The Steel Mirror by Donald Hamilton

Author:Donald Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: mystery, suspense, intrigue, espionage
Publisher: Dell
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

chapter FIFTEEN

He saw the station wagon waiting in the darkness as the bus rolled up to the false-front building that was Summit’s hotel and post office; the town otherwise consisting of two general stores, three saloons, and two churches. The saloons were lighted, as was the hotel; the stores and churches, dark. As Emmett got out he heard the clanking of a steam shovel in the bed of the creek that passed through the center of town. It surprised him that they were still working at it, after almost ten years. You’d have thought they’d have sieved all the silver out of that creek by now, he reflected.

“You’re Mister Emmett, I reckon,” a man’s voice said. He turned and shook hands with a small compact figure wearing boots, jeans, a blue shirt, and a finger-marked Stetson. By the light from the bus and the hotel he could see that the man’s face was brown and middle-aged. “Mack,” the man said. “Pete Mack. It confuses some people.”

The bus pulled away, leaving them standing beside Emmett’s piled luggage. Pete Mack spat out the dust it had kicked into his face and grabbed the bags; Emmett followed him with camera and fishing-rod case, feeling awkward and a little lost. He could feel the mountains all around him in the darkness, and his lungs were aware of the altitude.

“Still digging up that creek, I see,” he said in a conscious attempt to establish himself as an old-timer, as the station wagon bounced across the wooden bridge.

Pete Mack spat through the window beside him. “Young fellow just started it up again. Veteran. Expected to make a fortune by Christmas.” After a moment he added, “Last Christmas.”

Emmett glanced back at the great futile mounds of bluish clay illuminated by the lights of the shovel in the ravaged stream-bed bordered by cottonwoods. It seemed to him they were so obviously symbolical as to be merely silly. Then it occurred to him that he had no very strong position from which to criticize the other man; his own reasons for coming up here were not exactly brilliant. He held onto the door handle as the station wagon, in low, started up a dirt track that went up the mountainside at an angle that seemed to approach close to forty-five degrees.

“Is Johnny Parsons still around?” he asked. “Tall, redheaded guy… He taught my brother Dave how to use a rope.”

“Johnny lost a leg in the war,” the man behind the wheel said. “He’s got a job in a garage in Colorado Springs.”

“Dave got killed,” Emmett said. “In North Africa.”

“That’s tough,” Pete Mack said.

Mrs. Pruitt was on the porch when they arrived; a bulky woman in a clean print dress with a wide brimmed Stetson squashed down over her short gray hair.

“Leave his duffle in the car, Pete,” she said “… come on in here, young feller,” she said to Emmett.

Emmett was aware that the compact figure of the driver followed them onto the porch. Glancing back he saw the man waiting idly against a porch pillar, lighting a cigarette.

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