Ed McBaines 87th Precinct Mystery Magazine. Volume 1, No. 4. April, 1975

Backfire by Tom Godwin

I knew that Jack Browder was planning to murder either me or Doris when he wanted me to go with them on their hunting trip.

I couldn’t have proved it but I didn’t need any proof. I knew Jack for what he actually was.

Women liked him. He was tall and handsome, with long lashes over dark eyes and the kind of curly brown hair that made a woman want to run her fingers through it. When he spoke in his deep, melodious voice and flashed that engaging smile of his, you could practically see them melt at his feet.

Yeah, women liked him and nobody knew better than Jack Browder how charming he could be. But I had long ago seen what actually lurked behind that handsome, smiling front of his.

It was something heartless and cold and calculating, like a coiled rattle snake waiting for its prey.

And Doris had married him.

Two months before she had been Doris Reynolds — the prettiest girl in Phoenix, nineteen years old, with red-gold curls the color of an Arizona sunrise, lips as sweet as the petals of a wild rose, and big, trusting blue eyes that made you want to go out and fight a lion or something to protect her.

Also, she was rich. I guess that was one of the reasons I lost when handsome Jack Browder became the competing suitor against me and my busted-down nose.

Not that she was accustomed to wealth. It had been only the year before that her father had accidently found a rich gold vein out in the hills and the Reynolds family suddenly had lots of money.

A few months later both of Doris’s parents had been killed in a traffic accident and Doris was left all alone in the world — all alone and lonesome, with no one to care what became of her and nothing for company but a big bank account.

That was Jack’s cue to enter the scene.

For my part, her money worried me. I was afraid she would think I really wanted it instead of her. I had a fair income but not along the order of new Cadillacs every year, annual trips to Europe, and things like that.

Jack didn’t have any money at all but he managed to wear expensive clothes and give the impression of being well off. He turned on all his charm with her, and he could turn on a lot. It wasn’t long until I was sure I saw the handwriting on the wall — I didn’t stand a chance.

I told her good-by one evening, knowing that it would be for the last time. She smiled up at me, the sweet radiance of her youth and beauty like a light on her face, and I told myself, She smiles at Jack the same way — except more often.

“Good-by, Bill,” she said. “Until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow,” I answered.

I didn’t sleep that night. When morning came I knew I wouldn’t be able to forget her if I stayed in Phoenix. So I left, and didn’t come back for six weeks.

I was told, the day I returned, that Jack and Doris had left that morning to get married in Las Vegas. I moped around like a fool for a few hours, feeling miserably lonesome, then I went to a bar, wondering if I was an even bigger fool to try to drown my sorrows in whiskey.

When I woke up in jail the next morning with a bad hangover I had the answer to that question.

I heard that — at Jack’s suggestion — they spent their honeymoon in Las Vegas and that he had a gay time in the casinos and show places there. They had been married seven weeks when I saw Doris again.

She was standing before a fall bargain display of dresses and for a moment I didn’t recognize her. All the radiance was gone from her and she had aged ten years.

She saw me and exclaimed, “Bill!” her face lighting up for an instant. Then the light was gone as she said in a tone that I would have thought held sombre accusation if I hadn’t known better, “You walked out one evening and left town and never even wrote to me. Why did you do that?”

“Because I had sense enough to recognize superior competition, Doris,” I said. “But what happened to you — have you been sick?”

“Sick?” For a moment she looked puzzled. “Oh — no, not sick. I... feel fine.”

“Where’s Jack?”

“He’s... in Las Vegas again, right now.”

“About your marriage, Doris — felicitations, best wishes, and a lifetime of happiness with Jack.”

I saw the cloud of something hurt and bitter pass across her face. When she spoke it was in a tone that had no life:

“Thank you, Bill.”

We talked a minute — those pointless things people will say to each other when they suddenly find themselves in two different worlds — then I went on my way.

But even after I was home I kept seeing that look on her face and I knew that her marriage with Jack was already turning into a disillusionment.

