The Clue of the Screaming Woman

Part Four

Sheriff Bill Eldon, down on hands and knees, poked slowly around the two parallel piles of ashes. Undoubtedly these two campfires marked the spot where some man had been camping the night before, a man who was a seasoned veteran of the woods, who had spent a cold night without blankets, yet without inconvenience.

John Olney, standing a little to one side, watching with keen interest, was careful not to disturb the ground so that any remaining tracks would be obscured. The long western slant of the sunlight built up shadows, gave a transverse lighting which made tracks far more easy to see than would have been the case during the middle of the day.

The sheriff’s forefinger pointed to slight disturbances in the ground that would have escaped the attention of any except the most skilled tracker. “Now here,” he said, “is where Carl Raymond came along. Raymond was hunting deer. You can see that he skirted the edge of the plateau, keeping in the shadows, hoping he’d catch something still feeding in this little meadow.

“Anything out there would have been most apt to be a doe with a fawn, a spike buck, or perhaps a good fat barren doe. So you can figure Raymond was hunting for meat.

“Now, he got to this place right here and then could see where the campfire had been, so he moved over to investigate. Now that accounts for Raymond’s tracks.”

Olney nodded. The ground to that point was to him as plain as a blueprint to an architect.

“Now then, these two fires,” the sheriff went on, “tell quite a story. The man used wood from that dead pine over there. Then he cut fir boughs, raked the coals to one side, slept on the warm ground with a fire on each side of him, and early in the morning threw the fir boughs on the flames. You can see where the stuff caught into instant flame and burnt up until it left only the naked branches. Those were still green and didn’t burn easily. The man didn’t try to burn them at all. He simply brought water over here from that little spring and doused the fire and covered it up, so as to eliminate that much of the fire hazard. He certainly didn’t want the faintest wisp of smoke to show when it came daylight.”

Again Olney nodded.

“So the fir boughs must have been burned up pretty early, probably just as it started to turn daylight. Now, notice the way these boughs are cut. They’re not cut through with a single clean stroke. Every one of them has taken two or three cuts, but the cuts are clean. Our man wasn’t carrying a hatchet, but he was carrying a big knife and it was razor-sharp.”

Again Olney nodded.

“You can see his tracks around here,” the sheriff went on. “He’s wearing a good sensible boot, a wide last, with a composition cord sole and heel. That man could move through the forest without making any noise at all. He could be as quiet as a panther. Now then, he had to have something to carry the water from the spring to put out this fire. What do you suppose it was?”

“His hat?” Olney asked.

“Could have been,” the sheriff said, “but somehow I doubt it. Notice the number of trips he made here to the spring. He’s worn a regular trail up there, and the place where the little trickle of water has carried the charcoal down from the fire shows that he was using something that didn’t hold much water. Let’s sort of look around over here in the brush. Wait a minute!”

The sheriff stood up by the edge of the blackened space, made throwing motions in several different directions, said, “Over here is the best place to look. There’s no high ground here. He could have thrown a can farther this way than in any other direction.”

The sheriff and the ranger moved over to a place where the brush was lower and the ground sloped away from the fire.

“Getting dark,” the sheriff said. “We’re going to have to move along fast if we’re going to find what we— Here it is.”

With the deft swiftness of a cat pouncing on a gopher, the sheriff dove into a little clump of mountain manzanita and came out triumphantly bearing a soot-covered can. The top of the can showed an irregular, jagged crosscut, indicating that it had been opened by a few thrusts with a wide-bladed knife.

“Well,” the sheriff said, “we’re beginning to find out something about him. He has a knife with a blade a little over an inch wide. It’s razor-sharp, but he’s using it for opening cans as well as cutting brush. Therefore, he must have some pocket whetstone that he’s using to keep the edge in shape.

“Now this can has been on the fire. The label is all burned off, but from what you can see on the inside, it must have been a can of baked pork and beans. It doesn’t look as though he had a spoon to eat it with but whittled himself out a flat piece of wood that he used for a spoon. I s’pose we’d better hold that can for fingerprints, but it tells me a story without using any magnifying glass. He didn’t carry that can of beans in here with him, John. He must have stolen it someplace.”

The ranger nodded.

“He’s traveling light and fast, and he knows the mountains,” the sheriff went on. “He can move as silent as a cat, and he’s broken into a cabin and stolen a few provisions and a rifle.”

