The Danger Zone and Other Stories

Shortly before noon Jane Marlow decided to invade the sacred precincts of Buck Doxey’s thoroughly masculine kitchen to prepare lunch. Howard Kane showed his respect for Findlay’s resourcefulness by keeping him covered despite the man’s bound wrists.

“Buck is going to hate me for this,” she said. “Not that he doesn’t hate me enough already — and I don’t know why.”

“Buck’s soured on women,” Kane explained. “I tried to tip you off. He was engaged to a girl in Cheyenne. No one knows exactly what happened, but they split up. I think she’s as miserable as he is, but neither one will make the first move. But for heaven’s sake don’t try to rearrange his kitchen according to ideas of feminine efficiency. Just open a can of something and make coffee.”

Findlay said, “I don’t suppose there’s any use trying to make a deal with you two.”

Kane scornfully sighted along the gun by way of answer.

Jane, opening drawers in the kitchen, trying to locate the utensils, inadvertently stumbled on Buck Doxey’s private heartache. A drawer containing letters, and the photograph of a girl.

The photograph had been tom into several pieces, and then laboriously pasted together and covered with Cellophane.

The front of the picture was inscribed: “To Buck with all my heart, Pearl.”

Jane felt a surge of guilt at even having opened the drawer, but feminine curiosity caused her to hesitate long enough before closing it to notice Pearl’s return address in the upper left-hand corner of one of the envelopes addressed to Buck Doxey...

It was as they were finishing lunch that they heard the roar of the plane.

They went to the door to watch it turn into the teeth of the cold north wind, settle to a landing, then taxi up to the low log buildings.

The sheriff and Buck Doxey started running toward the cabins, and it was solace to Jane Marlow’s pride to see the look of almost comic relief on the face of the sheriff as he saw Kane with the rifle and Findlay with bound wrists.

Jane heard the last part of Doxey’s hurried explanation to Kane.

“Wouldn’t trust a woman that far but her story held together and his didn’t. I thought you’d understand what I was doing. I flew in with the sheriff just so I could call the FBI in Los Angeles. What do you know? Findlay is a badly wanted enemy spy. They want him bad as... How did you make out?”

Kane grinned. “I decided to give Findlay a private third-degree. He answered my questions with a gun. If it hadn’t been for that horse...”

Buck’s face broke into a grin. “He fell for that one?”