Bridge to Trouble: Chapter VI
"Are you out of your mind, or do you just enjoy giving that impression?”
Bridge to Trouble is a romantic-suspense novella set in 1920s Montana.
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One to make ready,
And two to prepare;
Good luck to the rider,
And away goes the mare.
- Children’s rhyme -Had the squares of moonlight moved at all across the carpet? They must have. I felt like I had been sitting and watching them for hours—ever since I had turned out my bedroom lamp at a reasonable hour for the benefit of anyone who might be watching the house, and come into the front room to wait for the tap at the front door that was my agreed-upon signal with Keith. It couldn’t be a whole hour yet, though. And he would have had to wait till it was full dark and be sure no one was watching him before he essayed to leave the shadows of the woods and slip across to the house.
If he came at all.
If he didn’t come, I would have to go down off the mountain in the morning not knowing yet whether he had outwitted me, or sacrificed himself.
I was sure the square of moonlight nearest to my foot had moved an inch. I hadn’t moved my foot. If I had paid attention to the clock ticking subtly and steadily from somewhere on the opposite wall—if I’d had the patience to count up to sixty over and over—I might have some idea how long I really had been waiting. The clock knew, and the moon knew, but my mind was too preoccupied to properly observe either of them.
A low tapping came at the front door.
In a flash, hardly breathing, I was out of my chair and out in the hall, and only paused with my hands outstretched on the lock. I was trusting Keith pretty far indeed, opening the door to him alone here in the dead of night. But could I hesitate now?
I drew a quick breath and unlocked the door and opened it.
The white moonlight was brighter than I expected; it dazzled my eyes for a second as a shaft of crisp chill air pierced to my lungs and quickened my blood. Keith was standing half turned away from the door, looking back toward the woods—he had a coat on with the collar turned up, but the moonlight touched his profile so I still recognized him in a glance. He turned as I slipped out and pulled the door shut behind me, and I beckoned him along the front terrace to where I knew we couldn’t be seen from anywhere but the clearing directly below.
“Well?” I said in a low voice but not a whisper.
“It’s them,” said Keith. “They’ve got him there in the cabin all right. Two of them, about the same type as Mills. They’re getting homesickness and cabin fever at the same time if I’m any judge. I stayed up on the hill and used my field glasses for a while, and they took turns coming out to smoke a cigarette and curse the mosquitoes.”
“And—Riley Conover? How do you know he’s in there?”
“Saw him. I worked my way around and down behind the cabin, and got close enough to take one good look through the side window. He was on the bunk at the left side of the cabin—I could only see his feet, and they were tied. So he’s alive, and he can’t have been seriously harmed if they’re keeping him tied up.”
I let out my breath slowly and quietly. I hadn’t realized it, but I had been so tensely awaiting knowledge on that score that my chest hurt tightly. “And now?” I said. “You’ll go down and wire for help?”
“Can’t. If they decided to clear out while I was gone, you wouldn’t be able to follow them alone, especially if they went in the auto.”
“Well, then let me go.”
“Barton would get suspicious if you did.”
“But you were willing enough to have me go down tomorrow if you didn’t come back!”
“That was only if it was too late to save Riley Conover. What I was just coming to is, most importantly, they could still kill him before help had time to get here no matter which one of us went.”
“Then what do you mean to do?”
“We’ve got to get him out of the cabin, of course.”
For a moment, there was silence upon the terrace. The moonlight, soft, unperturbed, streamed down over the peaked tops of the pines from the luminous cloud-strewn sky. I leaned back against the iron railing and folded my arms. I said, in an unnaturally matter-of-fact voice, “We’ve got to get him out of the cabin, of course. Are you out of your mind, or do you just enjoy giving that impression?”
“You forgot to add, ‘or both?’” said Keith. “No, listen, I’ve been thinking about this all the way back and it’s the only thing that might possibly work without getting Riley Conover killed. We have to make it look like he escaped on his own. You didn’t think I had in mind besieging the cabin, did you?”
“No, I expected you to suggest dynamite, or maybe mustard gas,” I retorted.
