Bridge to Trouble: Chapter VII
“Why not?” said Keith. “It’s the way I prefer to live. I struck a bargain with myself a while back that I was going to find the fun in everything that happened to me, or die trying.”
Bridge to Trouble is a romantic-suspense novella set in 1920s Montana.
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The queen commands and we’ll obey,
Over the hills and far away.
- Over the Hills and Far Away (1706) -It was a fair, fresh morning, warm with sunshine and redolent of the scents of earth and forest, when I set out on Esmerelda, armed with a penknife, some sandwiches, and a brown-paper parcel that looked like it held more sandwiches but really contained a handful of tangled ropes, to thwart a gang of kidnappers.
Sonny Barton I had put out of the way by suddenly discovering that several horses needed shoeing. I mentioned carelessly at the same time that I thought I’d go exploring up the creek again, and perhaps try another smaller rivulet on the west side of the mountain—and capped it by adding that if Mr. Mills came back, to tell him that I’d probably be home around noon, and if he waited to see me, not to let him out of his—Sonny’s—sight.
As soon as I was out of Sonny’s sight, I doubled back east.
Keith had camped overnight in the lower end of the little valley that held the cabin, close to where I had met him yesterday, and we rendezvoused there by the creek at eight-thirty. He had cached all his possessions except for his hunting rifle, conspicuous in the scabbard by his knee as he wheeled his buckskin alongside my mare, and his coat lashed across the cantle of his saddle.
“Got the ropes? Let’s have a look at ’em.” I handed over the parcel and Keith tore one end open. He nodded. “Close enough. ’Tis not so long as a lariat, nor so thick as a noose, but ’twill do.”
“You find everything so immensely entertaining,” I remarked.
“Why not?” said Keith. “It’s the way I prefer to live. I struck a bargain with myself a while back that I was going to find the fun in everything that happened to me, or die trying.”
“You might manage both this time,” I said. Keith, predictably, merely chuckled.
Just before the last turn of the valley that hid the cabin I took the lead, reining Esmerelda to the right and up the arm of the wooded ridge which embraced it on that side. The horses picked their way along in single file over the heaviest blankets of dead leaves and pine needles I could find, keeping just on the far side of the ridge’s crest. The woods began to thin out as we worked our way cautiously around the head of the valley, and it was a full half-hour before we had completed the semi-circle and maneuvered our way down into a screening thicket halfway down the hill, directly behind the cabin.
Here Keith dismounted and handed his horse’s reins over to me. We’d had to face the fact that there was no way for me to take out an extra saddled horse without Sonny knowing it, so Keith would have to be on foot for his part of the rescue. I couldn’t help noticing that he was still favoring his injured leg, and it sent a curl of uneasiness through my stomach.
“Give me a few minutes’ start,” he said as he slid the rifle from its scabbard. “This is the touchy part…but if I mess it up you can still get away. If you hear any shots don’t wait around to see, just go.”
I realized the fingers of my hand that held Esmerelda’s reins were hooked tightly over the edge of my saddle horn, the knuckles stiff and white. “Even if the first part goes fine—what about afterwards? If one of them runs into you while you’re afoot…they may not know the territory or the horses, but I doubt either one of them is someone to laugh off at close quarters.”
“I was in France too,” said Keith briefly. He checked the ammunition chamber of the rifle in an automatic way that lent force to his words, then shifted it to one hand and dropped to a crouch to slide over the edge of the steep incline among the bushes in front of us. On the verge he paused for half a second, threw a look back at me with that quick provoking grin of his, and then disappeared.
I sat perfectly still for a few seconds. Then on an impulse I didn’t stop to analyze I threw my leg over the cantle of Esmerelda’s saddle, secured both horses, put the packet of ropes under my arm and followed him down the hill, hastily but carefully.
“Now what?” whispered Keith without turning his head as I caught up to him.
“I want to have a look at the horses,” I whispered back. Keith didn’t answer, whether because he didn’t object or because we were getting too close to the cabin to risk being overheard squabbling, and I stayed close on his heels. In a few seconds he stopped and pointed ahead. Above a thick screen of bushes I could just see the backs and switching tails of two horses, one brown and one sorrel.
“We’re in luck!” I whispered. “That’s Pennyworth on the left. Slip his halter when you turn him loose and he won’t let himself be caught for a week.”
Keith gave me a silent thumbs-up. He moved forward, the tip of his tongue stuck out in concentration, and I faded back into the brush—probably not as far as Keith wanted me to, but far enough that I figured I could still make it back to our horses if all hell broke loose at the cabin.
I tried to calculate how long it would take him. The serene mountain silence stretched out…surely it was taking too long already. I couldn’t see Keith or the horses, but straining my ears I thought I could discern a rustle of shaken leaves and the faint thump of a hoof.
