The Mountain Cat

Chapter 3

The new Sammis Building, at 214 Mountain Street, was the imposing structure where Delia had gone that morning to call on Tyler Dillon. The old Sammis Building, bought by Lemuel Sammis many years before he had attained state-wide eminence both economically and politically, and much less imposing, was over on Halley Street. Its ground floor was occupied by The Haven, the biggest and most popular gambling room in the city. Walled off from The Haven, making a separate entrance, were the narrow hall and equally narrow stairs which led to the second floor, where an even narrower hall, so dark in the daytime that strangers almost had to grope, afforded only two doors. The one in the front bore on its glass panel an old dingy inscription: Evelina Mining Co. — left there as a matter of sentiment by old man Sammis because it had been named in the distant days after his wife Evelina, who had once been a beanslinger at a lunch counter in Cheyenne. The door at the rear had a much fresher label: Sammis & Jackson, with no designation of function. About midway of the hall stood an old wooden bin, half-filled with jagged chunks of ore, some smaller than an egg and some larger than a big man’s fist; and an ancient discolored card tacked to the bin conveyed the invitation: Solid silver — help yourself to a souvenir — Evelina Mining Co. It had been probably close to two decades since the invitation had been accepted by anyone.

When Delia parked the car in the neighborhood of the old Sammis Building that afternoon, she chose a spot fifty yards away because she had a reason for not parking directly in front even if there had been a space. It still lacked twenty minutes till four o’clock when she arrived, and she didn’t want to be seen by her sister Clara as she left for her appointment at Atterson’s. Also she didn’t want to enter the building until she was sure Clara had gone, so she sat in the car with her eyes glued to the entrance. Ten minutes passed before she saw Clara emerge and strike off in the other direction, mingling with the sidewalk crowd. She waited a minute or two and then climbed out.

She was at the head of the narrow stairs, in the dark upper hall, before she realized that she didn’t have her handbag. She stopped, frowning. She knew very well her wits were wandering. She concentrated. Yes, she had taken it with her from Uncle Quin’s place; she remembered it beside her in the car as she drove. Then she had left it on the seat. She turned to go back after it, then turned again. She was hot and the sun outside was hotter. She remembered distinctly now that the bag was at the end of the seat, against the door. No one could see it from the sidewalk, and no one was apt to snoop around that old car in search of valuables. She went to the door at the rear of the hall and stood there a moment before opening it, gazing at the inscription on the panel and thinking of the time when it had been Brand & Jackson instead of Sammis & Jackson. Then she became aware of voices within, a loud voice especially, raised in anger. So Jackson wasn’t alone. But she knew Clara wasn’t there, so she pushed the door open and entered.

The room she was in was small, with one window, and contained the desk with a typewriter where Clara would have been sitting. Now it was empty, but through the open door which led to the room beyond the words of the angry voice, a man’s, were audible: “... and I’ll run you right out of the State of Wyoming and see how you like that! If dirt won’t do it, and there’s plenty of dirt and you know it, I’ll try something that will!”

“Now, Dan, be yourself—”

“And drop the Dan stuff! My name’s Jackson! Mister Jackson to you! You keep your hands—”

Delia sang out, “Excuse me, I can hear you!”

“Who the hell are you?” the voice came, and the next instant a man appeared in the doorway. He was a bone-and-muscle man, tall, between forty and fifty, with a scar over his left eye that gave him a leer. “Oh, you,” he said, seeing Delia, his voice down. “What do you want?”

“I’ll wait.”

“Okay, go wait outside. Or sit there and wait, I don’t give a damn.”

“She doesn’t need to wait.” A woman slipped past him, careless of brushing him, and was in the small room. It was Wynne Cowles, looking as surprisingly cool as her voice. “Oh, Miss Brand? How do you do? Have you changed your mind about the bridle?” She turned on Jackson. “That date I have tonight, I’m going to keep it. And I have never been run out of any place yet, except a hotel in Rome once, and that was done by setting the building on fire.”

She moved, halted to give Delia a pat on the shoulder and to say, “Nice kid. I like you,” pulled the door open and went.

Jackson stared at the door a second and then told it, “I’ll cut her up, by God, and feed her to the pelicans.”