Jack came to my place a week later. We had always disliked each other but this time he was bubbling over with fake friendliness.

“Doris and I are going deer hunting,” he said, “and we want you to go with us.”

“Deer hunting?” I asked. “Since when did you become the outdoor type?”

He forced a laugh. “Never too late to change. Come on and be our guide, Bill — the three of us will have a lot of fun together.”

Yeah, I thought. The third wheel will have a ball — no doubt about it...

“What do you say, Bill?” he prompted. “Will you go with us?”

I looked at him, at the way the eagerness was showing through, and I knew beyond any doubt that he intended for someone to die on that hunting trip.

“I’ll go,” I said. “When do you want to start?”

I could almost hear him let out a big sigh of relief. “In the morning,” he said. “Early.”

Jack and Doris were at my place early the next morning in their shiny new open-top jeep, the back of it piled with brand-new camping gear.

“I’m glad you agreed to go with us, Bill,” Doris said. She was smiling and didn’t look tired and disillusioned the way she had the last time I saw her. I wondered if Jack hadn’t been putting on a little pretense of still loving her to account for the change. And she was as cute as a kitten in her new denims, cowboy boots and shirt, and a cowboy hat cocked over her red-gold curls. “Jack said he knew you would pick us out a good hunting area and—”

“I see you’re ready, Bill,” Jack interrupted, “so let’s get to moving — only three days of hunting season left.”

I got in my old four-wheel-drive pickup to lead the way, thinking, Yeah — let’s hurry. Only three days left for legal murder. After that the law would ask too many questions...

By mid-afternoon we were at the little Reese ranch which set near the top of the gentle western slope of Granite Mountain. Old Joe Reese — who was also the deputy sheriff in that area — was gone, but Mom Reese made us all welcome.

Mom was big and fat and jolly, with a heart of gold and a tongue that was never still so long as there was someone to talk to.

One of the first things she did, though, was to warn Jack and me about the danger of fire.

“We’ve had a very dry fall,” she said. “So you two be careful about smoking while hunting — Joe and I don’t want our cattle barbecued just yet.” Then, in almost the same breath, she turned to Doris and said, “You’re going to sleep in the house, honey — the nights are too chilly now for a little city girl to rough it.”

We sat around and talked with Mom until after dark. Or, rather, Jack and Mom talked while Doris and I listened. Jack sat near Doris and he made it a point to show her affectionate attention quite often. I saw her. face light up every time he touched her or called her “darling.”

He was playing his new role well — this time that of the clean-cut, all-American-boy-type who worshipped his young bride and had a special place in his heart for motherly old ladies named Mom Reese.

I left shortly after dark. Jack had already set up his cot on the back porch so I put mine out near where we had parked the pickup and jeep.

I stretched out on my cot and listened to the bits of conversation that the night breeze brought to me. Jack was working hard to make a good impression on Mom. I knew why. A deputy named Joe Reese would do the investigating if anyone got killed and having Mrs. Joe Reese to attest to the integrity of his character could be very helpful to Jack.

Doris had gone to bed and I was almost asleep when I heard Jack mention my name. I raised up, wide awake and both ears fanned out.

“... good old Bill,” he was saying to Mom. “... best friend I ever had... worried about him now, though... notice how he kept staring at Doris?... won’t forgive her for marrying me instead of him... we’re trying to show him we’re still his best friends... snap him out of that brooding... afraid he might do something desperate...”

The night wind freshened, drowning out the rest, and I considered what I had heard.

So I was brooding, about to do something desperate? Which would be what — despondently commit suicide? No — even if Jack did murder me and make it look like suicide, he would have gained nothing...

Then I saw the obvious and felt the first stab of fear. He had said of me, “... won’t forgive Doris for marrying me instead of him...”

Doris was the one he intended to kill.

Little hurt, hopeful, trusting Doris, who would do anything he asked her to do...

And, of course, he had already laid the groundwork so that I, not he, would be suspected as her murderer.

