The Paradise Affair

15 Quincannon

Quincannon left Kailua shortly past dawn on Wednesday morning.

Rain had pelted down again during most of the night, but at this hour the sky above the village was clear. Banks of clouds on the horizon were not quite dark enough to be the harbingers of another storm; an intermittent offshore breeze carried no scent of ozone. The ever-present muggy stickiness suggested another blistering, if dry, day ahead.

The hired wagon was little more than a wooden cart with iron wheels, but its bed was large enough to hold a trussed prisoner on the return trip; now it contained only his borrowed carpetbag and a package of food and bottle of water provided by Abner Bannister. As for the creature in the traces, Quincannon had never seen one quite like it. A Kona nightingale was smaller than the four-legged asses he was used to, and resembled nothing so much as a leathery-skinned mouse grown to fifty times its normal size. He had eyed it skeptically on first encounter; it seemed incapable of either the stamina for a thirty-mile trip or the ability to move along at any but a retarded speed. The impression, at least in the early stages of the trek, had proved false. The animal trotted along the muddy, heavily rutted road with no evident strain and at a pace almost equal to that of a horse.

Kailua lay in lowlands dominated by vast plantations of coffee and sugarcane. The road ran on a more or less level grade through the fields, then began to skirt the edges of inland hills grayed by volcanic ash. Ancient lava flows from Mauna Kea had permanently scarred the landscape, leaving humped, blackened rocks to mark their path to the sea. The volcano loomed high and wide to the east, its snow-covered crest sheathed and mostly hidden by clouds. The Polynesians, Abner Bannister had told him, considered it kahunu — a bad mountain — because of the devastation caused by its eruptions.

By nine o’clock the heat had increased and lay heavily on Quincannon’s head and shoulders. His sweat-encrusted Panama hat provided some protection from the harsh sunlight, and he allowed himself frequent sips from the water bottle. He stopped once to give the Kona nightingale a drink and a bait of grain, using the hat for a bowl. Otherwise the donkey trotted along without apparent need for rest.

Shortly past eleven by his stem-winder they crested a hill, from where he could see a considerable distance along the rugged coast. Huge blackened lava swaths cut through the greens and browns; some of the beaches were of black sand, an oddly unreal sight in their fringes of coconut palms. Where the road descended near one of these, he stopped again and sought shade under one of the palms in which to partake of the sandwiches and fruit Bannister had packed for him.

The day wore on. Mile after mile jolted away. He passed the small fishing villages that were noted on the map, Kawaihae and Puako, but saw no one on the road other than a lone rider on horseback — a cowhand from one of the ranches, from the look of him — and a handful of donkey carts driven by natives who regarded him with stoic interest, doubtless curious as to what had brought a large bearded stranger into their backcountry midst.

Sun flame and the moist air turned his disposition as black and bleak as the lava scars. There would come a day when he would look back on this adventure as an example of the ends to which an implacable detective would go to bring his quarry to justice. But that day was a long way off.

Mostly he rode with his mind empty, but once he thought of Sabina and wondered how she was spending her day. In much more pleasant circumstances than he was, he hoped. Seeing the sights with Margaret Pritchard, or lounging on the Waikiki beach in the shade of a coconut palm after a refreshing swim. The thought of immersion in the surf, despite the fact that it was as warm as bathwater, made him feel even hotter and he thrust it aside.

It was early afternoon when he reached the old temple, although he would not have recognized it as such if it hadn’t been for a pair of landmarks given him by Bannister — a stunted kukui tree growing atilt between two spike-like rocks, and the arrowhead-shaped ledge jutting out into the sea. There might have been cliffs here at one time, but molten lava had flattened them down into a long, wide slope ridged and humped and strewn with huge black boulders.

From the road he could see the blowhole in the ledge’s outer end, and below that a sandy beach neither black nor white but a dark gray. A strong offshore wind blew here and the sea had roughened under its lash; tidewater mixed with air boiled into the seaward end of what Bannister had described as a blowhole — a funnel-like tube on a wide flattened section beneath the ledge — and sent spray geysering a hundred feet into the air. The falling water drenched the rocks there, made them glisten like black glass.

Quincannon ground-hitched the donkey near the kukui tree. Nearby was an ancient trail leading down to the temple, but it was barely discernible; some exploration was required before he found it. The descent was gradual, but the sharp-edged lava rock made for poor footing and slow progress. As he neared the ledge, the roar and gurgle of the spouting blowhole was thunderous.