“A rifle?” Olney asked.

“Sure,” the sheriff told him. “Come on over here and I’ll show you.”

In the fading light, the sheriff took the ranger back to the place where a pine tree was growing straight and slim within some twenty feet of the place where the fire had been made.

“He put the rifle down here,” Bill Eldon said, “while he was cutting the branches for his bed. You can see where the butt of the rifle rested in the ground. Now, John, just as sure as shooting that was after it had quit raining. You can still see the little cross-checks from the shoulder plate on the stock. The ground was soft and... well, that’s the way it is.”

“You don’t suppose he could have made camp before it started to rain and then put the rifle here while he was getting breakfast, do you?”

“I don’t think so,” Eldon said. “This is the place where he would naturally have propped the rifle while he was getting those fir boughs. It’s just about the right distance from the fire and a nice place to stand the rifle. When he was getting breakfast he’d let the fire get down to coals — of course, he could have had the canned beans for supper instead of breakfast. Anyhow, it was after it’d quit raining. I’ve had a hunch he made this camp after the rain had quit.

“Now, the rain didn’t quit until after dark. A man wouldn’t have blundered onto this little spring here in the dark, particularly on a rainy night. No, John, this is some fellow that not only knows the mountains, but he knows this particular section of the country. He’s able to move around pretty well at night and when he left here early this morning he was smart enough to try and cover his tracks as much as possible. You see, he took off up that rocky ridge. My best guess is he kept to the rocks and the timber all day and kept holed up where he could watch, while he was waiting for dark.”

The sheriff pursed his lips thoughtfully, looked at the streak of fading daylight over the Western mountains, said, “He’s probably trying to get out of the mountains. But there just ain’t any telling just what he has in mind. If he’s the one that killed the detective, he planted that evidence by Ames’ cabin. He might be intending to do another job or two before he gets out of the mountains — and he may be sort of hard to stop. Let’s see if we can look around a bit before it gets slap dark.”

The men reined their horses down the trail. Suddenly, Bill Eldon pulled up and urged his horse into the fringe of light brush. “Take a look at that, John.”

The ranger peered down at a light-brown pile on the ground. “That’s the beans,” he said in astonishment.

Eldon nodded.

“Why did he open a can of beans, cook ’em over a campfire and then dump ’em all out?” the ranger asked.

Bill Eldon considered that question for a space of seconds, then said, “There has to be only one answer, John. He didn’t want to eat ’em.”

“But why?”

Bill Eldon touched the reins. “Now,” the sheriff said, “we know where we’re going. But we’re going to have to sort of wait around after we get there, until this man we want makes the first move. Come on, John.”

Trying her best to make time, Roberta fled down the trail. Her lungs were laboring, her heart pounding, and the trail pulled at her feet, making each step an individual effort.

She realized this man behind her was not trying to catch her. He was running slowly, methodically, as though following some preconceived plan.

Roberta tried once more to scream, but her call for help sounded faint and puny, even to her own ears.

Her heavy feet failed to clear an outcropping of rock. She stumbled, tried in vain to catch herself, threw out her arms and at exactly that moment heard behind her the vicious crack of a rifle.

The wind made by the bullet fanned her hair as she went down in a huddled heap on the trail. Lying prone, she simply lacked the strength to struggle back to her feet. She knew that the man behind her could reach her long before she could get up, and this dispiriting knowledge drained the last of her strength.

She heard Frank Ames’ voice saying, “Drop that gun,” then the sound of another rifle crack arousing echoes through the mountain canyon.

Roberta got to her hands and knees, and seemed unable to get the strength to rise to her feet.

She heard Frank Ames saying, “Darling, are you all right? You’re not hurt? He didn’t get you?”

She heard voices from the direction of the camp, saw flashlights sending beams which crisscrossed in confusion, making lighted patches on the boulders and the pine trees.

She turned from her knees to a sitting position, laughed nervously, and felt a touch of hysteria in the laugh. She tried to talk, but was only able to say gaspingly, “I’m... all right.”

She saw Frank Ames standing rigid, watchful, dimly silhouetted against a patch of starlit forest, then off to the left she saw an orange-red spit of flame, and another shot aroused reverberating echoes from the peaks. The bullet struck a tree within inches of Frank Ames’ head, and even in the dim gray of starlight, Roberta could see the swift streak on the trunk of the pine tree where the bullet ripped aside the bark.

