An Ear for Danger - Brandel Marc. Страница 10

Using all the strength of his wrist and forearm, he whipped the rod forward and cast the lead sinker as far as he could across the lake.

It was the best and longest cast Pete had ever made. The sinker landed in the water just on the far side of the dinghy.

Jupe grabbed the line as it fell across the bow of the boat.

“Don’t pull on it,” Pete shouted to him. “It might snap. Hold on to the sinker.”

Jupe pulled the lead weight out of the water and held it carefully with his right hand.

Pete began slowly and cautiously to reel in the line. Taking advantage of every inch of slack, he put as little strain on the nylon thread as possible.

He didn’t try to pull the dinghy, in toward the shore. But when the line was taut, he saw with a surge of relief that the boat began slowly circling in toward him as though held on a leash. He managed to reel in another few feet of slack.

As the dinghy came closer to the edge of the lake, the current grew weaker. Pete reeled in again, shortening the leash. The circle grew smaller. The boat was heading to shore. It was almost free of the current. Jupe was almost safe.

He was still ten yards from the bank when the line broke.

He kneeled on the seat and snatched up one of the broken oars. Leaning over the side, he plunged it as deep as he could into the water. Down, down it went. Then it suddenly struck bottom. He pushed on it, poling as hard as he could.

With terrible slowness the boat lurched a few feet toward the bank. Jupe poled again. The dinghy heaved toward the shore once more. He was in less than a foot of water now. Jumping over the side, he grabbed the bow of the dinghy and waded the last few yards to the bank.

Pete ran to him and helped lift the boat ashore.

“Thanks,” Jupe said. What else was there to say?

“Biggest fish I ever caught.” Pete smiled. “I’ll ask Ascencion to grill you for lunch.”

“I just don’t want to be a frozen fillet.”

They both heard the sound of quick footsteps as Bob came running around the edge of the lake. After Jupe had left him, he had wandered down to the shore to see how Jupe was making out. He had seen Jupe drifting toward the falls but there hadn’t been a thing he could do to help him.

“Good casting,” he told Pete. “Any Hollywood producer would be proud of a piece of casting like that.”

Pete grinned. “Hey, I thought this was supposed to be The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, not Jaws! Besides, there’s no way I’m going to be the one to tell Aunt Mathilda the bad news.”

Jupe laughed with them. “Some pals!” He sat down and tugged off his wet sneakers and socks. After only a few seconds in the water, his feet were blue with cold. Lucky he hadn’t tried to swim for it.

While Pete reeled in his line, Jupe quickly explained what had happened. The phone call. The broken oars.

“Both blades snapped off?” Pete asked. “Just like that?”

“No, not just like that.” Jupe was looking at the smoothly broken ends of the oars. “They’ve been sawed through. So the blades would break off after a few minutes of rowing. Looks like someone was hoping I’d have a fatal accident.”

He looked at Bob.

“Did you see anyone?” he asked. “Anyone on the other side of the lake?”

Bob nodded, sitting down on the stern of the boat. “Yeah, just for a second,” he said. “I got a glimpse of a woman on the opposite shore. She seemed to be watching you, Jupe, as you were heading for the falls. Then she split.”

“What did she look like?” Pete asked. “No, don’t tell me. See if I can guess. A Mexican woman with long black pigtails and a purple shawl over her head.”

Bob shook his head. “No, she looked like an American to me. She was wearing blue jeans and shades and — ”

“And she had blond hair,” Jupe interrupted him.

Bob looked startled. “Have you got ESP or something?”

8

Leave It to Blondie

The next morning the three investigators set off into the mountains.

Dusty had brought a horse box back with him from Lareto, hitched on to the back of the Jeep. Ascencion caught one of the horses in the lower field. Pete helped him bridle and saddle it. The horse had been well broken in and made no trouble as Pete led it up the ramp into its new trailer home.

He stayed with it, brushing its coat, while Jupe and Ascencion went to get Blondie. Jupe was glad to have a little time alone with Ascencion. He wanted to try to get some more information out of the wary Mexican.

“That boat down there on the edge of the lake,” he asked, “is it always kept there?”

“Where else would you keep a boat? In the kitchen?”

“Who does it belong to?”

“The ranch.”

“Does anyone ever use it?”

“Sometimes.”

“What for?”

“Fishing.”

As usual in his attempts to pry information out of Ascencion, Jupe wasn’t getting very far. But there was still one thing he had to know.

The blond woman Bob had seen across the lake was almost certainly the American woman who had phoned Jupe. So she was probably also the one who had sawed through the oars. But how had she made the journey back and forth across the water? She would have had to do that early the previous morning or maybe during the night.

“If you wanted to get to that village on the other side of the lake,” he asked Ascencion, “how would you do it?”

“Walk.”

“But the lake’s very deep.”

“It isn’t deep up there.” The Mexican pointed toward the river that flowed into the upper end of the lake. “There are stepping stones.”

Jupe nodded. That seemed like a possible answer. The American woman had crossed to Dusty’s ranch on the stepping stones, tampered with the oars, then crossed back to phone Jupe from the village.

And if she was the same blond woman Jupe had glimpsed that first night in the moonlight, then Ascencion knew her.

“Do you have any friends in the village?” Jupe asked.

“I know the man who owns the bar, the cantina. He’s my cousin.”

“Any American friends? A woman with blond hair?”

They had reached the gate into Blondie’s field. Ascencion turned and faced Jupe. He looked the American in the eye.

“It was stupid what she did,” he said suddenly, his tongue loosened. “I told her it was stupid. But she’s very frightened. And when people are frightened, they sometimes do senseless things. I’m glad you weren’t hurt. But he touched Jupe’s shoulder.

“Be careful in the mountains, amigo,” he warned him. “It’s dangerous in the mountains.”

Blondie was galloping excitedly to meet Jupe. He opened the gate and she rubbed her muzzle against him. Jupiter scratched her behind the ears. Blondie was growing on him. She still wouldn’t let Ascencion touch her. The Mexican had to stand at a distance while he told Jupe how to bridle her with a rope.

“You’ll have to ride her without a saddle,” he explained. “No matter how much she likes you, she won’t put up with being saddled. She’ll roll over and over on the ground until she tears the cinch loose.”

Jupe’s eyes widened.

Dusty had loaded the back seat of the Jeep with their supplies. Sacks of beans and rice, oats for the horse, sugar and coffee, sleeping bags, a rifle. Pete and Bob had to squeeze in back among all the provisions. Jupe sat in front with the rancher, holding Blondie on a long lead. She trotted beside the Jeep and the horse box trailed behind it.

He looked back as they drove through the gate at the bottom of the field. Ascencion was standing on the porch. He raised his right hand just before Jupe lost sight of him.

It wasn’t so much a goodbye as a gesture of warning.

Winding up into the hills, Dusty had to drive very slowly, keeping his speed down to five or six miles an hour, so that Blondie could keep up with the Jeep without tiring herself. For the first hour they were on a dusty road littered with stones. Then that petered out into little more than a track threading between the pine trees.