A flattish, inland extension of the ledge serpentined in among the overhanging rocks. There, hidden from the road, was where he found the ruins of the heiau.

All that remained standing were sections of the outer walls. Entry forbidden to natives by Polynesian law, Bannister had told him. Ancient superstitions meant nothing to Quincannon, or nothing to which he would admit in the light of day. He discovered a passage between two of the sections, followed it into an open expanse some fifty rods in diameter. The ground was uneven, littered with sharp rocks. Flat volcanic slabs, cracked and broken, appeared to have been arranged by hand at its rear — the old sacrificial stones. Nothing remained of the huts or idols that had once been displayed here.

He prowled the ruins for a time, finding nothing to have inspired the crude map or the cryptic word “auohe.” There were several narrow, tight-fitting openings into the maze of rocks, one or more of which might have been man-made, but attempting to explore them with no more than a packet of lucifers was a fool’s errand. He would need a lantern or a supply of candles for that chore. And exploration wouldn’t be necessary if he could get his hands on Lonesome Jack Vereen without incident at the Millay ranch.

He climbed back up to the road and into the wagon, gigged the Kona nightingale into a fresh trot. It was a short distance to where the ranch road, marked by a weathered sign and a track worn smooth by countless wheels and hoofs, wound upward through a desolate landscape toward the brooding presence of the volcano.

The ascent was sharp and steady, curling through lava beds where the wagon’s wheels churned up a powdery black grit that clogged Quincannon’s nostrils and streaked his sweating face. Then it passed through the kiawe forest, a long jungly stretch in which the trees, none more than dozen feet in height, were so closely packed that their bare, thorn-laden branches had interwoven to form an impassable tangle on both sides of the road.

Once he emerged from the forest, the grasslands began. The wind that blew at this higher elevation was cooler by several degrees and carried the smell of grass and mountain instead of the sea. Quincannon’s spirits rose. The lethargy produced by the long, hot ride began to ease.

Eventually the road debouched into a small, verdant valley. The pastureland here was spotted with longhorn cattle, lean and somewhat stunted by comparison to the burly variety raised on California and Southwestern ranches. At the far end, set among a broad half circle of trees, he spied the ranch buildings. He adjusted the holstered Navy on his hip, smiling thinly in anticipation, when the Kona nightingale clattered him into the ranch yard. The prospect of action, especially after a long trek, always had a limbering effect on his liver.

The ranch house, he saw as he drew near, was a long, low structure of native lumber with hand-squared log walls and a palm-thatch roof; its porch, open on three sides, was green-shadowed by the branches of a huge monkeypod tree. The visible windows had glass panes that caught the lowering rays of the sun and threw back a fiery dazzle. Several cattle pens and a corral constructed of thick bamboo poles stretched south of the house. Several outbuildings were also visible, among them a stable, dairy barn, and what was likely a bunkhouse for the hands.

Two Hawaiian cowboys clad in sweat-soaked shirts, chaps, and boots were working a pair of horses inside the corral, both animals small and wiry like Indian mustangs and marked with white pinto splotches. Another paniolo stood inside the open doors to a blacksmith’s shop next to the stable, using a pair of heavy nippers on another horse’s hoof. There was no sign of anyone at the main house.

Quincannon drew up at the far end of the yard, nearer the stable. The two paniolos in the corral stopped their work and came over to stand silently watching from the fence. The one in the smithy looked up but did not lower either the nippers or his animal’s hoof as Quincannon approached him.

The cowhand was middle-aged, sinewy, with an expressionless face sunburned to the hue of old mahogany. Quincannon stopped at a sidewise angle in the doorway so that he could see the corral and the house beyond.

“Aloha,” he said. This seemed to be the standard Islands greeting. “You wouldn’t be the luna, by any chance? Sam Opaka?”

“No. You want Sam?”

“My business is with James Varner.”

The name produced no reaction. The paniolo finished cutting away heavy cartilage, then picked up a wood rasp to smooth the edges and keep the hoof from splitting.

“James Varner,” Quincannon said again, more sharply.

“Don’t know him.”

“Mr. Millay’s friend from San Francisco. Arrived with him on Sunday.”

“Mr. Millay got no malihini friend here.”

“Tall man, slender, with a mane of silver hair.”

The paniolo shrugged. “Never see nobody look like that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure. Nobody with Mr. Millay when he come back Monday.”

Quincannon stared at him. What was this, now? A lie or evasion, for some reason? If it was the truth, where the devil was Lonesome Jack Vereen?