Goodwin Harold Leland
The Scarlet Lake Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story

CHAPTER XI
Deadrock Ogg, Mayor

At dawn's first light Rick and Scotty began the search for the distributor cap and rotor. The boys searched methodically, taking in the area far beyond throwing distance, on the assumption that whoever had taken the two essential parts might have walked a distance away from the jeep before throwing them as far as he could.

"It's not here," Rick said positively.

Now all that remained was the town itself. They walked back to the town, Rick carrying the water bag and Scotty the canteen. At least their water hadn't been dumped.

Scotty paid careful attention to the vehicle tracks in the dust of the road.

"It's pretty clear," he pointed out at last. "Here's where the sedan was parked. And here's where the other vehicle parked. See how this area is scuffed up? They made quite a few trips, carrying something from the side of the vehicle to the rear of the sedan, probably stowing the stuff in the luggage compartment. And, from the tire tracks, I'd say the vehicle from the base was a light truck."

"Like Mac's truck?" Rick asked.

"Maybe. Anyway, whoever it was had to go through the guard gate, and the run might even be chalked up on the board. Not to here, of course, but maybe to Careless Mesa or Dry Spring."

"We can check when we get back," Rick said. "Come on. We'd better take the town apart and see if the rotor and distributor cap are here."

It was midmorning before they gave up the search, and both of them were exhausted.

"Now what?" Rick asked wearily. He had never in his life felt so badly in need of sleep. Except for a few brief catnaps in the jeep, he had been awake continuously for forty-eight tense hours.

Scotty scratched his head. "There are a few buildings we haven't searched yet."

"No, but they wouldn't be in those. If the men were going to leave them here, they'd drop them nearby and not hide them in one of the distant buildings. But I suppose we'd better look, anyway."

"We'd better. I'm fresher than you are. Go stretch out in the hotel lobby and I'll look."

Rick was too tired to argue. He walked into the comparative coolness of the rickety old hotel and found a section of undamaged floor. He removed his shoes, stretched out, and was asleep almost at once. In a short time Scotty joined him after an unsuccessful search.

When Rick woke again it was dark and Scotty was stretched out beside him, sound asleep. He turned over and went to sleep again.

Both boys woke up, stiff and bleary-eyed, as dawn light flooded the hotel. They grinned at each other.

"I must have slept for two days," Rick said.

"Not quite. Just about sixteen hours. But you needed it, and there wasn't anything to do."

"We're okay so long as the water lasts, but then what?" Rick knew without even putting it into words that they could never walk to civilization. Their water would run out and heat exhaustion would get them before they were halfway to anywhere. The base was closest, and it was over thirty miles away, across desert and waterless mountains.

Scotty walked over to what had once been the hotel desk and held up a can. "Want some breakfast?"

Rick was at his side in an instant, examining a can of tomatoes. "Where did you get it?" It was shiny, the label unfaded.

"Down the street. In one of the houses. Someone comes here now and then, I guess. There are blankets, a sleeping bag, and a small supply of food."

Rick's brows knitted. "Shouldn't we have been standing guard?"

"I thought about it," Scotty admitted, "but I figured there wasn't much sense to it. We'd welcome friend or foe at this point. Anyway, I don't think whoever hangs out here is part of the gang."

"Why not?"

"Wouldn't the gang have been at his hide-out instead of here in the hotel? Besides, this looks like a cache for just one man."

Rick had to admit that made sense. "Do you suppose he's here now?"

"I doubt it. I'd have heard a car if one came into town last night. I wasn't sleeping that soundly."

"Well, I'm grateful to him, whoever he is. Let me at that can." Rick searched in his pocket and found his scout knife. He opened the can-opener blade and got to work. In a moment they were taking turns drinking the slightly acid, refreshing juice and pouring whole tomatoes into their mouths.

An amused voice spoke from the doorway. "Looks good."

Standing on the porch was a figure in worn but clean denims and miner's boots. His face was weathered from years in the desert sun. His hair was grizzled where it could be seen under an ancient and disreputable flat-topped, broad-brimmed hat. His eyes, under shaggy brows, were a clear, twinkling blue. The man held a rifle; the muzzle pointed unwaveringly at the boys.

"That your jeep in the wash?" he asked.

"That's ours," Scotty affirmed.

"Mislay a few parts?"

"You might say so," Rick agreed. "Who are you?"

"I'm the mayor of Steamboat."

The boys started. "The mayor?" Rick echoed.

"Yep. Likewise the sheriff. As mayor, I welcome you. As sheriff, I want your names and business."

The boys gave their names, then Scotty asked, "How did you get into town? I didn't hear a car."

"Good reason. I didn't drive. Now, what are you doing here?"

