Miss Shumway Waves a Wand Page 5

  Ansell got to his feet. “I’ll give you half an hour,” he said. “I take it that you won’t run out on me?”

  “We’ll be here when you come back,” I told him.

  “Hey!” Myra said. “Whose side are you on?”

  I grinned at her. “Pipe down for a minute, will you?”

  Bogle got to his feet after Ansell had shaken him. “Talk!” he said bitterly. “That’s all we do. We came out here so I could kick this dame’s teeth in and what happens? We sit around and talk! Now, we go away so they can talk! Don’t we ever do anything else, but talk in this gawdamn place?”

  “Cheer up,” I said. “You’re getting so many wrinkles, before long you’ll have to screw your hat on.”

  He glared at me, then turning on his heel, he slouched after Ansell. They crossed the square and disappeared into a beer parlour that stood at the corner.

  I settled further, into my chair. “Well,” I said, “you can never tell, can you. How do you like being a Sun Virgin?”

  Myra’s reply was unprintable.

  Chapter FIVE

  WELL, I talked her into it. It took a long time and it was as easy as cracking rock with a sponge.

  Some men like strong-minded women. They say they know just where they are with them. Me . . I give them away with a box of crackerjacks. The trouble with a girl who knows her own mind is she’s one jump ahead of you all the time. If you want to fox her into anything, you’ve got to do a double jump, and like as not you end up by buying yourself a truss. Anyway, I sold her in the end. That’s all that matters. I got her to see that for a couple of days’ work, she’d save herself a stretch in jail and maybe make herself a load of jack. Why bother with details? It’s action that counts. I had a lot to think about and a lot to do, but that’s not your worry. All you want to know is how it worked out, not how I did it. Briefly then, the four of us agreed to put up at the hotel. It was as good a place as any, and until we had worked out the details of our campaign, it was no use us floating around the countryside like peas on a knife. We got ourselves rooms and we settled down. As soon as I was alone, I put a call through to Maddox. When I told him that I’d found the girl, I thought he was going to have a stroke. It seemed he hadn’t got his story fixed and he wasn’t nearly ready for me to bring her in. Then again, he was dead set on her being kidnapped by bandits because he’d worked out a swell story how she had been carried off from her hotel by thirty desperadoes.

  I told him what I had in mind and that slackened the pressure on his arteries. I kept talking and I could hear his blood pressure going down. After a while, he said I was smart and finally he ended up by wanting to kiss me.

  The set-up was this. I’d take the girl to Pepoztlan and get the snake-bite angle fixed. That alone would make a swell story. On her way back from Pepoztlan, Myra would be snatched by a bunch of greasers. I knew a little greaser who lived in the hills and who would be glad to do the job for a couple of hundred bucks. I’d take a few photos and then pull a rescue stunt.

  The rest was plain sailing. The whole business was to be completed within a week. Maddox thought it was a swell idea. The snake-bite business excited him and he talked about buying himself in. I didn’t discourage him, but I made up my mind that if any money was to be made out of thin I was going to be the guy to cash in. I got him to let me spend anything within reason—my reason and not his—and then I hung up. That was that part fixed up.

  Then I put a call through to Paul Juden and wised him up on the deal. I told him where to send my bag, demanded some money, and asked him how he was making out with the nurse. He said he’d do everything I wanted and the nurse business was just a gag. He knew I knew his wife.

  When I’d done all that, I thought I’d go along and have a talk with Myra. I wanted to know more about this girl. I wanted to take the corners off our friendship and find out just how strong her mind was. So I went along to her room, and put my head round the door. She wasn’t there.

  I found her messing around the Cadillac under the shade of a banana tree. She looked over her shoulder when she heard me coming and then lowered the hood of the car.

  “Come on,” I said. “See those mountains? Well, let’s go out and look at ’em. I want to stand in the open with the wind against my face and feel that I’m somebody.”

  She gave me an old-fashioned look, but something must have caught at her imagination because she got into the car without a word. I sat by her side and we jolted gently over the cobbles, through the square on to the main road that led out of Orizaba.