“Not if I was a pelican, you wouldn’t,” Delia declared.

He transferred the stare to her. “She called you a nice kid. I guess you are. Come in and sit down.”

He backed through the door and she followed. His room was larger and furnished with foresight, containing, besides a desk and half a dozen chairs and a row of shelves and files, a huge and massive safe and three spittoons. After they were seated, she across the desk from him, Delia looked him in the eye and said, “You’re not going to fire Clara.”

He looked startled, then he grinned. “Hell, my child,” he protested, “I’ve already fired her.”

“I know you have. Then you’re going to hire her again and keep her hired.”

“Who says so?”

“I do.”

“Not enough. You’re not even old enough to vote.”

“I’ll see Mr. Sammis about it.”

He frowned. “I wouldn’t advise you to.”

“I will.”

“Go ahead. I’m running this office. Did Clara send you here?”

“No.” Delia took off her hat and held it dangling. “I came myself. I came because I’m going to do something... something vital and I want to do this first. Clara will have a job here as long as she wants it. She ought to have a good deal more than a job. You and Mr. Sammis have made thousands and thousands of dollars, I guess millions, out of grubstaking, and it was her father and my father who did it all. He was murdered doing it. Everybody says you’re no good at all compared to him, you have no judgment and no head for it, and you can’t hold the prospectors the way he could. The ones you do hold Clara does it for you. It was her father’s job and she likes it and she’s going to have it, even if she doesn’t get paid half of what she earns.”

“Well, by God!” Jackson’s voice matched the leer the scar gave him. “You are a nice kid! You certainly are. Who are some of the everybody that says I’m no good?”

Delia brushed it aside. “I only mentioned that. But as far as that’s concerned, you never were any good. I often heard my father tell my mother so when they didn’t know I was listening.”

“I don’t doubt it. But that’s not good testimony, you know. Not allowed. Your father’s dead.”

Delia’s color went, and she gripped the brim of her sun hat until it was crushed. In a moment she said calmly, “I know he is. And maybe you ought to know this. Maybe you ought to know that on every list that mother made up of the people who might have killed him, and on every list that the detectives she hired made up, and on every list that I made up, there was your name.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

She still gripped the hat. “Well?”

“Well what?” He grimaced. “See here, Delia. You may be a nice kid, but you’re a funny one and you always have been. As for your mother, your father’s death put a kink in her that never did get straightened out. No man in this state admired Charlie Brand more than I did. He didn’t like me much, but I admired him and I even liked him. I had no more reason or desire to kill him than you did. When he was alive he bossed the grubstaking part of this business and that suited everybody, including me. But now I’m bossing it, with all my faults, and that’s that. Clara does not handle the prospectors. If she tells you she does, she lies. She’s only a stenographer and bookkeeper, and she and I don’t get along very well. When your father was here he pulled his share out every year, and if he squandered nearly all of it that’s not my fault; with all his virtues he had that weakness. I don’t owe Clara anything nor you either, and anyway she’s a clever girl and she can do just as well or better somewhere else after she makes a start. She leaves here Saturday noon.”

Delia’s color was back. She demanded, “You mean you don’t even consider—”

“Clara leaves Saturday,” said Jackson doggedly.

“Then I must see Mr. Sammis. I have to get this done today.”

“Go ahead.” Jackson frowned at her, and added, “But I wish you wouldn’t see Sammis.”

“Of course you do. You’ll wish it still more when you hear from him. He’s my godfather and Clara’s, too.”

“Oh, I have no fear of the consequences.” Jackson was still frowning. “He may be your godfather, but he’s my father-in-law. I was thinking more of the possible effect on Clara than anything else. What she needs and what she’s really fitted for—” He broke off abruptly, cocking an ear. “What the devil was that?”

Delia heard it too, a noise from the hall as if a bag of potatoes had been rolled down the stairs.

Jackson arose. “Excuse me, nice kid, I think I’ll take a look.”

“I’m going anyway.” Delia got up too, put her hat on, and followed him, through the little room and the door to the hall. It was so dim there that they could see nothing for a moment. Jackson peered around, then went over to the head of the stair and stooped to pick up a small dark object from the floor. When Delia asked what it was he muttered, “Nothing. A piece of ore from that old bin. How the devil did it get there?”