“I’m not,” said Keith, quite shortly for him. “Here’s the idea: if they think Riley managed to escape on his own, they’ll believe he’s just wandering loose on the Pont, on foot and probably lost in the woods, and they’ll try to find him and recapture him. While they’re at it, that’s when we send for the police.”
“Suppose they just decide to bolt when they find he’s gone.”
“He’ll be alive,” said Keith; and though there wasn’t a trace of rebuke in his voice I suddenly felt ashamed of myself. “And you can give the police the license number of the car and full descriptions of Sonny Barton and Mining Mills.”
I winced. “I didn’t get the license number.”
“Well, we’ll get it later. First let’s get Riley Conover before those two in the cabin get too fed up with their own cooking.”
“I suppose you do have a plan for actually getting him out of there?”
“Not a plan,” said Keith tranquilly; “just ideas. I figure it means getting the two guardians out of the cabin on some pretext, and keeping them away from it long enough for one of us to get in and back out. That’s where I’m stuck at the moment.”
“A cry for help,” I suggested. “No, that’s wrong. They’re not supposed to know anyone’s around. Strange Unidentified Noise?”
“They might just barricade themselves inside instead.”
“Darn them.”
I leaned against the railing again. “And I suppose a dog barking would make them think of bloodhounds,” I mused aloud, considering and rejecting the idea of borrowing Jacot’s dog, “and sheep—no, there’s no help in sheep.”
Keith snapped his fingers. “Horses,” he said. “It’s rather crude, but I think we’ll have to fall back on turning their horses loose.”
“They have horses up there? Could you see the brand on them?”
“Well, they had to get up to the cabin some way. I’ll bet that was an entertaining sight. The brand looked kind of like a P with a half-circle over the top of it, from the glimpse I got.”
I rocketed forward off the railing, lit up with fury. “The gall—the absolute gall! They dared use Pierpont horses for their dirty work! Sonny taking our money to work here and borrowing our horses for a kidnapping gang as cool as you please—oh, if only I could give him a piece of my mind!”
“I’ll make the marshals promise to let you have a crack at him before they lock him up, provided I can be there to see it,” said Keith in a smothered voice.
“Oh, hush. If we’re going to do this let’s get on with it and do it right.”
“I’m ready. You’re sure you don’t want to use dynamite now? No, all right, never mind. I’d like to have daylight, since I don’t know the ground like you do, so let’s plan for early in the morning. Can you figure out something to keep Sonny out of our way?”
“I’ll get him out of the way,” I said through my teeth. “I’ll come up with a way to do it if I have to lie awake all night.”
“Don’t use dynamite,” Keith implored; “we only need him out of the way for a couple of hours.”
I managed to keep the laugh behind my clenched teeth, though it almost choked me. The vexing thing about Keith Phillips was that I sometimes felt I could have liked him a lot if only he didn’t infuriate me so much. “Well, since you ask so nicely, I’ll hand him back intact.”
“I don’t want him, for Pete’s sake. Particularly not tomorrow morning. Anyway, just two hours or so, that’s all we need, and once we’ve got Riley Conover safely away from them the whole gang can chase themselves in circles all over the Pont and not trouble us.”
I began to nod, and then suddenly my eyes widened and I clapped a hand to my head. “I forgot! Mother!”
“What about her?”
“It’s just that I ran off from California without telling her I was going. I’ve no idea when she’ll leave or if she’s left already, but I can’t imagine that she won’t follow me. She might turn up at any moment.”
“Well, this is a fine time to tell me,” said Keith, but without rancor. “I suppose it would be too much to hope that she might just settle into domestic life and not notice the gangsters playing hide-and-go-seek under her window?”
“Who, Mother? Goodness, no, she doesn’t miss a thing. She’ll be onto it quicker than I was.”
“All the more reason for us to get Riley out of their hands before she gets here, then.”
“You don’t think I wouldn’t tell her about all this, do you?”
“No, but think if she got here when you were away from the house, and ran across Mills, or smelled a rat about Sonny. Things could get complicated.”
“You don’t think they’re complicated already—? Never mind. I see what you mean. Now about tomorrow morning.”
We fell to discussing particulars.
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I’ve read Bridge to Trouble before, but I am getting SO much joy out of rereading it bit by bit here! It’s just…*flaps hands helplessly* I really like it