Читать книгу The Sandy Steele Mystery MEGAPACK®: 6 Young Adult Novels (Complete Series) - Roger Barlow - Страница 20

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Fourth Touchdown

Sandy fought his way up from unconsciousness like a diver rising from the bottom of a dark sea. For a long time he lay without moving as he tried to sort out the sounds around him. He was dead, of course, he reasoned. Nevertheless, some of the voices he seemed to hear sounded familiar.

He opened one eye experimentally, prepared to snap it shut if he didn’t like what he saw. Mrs. Gonzales was bending over him with one of her eternal compresses. So was a man with a goatee who had a stethoscope clipped around his neck.

Sandy opened the other eye and turned his head, which seemed to weigh a ton.

He found that he was in bed and bandaged right up to his chin. Kitty, her pretty face badly scratched, was watching him too. So were John Hall and…yes, it was Pepper!

“But I ought to be dead,” Sandy whispered in great surprise. “What happened?”

“I conked Cavanaugh with his own flashlight,” Pepper said with pride. “Knocked him out. His shot went wild.”

“Thanks a lot, Pepper. Shake.” Sandy tried to hold out his hand but found he couldn’t quite make it.

“Easy,” said the doctor.

“Am I badly hurt?” Sandy managed to say.

“Nothing worse than loss of a lot of blood. I’ve pumped you full of plasma. You’ll be all right in a few days, but you mustn’t exert yourself for a while,” said the doctor as he started packing instruments into his little black bag.

“But I’ve got to know what happened,” Sandy said fretfully. “For Pete’s sake!”

“I called Kitty out of the woods after I hit Cavanaugh,” Pepper explained. “We got you into his car and brought you home as fast as we could.”

“And you’re all right, Kitty?” Sandy persisted.

“Just a few scratches and bruises.” She came forward to prove it and patted his bandaged shoulder.

“And…and Cavanaugh?”

“The crazy fool is still up there,” Hall spoke up. “Look.” He pointed through the bedroom window.

Sandy worked his head around in that direction. The great hump of the Window Rock was lit up as bright as day.

“Floodlights,” Hall explained as he saw the boy’s surprise. “They’re set up permanently to illuminate the Rock on Frontier Day and for other tourist events.”

“But…”

“The Navajo police turned them on. The whole force, as well as most of the Indians who attended the joint Council meeting, are up there trying to flush Cavanaugh out of hiding.”

“Ralph too?” Sandy’s eyes were shining.

“Yes.”

“Did the Council meeting come to anything, Mr.—John?”

“It broke up before any formal agreement was signed when we got your message, but…”

“Gee, I’m sorry about that.”

“Forget it. I only had the chance to say a few words to Ralph while they were organizing the posse, but he told me the tribes understand each other’s position now. It’s just a matter of ironing out details before they agree to put those boundary-line leases up for bids.”

“That’ll be great for you,” Sandy said, “but I sure wish I hadn’t had to…”

“Forget it, I said.” Hall patted his shoulder too. (Why did everybody have to pat him as if he were a dog? Sandy wondered crossly. Then he burst out laughing, although to do so hurt his face and chest. Why, he almost was a dog, wasn’t he?)

“Young man, you’re getting much too excited,” the doctor warned as he approached the bed, hypodermic needle in hand. “I’d better put you to sleep for a while.”

Sandy pushed him away.

“There’s something else,” he cried. “John, did Pepper tell you about the message Cavanaugh received from Washington?”

“I told him there had been a message, and what Cavanaugh said to Elbow Rock,” Pepper spoke up. “But I couldn’t hear the message itself. Cavanaugh was wearing the earphones.”

“Better forget all this for a while and go to sleep, Sandy,” said Hall. His face was gaunt with worry.

“No! You must listen now.”

Sandy wanted desperately to go to sleep, but he wouldn’t let himself give in. Slowly, forcing each word out of his mouth as though it weighed several pounds, he repeated the message to Cavanaugh as well as he could remember it.

“Good Lord!” Hall gasped. “This changes the whole picture. I must call Ken!”

He rushed to the telephone while Sandy’s eyelids closed in spite of his efforts to keep them open. He just had to have a few minutes’ sleep. White’s arrival at the cottage jerked him awake again. The Agent was wearing heavy boots and carried a pair of binoculars slung over his pudgy shoulder.

“What’s all this, John?” he demanded. “I was just leaving from the Rock when you called. I sent off an inquiry to the Department of Interior immediately, of course. Then this message came in from San Francisco. That’s what took me so long getting here. The message is for you, Sandy.”

“Read it to me, please,” the boy said. “I’m too weak to lift a finger.”

