The Copper Frame

Chapter 16

The Plymouth had hit nose down and rolled over on its back. Both doors on the left side had been torn off and the other two had popped open. The headlights had been smashed, but both taillights still burned and the dome light, which was controlled automatically by the doors, was burning. These threw enough light to show that the snow was littered with shattered glass and bits of metal.

Saxon didn’t pause for a careful study of the scene, but he did give it one quick glance. Inside the front of the car he could see the huddled figure of Hardnose John Simmons.

He moved past the car through the foot-deep snow at a lumbering trot, heading away from the road. Despite the falling snow, there was enough moonlight to see where he was going.

Unfortunately there was also enough for him to be seen, too. He was perhaps ten yards beyond the wrecked car when a shot sounded from the top of the bank and a bullet swished past his ear. An instant later he rounded a curve in the ravine which hid him from the sniper.

Apparently there had been no water in the ravine at winter’s onset, for beneath the snow there wasn’t the smoothness of ice. The ground was rocky and uneven, making progress difficult. Twice as he hurried along, he stumbled over snags concealed by the snow and nearly fell.

Travel along the top of the bank would be easier, he realized. With this thought, Saxon started to look for a way up the opposite side. He spotted it almost instantly. Just ahead a section of the left side of the bank had fallen away some time in the past, leaving a gash which angled upward far less steeply than the original bank. It was an old landslide, for the bare branches of bushes which had grown there since thrust up through the snow.

Using the bushes as handholds. Saxon laboriously started to work his way up the bank. Halfway to the top he heard the blast of Benton’s forty-five and a geyser of snow leaped up three feet to one side.

He didn’t even pause to glance over his shoulder at the opposite bank. There was nowhere to go but up, and no way to make himself less a target. All he could do was continue to climb and pray.

Fortunately the opposite bank was about seventy-five feet away, about the limit of accurate range for the cumbersome forty-five automatic under ideal conditions. In the dark, with falling snow further obstructing vision and erratic gusts of wind trying to shove the gunman off balance, firing conditions were far from ideal for Benton.

Pulling himself upward from one frozen bush to the next, it seemed to Saxon that it would take him hours to reach the top of the bank. Another shot boomed and he heard the bullet plunk into the snow a foot to his right. When seconds elapsed before the next shot, he realized the gunman was taking careful aim and squeezing the trigger with target-range slowness. This time the bullet plucked at the skirt of his overcoat.

A sudden, minute-long howl of wind swept down the ravine and raised a blinding fog of snow from the ground to mix with the falling flakes already in the air; that reduced visibility to zero. Under cover of the swirling mass, Saxon managed to climb the rest of the way to the top and swing himself behind the thick bole of an elm.

He had hardly settled to one knee, panting from the exertion of his climb, when the wind died as suddenly as it had started. Cautiously he peered around the tree trunk at the opposite bank.

Dimly he could make out the silhouette of Farmer Benton standing there. As he watched, a figure joined him. The man Simmons had mentioned as Spider Wertz had joined the hunt.

Saxon lost the advantage the pursued has over the pursuer at night: the advantage of darkness. Wertz had brought a light from his car. It wasn’t an ordinary flashlight. It had a square lens probably four to five inches across and a wide, powerful beam.

The beam probed the bank below Saxon, slowly working its way to the top. When it touched the elm behind which he was hiding, he drew his head out of sight.

The beam lowered again and he took another peep. It was directed downward to illuminate the side of the opposite bank. As he watched, Farmer Benton stepped over the edge of the bank and slid downward on the snow in the same manner that Saxon had previously. Landing on his feet, he plodded across the ravine and started to climb the bank on Saxon’s side.

Saxon crawled ten feet back from the bank, rose to his feet and doubled back toward the highway as rapidly as he could. This wasn’t very fast, for the best gait he could muster through the steadily deepening snow was a plodding, high-stepping trot.

The taillights and dome light of the Plymouth were still burning when he passed it. He came out on the road on the opposite side of the bridge and started across it toward Spider Wertz’s parked car, his hope being that Wertz had left his key in the ignition. Only the parking lights of the car were now burning.

Halfway across he realized he had fallen into a trap. His hunters had anticipated his doubling back, and Benton’s descent into the ravine must have been designed to flush him this way. The car’s highway lights suddenly switched on, pinning him in their glare.

Turning, he ran back the other way, expecting a bullet in the back at any moment. The only reason he could think of for Spider Wertz’s not firing was fear that Farmer Benton might have reached the other end of the bridge by now and might be hit by one of the bullets.

He was nearly to the end of the bridge when the figure of Benton loomed through the curtain of falling snow. The man was plodding along the edge of the ravine toward the road, not more than twenty feet away. Spotting Saxon, he raised his gun.

