The Mystery of the Death Trap Mine - M. V. Carey [37]
Bob wondered. Had Manny and Gasper really managed to get to the top of the rise and beyond? Or had Gasper run the truck off the road in the darkness? Were Pete and Allie all right? Or were they lying below, caught in the wreckage of the truck, possibly hurt?
Bob hunched his shoulders.
Sheriff Tait must have sensed his fear. “Don’t worry, son,” he said kindly. “My deputy and another guy will come up the road in a jeep. If anything happened to that truck, they’ll find it.”
Jim Hoover took his craft low over the roofs of Hambone, and the searchlight probed the open areas between the rotting old buildings.
“What’s that?” cried the sheriff. “There’s a truck down there … behind the old Hambone mine works!”
Jupiter leaned forward. “That’s Mrs. Macomber’s pickup,” he said. “We found it abandoned there this afternoon. And we don’t know where Mrs. Macomber is.”
“What is going on around here?” demanded Sheriff Tait.
“I think I can explain it all later,” said Jupe. “Right now we’ve got to find Allie and Pete.”
“Well, if they got past Hambone they’re somewhere on the west slope, down on one of those little roads,” said the sheriff. “But I’m blest if I know which one I’d take if I were on the lam with a couple of kids.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” said Jim Hoover. The helicopter clattered on toward the west, leaving Hambone to its echoes and its ghosts.
**
Allie and Pete sat in the truck with Manny and Gasper and listened to the helicopter as it hovered above them. The searchlight on the craft swept the treetops and touched the empty road that led up to the ruined town. For an instant it touched the evergreen trees under which Gasper had driven the truck.
Allie Jamison held her breath. With all her might she willed the searchers in the helicopter to spot them. “Please see us!” she pleaded in her mind. “Please! We’re right down here! Can’t you see us?”
The sound of the helicopter grew fainter, then faded away. Gasper chuckled. “C’mon.
Let’s move!” He put the truck into gear, and it roared and shuddered as it lumbered out of the gully by the side of the road. Then, still without lights, they started slowly up to Hambone again.
“If we get away clean, I’m never coming back.” Gasper’s voice was morose. “Wouldn’t get us anything, anyway. If that Thurgood creep hasn’t found the stuff yet, he’ll sure start looking now. Don’t take no genius to figure out we were after something big.”
“How big was Gilbert Morgan’s share of that quarter of a million dollars?” said Allie.
Gasper stamped on the brake and the truck screeched to a stop. “Who said anything about a quarter of a million dollars?” he demanded. When Allie didn’t answer he fumbled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “We ought to dump these two someplace,” he told Manny. “Someplace where nobody will ever find them.”
Allie coughed loudly and waved cigarette smoke away from her face.
“A terrible habit, smoking,” she said. “Ruins your wind — in case you haven’t noticed
— and it does horrible things to your voice. And it wouldn’t do you any good to get rid of us. We know about the robbery in Phoenix five years ago. There were four crooks — three men and a woman. Gilbert Morgan was one of the men, wasn’t he? And you’re the other two. We know, and so do Bob and Jupe.”
Manny groaned. “The other two kids. And we left them behind!”
“Stupid of you, wasn’t it?” said Allie.
Manny held up the shotgun, and Allie was silent.
Soon they reached Hambone and started down the other side of the mountain. Gasper let the truck roll, holding it in check with the low gear.
After a time they came to a place where the main road curved off to the right, and a narrower, rougher way opened to the left. Gasper crushed a cigarette stub in the already overflowing ashtray and pointed to the main road. “Where’s that go?” he asked Allie.
“I don’t know,” said Allie, waving smoke away from her face. “Down to the desert, I suppose.”
“Take the side road,” ordered Manny. “I’ve got a hunch that by this time there