The Long Ride (11 page)

CHAPTER

It was four that afternoon before the station wagon rolled out of Cheyenne.

When Allan Garwith returned to the hotel, Cicely had insisted once again that he see a doctor. This time he didn’t argue. The desk clerk recommended a clinic. Then Harry Wells and John Benson, accompanied by a fawning Miss Kennicot, returned to the station wagon. All the riders climbed into the car. Mrs. Landry drove to the clinic.

While the others remained outside, Cicely and Allan Garwith went in. They waited an hour, during which time Garwith sat silently opening and closing his hands. At last he went into the doctor’s office, alone.

The doctor, a brisk, capable-looking young man, checked Garwith’s blood pressure and pulse. He looked into Garwith’s eyes carefully with a light. He questioned him at length and finally said, “I think you’ve just got a bad case of nerves. Any particular reason for it?”

Garwith shook his head. “Maybe just making this trip. I got to worry about getting a job when I get to California. I guess I’ve been worrying about that.” He was careful, despite the raw feeling of extreme nervousness, to look the doctor in the eyes when he spoke, careful to make his voice sound extremely sincere.

“Well,” the doctor said, “perhaps you’re just worrying too much. Things always work out, don’t they?”

Garwith nodded. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“I’ll give you a couple of things to take. Some tranquilizers, a few sleeping pills.” The prescription was written. Garwith returned to the waiting room.

“What did he say?” Cicely asked anxiously.

“The altitude,” Garwith said shortly. “Pay these people and let’s get out of here. And give me some money, will you? You stripped me back in Loma City, do you know that? What do you think I’m going to do with it? Spend it on wild women?”

“I’m sorry,” Cicely said.

“Don’t be sorry. Don’t be anything. Just pay the broad at the desk over there and let’s get these goddam pills.”

Meekly Cicely paid at the desk. Mrs. Landry drove them to a drugstore. There was a forty-five minute wait for the drugs. When the prescription was finally filled, Cicely and Allan Garwith returned to the car. “Are you feeling better now?” Mrs. Landry asked. “I certainly hope so, poor boy.”

“How about swinging around by that park across from the hotel again?” Garwith said. “I’ve got to take some pills—there’s a fountain in there.”

“We’ve got some water in the car—” Mrs. Landry began.

“I don’t want to hold you up,” Garwith said. “But I need a little air before we start again. I mean, I’m sorry about it, but I’ve got to have some air first. It’s okay if you go without us. We’ll manage somehow.”

“Now don’t be ridiculous!” Mrs. Landry said, and drove to the park. “Now you just relax. We’ve got plenty of time, haven’t we, everyone?”

Garwith walked into the park with Cicely. He took one of the tranquilizers with water from the drinking fountain. He closed his eyes and thought of Harry Wells sitting directly behind him every time he was in that car. He looked across the park and saw Wells now leaning against the side of the station wagon, staring at him. Christ, he thought, and took another tranquilizer.

“Did the instructions say two, Allan?” Cicely asked, blinking with worry.

“Go over and tell them I’ve got to rest before we take off.” He turned abruptly and walked across the glass to a point behind one of the green benches. He lay down on the grass, on his back, and covered his eyes with his arm.

He waited for the pills to go to work. Mentally he damned the fact that he’d had only enough money to send that package on by regular mail. That Landry woman really might beat the postal service this time. But that wouldn’t happen if he stalled long enough.

He would like, he thought, simply to junk the station wagon altogether. Buy Cicely a one-way ticket back to Loma City on the bus. Tell her to stay with her parents until he got located. Take all the money they had and use a train for himself to Reno. There was just about enough to do that, he figured.

But if he did that, and Wells really was the one who’d lifted the money from the bank, then he would be putting the finger on himself. So far Wells, if he were the one, didn’t have any more on him than he had on Wells. But busting out that way would be like a red light blinking in front of Wells’s eyes. And the thought of the man on his back from that point on, searching for him, coming out of nowhere some day, some minute, was too much. Wells had seen him pick up and mail a package, but that was all, so far. Thus, if he stayed on with the ride, then got the money, he would be able to…

But what, he thought, was he going to do when he got to Reno? How would he handle it then, even if he slowed this up enough so that the money would absolutely be there by the time they arrived?

