then it swung sharp left, the front of the car with its blinding headlights snapping out into space to stare out over the ravine, and then it dropped.
Parker was running back up the other way long before they heard the crashing sound down below. He ran up to the wagon, and Wycza and Salsa were there. He said, “Wycza, get Phillips. Have him show you the shovels. Get Elkins and come down, bring a car. Salsa, let’s go.”
They got into the wagon, and Parker backed it away from the edge, then turned the wheel hard and they started down. Parker had the parking lights on again and went as fast as he could.
Salsa, sitting on the outside near the cliff, said, “It’s burning.”
“We got to put it out.”
“That Paulus was a real chancy type.”
“He always tensed up, always.”
“I guess none of us works with him again, huh?” Salsa grinned. “You sure get the interesting jobs, Parker.”
“Crap.”
At the bottom they made the U-turn. Paulus’s wreck was ahead of them, outlined by flames; it looked like a mound of black spare parts.
It wasn’t much of a fire; by the time Parker and Salsa got there the only things left burning were the upholstery and the roof padding and the body hanging halfway out the front seat.
“He’s taking it with him,” said Salsa. “His split, you know?”
Parker was down on one knee, feeling the ground, trying to find loose sand. “We got to get that fire out.”
“Wait, Parker. Here they come with the shovels.”
The other car was coming. Wycza and Elkins climbed out and passed out shovels. The four of them started digging, throwing dirt generally on the wreck and especially on the parts that were still burning. When the fire was put out, they brought the two cars closer in and switched on their parking lights to see by. Then they kept shoveling.
They moved around, not taking too much dirt from any one place, spreading it out so the ground wouldn’t look more than usually uneven. When they were done, the mound of earth over the wreck was nearly waist-high, but it would look all right from the air.
“One thing,” said Elkins, “Now it’s a nine-way split.”
“He took his with him,” said Salsa. He seemed pleased by the remark.
4
The stink of sulphur was everywhere. In the dimness of twilight, the red waters of the stream looked a dark maroon, and velvety. Parker threw a machine gun into the stream and watched the bubbles rise, then turned back to the station wagon.
Grofield was coming over with the two rifles, wrinkling his nose. “I counted two-and-seventy stenches, all well defined, and several stinks.”
Parker shrugged. He wasn’t talking; when he opened his mouth he smelled the stink more.
The rear of the wagon was still full of revolvers. Parker picked up four of them by the trigger guards and carried them over to the stream and threw them in. Nobody’d stumble over them here, not too readily.
The guns could have been kept, but it would have been a false economy, and maybe dangerous. Until the next job, none of them would be needing a gun, and certainly not a rifle or chopper. In the meantime, they were difficult to transport, difficult to hide, and a cheap little rap if the law happened to stumble across them. So guns were just part of the overhead, bought before each job and gotten rid of afterward. Sometimes, if the job was done somewhere close to someone like Scofe, the blind man, or Amos Klee, the guns were sold back again at half-price, but only if that was the easiest way to get rid of them.
After they’d all been dumped into the sulphurous stream, Parker and Grofield drove the station wagon over to the truck. Wycza and Salsa and Elkins were there, dragging the bags and trays of the score down to the end of the truck by the open doors. Parker swung the wagon around and backed it up to the rear of the truck, and then he and Grofield got out and started transferring the stuff from truck to wagon. There was another car there, too; when they finished filling the wagon they loaded the rest into the trunk of the other car.
This was the third day. Tonight, if everything was clear, they’d leave this place. The sky was overcast and heavy, had been all day, building up from a lighter cloudiness yesterday. It hadn’t rained yet; with luck, it wouldn’t for a day or two.
Parker and Grofield and Wycza rode up in the station wagon, and the other two in the car. When they passed the mound of dirt covering Paulus’s wreck, Grofield said, “If it rains, the dirt’ll get washed away.”
“You got any ideas?”
“No. I was just saying.”
Parker grunted. What was the sense of talking about a problem if you didn’t have a way to solve it?
They drove up to the top and unloaded the two cars, carrying everything into the shed. Phillips and Littlefield and Wiss and Kerwin came out to help, making it like a bucket brigade, passing the sacks and bags and trays from hand to hand, piling it all up in a corner of the shed. Grofield’s girl sat on an army cot and watched it mount up. In the last few days, sleeping in Grofield’s car, with no fresh clothes to change to, she’d gotten a little bedraggled- looking, but it didn’t really hurt her appearance. She’d gotten, if anything, sexier-looking now. Parker had seen Salsa and a couple of the others looking at her. If they couldn’t all leave here tonight, there might be trouble yet.
When the cars were unloaded, Parker and Wycza put them back in their sheds and put the sides up, then went back to the living shed, where the others had started the count.
They’d taken nothing but money. They’d left the jewelry store stock alone because the only way to make a