White ripped open the yellow envelope, got out his glasses, and read:

FINALLY GOT HERE STOP NEWSPAPER FILES SHOW THERE WAS CAVANAUGH ON STATE TEAM IN 1930 WHO MADE ALL-AMERICAN STOP BUT HE WAS CALLED BRICK NOT RED STOP ALL SPORTS PAGE STORIES ON BIG GAME SAY HE MADE FOUR TOUCHDOWNS REPEAT FOUR TOUCHDOWNS AGAINST CALIFORNIA STOP QUIZ TAYLOR

“Aw shucks,” Pepper said disgustedly. “That proves our Cavanaugh isn’t an impostor after all.”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” Sandy dragged himself up on one elbow despite Mrs. Gonzales’ efforts to make him lie still. “It proves no such thing!”

“But if he did make those three touchdowns he was always bragging about…” Pepper started to protest.

“Four touchdowns, the telegram says,” Sandy panted. “Now look, all of you. Maybe a real football player might add a touchdown to his record if he thought no one would catch him at it. But who would subtract a touchdown? Nobody. That’s who!

“Cavanaugh is a phony, I tell you. Whoever he really is, he wanted to impress people, and keep them from asking too many personal questions when he went to Valley View and started building his lab with the money he had stolen from Mr. Gonzales. He remembered that there was another Cavanaugh on the State team, so he took his identity. But the game had been played so many years ago that he got the details wrong, see? I’ll bet that, if we start digging into his past, we’ll find lots of other queer things.”

“We’ll need to do a lot of digging, too, to make any charges stick against him after we catch him,” White said grimly.

“What do you mean?” Hall exploded. “He’s guilty of attempted homicide, defrauding the Indians, disturbing the peace, and I don’t know what all else.”

“Oh, he’s guilty all right,” the Agent agreed, “but could you prove that to a jury, particularly out here where so many people still think that the only good Indian is a dead Indian?”

“Oh, you’re being an old woman, Ken,” the oilman snapped.

“Maybe so, John. Maybe so. But I’ve been in this business a long time. If Cavanaugh or whoever he is hadn’t lost his head, he would have come right down here and given himself up. Then his lawyers could have claimed that he was only defending his property from a prowler. No. No. Shut up and listen to me. People are awful touchy about property rights out here. Remember what they used to do to cattle rustlers—still do, for that matter, on occasion.

“And now about this message that Sandy heard: Cavanaugh’s lawyers would say prove it!’ And what real proof have we got? We’d be putting up the word of a minor who did prowl—I’m not blaming you, Sandy. You did the only thing possible and your idea of using the light beam to call for help was a stroke of pure genius—but, as I say, the word of a minor against the word of an established businessman who has a lot of friends in these parts.”

“Then you don’t think…” Hall was really shocked.

“I think we have a chance of making our charges stick with the help of the information Quiz has dug up, but I’m not even sure of that. Frankly, if the government doesn’t act faster than it usually does, I’m afraid all of Cavanaugh’s uranium lease bids may have to be accepted tomorrow. Me can claim, you see, that he put them in before the time that he is even accused of having received his illegal tip.”

“Wow!” Sandy stared at his employer with round eyes. “Well anyway,” he added, “the change in policy will give you a chance to develop your own uranium strike on the San Juan.”

“Fat lot of good that will do me if Cavanaugh ties us up with a libel and defamation suit,” Hall grunted. “Well, Ken, it looks as if we’re all in trouble unless…what was that?”

They all whirled toward the window.

Far up near the top of Window Rock, pinpoints of light were flashing. The clean, thin sound of rifle shots came down to them through the still desert air.

White snatched at his binoculars and trained them on the mountain. Long moments passed as he fiddled with the focus.

“The idiot!” he almost whispered at last. “The poor scared, hysterical fool. He’s making a run for it across the top of the natural bridge!”

Hall snapped off the room light. Somehow, Sandy managed, with Kitty’s help, to sit up where he could get a view of the bare slab of rock where he had almost been tempted to do what Cavanaugh was now trying.

They all held their breath in the darkness as they strained their eyes.

There he was! A tiny black shadow, bent nearly double as he raced madly through the floodlight glare.

“He’s going to make it. He’s going to make it!” Pepper shouted, his old loyalty to his boss coming to the fore. “Run, Red. Run!”

The fleeing man stumbled. He threw up his arms and reeled to the edge of the narrow rock bridge. Almost, he recovered his balance…

Then he fell, turning over and over slowly, for a thousand miles, it seemed.

Kitty and her mother screamed together.

“It’s better so,” White murmured at last as he put his glasses back in their case. “A clean death. Cavanaugh made that fourth touchdown after all.”