Another adventure of Gunny Triwater and Pasc Morales of the British Columbia Provincial Police Force

The year after the big fire, I was patrolling the Chilcotin, while missing my old partner, Pascal Morales, and the fine ring of his Spanish guitar, when prospector Joe Adams approached me with a situation at Silvertop Butte, some five miles in from Chezacut:  "Gunny, Sergeant Triwater, I believe I sees Clay Thorvig dead through his cabin winda, and I says to myself, 'Now, Joe, don't you go a-touchin' nothin', as I onced heard on the Ellery Queen Mysteries radio where Inspector Queen made sure nobody touched nothin' and so's I didn't touch nothin' at all up there."

Joe and I packed a couple of mules and rode the switchback up the Butte where Clay Thorvig and Jed Bashe had been picking and tunneling for a lode of silver and gold as long as anyone could recall, though most considered the search fruitless. They had made themselves a devious reputation for playing practical jokes on each other, such as hiding the burros, howling like cougars, and salting the ore. Rumor had it that Clay recently formed a domestic alliance with Bonny Eagletoes, a lady hailing from Clearwater or thereabouts, putting some strain on the long standing relationship between the men.

As we approached the summit, through cottonwood, willow and aspen, we could see yawning entrances to little tunnels bored like holey Swiss cheese into the cutbank sides of the butte. "That Jed is some kind of engineer, Gunny," Joe pointed out. "See how them caves are drilled, and inside he's got ammo boxes on rollers, loaded with ore and pullied out into sortin' piles, and then dropping down the slide."

"You bet, Joe. See any sign of him around here?" We were coming up on the log shanty.

"Nope. Didn't notice neither him nor the woman."

We circled watchfully for Thorvig and Bashe were proficient on setting willow springsnares – booby traps --for varmints and victuals. The woodpile stood eight feet from the front door, next to a haystack lean-to. There were no animals, and we found the tools neatly hidden in the hay. Not a wisp of smoke issued from the stovepipe, nor a two-inch venting conduit that stuck up from the ground. To the rear a four by eight rotting canvas tent, presumably the sleeping quarters of the exorcised Jed Bashe, was vacated completely. I eased the mules and took a look through the window after giving it a swipe with my coat cuff, for it was covered with leaves, dust and webs. Sure enough there was old Clay Thorvig spread-eagled like some great wise Buddha completely surrounded by a dry lake of rusty blood, facing a black cold Quebec stove. We broke the glass and crawled in.

Clay had been shot once through the chest. I also dug out three bullets from the logs behind him. "Looks like forty-fives," I mused aloud.

"Prob'ly forty-fours. Jed had a forty-four Russian," Joe corrected me.

"Well, we'll see what the boys in Vancouver say about all this, Joe."

"I heard you cops are going real scientific-like these days, Gunny," Joe laughed.

"Winchester on the wall over there. Clean and not been fired, looks as if. And what the hell is that?"

Joe laughed again: "Why that's their commode. They got that toilet from the Paragon, which burnt last year. Lugged it up here to be fancy. Indoor plumbing like they got in some cities now."

"Bolted to the floor I see. It doesn't flush?"

"My gawd no Gunny, it don't flush. Crap just goes into the ground underneath. Vented for the stink. Well's on t'other side."

"Whew! Hardly vented enough for me, Joe." I got a long stick and stirred around for a weapon in there, and searched the rest of that cabin from top to floor, end to end. The door was padlocked from the inside and the window nailed likewise. The logs and roof were sound and chinked. There was no way anyone could have gotten in without breaking something, and conversely, not one egress. Even a packrat would have a hard squeeze. But there he was, Clay Thorvig the corpse, and no weapon in sight.

"Mebbe he fashioned a weapon from ice, shot himself, and the gun melted," Joshed Joe.

"After first missing himself twice," I replied, shaking my head.

"Jed Bashe turned into smoke, came down the pipe and shot him, going out the same way? Where is that radio feller Ellery Queen when we needs him?"