Ames merely stood more closely behind the tree, his rifle at ready.

“Keep down, Roberta,” he warned, without even turning to look at her.

Roberta remained seated, her head slightly back so that she could get more oxygen into her starved lungs.

Lights were coming up the trail now, a procession of winding, jiggling fireflies, blazing momentarily into brilliance as the beam of some flashlight would strike her fairly in the eyes.

Frank Ames called, “Put out the lights, folks. He’ll shoot at them.”

The rifle barked again, twice, one bullet directed at the place where Frank Ames was standing, the other at Roberta Coe, crouched on the trail. Both bullets were wide of the mark, yet close enough so the cracking pathway of the high-power bullet held vicious menace.

Roberta heard the sound of galloping horses, realized suddenly the precariousness of her position on the trail, and scrambled slightly to one side. She saw Frank Ames move, a silent, shadowy figure gliding through the trees, noticed, also, that the procession of flashlights had ceased.

The sheriff’s horse, which was in the lead, shied violently, as it saw Roberta Coe crouched by the trail. Roberta saw the swift glint of starlight from metal, heard the sheriff’s voice, hard as a whiplash, saying, “Get ’em up!”

“No, no!” Roberta gasped. “He’s back there, over to the left. He—”

The man betrayed his location by another shot, the bullet going high through the trees, the roar of the gun for a moment drowning out all other sounds. Then, while the gun echoes were still reverberating from the crags, the dropping of small branches and pine needles dislodged by the bullet sounded startlingly clear.

“What the heck’s he shooting at?” the sheriff asked.

Frank Ames said cautiously, “I’m over here, sheriff, behind this tree.”

“Swing around, Olney,” the sheriff said. “Cut off his escape. He’s up against a sheer cliff in back. We can trap him in here.”

By this time the others were trooping up from camp, and the sheriff stationed them along the trail. “I’m closing a circle around this place,” the sheriff said. “Just yell if you see him, that’s all.”

Bill Eldon became coldly efficient. “Where are you, Ames?”

“Over here.”

Eldon raised his voice. “Any of you from the camp got a gun on you?”

“I have,” one of the wranglers said.

“All right,” the sheriff announced. “That’s four of us. If we go in after that man, he can’t escape. He could make his way up that high cliff if he had time, but he’ll make a lot of noise doing it and expose himself to our fire. He’s only safe as long as he stays in this clump of trees. We have men stationed along the trail who can let us know if he breaks cover in that direction. The four of us can flush him out. Anyone have any objections? You don’t have to go, you know.”

“Not me,” the wrangler said. “I’ll ride along with you.”

The silence of the others indicated that the sheriff’s question could have had significance for only the wrangler.

“Let’s go,” Bill Eldon said. “Keep in touch with each other. Walk abreast. We’ll force him to surrender, to stand and fight it out, or to try climbing that steep cliff. When you see him, if he hasn’t got his hands up, shoot to kill.”

The sheriff raised his voice, said, “We’re coming in. Drop your gun, get your hands up and surrender!”

There was no sound from the oval-shaped thicket at the base of the big cliff which walled it in as something of an amphitheater.

Bill Eldon said to the ranger, “We’re dealing with a man who’s a tricky woodsman. Be on your toes; let’s go!”

A tense silence fell upon the mountain amphitheater where the grim drama was being played. Overhead the stars shone silent and steady, but within the thicket of pines was an inky darkness.

The men advanced for a few feet. Then Bill Eldon said, “We’re going to need a flashlight, folks.”

“Don’t try it. It’ll be suicide,” Ames said. “He’ll shoot at the flashlight and—”

“Just hold everything,” the sheriff said. “Hold this line right here.”

Eldon walked back to his saddlebags, took out a powerful flashlight which fastened on his forehead. A square battery hung over his back, held in place by a harness, leaving his hands free to work his rifle.

The sheriff said reassuringly, “If he starts shooting, I can switch this off.”

“Not after you’re dead, you can’t,” Frank Ames said.

“It’s a chance I have to take,” Eldon said. “That’s a part of my job. You folks keep back to one side.”

Eldon switched on the flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness, into the pine trees, a pencil of light, terminating in a splash of brilliance.

The sheriff kept slightly forward, away from the others, his rifle ready. He kept turning his head slowly, searching the long lanes of pine trees until at length he suddenly snapped the gun forward and held it steady.

