Bob stretched out behind a clump of sage and tried not to breathe too loudly. He raised his head and looked.
“Gimme that,” said one of the men. His voice was suddenly loud.
Bob saw the smaller of the two men reach out and take a flat bottle from the other. He poured something into his tin cup.
“You don’t need all of it, Bones,” said the larger man. He grabbed the bottle and poured a drink into his own canteen cup. Then he set the bottle on the ground.
The tent flap was pushed back and Lieutenant Ferrante came out into the sunlight. He scowled at the two men.
“Okay, Al,” he said. “I thought you weren’t going to drink while we’re here. You either, Bones.”
“What’s the harm?” said Al. “There’s nothing doing.”
“We don’t need any boozed-up guys,” said Ferrante. He seized the bottle and hurled it off into the bushes.
“Hey, you didn’t need to do that!” cried Bones.
“Yes, I did,” said Ferrante. “Suppose the guy on the gate goes back and tells old man Barron you’re drinking? How would it look? You’re supposed to be soldiers in the United States Army, remember? You’re answering the call of duty when your country is in danger.”
“Just what I’ve always wanted to do,” said Bones. His voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Save my country!”
“I know it’s hard for you–” began Ferrante.
“But it’s easy for you,” said Bones, “because you’ve got so much class! Only if you’re so smart, why do you need this end-of-the-world caper?”
“I need it for the same reason you need it,” said Ferrante, “and we’re going to do it my way or not at all. Now shape up or else beat it back to Saugus and stay there. This is a tricky operation. Don’t louse it up.”
“Why are we going to all this trouble?” demanded Bones. “We’ve got the muscle. Why don’t we just go in there and make old man Barron talk?”
“We’ve got muscle?” echoed Ferrante. “You think we’ve got enough muscle to take on fifty of Barron’s ranch hands? And he’s got an arsenal in his basement, remember? We wouldn’t just be dealing with a bunch of scared lettuce pickers.”
“Give them a small cut and they’ll change sides so fast it’ll make your head spin,” said Bones.
“No way,” said Ferrante. “I’ve talked to some of them. Met them in town, accidentally of course, in the Sundown Cafe or the penny arcade. The way they have it figured, so long as Barron keeps this ranch, they’ve got it made. They don’t want anybody to rock their canoe.”
“You think they’d fight for him?” Bones demanded.
“If you threaten what they’ve got, they’ll fight,” Ferrante declared. “My way’s the only way we’ll ever get the stuff. The old guy is beginning to buy it, so let’s keep cool. He’s no dimwit, you know, and he’s touchy as a rattlesnake in a rainstorm.”
The field telephone jangled again. Ferrante answered it.
“Anything up?” he said. His voice was flat and tense.
He listened, then said, “Okay. Let me know if there’s any change.”
He replaced the receiver and started towards the tent. “Barron’s on his regular afternoon tour of the ranch,” he told his companions. “The hands are working the fields. They’re trying to keep everything normal. It’s going the way we figured it would.”
“Sounds to me like it isn’t going at all,” said Al.
“Did you expect Barron to act like Chicken Little?” said Ferrante. “He’s not the type.”
He went into the tent and let the flap fall shut behind him.
“The guy thinks he’s Napoleon,” said Bones. He leaned back against a rock and closed his eyes. Al didn’t answer him, and after a minute or two Bob retreated up the hillside, going even more slowly and carefully than he had when he came down.
A few minutes later Bob was back over the fence in the comparative safety of Barron’s land. He found Pete under the trees, looking anxious.
“Did you find out anything?” Pete wanted to know.
“Plenty!” crowed Bob. “They’re crooks and they’re just about ready to fight one another and let’s go find Jupe!”
The two hurried back towards the ranch buildings. When they came out of the citrus groves on to Barron’s front lawn, they stopped dead and stared up at the big house.
Jupiter was standing on the roof of the front veranda. He was pressing himself close to the wall of the house and was scowling at a corner window only inches from his elbow. It was an open window; Bob and Pete could see the curtains blowing outward on the breeze. They could also see Jupe’s face. It was red with embarrassment–or perhaps with desperation.