The sounds exploded all at once: a horse’s shrill whinny, the cracking and thrashing of branches and the heavy pounding of hooves, which quickly receded. Then came voices from the cabin, the squeak and bang of a wooden door, and alarmed and annoyed shouts, which turned to wrangling argument as they too drifted away. This was my moment. I plunged down through the bushes and around to the side window of the cabin, took one quick sweeping glance through it to assure myself the cabin was empty of kidnappers, and scrambled up on the sill. The window was a little higher than I remembered, but I gripped the window frame, scraped for a toe-hold between the logs of the cabin wall with one boot, and heaved myself through and fell what felt like six feet to the dirt floor inside, banging both knees and jamming my wrist so hard it probably would have hurt a good deal if I hadn’t been wrought up to too high a pitch of excitement to feel it. I rolled to my feet and swung toward the bunk against the wall, and met a pair of wide, frightened eyes for a half-second as I groped in my skirt pocket for the penknife.
“Quick! Your hands!” I said breathlessly, caught at his bound wrists, and the small bright blade of the penknife sliced through rope. I dropped to one knee and cut the ropes around his ankles. All thumbs, ten thumbs, twenty thumbs, we both struggled frantically with the tangled ropes; it was like wrestling a small octopus. They dropped limp to the floor at last, and in one swift movement I caught up the whole frayed, knotted mess and flung it through the open window. I threw down the ropes I had brought in their place—twisted loosely and artistically with a few stray knots, to look at a glance as if the prisoner had manage to work himself free.
“Come on—hurry.” I caught hold of Riley Conover’s arm and pulled him up off the bunk. His legs and feet were numb from being bound so long and he staggered and fell; I gripped a double handful of his coat and dragged him up again. I panted, “The window—you go first!”
His legs were a little longer than mine; even floundering with limbs half useless, it was easier for him to get over the sill. He vanished with a confused tumbling sound and I scrambled after, the brown paper from the dummy ropes clutched in my teeth, and of course stepped on him in getting down. I helped him up again, snatched up the cut ropes and pulled him to follow me up into the woods at a run.
I know I slipped more than once climbing that slope, and I think Riley Conover fell at least three times, but somehow, breathless, dirt-smeared, his hair falling into his eyes, he made it up the hill behind me to our horses. I said, “Take the buckskin,” loosed both horses and swung up on Esmerelda, and glanced back to see that Riley had made it into the saddle before turning uphill. I spurred Esmerelda up the steep slope to the left, leaning forward with my face close to her neck, ducking the soft but stinging pine branches that whipped past my head, only able to spare a fleeting hope that my companion was evading them as well. Both horses strained every nerve, necks stretched forward, hooves scrabbling at the rocky soil, climbing, climbing, till we reached the top of the western ridge, and I drew rein. We were high above the cabin, in a tricky, shadowy world of dense feathery young pines and twinkling aspens—a little break in the trees owing to an exposed shoulder of rock on the hillside let in the sun, and though I couldn’t see down into the valley, I listened for a moment, feeling sure sounds from below would carry in the clear air. I thought I heard a very, very faint shout, some distance away, but carrying a note that made me smile a little to myself. The would-be criminals of the century were discovering that “the game is afoot” has a very different meaning when you are miles from anywhere.
I turned to take my first proper look at Riley Conover, who sat holding tight to the buckskin’s saddle horn, breathing as hard as if he’d climbed the hill himself. I don’t know what a millionaire’s son is supposed to look like on average, but at the moment the one I had rescued looked merely like a rather nice boy with soft brown hair, a white, scared, dirty face and good clothes the worse for wear. By the look in his eyes he wasn’t quite sure what to make of me. I couldn’t blame him: after days of close confinement and fear, an Amazon tumbling in the window and hauling him out into the wilderness could only be more unnerving.
I heard a sliding of loose stone in the trees just below us, as of someone climbing the ridge on foot; and in a moment, far sooner than I had expected to see him, Keith Phillips emerged from the young pines and sat down hard on the bare rock at our horses’ feet. He laid his rifle to rest beside him, holding one hand pressed to his shin in a way that made me guess his leg was throbbing, but looking very well satisfied with himself. “If they think those horses broke loose by themselves they’ll be the very dudest of dudes,” he said. “They had them tied up like the mainsail of a brig. I hacked up the branches a little on my way back; maybe they’ll think the horses kicked themselves loose.”
“Good enough,” I said, as I dismounted. “Sonny could tell the difference at a glance, but let’s hope they don’t call him in right away.”