The beam of the flashlight showed a gun, neatly propped against a tree.

“Now, what the heck do you make of that?” Olney asked.

“Reckon he’s going to give himself up,” the wrangler from the dude camp said, and called out, “Get your hands up or we’ll shoot!”

There was no answer.

They advanced to where the gun was leaning against the tree.

“Don’t touch it!” the sheriff said. “We’ll look it over for fingerprints. He must have been standing right behind that rock. You can see the empty shells around on the ground.”

“Have you got him?” a voice called from the trail.

“Not yet,” Eldon said.

“What the devil’s all this about?” stormed H. W. Dowling, crashing in behind the searching party. “I demand to know the reason for all these—”

“Get back out of the way!” Eldon said. “There’s a desperate man in here. You’ll be shot.”

“A sweet howdy-do,” Dowling said. “What the devil’s the matter with the law-enforcement officers in this county? Can’t I organize a camping trip into the mountains without having someone turn it into a Wild West show? My sleep’s gone for the night now. I— The whole camp pulled out on me. I had to run—”

Sheriff Eldon said grimly, “We can’t pick the places where murderers are going to strike. All we can do is try and capture the criminals so men like you will be safe. Okay, boys, let’s go. I think he’s out of shells. Do you remember, that last shot went high through the trees?”

“I’d been wondering about that,” Ames said. “What was he shooting at?”

“We’ll find out,” the sheriff said, “when we get him.”

They moved forward. Then, as the thicket of trees narrowed against the perpendicular cliff, they closed in compact formation until finally they had covered the entire ground.

“Well, I’ll be darned!” Olney said. “He’s managed to get up those cliffs.”

“Or out to the trail,” Eldon said.

He moved out from the protection of the trees, moved his head slowly so that his beam covered the precipitous mountainside. “Don’t see anything of him up there. Don’t hear anything,” he said. “I told you he was a clever woodsman. Let’s get over and see if anyone saw him cut across the trail.”

They moved back to the trail where the shivering dudes, the cook and the outfitter were spaced at regular intervals. “Anybody come through here?” the sheriff asked.

“No one,” they said. “We could see well enough—”

“He might have been pretty clever,” the sheriff said, “might have worked into the shadows.”

He moved slowly along, looking for tracks on the trail.

“What this country needs is more efficiency!” Dowling growled sullenly.

“Well, I missed him,” Eldon said resignedly. “Let’s go on back to camp. If he got through our lines, and abandoned an empty gun, it’s possible he’s planning to go down and raid your camp for another gun.”

Eldon untied his horse, swung into the saddle, said, “I’ll go on ahead on a gallop so as to beat him to it.”

Olney mounted his own horse, followed the sheriff.

“You folks come on,” Bill Eldon called over his shoulder.

The huddled group watched the shadowy figures gallop on down the trail.

Dowling said, “I want you boys to organize a guard for our camp tonight. I don’t like the idea of a murderer being loose. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Roberta and Frank managed by some unspoken understanding to wait behind until the others had gone.

“You’re not hurt?” Frank asked.

“No.”

“What happened? How did you run onto him?”

“He was — I don’t know, he was just loitering there in the shadows. I got a vague, indistinct glimpse of head and shoulders and—”

“I know,” Ames said. “I heard that peculiar whistle you were telling about, so I turned and came back. He shot and I saw you fall—”

“I fell just before he shot,” Roberta said. “I stumbled. The bullet grazed my hair.”

“What I don’t understand is how you happened to be out on the trail. You’d gone into your tent and blown out the candle,” Ames said.

“You were watching?” she asked, almost before she thought.

He waited for some five seconds before he answered. “Yes,” he said.

She said, “Frank, let’s not let foolish pride come between us. I thought — I thought you were going away — out of my life — because of my prior marriage — I started up the trail after you. I had to find out... I—”

“I was leaving because I knew you were too far above me. For a minute I thought-well, you acted as though— Oh, shucks, I love you! I love you!”

Bill Eldon sat by the big campfire, drinking coffee.

“If you ask me,” Nottingham protested, “this is about the fourth fool thing that’s been done tonight.”

“What?” Bill Eldon asked.

“Having us all gather around a campfire while we know there’s a desperate killer out in the hills. He can see our figures silhouetted against the blaze and—”

“I know,” the sheriff said, “but it takes a good man to shoot at night.”