"Waiting to be rescued," Rick said on impulse.

"Reckon that can be arranged. You drove in, hey? But you didn't drive into town. Instead, you parked in the wash. Now, as sheriff, I find that mighty interesting. You wouldn't have parked there unless you didn't want to be seen. Only I suspect you were seen, and whoever did the seein' walked off with your distributor cap and rotor. Unless you have 'em, which I doubt. If you had 'em you wouldn't need rescuin'. Correct?"

"You're telling it," Rick replied courteously.

"Yep. Also, you're from Scarlet Lake, and you're nosy. Day before yesterday you got nosy at Careless Mesa and nearly got pinked. Are you busybodies, or have you got a right to snoop?"

Rick stared at the man. He had a strong suspicion they were looking at the mysterious rifleman. Since the man hadn't come into Steamboat by car, he must have come by horseback. The rifleman had departed from Careless Mesa by horseback, too.

Scotty spoke up, in response to the man's question. "You might say we're busybodies. We're curious about everything."

"Uh-uh. Toss me your badges."

Rick's eyes met Scotty's. He shrugged. There was no reason for not complying. Both boys detached their badges and tossed them across the floor. The man picked them up, examined them closely, then tossed them back.

"All right. Come on with me and we'll have some breakfast." He tucked the rifle under his arm, turned, and walked out. As the boys followed, they cast puzzled looks at each other. The man led them to the cache Scotty had found. A saddled horse was standing in front of the house.

"I've seen that horse before," Scotty said. "It was nice of you to wave at me up at Careless Mesa."

The man grinned.

Rick asked bluntly, "Why did you shoot at us?"

Twinkling blue eyes surveyed him. "Didn't. If I'd shot at you I'd have scored a few hits."

"You were warning us off," Scotty said. "Were we getting too close to something?"

The man tilted his hat back and chuckled. "Mighty curious pair, I'd say. No, son. But if you stayed around, I wouldn't get close to what I wanted to get close to. What's more, I figgered you weren't just tourists. You had a purpose in being at Careless Mesa. Your actions told me that, and I didn't want you there."

"We might have reported the shooting," Rick said carefully. "You could have gotten into trouble. Why didn't you just ask us to leave?"

"That would have brought questions I didn't want to answer. Why didn't you report it?"

That stopped Rick. They might have reported it, if there had been more opportunity to go into detail with John Gordon.

Conversation lapsed. The man filled a coffeepot from a water bag, brought out a propane-powered single-burner camp stove, and started the coffee going.

In a short time a simple breakfast of fruit juice, crackers, cheese, and coffee was ready. Then, as he juggled a hot mug of coffee, Rick said, "We're mighty grateful, sir. But we can't thank you properly when we don't know your name."

The man studied them again, over the lip of his coffee mug. "When did you boys get to Scarlet Lake?"

Rick told him. There was no reason to conceal it.

"Uh-uh. I figgered you were pretty new. Now tell me exactly what happened here last night."

The boys hesitated.

Rick asked, "Are you just being curious?"

"No. I've got a reason, and it's a good one."

Instinct told Rick that the man was more than he seemed, but that he was in no way a thief or law-breaker. Briefly he sketched the events of the previous night without going into the reasons for their own actions. Scotty filled in a few details.

"All right. I'm Deadrock Ogg. Besides being the mayor and all the other city officials of Steamboat I'm a prospector. Last night I was doin' a little prospectin' and I came up with pay dirt. You saw what happened here. Well, I kind of figgered in advance what was going to happen, and I waited on the turnoff to Pahrump Valley. A sedan went by me pretty fast, but not so fast I didn't get the license number. Mostly because I was lyin' at the roadside waitin', and interested only in that."

"But the sedan traveled without lights."

"Not past the turnoff it didn't. Road's too curvy, and in too much shadow. That's why I was there. I knew they'd have to turn on lights."

It was Rick's turn to give Deadrock Ogg his own question back. "Who are you, Mr. Ogg? Are you a busybody? Or do you have a right to snoop?"

Deadrock Ogg chuckled. "The answer you gave me is good enough. Now, I'm going to lend you a distributor cap and rotor."

"Where are you going to get the parts?" Scotty asked.

"My own jeep. I've got one cached just above here. Now, when you get back to Scarlet Lake, you see Tom Preston right away. You know who he is. Tell him exactly what you told me, and what I told you. And give him the number I'm goin' to write down for you. Then you ask Tom to send a plane back to drop off my cap and rotor. And tell him to send a walkie-talkie, too.

"Now, I got a real good idea what game you boys are playin' and it's fine by me. Only don't get into my game. Stay on the base. You mean well, but you could cross me up when it would hurt most. Some day, after we have the one we want, we'll compare notes. Now let's get goin'. You kids are goin' to have a long, long drive. I'm sendin' you home by way of Pahrump Valley."