Keeping it in his hand, he started down the stairs. Halfway down Delia, at his heels, heard his sudden ejaculation but couldn’t see the cause of it, since he was obstructing her view. He quickened his step, and by the time she reached the bottom he was bending over the form of a man stretched on the floor of the lower hall. One of the man’s legs was curled under him and the other extended with a foot resting on the lowest step of the stair. Delia, halted on the third step up, clutching the rail and setting her teeth on her lip, watched Jackson squat to find a heartbeat with his fingers. Then, as Jackson moved, muttering, “He’s all right,” and she caught a glimpse of the prostrate man’s face with blood trickling around an ear, she gasped, “Uncle Quin!” and leaped over the extended leg and knelt on the dirty floor.

Jackson repeated, “He’s all right. Get away and let me see.” He squatted beside her to examine the head and, in a moment, grunted, “Looks like he was hit with that piece of ore. Where the devil is it?” He looked around, saw where he had tossed it and reached for it.

“All that blood! He’s not dead?”

“Hell no. That’s only a couple of spoonfuls. He’s out, all right, but he’s far from dead. You wait here a minute, and don’t start shaking him in case he’s got a fracture.”

He opened the street door and disappeared. Delia, still kneeling, took a handkerchief from a pocket of her dress, hesitated a moment, and then started dabbing at the blood. It was matting the dusty gray hair back of the temple. There seemed to be several places where the jagged edges of the ore had broken the skin.

“Uncle Quin!” she said urgently. “Uncle! Uncle Quin!” Then she jerked her hand away as she saw his eyelids flutter. They closed again and then opened once more. He moved his head, moaned, moved his head again, and was staring at her.

“What... what in the name... what you trying to do?”

“You got hurt, Uncle Quin.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “You stay still.”

“How’d I get hurt?”

“I don’t know. Now keep still. Mr. Jackson will be back in a minute... here he is now—”

The door opened. Jackson had a pitcher of water in his hand, and entering behind him was a well-fed short man with a deadpan for a face — a deadpan well known to the habitués of The Haven, since he was the assistant manager.

Quinby Pellett, struggling to sit up with one hand against the wall, demanded, “What is this? What the hell happened?”

“Oh, you woke up.” Jackson looked at him sharply. “You’d better take it easy, Quin, you may have a cracked skull. I’ve sent for a doctor and a cop. They’re phoning next door.”

“Cop? Hey, what...” Pellett put his hand to his head, took it away, and looked at the blood on his fingers. “How bad am I hurt?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think bad. You got conked and you fell downstairs.”

“Who conked me, you?”

“No. I was in my office with Delia when it happened. What would I want to conk you for, practice?”

“I don’t know.” Pellett slowly moved his head and eyes. “Oh, Delia. You here. Didn’t you say you were coming here? Sure you did.”

“You should keep quiet till the doctor gets here, Uncle.”

“Sure you did. So did I.” He turned his head again. “Wasn’t I coming to see you?”

Jackson nodded. “I guess you were. You were supposed to. How far did you get, the head of the stairs?”

“Yes. I did. I was going upstairs and I got nearly to the top — hey!”

“What’s the matter?”

“That’s where I got hit, at the top of the stairs!”

“So I suspected. Who hit you?”

“How the hell do I know?”

“Didn’t you see anyone or hear anything?”

“He ought to be quiet until the doctor comes,” Delia put in firmly.

The door popped open and a man in the uniform of a police sergeant entered, briskly. He nodded to Delia and the others and looked down at the man sitting on the floor with a grin.

“What’s the matter, Quin?” he demanded. “Doing a little research on the law of gravity?”

Twenty minutes later, upstairs in Jackson’s office, the police sergeant finished asking Delia a few questions, getting corroboration of Jackson’s story. The doctor had disfigured her uncle’s head with a bandage and stated that apparently there was no serious damage, and her uncle had insisted that he felt well enough to remain there for the business he had come to see Jackson about, so Delia departed.