“Well, I think this murderer is what you’d call a ‘good man.’ Good enough to do just about as he pleases.”

The sheriff ignored the insult. “Funny thing about that murderer, now,” he said. “I’ve been sort of checking up with people about where everyone was when Frank Ames first came into this camp. It seems like there were two people missing, Alexander Cameron and Sam Fremont. Now, were you two boys together?”

“No, we weren’t,” Cameron said. “I went on downstream, fishing.”

“Downstream?”

“That’s right.”

“And you?” the sheriff asked Fremont.

“I went downstream a ways with Cameron and then I left him and started hunting for pictures of wildlife,” Fremont said. “I suppose you have the right to ask.”

“You got those pictures?” the sheriff asked.

“Certainly. They aren’t developed. I have two rolls of film.”

“Of course,” Nottingham pointed out, “those pictures wouldn’t prove a thing, because he could have gone downstream any time and taken a couple of rolls of film.”

“Don’t be so officious,” Fremont said, grinning. “When I came back the girls were all strutting sex appeal for the benefit of a newcomer. I stole a couple of pictures showing ’em all grouped around Ames. Those will be the last two pictures on the last roll.”

“How about the guides?” Sylvia asked. “They weren’t here. At least one of them was out—”

“Rounding up the horses,” the wrangler cut in. “And unless horses can talk, I haven’t any witnesses.”

“I was in my tent taking a siesta,” Dowling said. “The unusual chatter finally wakened me.”

“Well, I was just checking up,” the sheriff said. “Were you in bed tonight when the shooting started, Dowling?”

“Yes. I dressed and came barging up the trail as fast as I could. The others hadn’t turned in; they got up there well ahead of me.”

“You hurried right along?”

“Naturally. I was as afraid to stay in camp alone as I was to go up there where the shooting was taking place.”

The sheriff regarded his toes with a puzzled frown.

“You folks do whatever you want,” Dowling said indignantly, “but I’m going to get away from this fire.”

“I don’t think there’s the slightest danger,” the sheriff said.

“Well, I’m quite able to think for myself, thank you. I’m not accustomed to letting others do my thinking for me. You evidently didn’t think fast enough to keep him from shooting at Roberta.”

“That’s right,” Bill Eldon admitted. “I didn’t. Of course, I didn’t have quite as much to go on as I have now.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned,” Dowling said, “I’m going to get away from this campfire.”

“You seem to be pretty much of a woodsman,” the sheriff said.

“I did a little trapping in my younger days,” Dowling admitted.

“You know,” the sheriff drawled, “I think I know how that murderer got through our cordon. I think he climbed a tree until we went past.

“And,” the sheriff went on, “after we’d passed that tree a few steps, he dropped back down to the ground.”

“And ran away?” Nottingham asked.

“No, just mingled with us,” Eldon said. “You see, he was well known, so he only had to get through the line. I had that all figured out as soon as we came on the empty gun propped against the tree. That’s why I brought you all down here and built up a bright campfire. I wanted to see which one of you had pitch on his hands!”

In the second or two of amazed silence which followed, one or two of the men looked at their hands. The others looked at the sheriff.

“The man who did the killing,” the sheriff went on, “went to a lot of trouble to make it appear that there was someone else running around the hills. He had practiced the whistle that was used by a certain man whose name we won’t mention at the moment. He went to a lot of trouble to make a bed of fir boughs that hadn’t been slept in, to open a can of beans that wasn’t eaten. He tried to kill Roberta Coe, but Ames showed up and spoiled his aim. Then he jumped into the thicket of pine trees, did a lot of shooting, dropped the gun, climbed a tree, waited for us to enter the brush, then came threshing around, indignantly demanding an explanation.”

“Indeed!” Dowling sneered. “I wonder if you’re asinine enough to be trying to implicate me.”

“Well,” the sheriff said, “there are some things that look a little queer. You were in your tent when the shooting started?”

“Fast asleep. I jumped up, dressed, grabbed my six-shooter and ran up the trail to join the others. Here’s my gun. Want to look at it?”

“Not right now,” Eldon said, casually taking his cloth tobacco sack from his pocket and starting to roll a cigarette. “But if you’d run all the way up the trail, you’d have been out of breath. Instead of which, you took time to curse my bucolic stupidity and you weren’t out of breath in the least. In fact, you strung quite a few words together.”