  We didn’t say anything until we reached the mountain road and when we began to climb, with a sheer drop down into the valley whizzing past our off-wheels, she said suddenly, “We could go on and on like this and we wouldn’t have to worry about anything. And when we’re tired of each other we could say good-bye and both of us would have still less to worry about.”

  “And the world wouldn’t have any snake-bite ointment and you and I wouldn’t feel very happy about it,” I said.

  “You don’t really believe that stuff, do you?”

  “I guess I do,” I said. “Besides, didn’t you promise the old man that you’d play along with him?”

  She laughed gaily. “You a newspaper man and you talk about promise,” she said. “That’s a laugh!”

  I looked at her. “What do you want to do, double-cross the old geyser?”

  “I’m nor even thinking about him,” she returned, slowing the car as we ran past a line of ancient, weatherbeaten houses and refreshment booths, with their awnings over the street.

  “No one dictates my life. I’m just saying we could go on from here and not go back.”

  The Cadillac began to mount again, leaving the small town behind. I had no idea what the name of the town was and cared less. We were heading for the wooded country and signs of human life began to thin out. The few Indians, jogging along the roadside, straddling the rumps of their burros, became fewer as we went on. Then suddenly she slowed down, swerved off the road and pulled up under the shadow of the forest fringe.

  “Let’s get out,” she said.

  I followed her as she moved away from the car, and sank down beside her on the parched, brown grass. She looked up at the brilliant sky, screwing up her eyes against the brightness of the sun, then she heaved a little, contented sigh.

  I found her disturbing. I don’t know what it was, but her metallic hair, gleaming in the sun, the white column of her throat, the curve of her figure under the blood-red shirt, her small finely boned hands and the courage of her mouth and chin got me. I found myself groping back into the past to remember any one woman I had known who looked as good as this kid. Pale ghosts paraded in my mind, but none of them clicked.

  “Look, sister…” I said.

  “Just a minute,” she interrupted, facing me. “Would you mind not calling me sister? I’m no sister of yours. I’ve got a name. Myra Shumway. We met. Remember?”

  “You’d’ve been a better girl if you’d been my sister,” I said grimly.

  “All you tough guys think of is violence. That’s your only reply to a woman, isn’t it?”

  “What do you expect, when they feed us hot tongue and cold shoulder?” I asked grinning.

  “Besides, a little violence works.”

  “Get me out of this,” she said, suddenly turning so that she was close to me. “You can do it. I don’t want to go on with it.”

  I thought, ‘If you knew half what I’ve got lined up for you sweetheart, you’d be climbing trees.’ But, I just shrugged. “Don’t let’s go over that again,” I said. “You’ll thank me in a week or so. You’re not scared of this Quinn guy, are you?”

  “I’m not scared of anything on two legs…” she began.

  “I remember, you told me.”

  “But, it’s crazy,” she went on. “It’s all right to talk about it, but actually doing it… why, it’s crazy! I can’t speak the language. They’ll know I’m a phoney.”

  “You leave i
t to Doc. He’s got it all worked out,” I said. “Why should you worry?”

  She fumbled in her bag and took out a deck of cards. “There’s something about you,” she said, flipping the cards through her fingers so that they looked like an arc of a rainbow. “I wonder what it is?”

  “When I was very young,” I returned, lolling back on my elbow, “my mother used to rub me in bear fat. It built up my personality.”

  She leaned forward and took four aces out of my breast pocket. “Would you say I’m a serious young woman?”

  I watched the cards flutter through her slim fingers. “Yeah,” I said, feeling my throat thicken suddenly. “More than that. I’d say you were a remarkable young woman.”

  She looked at me with quick interest, “Really?”

  “Hmm, I guess so. We’re going to know each other an awful lot better before we wave good-bye. Do you know that?”

  She reached over to take the King of Spades from my cuff. I could smell the scent in her hair. It reminded me of a summer spent in England in an old country garden full of lilac trees. “Are we?” she said.

