed him. He didn’t like this sadness of being alone, this was new to him, this hollow loneliness.

What he’d planned to do was buy the gray back, if he had been taken in by that ranch, buy him if they’d sell him, and take off on horseback for Mexico. But a little thought, a few questions asked, and he knew the land along the Colorado, down into Baja, would be way too hard on a horse. Little if any grass for miles across the desert, little if any water, and much of the Colorado River inaccessible where it ran deep between ragged stone cliffs. Even if he bought a trailer, maybe traded the Chevy for a pickup, it would still be a hard journey, hard to care for a saddle horse. He didn’t have any real destination, didn’t know where, in Mexico, he’d end up. Somewhere along the gulf, but how much feed could he buy there, how much water could he count on? He’d be smarter to wait, to buy some Mexican cayuse later on.

Well, hell, the first thing was to get the money. If it was gone, he couldn’t buy a flea-bitten hound dog.

Parking beside an orange grove he unwrapped a burrito and opened a beer. It was then, as he ate the rest of his lunch, that Misto was suddenly beside him, grinning up at him, yellow shaggy coat, ragged ears, ragged, switching tail. How often had it been this way over their long friendship, Misto abruptly appearing pressing against him, loud with rumbling purrs. Lee stroked his rough fur and offered him a bite of burrito, but Misto sniffed and turned his nose away. Too much hot sauce.

He stopped once more before he reached Blythe, to gas up the Chevy again and use the restroom. The attendant was young and shy, he looked at his feet when Lee addressed him. “Can you tell me the name of that ranch out on the old road to Amboy?”

The young man glanced up at him, turned, and headed for the office. Lee could see him ringing up the sale. Bringing Lee his change, still he didn’t look at him. “That would be the Emerson place,” he mumbled. “It sets just beyond the little airstrip.”

Lee nodded. “That’s the only ranch out there?”

“The only one,” the young fellow said shyly, studying his boots. But he stood watching as Lee pulled away. The ghost cat had disappeared. The car seemed filled with emptiness as Lee headed for the road to Amboy.

Approaching the old abandoned barn on the Amboy road, he parked behind it and, at the base of a boulder, he dug with a rock until he’d uncovered the little folding shovel he’d buried there, and then the saddle and bridle. There wasn’t much left of the rotted blanket. He wiped the leather off as best he could, laid the saddle and bridle in the trunk beside his meager kit. Somewhere down the line, he’d need them. As he headed the Chevy up the shallow mountain the scene came back too vividly, the robbery, returning here in the truck with the dead convict sitting in the seat beside him, the man he had killed to save his own life and who, it turned out, had come in real handy. That day, he had driven up the hills as far as he could, leading the gray with a rope through the open window, the dead man propped in the cab beside him. Picking his spot along the canyon, he’d gotten out, tied the gray at a safe distance, and sent the truck and dead man, with the gun and a few scattered post office bills, over the edge of the ravine, a no-good convict taking the rap for the robbery.

The truck and his companion disposed of, he had moved on up the hills on horseback, buried the money, and ridden back down to the old barn. Had buried the saddle and, when the duster plane came into view, had turned the gray loose, then buried the bridle and shovel. Stepping up into the cockpit, he’d headed for Vegas. No commercial plane to fly him from the empty desert, and the small duster plane left no record. For all intents and purposes, when the post office robbery went down, Lee was already drunk and raising hell in Vegas, cursing and assaulting the Vegas cops, and was thrown in the can there. So far, his alibi had held firm.

Now, heading the Chevy up the shallow desert mountain, he thought he could make it maybe halfway before boulders made the trail impassable and he’d have to walk. Already he could see, high up to the east, the rock formation where the money was hidden.

Before he left the car he backed it around so it was headed down again, the parking brake set, the front bumper secure against a boulder. Moving on up, on foot, the sand hushed beneath his boots with an occasional soft scrape. Lizards scurried away, and once he startled a rabbit that went bounding off. Nothing chased it. Was Misto with Sammie? Would Sammie, in a dream, see him walking up the mountain, watch as he approached the tall rock and began to dig, see him bring up the stolen post office bags? What would she think, how would she judge him? That thought bothered him.

“It’s all I have,” he told her, wondering if his words would enter her dreams. “All I have, for whatever years are left.” A little cottage in Mexico, good hot Mexican food, soak up the hot sun. The money he was about to dig up, that’s all there was against an empty future.

44

I N THE DC-3,as Sammie yawned in Becky’s arms, already Morgan had drifted off, his head on Becky’s shoulder. Becky couldn’t have slept again; her stomach felt queasy from breakfast or maybe from the plane taking off, banking over the city, then lifting fast above the mountains. Below them clouds hung low between the highest peaks, then soon the plane’s shadow raced ahead over mountains mottled with snow. Snowcapped ridges tinted gold by the rising sun surrounded a deep blue lake; far ahead, long white ridges marched, jagged, primitive, stroked with gold.

Last night in the motel room Sammie, sleeping peacefully, had stirred suddenly and sat up, her rigid body silhouetted against the motel lights beyond the window. Becky couldn’t tell if she was awake or still asleep; but a darkness stood across the room slicing fear through her—a dark consciousness more alive than if they faced a human intruder.

“Leave us alone!” Sammie shouted. “Leave my daddy alone. You tried with Uncle Lee, too. You failed with both of them. Now go away. Go away from us . Go bother someone who wants to follow you.”

The authority in the child’s voice held Becky. Morgan was awake and took Becky’s hand. They didn’t speak to Sammie. This was not the kind of dream they were used to. Sammie didn’t reach out to them, frightened. She seemed quite in control, there was a new power in the child. Her strength seemed to press at the dark presence as if driving it back; it smeared and grew thin. “You couldn’t hurt Russell Dobbs,” Sammie said boldly. “You couldn’t hurt Lee or my daddy. You can’t hurt us any longer.”

Her fists gripped the covers. “You can’t direct my dreams. You never could, they never came from you! Go away from us, we are done with you!” She was not a child now, something within her seemed ageless, they could only watch as she faced down the dark that stifled the small room. The child waited silent and rigid as the spirit receded. When it vanished, she turned away—she was a child again, soft and pliant, leaning into her daddy, pulling Becky close, pressing between them until soon she slept, curled up and at peace.

They exchanged looks, but didn’t speak. At last Morgan slept, too. Only Becky lay awake, thinking about the strength they’d seen in Sammie—and then about the days to come. Home again in their own house. Morgan back in the shop he loved. Caroline with her comforting support. Anne a real part of the family now, Anne and Mariol.

With Morgan exonerated, all charges wiped from the books, would time turn back to what life was before? Would the town’s anger be wiped from the books? As cleanly as the legal charges were expunged? Would they be a real part of their community again?