The sheriff used both hands to roll the cigarette. “And you have pitch on your hands and on your clothes, and somewhere in your tent I think we’ll find a pair of cord-soled shoes that will fit the tracks of—”

“Take a look at this gun now,” Dowling said, moving swiftly. “And take a look at the front end.”

The sheriff was motionless for a moment, then went on rolling his cigarette.

“I don’t want anyone to move,” Dowling said. “Keep right here in plain sight by this campfire and—”

Suddenly from the other side of the campfire came the swift flash of an explosion, the roar of a gun, and Dowling stood dazed, glancing incredulously at his bloody right hand from which the gun had disappeared.

The sheriff put the cigarette to his lips to moisten the paper, drew his tongue along the crease in the rice paper, and said in a low drawl, “Thanks for that, Ames, I sort of figured you’d know what to do in case I could talk him into making a break.”

The eastern sun had long since turned the crags of the big granite mountains into rosy gold. The shadows were still long, however, and the freshness of dawn lingered in the air.

Frank looked up as he heard the sound of the horse’s hoofs trampling the ground. Then Roberta’s voice called, “Ahoy, how are the hot cakes?”

“All eaten up,” Ames said, “and the dishes washed. Why don’t you city slickers get up before lunch?”

She laughed. “We did,” she said. “In fact, no one went to bed at all. The packers broke camp with daylight, and the sheriff has already taken Dowling out to stand trial. I thought you’d want to know all the latest. Bill Eldon certainly isn’t the slow-thinking hick he might seem. Howard Maben was released from the penitentiary two months ago, but he got in trouble again over some forged papers and is awaiting trial in Kansas right now. The sheriff got all that information over the phone.

“George Bay was free-lancing to see if he couldn’t clear up Mrs. Dowling’s death. He had an idea he could collect a reward from the insurance company if he showed it was murder.

“Bay didn’t have much to go on. But Bill Eldon has just about solved that case too. He found out that Howard and Mrs. Dowling had a picnic outfit in a suitcase. They carried powdered milk. She was the only one who took cream in her coffee.

“Dowling only had to put poison in the powdered milk and then leave on a business trip, where he’d have an alibi for every minute of the time. The picnic case, you see, was never used except when he was gone, and only his wife used the powdered milk.

“You should have heard Sheriff Eldon questioning Dowling. He soon had him floundering around in a mass of contradictory stories.

“He’d learned Bay was on his trail and decided to kill Bay so it would look as though Howard had done it. He knew Howard’s term had expired but didn’t know Howard had been rearrested and was in jail. Dowling had had his tent placed so the back was right up against that pine thicket. He’d pretend to be asleep, but he’d taken the pegs out of the back and he’d carry a change of shoes and prowl along the mountain trails. I guess he was pretty desperate, after getting all that wealth together, to be trapped by an old crime. He tried to frame it on you, of course, stealing your gun, then later even planting some of your cigarette stubs. He buried the things from his victim’s pockets at your place where officers would be sure to find them. But because he thought Sheriff Eldon was a doddering old man, he overdid everything.

“Well, that’s all the news, and I must skip. I’m supposed to be back in the main trail in ten minutes. The others are going to pick me up on the way out. I thought I’d just stop by and — leave you my address. I suddenly realized I hadn’t told you where you could reach me.”

She was standing in the door of the cabin, smiling, looking trim and neat in her leather riding skirt, cowboy boots and soft green silk blouse.

Frank Ames strode toward her, kicking a chair out of his way. “I know where to reach you,” he said.

Five minutes later she pushed herself gently back from his arms and said, “Heavens, I’ll be late! I won’t know how to catch up with them. I don’t know the trails.”

Ames’ circling arms held her to him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You have just left lipstick smears all over one of the best guides in the mountains.”

“You mean we can catch up with the others?” she asked.

“Eventually,” Frank Ames said. “You probably don’t know it, however, but you’re headed for the County Clerk’s office.”

“The County Clerk’s office? Surely you don’t mean—?”

“I’m leaving just as soon as I can get a few things together,” he said. “You see, I want to record a claim. Up here in the mountains when we find something good, we file on it.”

“You... you’d better have it assayed first, Frank.”

“I’ve assayed ‘it,’ ” he said. “Underneath that raspberry lipstick there’s pure gold, and I don’t want anyone to jump my claim.”

“They won’t,” she assured him softly.