She got into the car and made her way through the traffic, heading south and continuing beyond the city limits into the valley. The attack on her uncle and the sight of him lying on the floor unconscious with blood on his head had started her nerves quivering and upset the order of her thoughts, so she was into the country before she remembered to look for her bag. She glanced at the seat beside her. The bag wasn’t there.

The car swerved and nearly slid into the ditch. She jerked it back into the road, then slowed down, steered to a wide spot in the roadside and stopped. A search behind the seat, under it, between the seat and the door, on the floor, yielded nothing. The bag was gone!

She sat behind the steering wheel, with her teeth clenched, concentrating. She was absolutely sure that she had left the bag there when she parked the car to go to Jackson’s office. Some passerby had snitched it. She was an incompetent little fool and always had been and always would be.

That gun was her father’s. She had meant, had utterly and with all her heart meant, to use that gun for the retaliation of the Brand family to the evil malignity which had murdered her father and driven her mother to suicide. She had so intended. Her teeth clenched harder. She had, she had!

What Ty Dillon had said. What Uncle Quin had said. About her getting a cramp in her trigger finger. They were dead wrong.

But she had left that bag, with that gun in it, on the seat of the car parked in the street and hadn’t gone back after it. Wasn’t anyone who would do that either a brainless fool or a cheap fraud?

And now what? Her father’s gun, her chosen weapon, was gone. Now what? It was to have been tonight. That had been irrevocably decided. Now what? Her jaw, aching from the clenching of her teeth, began to quiver. Now what? Her head fell forward to the steering wheel, her face against her crossed forearms, and she began to cry. She hadn’t cried since her mother’s death. She cried quietly, not convulsively, but every minute or so her shoulders heaved as her indignant lungs issued the ultimatum, oxygen or death. She might, in the despair and dolor of that moment there at the roadside, while passing cars decelerated for the prolongation of curious glances, have preferred death, but nature requires something stronger than a mere passing preference to enforce that decision.

When finally she straightened up, her face and forearms were wet. She disregarded them. She had not answered the question, now what, as to the ultimate retaliation she had designed, but she was going on, at least, with the immediate job. She released the brake and shifted the gear and the car shot forward.

Ten miles farther on she slowed down again and turned right into a graveled and well-kept drive. At the edge of the public domain it passed under an enormous stone arch across the top of which was chiseled: Cockatoo Ranch. The Cockatoo had been the name of the lunchroom in Cheyenne where Lemuel Sammis had found Evelina long ago and when, in his opulence, he had bought a thousand of the most desirable acres in this valley and built a mansion thereon, he had named it Cockatoo Ranch; some whispers said to remind his wife of her lowly origin, but that was not true. Lem Sammis was a man of enduring sentiment. It was true that he had shouldered aside many men on his march up the hill, had broken not a few and never put scruple on his payroll, but it was undeniable that he had sentiment.

Flowers were blooming, sprinklers were going, and the lawn was clipped and green. Delia left the car on the gravel a hundred feet from the mansion and started across. Three or four dogs came running at her. A woman with three chins who weighed two hundred pounds stopped trying to reach a lilac twig and yelled at the dogs. Delia went and shook hands with her.

It was Evelina. “I haven’t seen you for a coon’s age,” she declared, looking Delia over. “What you been crying about?”

“Nothing. I came to see Mr. Sammis.”

“First we’ll have some tea. If you’ve been crying you need it. Come over on the veranda. Oh, come on. One of the few things I like in all this damn business of putting on dog is this idea of afternoon tea. We’ll have some turkey sandwiches and potato salad.” She yelled at the top of her voice, “Pete!” and a Chinese appeared.

Delia, to her own surprise, ate. The sandwiches and salad were excellent. Lemuel Sammis himself came out of the house and joined them, accompanied by a tired-looking man whom Delia recognized as the State Commissioner of Public Works. The fact that Mrs. Sammis did a lot of talking seemed not to interfere with her eating. It began to appear to Delia that tea threatened to have a collision with dinner.

At length Sammis finished his third highball and arose. “You want to see me, Dellie? Come on in the house.”