Keith grinned. “They won’t have a chance for a while yet. The horses behaved beautifully—took off in two separate directions like they’d been told just what to do. I didn’t have to do a thing more after I stampeded them. The last I saw of our friends, they were sprinting down the valley hollering at each other about whose fault it was.” He made sure the bandage around his leg was still secure, and then stood up, glancing toward Riley Conover, who had followed my lead and slid uncertainly down from his horse. “I see everything went off all right on your end?”
I spit out a fragment of brown paper that still adhered to my tongue. “Perfectly. Of course it would have been nice to know we weren’t trying to beat the world record for getting out a window, but that’s no matter now.”
Riley Conover finally found his voice. “Who are you?”
“I’m Jeannette Pierpont. I live here. And this is Keith Phillips.”
“An innocent bystander,” Keith elaborated helpfully. “Or not so innocent, depending on who you ask. By the way, I suppose you are Riley Conover?”
“Yes,” said Riley. He sat down rather abruptly on a rock and put his face in his hands, and drew a deep breath. He said, “I didn’t think I was getting out of that.”
Keith and I exchanged a glance, hardly more than a second’s meeting of eyes, but which communicated more than we would ever say of satisfaction at what we had accomplished. After a moment Riley straightened up and ran the fingers of one hand through his hair and seemed to try and pull himself together a little, with the ghost of a brave smile that made me like him a good deal right away. Keith said, with a jerk of his head toward the valley, “What do you know about those fellows? Did you overhear much when you were with them?”
“Not too much. They didn’t discuss things right in front of me, so I only heard a few scraps when they were talking outside the cabin. I got the idea that my father was quibbling about the details of the ransom, and they thought the police had him stalling in hopes I’d be found first. They didn’t seem too worried about that, because they thought their hiding-place was perfect.” Riley was looking about him with wide, slightly dazed eyes as he spoke, taking in the brilliant sunshine and the panorama of wooded mountainside he suddenly found himself in the middle of. “They had some arguments with the cowboy who came to the cabin, because he was upset with them for not keeping me blindfolded the whole time. He didn’t think I should have seen their faces.”
Keith gave me a glance which I felt carried some meaning, but I couldn’t decipher it just then. Evidently it was something he didn’t want to say in front of Riley, for he merely said to him, “Feel all right? They didn’t hurt you?”
“No—they weren’t too gentle, but they didn’t beat me or anything like that. At first when we were in the car, they had me gagged so tight I thought I was going to choke to death. I was lying tied up on the floor of the car in back—I couldn’t move. But they finally took the gag off, I suppose once we’d gotten where they figured nobody could hear me, and after that it was easier. But they never took the blindfold off until I was inside the cabin.”
He looked around him again. “What is this place, anyway?”
“Pont du Claire—about half a day from Garrison, Montana,” I said. “Which reminds me, we’d better get moving. I’m sorry I can’t take you back to the house, but there’s reasons why. We’ll explain on the way.”
We mounted up again, with Keith’s buckskin carrying double, and once more I took the lead. I knew exactly where I was aiming for and exactly how I wanted to get there. Up the narrow ridge leading onto the main body of the mountain, and then westward through the pines and across open flinty slopes, with the peak looming high overhead on our right hand. And once we’d traversed nearly the whole breadth of the Pont, down again through the woods onto another ridge overlooking the green valley where I’d had breakfast with Jacot my first morning back home.
I’d weighed the relative merits of all my old childhood hidey-holes, and settled on this one, a nest of four-foot rocks atop the wooded ridge in which I’d played “fort” and hidden my youthful treasures for many a year. A seed from a pinecone dropped into a crevice by some squirrel had grown into a resolute sapling whose roots had with a mighty effort split one of the great boulders and come twisting out on either side, and which tilted over the nest of rocks like an umbrella, while senior trees formed a dizzyingly patterned canopy far overhead.
“If you keep quiet down in here, chances are no one will ever find you,” I told Riley Conover as I scrambled over the flat top of a rock and dropped into the center hollow. “They’ll probably never come this far anyway, because they wouldn’t imagine you got so far on foot. But if they do—”
“If they do?” said Riley, facing up to it bravely.
I hesitated, because this was the one part I wasn’t sure of myself. “If you hear someone getting close, and you think you’re better off running—I’d go up the mountain. They’ll be expecting you to try and get down. If you keep moving and don’t let them hear you, you can probably stay out of their reach so long as they’re not actually chasing you. But stay here and lie low if you possibly can.”
“Too bad there aren’t any loose boulders around to roll down at people,” observed Keith from the top of the biggest rock.
“Pay no attention to him,” I advised Riley, “it’ll only land you in trouble.”
“You should know,” said Keith cheerfully. He tossed his coat down to Riley, who must have been privately convinced he’d fallen from the hands of murderers into the hands of madmen. “You’ll want this; it gets cold up here at night.”