“I think we’d better do something,” said Pete, “and we’d better do it quick!”
12
Jupe Has a Brainstorm
WITH A WAVE TO JUPE, Pete began to jog across the lawn to the drive. Bob followed, wondering what Pete had in mind. The taller boy kept moving until the drive took them between the Barron house and the humbler ranch house to a point where Jupe was no longer in sight.
Pete stopped suddenly and turned.
“Do that again and I’ll knock your block off!” he shouted at Bob.
Bob froze, his face startled. “Hey!” he said.
“Cut it out!” roared Pete. “You know what you did!”
Pete leaped at Bob and struck him lightly on the arm. “Come on!” he yelled. “Put ’em up!”
“Oh!” said Bob. “Oh yeah!” He darted at Pete, his fists flailing.
“Boys, you stop that!” called Elsie Spratt from the side window of the kitchen. “That’s enough! Stop it, you hear me!”
She clattered down the steps of the ranch house and waded into the battle, grabbing Bob by the arm and yanking him away from Pete.
“What’s this?” demanded a gruff voice from above.
The boys looked up. Charles Barron was scowling down at them from a side window in the second storey of the big house.
“It’s nothing, Mr Barron,” said Elsie. “Boys do this sort of thing all the time.”
Jupiter walked around the corner of the big house just then. He looked rumpled and soiled, but he was smiling. “Trouble?” he said.
“Not really,” said Elsie, and she went back to her kitchen. Barron drew in his head and slammed his window shut. Grinning at one another, the boys walked off behind the big house.
“Thanks for creating a diversion so I could climb down off that roof,” said Jupe. He sat down under a eucalyptus tree in the Barrons’ backyard and the other boys crouched beside him.
“I was alone in Mr Barron’s office when he came back to the house,” Jupe reported. “He started upstairs and there was no place to go except out the window on to the roof. Once I was on the roof I didn’t dare climb down. I didn’t know exactly where he was, and he might have seen me.”
“Did you find out anything?” asked Pete.
“I’m not sure. I have to think about it. What about you? Were you able to learn anything about the soldiers on the road?”
“You bet!” said Pete. “For openers, they lied. The field telephone they have is not out of order. We saw them use it twice. Then Bob went over the fence and got close to the tent. Bob, tell Jupe about that.”
“Okay,” said Bob. “I heard the second call that came in on the field telephone. That lieutenant asked someone what was new, and they told him that Mr Barron had just gone on an inspection tour.”
“Oho!” said Jupe. “So there is a conspiracy against Barron. And someone who works here is in on it!”
“Right,” said Bob. “Those guys in the jeep aren’t soldiers–none of them. The two who were sitting outside the tent were drinking whiskey, and when the lieutenant called them on it they gave a lot of backtalk. Soldiers don’t talk back to officers, do they?”
Jupe shook his head.
“The lieutenant said if they made any more trouble they could beat it back to Saugus, and one of them said he didn’t see why they were going to so much trouble when they had enough muscle to just walk in and force Mr Barron to talk.”
“That sounds ugly,” said Jupe.
“Sure does,” Bob agreed. “The lieutenant said Barron has an arsenal here and his ranch hands would be armed and they’d fight for him. Does Barron have an arsenal?”
“Yes, in his basement,” said Jupe. “I wonder why the lieutenant thinks the ranch hands would side with Barron.”
“Ferrante said he’s been feeling some of them out,” Bob reported. “Some of them go into town and Ferrante managed to talk with them. He says they like things here just the way they are, and he believes they’d fight to keep them that way.”
“Good!” said Jupe. “We can eliminate the ranch hands as suspects. They are what they seem to be–agricultural workers who are permanently settled at Rancho Valverde. They don’t want to be disturbed. But there must be a spy here if Ferrante knows about the guns in Barron’s cellar. And he knew Barron went out to ride this afternoon. Did Ferrante mention anyone on the staff? Detweiler? Aleman? Banales?”