Delia followed him. He was the only person who had ever called her Dellie besides her father. In a room with, among other things, an ornate desk, a wall lined with deluxe books, and four heads of bucks, mounted, as she knew, by her Uncle Quin, she sat and looked at him. He looked like Wyoming, with his lean old face, his tough oil-bereft skin, his watchful eyes withdrawn behind their wrinkled ramparts from the cruel and brilliant sun. He inserted a thumb and finger into the small pocket of his flannel trousers and pulled out a little cylinder, apparently of gold, which looked like a lipstick holder; removing the cap, he shook it over his palm and a quill toothpick fell out. As he used it, his teeth looked as white as a coyote’s.

“Turkey gets in your teeth worse than chicken or beef,” he stated. “Seems to shred or something.” He flipped detritus from the point of the pick with a finger. “What’s on your mind, Dellie? I’ve got some important business to finish with that specimen of a man out there.”

“Clara.”

“What’s wrong with her? Sick?”

“She’s lost her job. Jackson fired her.”

The old man’s hand halted in midair, brandishing the toothpick like a miniature dagger. “When?” he demanded.

“Yesterday. She is to leave Saturday.”

“What for?”

“Jackson says they don’t get along together and that she’ll be better off somewhere else. I just saw him this afternoon and that’s all he said. My own opinion is that there’s somebody he wants there, I don’t know who, and it’s none of my business. But you know the whole country talks about his — the way he likes women.”

Lem Sammis looked uncomfortable. “At your age, Dellie, I should think that kind of talk...”

Delia nearly smiled. “I know, Mr. Sammis, you’re a prude and anyway I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I suspected you didn’t know about Clara’s being fired, and when I threatened to come to you about it and Jackson said he wished I wouldn’t, I was sure. He also said he was the boss and he was running that office, which struck me as funny, because I always thought you were the real owner of it and always had been, even when the name on the door was Brand & Jackson.”

“So he’s the boss. Huh?”

“That’s what he said.”

Sammis leaned back in his chair and took in air with his mouth open, then expelled it by the same route, with a noise like a valve held open on an inflated tire. The duration of the noise spoke well for the condition of his lungs. His eyes behind their barricades were still the old Sammis poker eyes.

“Dellie,” he asked as if requesting a favor, “will you kindly tell me something? Will you kindly explain how my and my wife’s daughter Amy ever happened to stake a claim to a patch of alkali dust like Dan Jackson?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Sammis.”

“Neither do I and I never will.” The old man frowned at the toothpick, screwing up his lips.

After a moment Delia ventured, “And about Clara...”

“Sure, Clara. Him having the gall to fire Charlie Brand’s daughter! The fact is, I’ve about decided to give up grubstaking. I’m nearly seventy years old, and it’s no better than a dogfight with a bunch of pikers edging in, including that what’s-her-name woman buying off my men. I hear she’s just come back with another divorce. I can’t keep an eye on it any more.”

“You won’t close up the office!” Delia exclaimed in dismay.

“No, I guess not. I’d hate to see that old office shut up for good. As a matter of fact, I’d put Clara in charge if I could think of anything else to do with Dan Jackson.” He added bitterly, “I might put him to renting rowboats out on Pyramid Lake.”

“Then Clara won’t be fired?”

“She will not. No, ma’am. I’ll see Dan maybe tonight, or more likely tomorrow.” He got up. “It’s going on six o’clock and I don’t want that fellow staying for supper. Anything else on your mind, Dellie?”

“Yes. I’d like to have the satisfaction — I have a particular reason for wanting to get this done today, done and finished. Just a personal reason. Of course I know you’ll see to it, since you say you will — but if you’d write a note, just a line, I’d like to take it to Jackson myself. I can write it on a typewriter if you want me to, and you can sign it...”

Sammis cackled down at her. “Why, you derned little long-legged heifer! Don’t trust me, huh? Think Dan might talk me out of it?”

“No,” she protested, “certainly not! It’s just a personal reason!”

He glanced at her keenly. “You’re not saying you have anything personal with Dan Jackson?”

“Oh, no, heavens no, not personal with him. Just personal.”

He looked at her a moment, then sat at the desk and reached for a sheet of paper. “All right, I’ll make it plain enough so he can understand it,” he said, and began writing.