"It's shorter directly back to the base," Scotty objected.

"Sure. And you'll attract more attention that way. Go through the valley and back to Route 95, and you'll enter from the front gate. Then who'll know you didn't spend the night in Vegas?"

It took only ten minutes to get the parts from Deadrock's jeep, which was parked in a ravine, invisible to anything except a low-flying plane. They said good-by to the "prospector" at the edge of town.

"Got the map in your heads? You won't get lost?" Deadrock asked.

"We'll be fine," Rick assured him.

"All right. Get goin'. And, boys – look out for sidewinders!"

CHAPTER XII
Servomotors Missing

Rick and Scotty took time to shower and change, then left on their prearranged errands. Scotty headed for his own department, to check all travel to the north since the Orion firing. Rick set out to find John Gordon.

The Spindrift scientist was not in his office, nor could Rick find him around the base. Finally he took the jeep and headed for the firing area.

There was considerable activity down on the lake bed. At a pad close to the blockhouse a tower was under construction. That was the launching tower for Cetus. But of even more personal interest to Rick was the presence of a gantry crane at a third firing pad where one of the special rocket-transport trucks was just putting the first stage of Pegasus into place!

It was at the Pegasus pad that he found Gordon, in conversation with Gee-Gee Gould, Dick Earle, Frank Miller, Cliff Damon, head of the instrumentation section, and Lars Jannsson, head of the Pegasus propulsion section.

"We'll start security immediately," Gordon was saying as Rick walked up. "Tom Preston will arrange for a guard around the clock. We'll also arrange an exchange-badge system, so no one gets inside the fence without handing in his own badge and getting a special one. That way, we'll have absolute control on who comes and goes."

Gee-Gee Gould saw Rick and dropped a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Rick and I will do the final electronics check, just as we did on Orion."

Rick looked at Gordon. "Did you say something about a fence, sir?"

"I did. Look over there." Gordon pointed to a crew with a mechanical posthole digger that was just starting work, then gestured to sticks with red flags that formed a huge box around the pad. "That's where the fence will go. And there will be only one gate."

Rick took advantage of the brief exchange with Gordon to wink at the scientist. Gordon picked up the cue quickly. "Can I ride back to the base with you? I rode down with Dick, but he's not ready to leave yet."

"Glad to have you, sir," Rick replied.

On the way back to the base Rick told his story in detail, starting with Scotty's and his own first suspicions about Mac and Pancho and ending with their rescue by Deadrock Ogg.

John Gordon remained silent for long minutes after Rick had finished. Finally he said, "You've certainly stirred up something, Rick, but I don't know how it fits into the over-all pattern. You and Scotty meet me in thirty minutes in my quarters and we'll see."

Rick dropped the scientist off at his office, then went to find Scotty. His pal was just emerging from the big maintenance shed. "Anything new?" Rick greeted him.

"Mac and Pancho took their truck out last night," Scotty reported. "The timing was right. They could have been driving the second vehicle that arrived while we were getting loose in the jail."

Rick looked at him curiously. "Funny. Why would they take a truck out? I mean, what legitimate reason could they have?"

"They made one. Mac told the dispatcher they'd left an important piece of gear at Careless Mesa."

So their hunch about Mac and Pancho had been right! But Rick still couldn't figure out how they were involved.

"How did you find out?" he asked.

"Easy. I checked the board. The dispatcher was sitting right there, so I just kind of wondered aloud what a tracking team would be doing off the base at night. He's a talkative sort, anyway, so he just handed me the dope."

Exactly twenty minutes later Rick and Scotty walked through the door into the barracks in which John Gordon had his quarters. They hadn't been inside before, although they had taken the precaution of locating it in advance. It wasn't like their barracks. Instead, it was divided into a series of individual rooms, occupied by the chief executives of the base.

Gordon was waiting, and with him was Colonel Tom Preston. Preston shook hands with them.

"Apparently John was right," he greeted them. "You two do have a knack of sniffing things out."

Rick looked at the thin partition. "Is it okay to talk here?"

"It is now. I've checked. The occupants of nearby rooms are out. We'll be able to hear if anyone comes in."

Rick immediately launched into a recital of their activities since arriving in Las Vegas. Now and then Scotty elaborated. A few times Preston interrupted to ask for clarification on a point or two.

"Good," he said when they had finished. "I'll see that Deadrock gets his parts back."

"Who is Deadrock Ogg?" Scotty asked.

Preston smiled. "Quite a character, isn't he? Normally he's a Forest Ranger. At the moment he's on loan to me, serving as my outside security officer. He did a good piece of work, getting that license number. We'll hand it to the FBI bureau in Las Vegas and they'll take it from there."