Jack was ready to go right after breakfast the next morning, his and Doris’s rifles in their twin scabbards in the jeep.

Mom beamed with approval as Jack helped Doris to the seat and gave her a kiss. He was certainly missing no opportunity to publicly display his affection for the girl he intended to kill...

In accordance with Jack’s request, I stopped once at a good vantage point to let him see the lay of the country and point out the various places — Pine Basin, Sandy Wash, Spur Canyon, Box Canyon...

We drove on toward Pine Basin and I saw why Mom was worried about fire. The grass was high and thick and dry as tinder, just waiting for a spark to touch it off.

When we stopped at the lower end of Pine Basin Jack jumped out of his jeep with a smile and a suggestion:

“Suppose we split up here? You take the middle of the basin, Doris the left side and I’ll go up the right. Like that, if there are any dear here, one of us will get a shot.”

“Fine with me,” I said, wondering how he was going to kill Doris when he would be too far away to even see her through the trees.

When we met back at the vehicles at noon — Pine Basin was not large — I still hadn’t figured it out.

And there had been no sign of deer.

I said to him, as the three of us stood beside his jeep, “It looks like the hunters before us have pretty well driven the deer up into the high country. We’ll have to go there.”

He scowled at the high ridges and peaks above us, a sour look on his face. Apparently his murder plans hadn’t included such physical exertion as mountain climbing...

Doris was busy taking some small rocks out of her pockets — quartz specimens — and laying them out on the fender of the jeep. Jack became aware of what she was doing when she reached into the glove compartment for a reading glass and began hopefully examining the specimens with it.

He turned his scowl on her and said, “So that’s why you brought that glass along? So you could waste your time looking for rocks instead of deer!”

“I did look for deer, Jack,” she protested. “But since we would be in mountain country I was hoping — I thought it would be fun — to see if I could find some rich ore like Daddy found.”

He opened his mouth to say something more to her, then the scowl faded away and a thoughtful expression replaced it. He turned to me, his tone again one of good-natured friendliness.

“It’s too late to get into the high country today, Bill. Suppose I pick some canyons on the way back home. Might have the luck on a beginner, you know.”

“O.K.,” I said. “Lead the way.”

He drove back the way we had come and stopped near the mouth of Box Canyon. “More grass here than any other canyon,” he said, watching it ripple in the wind like a field of grain. “Should be deer up it and if it’s really a box canyon, they can’t get away.”

“It’s a box canyon,” I said. “The upper end is a high, sheer wall.”

He looked pleased. “Then I’m going to try my luck in it, as soon as I get this wrinkle pulled out of my sock.” He began unlacing his boot. “In case I’m wrong, why don’t you and Doris try those other two canyons for deer sign?”

“I’m on my way,” I said.

Which I was, until I got out of sight. Then I circled back to a place where I could see without being seen.

Doris was well on her way to the mouth of a canyon to the north. Jack was just leaving the jeep, looking in all directions.

When he came to the mouth of Box canyon he turned aside a little to go into a thicket of tall, dry brush. When he came out five minutes later he lifted his hand, as though looking at his watch, then continued on up the canyon.

I looked at my own watch and saw that it was 12:30.

I patiently waited and watched. At 3:00 he came walking down the canyon. He went into the same brush thicket and came out a minute later. With a long look in all directions he went over to his jeep and sat down.

He was still sitting there when I saw Doris coming an hour later. I made my own appearance then and got to the jeep shortly after she did.

“I was right, Bill,” Jack said as soon as I walked up. “I saw the tracks of a big buck up there.”

“But no buck?” I asked.

“I didn’t go all the way — an old stomach ailment suddenly hit me. But one of us can get him tomorrow.”

Mom had driven to Mesquite Junction for the mail when we got back so Doris fixed us something to eat, concern in her eyes every time she looked at Jack. I wondered how she could think he was sick when he looked so perfectly normal.