I don’t know, he thought, realizing that the pills were going to work finally. I don’t know anything. And he felt, for the first time, a relaxation. It got into his system and spread and left him with a pleasant, detached feeling. In a moment, his nerves finally calming, he dozed. He awakened when Cicely came over and sat down beside him. She put her hand comfortingly on his forehead. He didn’t protest. He lay there until three-forty-five, really not caring at all. Then finally he stood up and looked at the station wagon.

Some of the others were out of sight. But Harry Wells was still standing beside that wagon, just as though he hadn’t moved, staring straight at him. The hell with you, Garwith thought. He walked back to the fountain and took two of the sleeping pills. What do I care about anything? He said to Cicely, “Let’s roll it, what do you say? I’m sick of this town.”

After John Benson had followed Allan Garwith back to the station wagon that morning, Miss Kennicot clinging to his arm like an eager oversized bear cub, he’d known that he should have counted on Miss Kennicot even more accurately than he had. But there was, he knew, nothing he could do about that now.

When they’d driven to the clinic, he was able to walk down the street, into a store and telephone Dornig. He instructed Dornig to check the post office for anything bearing Garwith’s name. When Allan Garwith had stretched out on the grass in the park, he’d made a second call to Dornig from the public booth in the lobby of the hotel.

Dornig reported, “It was a package. Garwith picked it up at the general delivery window, then remailed it. But the clerk on the mailing window doesn’t remember where it was going. The package was gone by the time we got on it. But it had to be shipped out on a westbound train. Nothing has gone east in that time. And it was first class, the clerk remembers that much. He said Garwith readdressed it. Crossed out the old address and stamps and turned it over and put on the new name and address. The clerk said he couldn’t accept it that way, so he put some paper tape over the old stamps and address. But he doesn’t remember the name it was mailed to or where.”

“But its sure going west?”

“Yeah. The package was the right size for the dough. But there’re a lot of packages the right size, even with brown paper tape on them. We’ll start the check. I’ll alert all the points on your route. If he figures to pick it up while he’s on this ride of yours, and he’s sent it to his own name again, maybe we can nail that money. But they’ll have to contact you before they fool with it.
If
they find it.”

“If,” John said. “Wells was right behind him. Maybe they’re in it together. But maybe Garwith’s trying to keep it out of Wells’s hands. Maybe that’s why he mailed it again.” He paused. “If the package is located, maybe we can put a dummy in its place and save the money no matter what happens. But I don’t know. I don’t want just that kid and the money—I want Wells too.”

“Well,” Dornig said, “remember the kid could have sent the package anywhere. It’s a large postal service. But it ought to be on one of two trains going west. We’ll alert both of them. If we get the package, you’ll know it when you check in, wherever that is. Good hunting, Benson.”

Allan Garwith, with Cicely, returned to the station wagon at three-fifty, when the sun had burned away all of the mountain coolness of the night before. A short conference was held by the riders before Mrs. Landry started the engine.

“It’s late,” Mrs. Landry said. “But remember it’s summer and we’ve got a lot of good light left. I can make ever such good time once I get out on that Great Divide.”

“I just think we ought to go on!” Miss Kennicot said, laughing heartily. To John Benson’s dismay, she had climbed into the seat previously used by Margaret Moore, just in front of him. Margaret Moore now sat up front with Mrs. Landry. Harry Wells was still at John’s left. The Garwiths were sitting in the same place. Allan Garwith had stretched out, leaning his head back against his seat. He looked calm, even sleepy, John saw. He’s either certain he is going to get away with this, he thought, or those pills have gotten to him.

“What do you think?” Mrs. Landry said to Cicely. “Will the poor dear ride all right now?”

Allan Garwith had closed his eyes and seemed to have fallen asleep. “Well,” Cicely said, “I think we’ve caused an awful lot of trouble. But I think everything will be all right now. Whatever everyone else wants to do is fine with us, I’m sure.”

“Mrs. Moore?” Mrs. Landry asked.

“Somehow,” Margaret Moore said, “I’m getting weary of Cheyenne.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Landry said. “Mr. Benson?”

“I’m ready,” John said.

“Mr. Wells?”

“Let’s move it,” Harry Wells said.

Seven minutes later, Mrs. Landry rolled past the western city limits. Once again she floored the gas pedal. The station wagon’s nose lifted. Everyone was pushed back into their seats. Then Mrs. Landry was whipping the car down the highway at a little less than eighty-five miles an hour.