"He must have had advance information, to be at the right spot to get it," Rick observed.

"No more than you had," Preston told him. "We reached the same conclusion that you and Luis Hermosa did, about how stolen goods could get off the base. We've been watching from the inside, and Deadrock has been watching at the Steamboat end."

"Then you already knew about Mac and Pancho leaving last night," Scotty stated.

"Yes. But we really don't know any more than you two have found out. We're no closer to finding out who sabotaged the rockets – or who stole the transistors and the servomotors."

"What?" the boys exclaimed in unison.

Tom Preston's eyebrows went up. "You haven't heard? But of course you haven't, because you weren't here when we finished inventory. We're missing ninety thousand dollars' worth of servomotors."

"Suffering spacefish!" Rick groaned.

Scotty asked quickly, "When did it happen?"

"During the Orion shoot. Project Cetus had drawn servos the day before, and they were on the shelves then."

"The stock clerks." Rick began.

"Ran out to see Orion," Colonel Preston finished. "They've gone out to see every shoot since the first one. But all of them swear no unauthorized personnel got into the warehouses. Of course they can't be sure, because none of them kept eyes on the doors."

"Could any of the clerks be in on the thefts?" Scotty asked.

"If so, we have no evidence of it. But we have so little evidence it doesn't count for much anyway. Of course we have some ideas, and I suppose you do, too."

Rick and Scotty nodded.

Preston continued, "The thing that's clear to us is that there isn't just an Earthman. There's a gang. Someone sabotages the rockets. Someone else steals the stuff from the warehouse. Someone else – and it looks like Mac and Pancho – takes the stuff to Careless Mesa, or Steamboat, or both. And someone else – the gang that captured you – gets it at Steamboat and takes it to Vegas. Then, I suppose, still another man or group gets rid of it through trade channels."

John Gordon had been listening without comment. Now he spoke up. "The pattern seems to indicate sabotage, in order to create a diversion for thieves. I can't buy it."

The boys and Preston waited for his reason.

"The thefts are peanuts. Oh, not in terms of ordinary thefts. But it doesn't seem reasonable that anyone, no matter how greedy or crooked, would destroy ten million dollars' worth of rocket to steal goods only a tiny fraction of that in value."

Gordon's comments were an echo of what Rick had thought when the theft of transistors first came to light. He simply couldn't believe theft was the only reason. He had also rejected theft as a means of hampering operations. While loss of parts was a nuisance, it wasn't crippling.

"Then the Earthman – I mean the Earthman who sabotages the rockets – has to be a part of the technical staff," Rick said.

Gordon and Preston nodded. "Because only the project people have ready access to the rockets," Gordon agreed. "Have you found out anything suspicious about any of them, Tom?"

Preston shook his head. "I've studied their security background investigations until I'm half blind. There isn't a thing that has even a remote connection."

Gordon added, "Maybe finding the actual saboteur is the toughest part, but there are some things about the thefts that aren't clear to me. For instance, how did Deadrock Ogg know the car would be traveling without lights? He told the boys how he planted himself at the Pahrump Valley turnoff because the sedan would have to turn on lights there. How did he know?"

Rick had figured that part out. "At night, car lights can be seen for miles. The last thing in the world the thieves would want would be to attract attention to Steamboat. The only way to be sure would be to travel without lights. Turning them on during the run through the twisting roads into the valley wouldn't be too much of a risk, because the road can't be seen for long distances there."

Scotty asked, "But why did the men handle us so gently last night? They didn't rough us up, especially. And one of them said we could get loose."

"You didn't see them, did you?" Preston countered. "It was too dark. So there was no danger of your identifying them. Why add murder or mayhem to the list of charges when you gain nothing?"

John Gordon stirred restlessly. "We'd better end this meeting. If the boys are associated with us, and especially with you, Tom, it will mean an end to their usefulness."

"You're right, John." Preston looked at the boys. "The biggest value you have is as free agents. I won't try to keep you posted on all my activities. And don't bother trying to contact me, or John, about what you're doing. It's too dangerous – unless you turn up a definite lead. Meanwhile, go on as you have been. I'd say you were doing fine. Just be careful. These men may have been gentle last night when they had nothing to lose, but that doesn't mean it's a way of life with them. Now scoot. And try not to be seen leaving."

The boys shook hands and started out, but Rick paused at the door and said something that had been on his mind since the Orion disaster.

"There's one thing. Let's hope that when the Earthman finally trips up, it won't be in front of everybody, especially after a shoot that he's just sabotaged. Otherwise, we'll never get a chance to question him. He'll be dead – lynched on the spot by the rocketeers!"