Jack ate part of the meal that Doris had fixed for him, his glance flicking often to her. They were glances in which the satisfaction was not quite hidden; in which the cold anticipation was shining like a rattler’s scales after a rain.

I knew what it meant. Tomorrow Doris was to die.

He went to the back porch and sprawled out on his cot after he ate. Doris following him, to get him an extra pillow. I heard her talking to him and heard him give her short answers, when he answered at all. When she asked him for the second time if they shouldn’t go on back to Phoenix where he could see a doctor, I heard him sit up on the cot and say with the pseudo-politeness that can cut like a little whip:

“I don’t want to seem rude, Doris, but I’m trying to concentrate on certain things I have in mind. I’m sure I will feel much better after I rest a while.”

There was a silence, then I heard her walk away from him. I lit a cigarette and went outside, hoping I would finally get the chance to talk to her alone.

She was standing near their jeep, looking out across the wide desert to the west, all the lines of sadness and disillusionment back on her face.

She looked up at me and tried to smile, as though nothing had happened. “The desert is beautiful at sunset, isn’t it?”

“So I’ve heard,” I said. “How much do you love Jack?”

She recoiled a little, as though I had unexpectedly slapped an old wound. She looked out across the desert again.

“As much as he will let me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I — so much of the time I don’t understand him. He will act like he’s already tired of me.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

“But at other times” — her eyes lighted up and the life came back into her voice — “at other times he will show he loves me by doing special things for me. Like the rifle he bought for me.”

“Is it a good rifle?” I asked.

“He bought me the best rifle he could find in Phoenix after you promised to go with us — he looked for hours to find just the kind of brand-new, special-made foreign rifle that he wanted me to have.”

“So he had bought her a special kind of rifle after he knew I was going along?”

“Let’s see those rifles,” I said, turning to the jeep.

I looked at Jack’s rifle first. It was an expensive American-made 30:06.

“Jack just bought an ordinary rifle for himself,” Doris said. “But look at the one he got for me.”

She handed it to me. At first glance — or to anyone who did not know guns — it was a beautiful thing; an identical twin to Jack’s rifle except for being even more polished and fancy.

But that was all there was to it — its appearance. It was the very cheapest kind of imitation of the American rifle — it was deadly dangerous gilded gingerbread.

I pulled back the breech bolt and saw that the bolt locking mechanism was a flimsy improvization; made of thin, brittle, cast metal, so weak that any shot might cause the breech bolt to be blown back in the shooter’s face, seriously injuring him if not killing him.

But Jack would want no if’s.

I ejected the cartridges and saw that two of the bullets had a tiny smear of something gray. It looked like cement. I turned the rifle to try to blow down the barrel. It was very, very solidly plugged.

That, then, was the way he had tried to kill her. He had plugged the barrel with cement, just in front of the firing chamber, so that the bullet could not possibly escape and the entire force of the cartridge would go backward, to rip off the breech-bolt and drive it deep into her brain.

“—don’t you think so, Bill?” Doris was asking. “Didn’t he give me something exceptional?”

“Yes,” I said. It was hard to make my voice sound normal while my throat was tight and hot with the surge of hatred for him and the desire to kill him — with the knowing that I was going to kill him, somehow, for what he had tried to do to her. “Yes, it’s an exceptional gun, Doris.”

I turned my back to her and dropped all the cartridges into my shirt pocket as I pretended to reload the rifle.

My own role in Jack’s scheme was obvious, of course. He had already played me up to Mom as psychotically resentful toward Doris and moodily brooding.

Who else but Bill Jones could the law suspect as her murderer?

Mom came driving up then and we went into the house. Jack came in, to bravely belittle his illness. “It’s just something I used to get quite often in Viet Nam,” he said. “I’m usually better the next day.”

I found this explanation interesting since I knew the closest he ever got to Viet Nam was when he was blowing Doris’s money in Las Vegas.

Mom started relating the latest gossip from Mesquite Junction while Jack pretended to listen. Doris went to sit beside him and he laid his hand on her shoulder; a gesture of affection that was not reflected by the musing, coldly-satisfied expression on his face.

