something to eat. Remember—say nothing whatever about the ladies! I told him they left here several days ago for Prescott.'
'But—'
'Shhhh! I will explain everything later. In the meantime, let us act perfectly natural. Perhaps Meech will be satisfied and go on about his business.'
Together Drumm and the detective ate pie and drank coffee under the ramada. The sun climbed high in the sky; the Mazatzals turned blue and hazy. A wren dipped brazenly through the shelter and then perched atop a cactus, singing a cheerful song. Meech spooned up the last of his pie.
'Ain't had a treat like that since I come out here! Crust just like my wife makes.' He looked thoughtfully at Jack Drumm and belched. 'Mrs. Glore was said to be a good cook.'
'Eggie is almost of chef level,' Jack said carelessly. 'You remember his cooking the night we had dinner here, just before Agustin and his Apaches attacked. Eggie is a real coper—he can bring off almost anything you care to mention. Really, a marvelous servant!'
Meech wiped his mouth, staring at laundry spread over the bushes. Jack suspected they were Phoebe Larkin's underthings. From where he sat he could not quite make out the laces and bows undoubtedly there.
'Eggie is quite clean, also,' he added. 'He insists on laundering our linen daily. Since we settled down here, we have become very regular in our habits.'
'Well—' Meech sighed and put on his broad-brimmed hat. He filled his canteen from the water butt and buckled the big Colt's revolver about his waist. 'Got to get on about my business.'
Jack's inquiry was casual. 'Where are you bound for now?'
Meech stared with reddened eyes down the road; his gaze followed the winding track into Centinela Canyon. 'Just around, I guess, to pick up their trail and start all over again. I had 'em dead to rights in Phoenix but they gave me the slip.' He mounted the buckskin and waved. 'Churchy la femme. That's French for 'don't never trust a woman.''
Jack sat for a long while under the ramada, watching the detective and his mount dwindle in the southern distance. Finally they were gone, but perhaps the detective had field glasses in his saddlebags. He walked slowly, casually, to the dam. Eggleston looked up, brow shiny with sweat, face smeared clownlike with dirt.
'He has gone, then?' he asked.
'How far, I don't know! But I think he is suspicious. Even now he may be watching the camp.'
The valet leaned for a moment on his shovel. 'I do not think the women are very far away, Mr. Jack. A moment ago I was sure I heard voices.'
Jack parted the reeds. Damned females—what had they gotten him into? Now he was an accomplice after the fact, when all he had to do, really, was admit their presence and let Meech take them away to a well-deserved fate! Murder was a serious business.
'Phoebe?' he called. 'Miss Larkin?'
The sun beat down in a lacy green pattern. Something plopped into a scum-edged pool. His boots gurgled and sucked in the rich ooze.
'Phoebe!' he called again. 'Where are you?'
A bee lumbered near his ear. The buzz was loud in the silence.
'Phoebe?'
He stepped into a hole and fell headlong, grasping the tough stalks in an effort to regain his balance. As he toppled, his eye registered the scene as a photographic plate is struck by light to fix a permanent image. Phoebe Larkin stood in a clearing, aiming carefully with her derringer. Mrs. Glore screamed; Jack saw her also with utmost clarity, terror-struck, hand over her mouth. Fortunately the shot went wide, cutting through the grasses over his head. Indignantly he clambered from the muck to snatch the weapon.
'One murder,' he protested, 'is enough for any female, I should think! You almost killed me!'
Phoebe sank down on a grassy mound, face in her hands.
'I thought it was Detective Meech,' she quavered.
'That's right!' Mrs. Glore cried. 'That's the God's truth! May I be set afire without no hose company if that ain't the truth! We was hiding here, and when someone come blundering through the reeds, we figured the jig was up!'
Eggleston came running, Sharp's rifle at the ready. 'What is it? What's happened?'
'Nothing,' Jack said. 'Nothing at all, Eggie. Just a little misunderstanding. Go back to your work.'
Now he understood their strange behavior: the initial refusal to return to Phoenix, their later refusal to go on to Prescott with the wagons under the escort of Lieutenant Dunaway. The Pinkerton had lost their trail in Phoenix. Thinking they had finally eluded Meech, the two women took the stage to Prescott and Phoebe's uncle Buell, only to have the stage turned back by the Apaches. They could not, of course, return to Phoenix, where Meech was, and so insisted on staying at the Agua Fria with Jack Drumm. Then, when safe transportation to Prescott was assured, Drumm told Dunaway that Meech was in Prescott, still on the trail of his quarry. It must have been an agonizing moment for Phoebe and Beulah Glore, trapped between Phoenix and Prescott. But Drumm hardened his soul. Phoebe Larkin was a murderess.
'Come with me!' he ordered, slipping the derringer into his pocket.
'Where?' Phoebe asked.
He nodded toward the reed hut.
'But—' A hand crept toward her throat. 'Where is that devil Meech?'
'He has gone, but may be watching us from a distance.' Taking her hand, he guided Phoebe and Mrs. Glore to a thicket that bordered the reed hut; they were able to slip in unseen, so far as he knew.
'I don't understand this,' Phoebe murmured. She sat in their shelter, cluttered about with fripperies. A lacy nightgown hung from a nail, bottles of cologne and containers of face powder littered an upturned box, the place smelled feminine and foreign to Jack Drumm. Face pale but head proudly erect, Phoebe clasped hands in her lap. 'Mr. Meech must have told you the whole story! Why didn't you just turn us in?'
He had no ready answer. 'I don't know, exactly. Maybe it was only that I wanted to hear your side.'
That was not it—not the whole thing, anyway. He found himself in the grip of a powerful emotion he did not quite understand. He distrusted emotion, especially his own; better always to be cool and practical. To cover his discomfiture, he added, 'Anyway, that's neither here nor there.'
'But it is!' Phoebe insisted. 'It makes you an accomplice, or some such legal foolishness! I know
'And where,' he asked, '
Phoebe swallowed hard, looked down at her clenched fingers.
'I want you to know the truth! Since you helped us so—me and Beulah—I'll tell you everything, just as it happened.' In a monotone, not looking at him, she went on. 'I was a poor girl from Clover Lick, in Pocahontas County. That's in West Virginia, the coal-mining country. I worked hard, and hunted and fished with my uncle Buell. Mr. Phineas Buckner owned most of the mines. He was a rich man, a real rich man, that lived in Philadephia. He used to come to Pocahontas County to visit his mines and see how much money they was—were making. One time he came to our house—my pa was a foreman in the Black Diamond Mine—and saw me. I was only eighteen then, and I guess something of a looker—'
'That's right!' Mrs. Glore interrupted. 'Peaches-and-cream complexion, and that red hair falling all over her shoulders—'
'Be quiet, Beulah,' Phoebe said. 'Anyway, Mr. Buckner courted me. He was nigh on to fifty then, and old enough to be my father. But I was a loving girl—still am. I am full of love, and sometimes regret it. I—I—' She broke off; tears misted her eyes. 'I gave him my hand, and we were married in a big church in Philadelphia. That was ten years ago, come spring.'
Jack Drumm cleared his throat, uncomfortable. 'If these details pain you so, you need not—'
'No!' She shook her head; the red tresses swirled about. The close air filled with feminine fragrance. 'I've got to tell somebody, maybe just to get it all straight in my own mind!'
Brushing a vagrant strand back from her forehead, she went on. 'Philadelphia was a big town, and I didn't fit in with his society friends. And Mr. Buckner was so much older than me that there was no one to talk to. I did get him to bring Beulah to his big house when he needed a cook, but she was the only friend I had. For a while he kind
