Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman by Alan Edward Nourse Page B
Authors: Alan Edward Nourse
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"Robert Comstock."
"You ain't going to find him," the man said. "He ain't here."
"So I see. Do you know where he went?"
"Couldn't rightly tell you, buddy." The man looked at him closely. "You didn't hear about that? He's dead."
"Dead of what?"
"Pneumonia, so they say. Got sick up there in Seattle and just turned up his toes. Same with two or three of the others."
Frank walked over to the man, not sure he'd heard right. "You say Comstock died in Seattle? This Robert Comstock?"
"It was on the TV just this morning."
"Look, this is very important," Frank said. "He had about twenty people with him up there. They were camping, right? Do you know if any of the others have come back?"
"Well, sure, I think Art Toomey's kid, Pete, got back, and— say, who the hell are you, anyway?"
"Forest Service." Frank held out his government ID with his picture on it. "I'm checking out that camping party."
"You aren't planning to make trouble, are you?"
"Well, no, I'm trying to keep people out of trouble, and I need to know what happened up there."
"Well, you could check with Pete Toomey, they live up on Avondale Street, you can get the number out of the phone book. Then there were Ted and Vi Thompson and a couple of people from Colorado Springs . . ." The man went on to name half a dozen others, with their addresses or general locations.
Frank thanked him and got back into the car. Exhausted as he was, he felt an urgency to get going down the list that afternoon. It was no easy job. Canon City, thirty-five miles south of Colorado Springs, boasted only about 12,000 people, but it was a rural sprawl of a town, spread for miles across a flat basin surrounded by rough sandstone hogbacks and outcroppings to the north and south and the rising Rockies to the west. Frank checked a local map in a gas station, then drove a couple of miles west of town and turned right up Skyline Drive for a high view back at the town for general orientation. Then, back in town, he started searching out the streets and houses. The rental car was a lemon, a clutch that slipped on grades and brakes that grabbed so badly he nearly flew through the windshield whenever he touched them. Nor were the people he was looking for, when he began finding them, much'more cooperative. Mostly they looked vaguely frightened, closed up like clams or slammed their doors in his face the moment he mentioned Com-stock or the camping party.
Pete Toomey, the first one that he actually located, was sick in bed with a "bad cold," his mother said, and she wouldn't let Frank see him; the doctor told her, she said, to take him to the emergency room at the local hospital if he got any worse, and in any event, he wasn't in condition to talk to anybody right then. Ted and Vi Thompson, in a little cottage on the far side of town, cut him off in midsentence and slammed the door hard; when he persisted at the doorbell, Ted returned with a double-barreled twenty-gauge and told Frank, past a privacy chain, exactly how many seconds he had to pack into his car and get out of there. Two other tries were equally unproductive—one not home, with no response to repeated telephone calls, the other a house he couldn't find at all until he discovered that the town had two streets with the same name on opposite sides of the valley and he had wasted an hour searching up and down the wrong one.
By then it was eight o'clock in the evening, and Frank was beginning to see things at the side of the road that weren't there. No point going on without rest, he thought, got to have a clear mind, at least, just in case one of these people decides to break down and talk for a change. He found a room in town at the Sky Valley Motel, walked down the main street to a steak house for food and then returned to the motel and fell asleep on the bed with his clothes still on.
It was not until three the next afternoon that Frank finally struck pay dirt. Jerry Courtenay was just getting home from work as Frank drove up to
"You ain't going to find him," the man said. "He ain't here."
"So I see. Do you know where he went?"
"Couldn't rightly tell you, buddy." The man looked at him closely. "You didn't hear about that? He's dead."
"Dead of what?"
"Pneumonia, so they say. Got sick up there in Seattle and just turned up his toes. Same with two or three of the others."
Frank walked over to the man, not sure he'd heard right. "You say Comstock died in Seattle? This Robert Comstock?"
"It was on the TV just this morning."
"Look, this is very important," Frank said. "He had about twenty people with him up there. They were camping, right? Do you know if any of the others have come back?"
"Well, sure, I think Art Toomey's kid, Pete, got back, and— say, who the hell are you, anyway?"
"Forest Service." Frank held out his government ID with his picture on it. "I'm checking out that camping party."
"You aren't planning to make trouble, are you?"
"Well, no, I'm trying to keep people out of trouble, and I need to know what happened up there."
"Well, you could check with Pete Toomey, they live up on Avondale Street, you can get the number out of the phone book. Then there were Ted and Vi Thompson and a couple of people from Colorado Springs . . ." The man went on to name half a dozen others, with their addresses or general locations.
Frank thanked him and got back into the car. Exhausted as he was, he felt an urgency to get going down the list that afternoon. It was no easy job. Canon City, thirty-five miles south of Colorado Springs, boasted only about 12,000 people, but it was a rural sprawl of a town, spread for miles across a flat basin surrounded by rough sandstone hogbacks and outcroppings to the north and south and the rising Rockies to the west. Frank checked a local map in a gas station, then drove a couple of miles west of town and turned right up Skyline Drive for a high view back at the town for general orientation. Then, back in town, he started searching out the streets and houses. The rental car was a lemon, a clutch that slipped on grades and brakes that grabbed so badly he nearly flew through the windshield whenever he touched them. Nor were the people he was looking for, when he began finding them, much'more cooperative. Mostly they looked vaguely frightened, closed up like clams or slammed their doors in his face the moment he mentioned Com-stock or the camping party.
Pete Toomey, the first one that he actually located, was sick in bed with a "bad cold," his mother said, and she wouldn't let Frank see him; the doctor told her, she said, to take him to the emergency room at the local hospital if he got any worse, and in any event, he wasn't in condition to talk to anybody right then. Ted and Vi Thompson, in a little cottage on the far side of town, cut him off in midsentence and slammed the door hard; when he persisted at the doorbell, Ted returned with a double-barreled twenty-gauge and told Frank, past a privacy chain, exactly how many seconds he had to pack into his car and get out of there. Two other tries were equally unproductive—one not home, with no response to repeated telephone calls, the other a house he couldn't find at all until he discovered that the town had two streets with the same name on opposite sides of the valley and he had wasted an hour searching up and down the wrong one.
By then it was eight o'clock in the evening, and Frank was beginning to see things at the side of the road that weren't there. No point going on without rest, he thought, got to have a clear mind, at least, just in case one of these people decides to break down and talk for a change. He found a room in town at the Sky Valley Motel, walked down the main street to a steak house for food and then returned to the motel and fell asleep on the bed with his clothes still on.
It was not until three the next afternoon that Frank finally struck pay dirt. Jerry Courtenay was just getting home from work as Frank drove up to
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