At dark I went back out to my cot. I wanted to do some thinking. My mind isn’t very sharp but it can sometimes blunder onto the right answers when I strain it long enough.

I was sure that Jack had already abandoned his former method of killing Doris. The absence of deer would give her no reason to fire the rifle. He now had some other plan, one which he was certain could not fail.

What?

The desert stars were long since bright overhead when I finally found the answer and knew how he had arranged for her to die.

It would be a death far more horrible than the other one.

I thought about it, hearing in my mind her sobbing cries for the help that would never come, hearing her screams of pain as she died.

That was the way he wanted the world to end for her...

Later that night, when I was sure that everyone was asleep, I got up and went to the jeep. I made a check that showed, very definitely, that I was right. Then I took her rifle and put all the cartridges back in it.

This made me feel much better and I was asleep, myself, a few minutes later.

Jack was still pretending to be sick the next morning. “We’ll wait a little while,” he said, “in case I get better.”

I went outside, to wander around restlessly in the bright sunshine. I knew why he was waiting — if Doris and I left too soon it might upset his murder schedule.

At 11:30 I went back in the house. Jack gave me the wan smile of a martyr — Mom was watching — and said, “I’ll be O. K. in a couple of hours but I’ve already caused enough delay. So you and Doris go on. I want Doris to get that big buck I told you about — I want her to get the best trophy of any of us.”

He stepped over to put his arm around Doris and hug her while Mom beamed from the kitchen doorway with the usual approval. “And nothing, Doris, could make me more proud of you.”

Mom turned back to her cooking and Jack’s arm dropped away from Doris. “All right, Bill,” he said, “you’d better get a move on — it’s almost noon.”

I went out and got in my pickup. Doris came out a few seconds later, the expression on her face telling me that Jack had continued to ignore her after Mom was no longer watching. She got her rifle out of the jeep and sat down beside me, looking back to see if Jack was going to come to the door and tell her good-by. I waited.

He came to the door, impatient question on his face.

“Won’t that thing start?” he asked.

“We’re just going,” Doris said. She lifted her hand in a gesture of farewell. “Good-by, Jack.”

He glanced at her as one might glance at a passing stranger. And to him she was a stranger — or far less than a stranger. To him she was a woman already dead. He didn’t even reply to her.

Instead, he looked at me with a thin smile and said, “Good hunting, Bill — I have a feeling this is going to be a day you’ll remember.”

Then he turned and went back inside.

Doris sat moodily silent beside me for the first mile. I knew why and I said, “Why do you keep trying so hard?”

“Because—” She hesitated, as though trying to find the right words. “Because I loved him, and I thought he loved me — because, so many times, he still seems to love me.”

“When someone is watching.”

“Yes... I know. But there are things to show he cares — like the time when I was so hurt I told him I was going to get a divorce and give him his freedom. He hugged me and told me he was sorry he had hurt me and that if I got a divorce he wouldn’t have anything to live for.”

Well... that was understandable. A divorce would forever put her money beyond his reach.

“So I want to try a little longer,” she said. “I’m a coward, I guess — the world can be such an empty place when you have no one to love you or care what happens to you. I don’t want to call quits to our marriage until I’m sure there’s nothing there.”

I felt the bitterness of still loving the girl who had not been able to see me for the handsome face of Jack and I said, “But Doris — a girl with lots of money should never find the world an empty place.”

“Money!” She spit out the word, the sparks of sudden anger in her eyes and something that seemed close to tears. “Money solves everything, doesn’t it? But did you ever actually try to find out how much happiness money can buy for you?”

“I was never rich enough to try,” I said. “But did you ever lose something you wanted very much — something that neither love nor money could get for you?”

She looked away from me, down at her hands in her lap. When she answered it was in a strange, small little voice, so low I could hardly hear it:

“Yes.”