  I caught her band and pulled her close to me. She didn’t resist, but let me pull her across the small space that divided us. “I think so,” I said, sliding my arm under her shoulders. “An awful lot better.”

  We lay like that, close to each other, and I could see the overhead clouds reflected in her eyes.

  “Will you like that?” she asked, her lips close to mine.

  “Maybe—I don’t know.” Then I kissed her, pressing my mouth hard on hers.

  She lay still. I wished she would close her eyes and relax, but she didn’t. I could feel the hard muscles in her back resisting me. Her lips felt hard, tight and child-like against mine.

  She made no effort to push me away. Kissing her like that was as good as kissing the back of my hand. I dropped onto my elbow again, releasing her. “All right,” I said. “Forget it.”

  She shifted away from me. Her fingers touched her lips carefully, “You meant that to be something, didn’t you?” she asked, curling her legs under her and adjusting her skirt.

  “Sure,” I said. “But what of it? Sometimes it’s all right, but not this time. The trick is not to rush this kind of thing.”

  “No,” she said, looking at me seriously. “The trick is not to do it at all.”

  Then I thought what’s wrong with me? What am I trying to do? I’d got a job on my hands. I’d got 25,000 dollars just around the corner with my name on it, and here I am gumming up my chance trying to neck a kid that meant as much to me as last year’s income tax return. I guess it was her hair. I was always a sucker for blondes.

  “Changed your mind about knowing me awfully well?” she said, watching me intently.

  “I guess not,” I said. “I’ll keep trying. Did I tell you about the red head I met in New Orleans?”

  “You don’t have to,” she said, scrambling to her feet, “I can imagine it,”

  “Not this red head,” I returned, looking up at her. “She had a figure like an hour glass. Boy! Did she make every minute count!”

  She began moving slowly towards the Cadillac. “So you’re not going to help me?” she said.

  “Not after I’ve been nice to you?”

  “What’s wrong?” I got to my feet and we both walked towards the Cadillac. “You were feeling fine about it this morning.”

  “I’ve thought about it,” she said, getting into the car. “I don’t like the idea any more.”

  “Give it a chance,” I urged, feeling the heat coming at me from off the dusty road. “Be big minded about it.”

  “What are you getting out of it?” she said, starting the engine “You’re selling it too hard to be disinterested.”

  “A story,” I said. “And, Pie-crust, if you were a newspaper man you’d know just what that meant. It’s going to be a beautiful story, with lots of publicity, and they’ll even print my picture.”

  “You never give a thought to those folk who have their meat wrapped in your newspaper, do you?” Myra returned, driving slowly back the way we came.

  I winced. “I wish you wouldn’t,” I said. “Wisecracks spoil your romantic appeal.”

  She slightly increased the speed of the car as we began to descend the steep winding rood. Just ahead of us was the little mountain town we had already passed on our way up.

  “Let’s stop and buy some beer,” I said. “My tonsils are dusty.”

  We entered the town, drove along the cobbled main mad, ignored the group of Indians, lounging behind heaps of van-coloured flowers which they stretched towards us, and pulled up outside a little beershop. There was a long wrought-iron table and bench outside the shop, shaded by a gaily covered awning. A smell of beer and stale bodies came through the doorway.

  “We won’t go in,” I said, sitting at the table. “That smell reminds me of a newspaper office.”

  She came and sat by my side and pulled off her wide straw hat, which she laid carefully on the table.

  A thin, elderly Mexican came out of the shop and bowed to us. There was an odd, worried look in his eyes that made me wonder if he was in trouble.

  I ordered beer and he went away without saying anything. “Now, there’s a guy who looks like he’s got more than his hat on his mind,” I said, opening my coat and picking the front of my shirt carefully off my chest.

  “These greasers are all alike,” Myra returned, indifferently. “They worry over which way a flea will jump. At one time I was sorry for them, but now, I don’t worry—” She broke off and looked pest me, her eyes widening.