“Would it bother your husband if we all sang again, dear?” Mrs. Landry called to Cicely.

“I’m sure it wouldn’t,” Cicely said. “I think he’s sleeping very soundly.”

“All right,” Mrs. Landry said happily. “What’ll we sing this time?”

“Why don’t we just warm up with ‘Friends’ again?” Miss Kennicot shouted. She had paled a little, John noticed, and was gripping her seat with white-knuckled tension. She laughed uproariously, then pealed into the song at the top of her lungs.

Allan Garwith, John Benson saw, had begun to snore softly. When Mrs. Landry reached the Great Divide, she really opened the station wagon up.

CHAPTER

The singing had gradually died as Mrs. Landry took Granite Canyon, Laramie, Medicine Bow and Rawlins like a skier running down a hard-packed snow slope. The riders simply settled into silence as she sent the car winging swiftly over the purple sage-clustered land, as the sun yellowed and dipped closer to the horizon ahead.

Everyone but the Garwiths had eaten lunch in Cheyenne while Allan Garwith had been stretched out on the grass in the small park. Cicely had bought sandwiches during that time, and now had them ready in the event her husband awoke and was hungry, though she had not eaten herself. This fact obviously bothered Mrs. Landry. After covering the basin in what was undoubtedly one of the fastest crossings in Wyoming history, she began talking of dinner. “You can’t go without fuel, you know!”

“This friend of mine I mentioned,” Miss Kennicot said, “Alice Gregson? You remember? Well, she said there’s a perfectly wonderful little roadhouse to eat in in Green River, just as cheap as anything, and awfully good food. Let me look it up in the Three A’s. Here it is. It’s right in Green River. That isn’t far ahead is it, Mrs. Landry?”

They arrived in a half hour. It was dark when the station wagon stopped outside the roadhouse. Everyone climbed out except Allan Garwith.

“My goodness,” Mrs. Landry said, peering at him stretched back on the seat, “he certainly sleeps, doesn’t he?” She looked at Cicely. “Do you want to wake him up, dear?”

“Well,” Cicely said nervously, “maybe, since he’s sleeping so hard, I shouldn’t. I mean, the doctor gave him some pills and maybe it wouldn’t be good to wake him.”

“All right, dear. You just come in with the rest of us, and let him sleep.”

“Maybe I should stay out here and be with him, in case he does wake up.”

John Benson watched Cicely Garwith carefully. He had felt certain from the beginning that however Allan Garwith was mixed up in this, Cicely was innocent. She had to be a superb actress to be anything else. And the background Ray Hannah had given him on her did not indicate that she was anything but what she seemed to be. He was even more certain now that whatever Allan Garwith was doing, she had no part of it.

“Now, dear,” Mrs. Landry said in her best mother’s tone, “I know you haven’t eaten lunch. I don’t know if you’ve even eaten breakfast.”

“We had it in our room. I really haven’t been hungry since.”

“Well, it isn’t good for you not to eat all day. Now that young man’s going to be all right. If he wakes up and gets hungry, he can eat those sandwiches you have. Now you come inside with us.”

Still Cicely looked hesitant, and John Benson thought: It’s a matter of money, as much as her concern for him. Garwith hasn’t spent any of that bank money, or he would have known it by now. She just can’t afford very much.

He said, smiling at the girl, “Would you have dinner with me, Mrs. Garwith? Let’s make your husband jealous, shall we? I think grooms take too much for granted. Do I have a date?”

Cicely looked at him for a moment in surprise, then a smile broke forth, bright, appealing, so honestly direct that it was irresistible. She laughed. “I think you’re quite right, Mr. Benson. I think I should keep him a little jealous.” There was a glow in her eyes, he saw, as though what he’d just said to her was the most pleasant thing she’d heard in a good while.

He gave her his arm. They all moved into the roadhouse, leaving Allan Garwith sleeping deeply, snoring softly.

He awoke a few minutes after they had gone inside. He looked around the interior of the otherwise empty station wagon, light from the neon of the roadhouse illuminating it. He then looked out at the roadhouse and saw the others at a booth by a window. He realized that the station wagon was clearly visible from that window. He shrugged and shifted his position into one more comfortable. He closed his eyes and in a few moments was snoring softly again.