Neither of us said anything more until we stopped below the mouth of Box Canyon. Doris picked up her rifle but did not get out at once. I knew that in the darkness of her dejection she had no interest whatever in hunting a deer — she was only doing it in the forlorn hope that it might cause Jack to think more of her.

The Reese place was in plain view up the mountain’s slope behind us and I knew that Jack would be watching us with his binoculars. He would want to know for certain that Doris walked alone up that canyon of death.

And her time of grace was now growing dangerously short.

“Forget the deer,” I said. I heard the harshness of tension in my voice. “Listen to what I say — your life depends on it.”

Her eyes widened with surprise and question.

“You’ll have to go up that canyon — you’ll die later on if you don’t. You’ll have to trust me, and do exactly as I say.”

“But Bill—” she protested, question and incomprehension and a touch of alarm mingling on her face. “How could I be in danger? What is—”

“There are things you wouldn’t believe if I told you now. Later, you will understand everything, Will you trust me and do as I say?”

She answered without hesitation, “Whatever it is, you should know I trust you, Bill. But—”

“Then head on up that canyon. As soon as you get around the first bend go into a fast trot...” I told her how to find the hidden crevice up the canyon, which so few people knew about, that led up to the top of the canyon’s south rim. “Get to this crevice and up on top as fast as you can,” I finished. “Stop for nothing on the way — absolutely nothing.”

She hesitated and I gave her a little shove. “Out — on your way,” I said. “Wait for me on top if I don’t meet you before then.”

She slid out of the pickup. “All right, Bill,” she said, and walked swiftly away.

I put the pickup in gear and started for the mouth of the adjoining canyon, Spur Canyon, Some distance up it was a place where I could drive up out of it and cut back to Box Canyon and the upper end of the crevice.

I kept turning my head to watch her, feeling a cold apprehension. I wanted to go with her, to make sure no harm came to her, but there was absolutely no way I could do so without being seen by Jack. It was imperative to my own plan that Jack, in the very near future, should think she had died.

I could, within two minutes, completely wreck his murder scheme. But he would see me do so and he would promptly devise another murder plan; one to be carried out in Phoenix or some other place where I could not be near her to watch over her.

If I did not interfere with his plan — and if I had not erred in my own counter-plan — he would never again try to harm her. He would be dead.

I resisted the urge to hurry, not wanting to arouse Jack’s suspicions, until I was out of his sight up in Spur Canyon. Then I romped on the accelerator. According to my calculations I would have no time to spare in getting up and around to the crevice, then down it and on down Box Canyon to meet Doris and make sure she made it safely the rest of the way.

But, fifteen minutes later, the bright sunlight suddenly faded. I looked back and felt the chill of near-panic as I saw the reason.

Rolling high into the sky from what would be the lower end of Box Canyon was a great, black column of smoke.

The fire had started more than twenty minutes sooner than I had expected. Already it would be a solid sheet of flame, ten feet high and reaching from wall to wall of the canyon as it rushed toward Doris. Once around the bend, with the west wind behind it, it would go roaring up the canyon faster than a horse could run...

As I look back, I have only a hazy memory of the rest of that ride. Mainly I remember the frantic urgency to get to Doris before the fire caught her and T remember shoving the accelerator to the floor and holding it there. I remember my prayer that the old pickup would not fail me and I remember the answer; the way it went smashing through brush and young trees, careening through boulders and across ditches, hurling rocks behind as it scrambled up steep banks, pawing and bellowing like a wild bull all the way and never once faltering.

But the wind-pushed fire had a shorter distance to go. When I finally slewed to a stop near the top of the crevice the smoke was a black pall that darkened the mountainside and the fire was in the canyon below; a raging, savage thing that made a noise like the roaring of a river as it swept on up the canyon. It was already past the crevice. Nothing but black, smouldering desolation lay in its wake and a bright tongue of flame was racing up the crevice, itself.

For a long moment I stood motionless and frozen, not breathing. It seemed to me that the entire world stood still, even that raging wall of flame. I felt a sense of loss that no words could ever describe and in my mind I heard the grim and terrible accusation:

You fool — you let her die!