Making a left wheel, Saxon raced for the opposite side of the road. Four rapid shots rolled out, so closely spaced that they sounded like one long-drawn-out explosion. Saxon’s hat lifted from his head and tumbled to the ground before him. Ignoring it, he hurdled the low bank of snow piled up at the edge of the road by snowplows and kept running.

There were no more shots. Altogether he had counted eight from Benton’s gun, which would account for one full clip plus one extra in the chamber. Saxon hoped that the bitter cold had numbed the man’s hands enough to make reloading difficult.

He continued to flounder across country until he reached the protection of a clump of trees, then stopped to listen. A wind abruptly rose again, filling the air with eddies of fine snow and cutting vision to a matter of feet. He could hear nothing but the roar of the wind and the panting of his own breath.

When the gust died and he could see through the falling snow again clear to the dim outline of the bridge, he could make out the figure of Farmer Benton moving across it toward the lights of the car. Apparently the man had given up trying to locate him in this blinding near-blizzard.

As he watched, Benton reached the car and crossed in front of the headlights to the side away from the road. The highway lights blinked off and the parking lights came on again. Then the square-lensed hand lamp switched on and moved toward the point where the Plymouth had gone over the bank. Belatedly, Farmer Benton and Spider Wertz were going to check on the man who had ridden Saxon’s car into the ravine.

Saxon grew conscious of a growing numbness in his ears. Pulling his scarf from around his neck, he shook the snow from his hair, draped the scarf across the top of his head, and tied it beneath his chin.

Then, sticking as much as possible to the protection of trees, he started to walk toward Iroquois, staying back from the road a good fifty feet. The area along here clear to the edge of town was open country, with numerous wooded sections. A good portion of it was state-owned and was reserved for an eventual state park. Nearer town, one side of the road was owned by the Iroquois Country Club, the other by the local conservation club. There wasn’t a single private home along the whole four-mile stretch.

The going was difficult because of the foot-deep snow, but he couldn’t risk taking the road. If Benton and Wertz came along and spotted him, the chase would start all over again. Back from the road he would have time to run for the protection of some tree if headlights appeared or, if in an open area, simply to fall flat and wait until the lights passed.

Once headlights did appear from the northeast and he froze to immobility behind a tree. They went past slowly — which meant nothing, considering driving conditions. It might have been his hunters or it might not have been.

Fifteen minutes later lights swept by at a higher speed from the opposite direction. This time he was in the open and had to drop flat. He didn’t care to chance the first car’s having been Wertz’s and these lights being from the same car returning.

Periodically the wind rose and surrounded him with a cloud of fine snow, sometimes blowing with such intensity that he struggled to the nearest tree and set himself to leeward of it until the gust died again. The bitter cold seeped through his overcoat and gloves, numbing his body and hands more with each yard of progress. The exercise of having to lift his feet high because of the depth of the snow at least kept his body from freezing. And ever so often he beat his gloved hands together to retain circulation in them. He plodded on at the rate of about two miles an hour.

He heard the city-hall clock strike nine at the same moment that he glimpsed the lights of the country club on the opposite side of the road, which indicated the very edge of town. He could have found sanctuary there, but Emily’s apartment was only a quarter of a mile beyond the club, and by the time he had crossed the highway and followed the long, winding drive to the club building, he would have traveled nearly as far as to her place. He decided to go on. He moved onto the road now, for from here on there were houses, the shadows of which he could dart into if headlights appeared.

At nine-fifteen he rang the bell of Emily’s apartment.

When she opened the door and saw him standing there laden with snow, his face red with cold and the scarf ridiculously tied beneath his chin as if he were some outsize peasant woman from the old country, she couldn’t help bursting out laughing.

“I’m glad I tickle your funny bone,” he growled. “You’ll roll on the floor when you hear how close I came to being dead.”

Her laughter died. “What happened, Ted?”

Inside he walked past her to the kitchen and hung his overcoat and scarf over the edge of the door so that the residue of melting snow could drip on the floor. He came back into the front room rubbing his hands and shivering.

“You need a hot drink,” Emily said with concern. “You look half frozen to death.”

“About seven-eighths, I think. Got any rum?”

“No, but I can make you a coffee royal.”

“I’ll settle for that. Julie at work?”

“Yes,” Emily said. “She’s still on three to eleven. But what happened?”

He walked through the bedroom to the bathroom and ran the washbowl full of lukewarm water. Pulling his sleeves up as far as they would go without removing the jacket of his suit, he plunged both hands into the water. After a few minutes he let some out and ran in more hot. He kept gradually increasing the hot until his hands and wrists were thoroughly thawed and his hands began to redden from the heat. Then he pulled the plug and dried his hands.

When he got back to the front room, Emily said, “I’m making instant because it’s faster. That all right?”

“Sure,” he said. “The faster the better.”

“Ted Saxon, will you tell me what’s wrong!”