I put down the package of sandwiches and the full canteen off my saddle by the base of the rock. “We’ll be back as soon as we can,” I said. I met Riley Conover’s eyes for a second, and could see that they were still scared deep down, though he managed to smile. It must be a strain, after the brief flare of hope our rescue had given him, to know he wasn’t out of the woods yet in any sense of the word. I hated to leave him here alone. But—there were four kidnappers at large between here and Pierpont, and we couldn’t get past them by ourselves.
We left him there, sitting as still and quiet as a rabbit listening for a fox, and retraced our way along the ridge where our horses’ hooves would leave less sign on the rocky ground. At the head of the valley we doubled back beside a frothy little cataract and followed the creek down, quickly now wherever the terrain permitted, for the sun was climbing in the sky and we were approaching our self-imposed limit of two hours for the rescue. As we broke into the open—the same emerald-green creekside meadow where Sonny and I had panned for gold yesterday afternoon—a swift breeze raced toward us over the shimmering grass and rippled gently across my face, seeming to release my heart to exult in the knowledge that we had done it. I tossed my head to throw back a wisp of hair whipped into my eyes by the breeze and squinted at the sun, smiling almost without realizing it.
“You seem in much better spirits this morning, Miss Pierpont,” remarked Keith.
“Do I?” I said.
“You do,” he said. “In fact, if I could be sure—absolutely sure—that you were not carrying a concealed weapon, I might even venture a compliment on your appearance.”
I almost looked at him but caught myself in time. I kept my eyes on the sunlit rank of pines across the meadow as I spoke, gravely, but with the slightest twitch of lips. “But you can’t be sure.”
“No,” agreed Keith. “I can’t. But I will say I think adventure agrees with you.”
“Really.”
“Oh, yes. It’s a well-known tonic, though few people swallow it of their own accord. Nothing like a few interesting hoodlums to take one’s mind off one’s troubles.”
“You sound quite experienced,” I remarked.
“With hoodlums? Not particularly. But they seem to be as strong a flavor of tonic as anything else.”
I couldn’t help wondering, with a touch of resentment even in this peaceful moment, just how much of troubles someone so relentlessly cheerful could possibly have known. Of course he’d been in the war, but that was an experience common to thousands of young men. Some people, I reflected, seemed to live a charmed life even as they shared in the experience of common hardships along with everybody else.
We drew rein at the last stand of trees that blocked our view of the great meadow. “Here’s where we separate,” I said. “I’ll stick to Sonny again until you’ve managed to slip down to the bridge. Listen, you’d better wire to Deer Lodge for the county sheriff, too, in case the U.S. marshals aren’t quick enough. Whoever can get here first.”
Keith held the buckskin at a standstill for a minute, and bit his lip, “Jeanette,” he said, getting the name out a bit awkwardly, “I’ve been thinking about this, and I don’t exactly like it. Maybe it’s better if you go down for help instead. I don’t like leaving you up here with all that gang on the loose—and anyway, you know the people down there and can probably make yourself understood faster—”
“No, no, no. We worked this all out last night. The only way for this scheme of yours to succeed is if I go home and behave naturally. I’ve already planned what I’m going to do: I’m going to take my watercolors out on the terrace and paint all afternoon. I’ll be in full view if anybody cares to spy on the house, and I’ll look like I haven’t a care in the world. For all they know, I still haven’t got the faintest idea there’s anybody at the cabin, and I have to go on looking that way.”
“All right,” said Keith. “Since it was my idea, I guess I haven’t got a case. Cue overture for Act II: me as Paul Revere, and you as—Casabianca? No, that’s Riley, isn’t it.”
“I know. I hated leaving him up there. But we didn’t have much choice.”
“There wasn’t any safer place you could have found?”
I shook my head. “No…the house was out of the question. Sonny would find an excuse or an open window and have it searched before you could say Pacifico-Northwestern Mining Company. And I wasn’t keen on the sheep wagon either.”
“You couldn’t trust your herder?”
“I’d trust him with myself, easily,” I said, “but I don’t know if he’d be willing to do anything for a stranger. Besides, there is a risk involved, and I don’t think it would be fair to Jacot to put him in danger if he didn’t understand what was going on.”
“I thought you said he wasn’t half-witted, the way you told Barton.”
“Well, he isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with his mind—he just chooses what he wants to give his mind to, and has nothing to do with anything else.”
“Not so different from most people, really,” said Keith. “Not a bad thing, either, provided you don’t take it too far.”
I didn’t feel like exploring that bit of philosophy any further at the moment. It was my place to lift the reins across Esmerelda’s neck and go. But some impulse of perversity or mischief made me linger to say, “You never asked me why I ran away from California.”
Keith held up his hand with a slight shake of the head. “If you’re on the run from the law, I don’t want to know. I can only deal with one set of criminals at a time.”
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