Then I heard the panting cry from below me; from under the overhand on which I stood:

“Bill — where are you?”

I dropped down into the crevice and put my arm around her. She was shaking, almost helpless with exhaustion, the crevice’s brushfire only yards behind her. I half carried her to the top and lifted her onto the seat of the pickup.

“The fire—” she said in her labored panting. “I ran — but it ran faster—”

“It’s all over, now,” I said. I kept my arm around her shaking shoulders and brushed the tangled hair back from her little face that was now so grimy with ashes and smoke and perspiration. “It’s all over and nothing is ever going to harm you again, Doris. I promise — not ever again...”

We reached the head of Box Canyon a few minutes after the fire had died in one last billow of smoke against the barren cliffs. The fire in the crevice had died out the same way and Sandy Wash had stopped the fire below the mouth of the canyon.

Everything was over but for the rendezvous, the revelation, and the execution.

I had the pickup hidden behind a high outcropping of granite. The head of Box Canyon was only two miles from the Reese place and I could see Jack’s jeep already coming. I had known that he would want to make sure that the fire had made a clean sweep to the head of the canyon and that Doris was definitely dead.

Doris stood beside me, question burning on her face.

“I’ll tell you now,” I said. “Jack started the fire. He wanted to kill you. You probably still won’t believe it.”

Her face paled under stains of ashes and smoke. “But — but he couldn’t have, miles away — and why should he?”

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Listen when he gets here, to what he and I say to each other. And don’t — in the name of God — don’t let him see you.”

I was standing near the rim of the canyon, looking down at the black, smouldering things that had been green life a few minutes before, when I heard his jeep stop behind me. I turned around.

He was staring at me with a glare of suspicious question. I saw that one hand was near the rifle which was still in its scabbard.

“What in hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

“I tried to get up along the rim of the canyon fast enough to save Doris,” I said. “Your burning glass set the fire quicker than I thought it would.”

His mouth dropped open. Then it snapped shut and he was suddenly out of the seat, the rifle held waist high and a deadly look in his eyes.

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“Why, Jack,” I said, “I knew last night that you had hoped to murder Doris by plugging the barrel of the cheapest, most dangerous rifle you could find in Phoenix. But there were no deer to cause her to fire it — so you took her magnifying glass yesterday afternoon and set it up as a burning glass in that brush thicket. Later, when the sun had moved enough for it to no longer be in focus, you came back and put dry grass — and probably match heads — under it so that at noon today it would set the canyon on fire.

“And Doris, at your request, would be up the canyon where she would burn to death with no chance for escape.”

He stared at me, gripping the rifle, the hatred shining in his eyes, no longer the least bit handsome.

“Do you think the law would believe a wild story like that?” he asked.

“That suicide rifle you bought for her, with that cement plug, is enough, alone, to show the law you tried to murder her. When they look at the place you set up the burning glass” — I implied seeing something that I had not seen — “and find the lens with part of that bright red plastic handle still not melted to show that it was the glass of Doris’s that disappeared out of the glove compartment when you were pretending to be getting a wrinkle out of your sock...”

“All right, fool,” Jack said. He smiled at me; a smile that was thin and vicious with hatred and anticipation. “You have just blabbered your way into hell.”

He lifted the rifle chest high and I said, “Do you think you can get away with a double murder today?”

He laughed. “You’re going to be the victim of an innocent hunting accident. I’ll go back and sadly report to that old woman, ‘I went out to look at the fire, thought I saw a deer through the trees, and shot it. It was Bill — poor Bill — best friend I ever had...’ Then I’ll get worried about my wife, drive down and dispose of the remains of that glass, then go back, shocked and grief-stricken, to tell the old woman that my wife is dead.”

I saw a movement thirty feet behind Jack. It was Doris, who had walked up silently on the carpet of pine needles. But now she was stopped, one hand on the tree for support, her blue eyes enormous in her white face, her hand to her mouth, as she heard the cold, brutal words.