There was not a clue to be had among the cabin's contents: Beans, flour, sugar, coffee and bacon for the most part. Ammo. Some tin cups and plates. Cutlery. Blankets. And a wire clothes hanger containing a black men's double-breasted worsted suit wrapped in butcher paper. "That there'd be his buryin' outfit," observed Joe. It customary in those parts for a man to have a clean suit put aside for that final event, no matter what his circumstances. We found two silver dollars funeral money in the left pocket.

Next morning we loaded the mules with poor old Clay, his suit, rifle and the relevant evidence, heading down Silvertop just in time to miss the first blue northers. We got him in the ground pronto after having him certified dead, and I swore warrants for Jed Bashe and Bonny Eagletoes. I mailed my report, but didn't get a stir for months, until one spring morning I woke to a rapping at the door."Gunny, Gunny, Gunny! Rise 'n shine, you old porcupine eater!" It was my old buddy, Pascal Morales, the cleverest detective west of Winnipeg.

"Pasc, you singing cowboy grizzly 'wrassler!" I cried. We hugged, jawed and drank Alberta rye singing Blue Okanagan though the day and night, while he played that old Gibson I loved so much.

Dawn was on us when he finally spoke seriously, "So I hear you got a mystery. I heard about it, and thought it would give me an opening to see my old pal Gunny."

I gave him a rundown. "If Bashe did it over the woman, he must have turned into a snake."

"Disappeared?"

"Not a trace of either of them."

"Well I been keeping news from you Gunny. We got a telegram from Australia. Seems they found that missing couple in a place, name of Billiluna, three hundred miles from Kununurra." He laughed. "We gotta check this out really fine before we pay their boat fares all the way back here. Next clear day, lets vamoose up there and see what we can see."

"Tell the truth, Pasc, I'm not looking forward to it."

We saddled up with two day's provisions. It was a tough trek through creeks choked with ice and spring runoff, the night so cold and dark we kept a real blazing campfire going until dawn just to keep from freezing stiff, and hold the wolves at bay. On Silvertop summit we found the site burned to the ground, only the stove and toilet standing among melted piping and charred remains.

"No sure way of knowing how it happened, Gunny," Pascal murmured, taking out his notebook and a pencil. "Boy, look at all the ore. The digging they must have done." For a half hour he wandered around and down the sidehill, returning to examine the stove and blackened planking. Finally he sat down on a stump and smiled, scribbling wildly.

"Well, got any answers?" I queried.

Pascal was grinning like a cat that ate the canary. "Reckon so, Gunny. Come on over here. See this toilet, how it tips up. Ugh! What a smell!"

"Whew! So it tips?"

"So if you look down past the shit you'll see this is part of a tunnel. Notice the pulleys there."

"Yep."

"So get the picture? Somehow Jed Bashe earns the favor of Clay Thorvig's woman, and they leaves in the night. Instead of being a normal jealous, vindictive guy, chasing them down and shooting them, he's gotta make things real difficult. He props up the toilet with a stick to which he's attached the six-gun. Over here on the coat nail he holds it in place with twine reverse-rigged to the trigger. He practiced cocking and firing a couple of times to get the aiming just right -- those rounds you dug out of the wall, remember?"

"Don't think I didn't surmise that, Pasc. But if that's so, where did the gun go? Not down in the dung. We fished that for hours, me and Joe did."

He jumped up, and I followed him out to the edge of the plateau where he pointed straight ahead into the trees, and there dangling from a mess of rope like some dead strangled raven was a Russian six-shooter swinging among the buds from the spring-like branch of a tree.

"The gun recoils slamming the trap door, the toilet falls into place while the whole rigmarole is whipped up over pulleys into the sprung willow. Now that took a mess of figuring."

We got back early next morning, wired a stop order on the King George - Dominion of Canada Warrant, and drank for a week. "Someday, I'm gonna make a story outa this one, Pasc," I said many times.

Pascal sat tuning his guitar. "Words and music down at the dance hall," is all I heard back.

Neither of us did what we said we'd do. And by now I reckon he's serenading angels and having a laugh with old Hole-in-the-Heart Clay Thorvig right this very minute.