  I glanced over my shoulder.

  Standing in the doorway of the shop was the fattest man I’d ever seen. He was not only fat, but he was big with it. I guess he must have been seven inches over six foot. He was wearing the usual straw sombrero, a sarape hung over his great shoulders, but I could see his neat black suit and his soft Mexican riding boots ornamented with silver inlay.

  He leaned against the doorway, a cigarette banging from his thick lips and his black eyes on Myra.

  I particularly noticed his eyes. They were flat like the eyes of a snake. I didn’t like the look of this party. He didn’t belong to the town. I was sure of that. There was too much class about him. I didn’t like the leer he as telegraphing to Myra.

  “Isn’t he cute?” Myra said to me. “I bet he was twins before his mother cooked him in a too hot bath.”

  “Listen, Apple blossom,” I said, keeping my voice low, “keep your funny stuff for me, will you? That hombre won’t like it.”

  The fat man picked his cigarette out of his mouth and flicked it across at me. It landed on the table between us.

  If any other greaser had done that, I’d have pinned his ç ears back, but I’ve got a superstition about hitting a guy twice my size. I’ve been over that with you before. But when that guy gets so that he’s three times my size, I’ll take an awful lot from him before I go into action.

  Myra didn’t mind pushing me into a fight. That’s like a woman. They think uneven odds is a sign of chivalry.

  “Why don’t you poke that fat boy in his pantry?” she asked.

  Maybe the guy couldn’t speak anything but his own language, but how was I to know? The most unlikely people get educated these days.

  “What do you want me to do?” I whispered. “Commit suicide?”

  “You’re not going to let a pail of lard insult me?” Myra said, her eyes suddenly flashing.

  “Didn’t you see what he did?” She pointed to the cigarette end that smouldered near her hand.

  “That little thing?” I said, hastily. “Why, that was an accident. He didn’t mean anything. You pipe down. It’s dames like you who cause revolutions.”

  Just then the thin Mexican came out of the shop. He edged round the fat party as if he were passing close to a black widow. Then he set two beers in front of us and faded back to the shop fast.

  The fat party was smoking again and he took his cigarette o
ut and flipped it once more. I had my hand over my glass as the smoking cigarette curled through the air, but it dropped into Myra’s glass.

  I took her glass before she could say anything and gave her mine. “There you are, sweetheart, and for the love of Mike don’t make anything of it.”

  Myra’s face scared me. She’d gone a little white and her eyes looked like those of a cat in the dark.

  The fat party suddenly laughed. It was a high tinny sound that went with his sideboards and pencilled moustache. “The senor has milk in his veins,” he said, slapping his thick thigh and looking as if he was having the time of his life.

  I considered getting up and giving him one, but something warned me off. I’ve knocked around this country for some time and I’ve seen plenty of tough greasers, but this party was something special. If I was going to do anything, I’d have to do it with a gun. That was the kind of guy he was and I didn’t have a gun with me

  That didn’t put Myra off. She gave him a look that would have stopped a runaway horse and said, “Go jump into a lake, you fat sissy; if one won’t hold you, jump into two.”

  You could have heard a feather settle on the ground.

  The fat party stopped laughing. “You’ve got a very big mouth, little rabbit,” he said. “You should be careful how you use it.”

  Boy! Could that guy look mean?

  “Get out of the sun, fat boy,” Myra said. “Before your dome melts. Take the air—drift— scram—dust off.”

  The fat party put one hand under his sarape. I guess he was going after his arsenal, so I said quickly, “We don’t want any trouble, pal, we’re just going.”

  But, he wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t even moving any more. He just stood like a great block of granite with his eyes sticking out of his head like long-stemmed toadstools.

  I looked at Myra. She had her hands on the table and between her cupped fingers was the head of a little green snake. It darted its spade-shaped head in a striking movement and its forked tongue flickered in and out in a way that gave me the heebies. Then she opened her hands and the snake wasn’t there any more and she smiled at the fat party as if they’d known each other for a long time.