“Then you’ll have her money, to live in the style that you would like to be accustomed to living in?” I said.

“It’s my money now and there won’t be anyone to try to keep me from having fun with it, the way she has been doing.” He laughed again and I saw that in his triumph he was not quite sane. “I’ll even use part of my money to give her a big, showy funeral.”

I flicked another quick glance at Doris. She was still frozen by the tree and even at the distance I could see the horror in her eyes as she listened to the thing that she had once loved as a man.

“And then you’ll be on your way to hit all the gay spots between Las Vegas and Paris, I suppose?” I asked.

“And then I’ll be on my way,” he said. He raised the rifle higher. “And this will be the first step. I’d like to gut shoot you a few times, just for kicks, but this is supposed to be a hunting accident. So how about a good, clean shot in the forehead?”

He swung the rifle up and the muzzle of it was a big, black hole that suddenly seemed to be large enough for me to shove my fist into. His finger was on the trigger as the sights swung in line with my forehead.

I was aware of Doris being away from the tree, of her running toward Jack with protest on her face and her mouth open with the beginning of a scream.

He never heard her. He was already pressing the trigger and her scream was drowned by the shattering blast of the rifle.

He was hurled backward to the ground, the rifle flying from his hands. He kicked spasmodically, the breech bolt buried almost all the way in what had been his eye socket.

I caught Doris and swung her away from him, not wanting her to see any more of the ugly sight. I hurried her to the pickup and circled wide of Jack’s body as we started for the Reese place.

She was shaking like a leaf and I said, “You’ve had a terrible day, Doris. I’m sorry.”

“He died the way he wanted — wanted me to die,” she said. “You switched rifles last night, didn’t you?”

“Yes. It had to be that way or he would have killed you later on in Phoenix. But it’s all over now, Doris — it’s a nightmare that never happened and now you’re safe, and free, and your life is ahead of you.”

“Yes.” She straightened a little in the seat. “And where I was blind, now I can see.”

There was no reason to cause Doris further unpleasantness by telling anyone of Jack’s murder attempts so we let everyone thing we had heard a shot and then found his body.

The reaction of the law was best expressed by old Joe Reese, who said, “Anybody that would hunt with such a cheap rifle ought to have sense enough to know that the first shot would blow his head off.”

I knew that Doris was more upset and alone than she had ever been so I hitched her jeep behind my pickup and we rode together on the trip back to Phoenix. And I wanted this last chance to have her beside me before we had to go our separate ways.

More than ever, now, her money would be a barrier between us. After her experience with Jack how could I ever expect her to fully believe that I cared not in the slightest for her wealth?

The sun was down, the western sky glowing with gold, when we stopped in front of her house. The ride together was over and I could feel my own loneliness already setting in.

“Well, here we are,” I said. “It was nice of you to ride with me.”

“Are you going home now?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s time to resume our roles of Poor Boy and Rich Girl. But if anything should ever happen that you need me, let me know.”

She looked at me, a strange, tender smile on her face. “Bill, you fool — didn’t I tell you that I once wanted something that my money couldn’t buy for me?”

For a moment I had the wild impression that she meant she had wanted me instead of Jack. Then I jerked my mind back into sanity. “What did you have your heart set on?” I asked. “The Koh-i-noor diamond?”

She shook her head, that little smile still on her face.

“As for being a rich girl,” she said, “I was afraid to tell him but there was a reason why I didn’t want Jack to throw money away. That’s why I brought the magnifying glass along — why I was trying so desperately to find rich ore like Daddy found.

“The vein pinched out a month ago and the mine is closed — worked out. The last of my money went to get ready for that hunting trip. I’m flat broke. Bill.”

The sunset was suddenly about twenty times brighter than ever and I knew I had been right the first time about what money couldn’t buy for her.

I put my arms around her and I couldn’t feel the faintest sign of a barrier anymore.