by Edward Abbey
“We’re the rabbits.”
“We’re the rabbits. We can’t get back to the road so let’s find a way across this gulch here. Follow me.”
Smith leads back for a short distance along the route they had come, finds a descent into the gulch and disappears. The others, Hayduke on rearguard duty, scramble down after him and find Smith ahead in the sandy wash, making tracks. Can’t be helped. On either side the walls are nearly perpendicular, twenty to forty feet high. They stumble through the shadows, blindly following their guide.
After a while Smith finds an opening in the wall, a tributary wash. They go upwash over the dry sand and within a hundred yards reach an exit, a sloping dome of stone on the inside of a curve. Up they scramble like monkeys, on fingers and toes, Doc puffing a bit, and regain the moonlight and open terrain. Smith strikes off northeasterly toward a sharply defined skyline of buttes and pinnacles. He walks like an old-time prewar pre-pickup-truck Indian, with a steady loping stride, the feet pointed straight ahead, perfectly parallel. The others hurry to keep up.
“How many more … little canyons … like that?” Bonnie gasps. “Between here and … I mean … where we’re going?”
“Seventy-five, maybe two hundred. Save your wind, honey.”
The long march is under way. At every hundred paces or so Smith pauses to look, listen, test the air currents, feel the vibrations. Hayduke at the end of the file, catching his rhythm, alternates Smith’s vigils with his own, stopping while the others march for an extra look around. He is thinking of that helicopter: what a nice coup it would make. If he could only slip away for a half hour….
Hayduke lingers behind, pausing to tap a kidney. Absorbed, self-satisfied, he contemplates with pleasure the steady drumming on the stone. Purified Schlitz, shining by the moon. Thank God I am a man. Flat rock. Splashing his boots. He is shaking it, trying to free that last drop which will inevitably drip down his leg anyhow, about to tuck it away and rezip, when he hears a sound. A foreign noise, alien to the desert peace. A metallic click and clash.
A powerful ray of light sweeps across the slickrock—from a spotlight attached to the helicopter?—impaling Smith and Abbzug on its beam. They stand frozen for a moment, pinned by the white lance, then start running among the junipers. The light beam follows, catching them, losing them, catching Doc Sarvis lagging behind.
Hayduke draws his revolver. He kneels, steadies his gun hand with his left and aims at the turning light. Fires. The shattering muzzle blast stuns him for a second, as always. Missed the target too, of course. The disembodied light, like a great glaring eye, comes searching Hayduke’s way. He fires and misses again. Should unsling the rifle but there isn’t time. He is about to fire his third shot when the light goes out. Whoever was guiding it has suddenly realized that he is too close to the target. That he is the target.
Hayduke runs awkwardly after the others, the enormous pack riding on his back. From behind comes the sound of running feet, shouts, a spasm of symbolic gunfire. Hayduke stops long enough to snap off three shots, aiming at nothing in particular—for in the vague and treacherous moonlight there is nothing in particular to shoot at that he can see, and even if there were he couldn’t hit it with this jolting cannon in his hand. But the noise slows the pursuers, makes them cautious. The shouting dies away; the Team is busy with its radios. Scrambled transmissions jam the airwaves, excited voices canceling one another out.
Running, the awkward burden on his back, Hayduke catches up to Doc, huffing along like a steam engine far behind Smith and Abbzug—dim figures jogging over the rise ahead. Hayduke can see that they have shed their big backpacks. In his rear the shouts resume, orders, instructions, the thump of running boots. Spotlight on the move again. Two spotlights.
“We got to … dump these packs,” he says to Doc.
“God yes!”
“Not right here—wait….”
They reach the rim of another incipient canyon, a typical slickrock-country gash in the stone, with overhanging walls and inaccessible floor—a cleft too wide to leap, too deep and too precipitous to descend.
“Here,” says Hayduke, stopping. Doc stops beside him, blowing like a horse. “We’ll drop them here,” Hayduke says, “under the wall here. Come back and get them later.” He takes off his pack, pulls out a coiled rope, then gropes deep in the big pocket for his box of rifle ammunition. Can’t immediately find it, jammed as it is beneath sixty pounds of other gear. Sound of pursuit coming closer, the heavy boots running. Too close. Hayduke lowers his pack and pack frame over the edge, lets go: they drop fifteen feet onto something rough. Crump! That beautiful new Kelty. Attachment to possessions. Yes! He slings the coil of rope across his back, carries the rifle in his hand.
“Hurry up, Doc.”
Dr. Sarvis is wrestling with something in his pack, trying to draw a black leather bag up and out from its tight fit in the center of the load.
“Come on come on! What’re you doing?”
“Just a moment, George. Have to get my … bag out of here.”
“Drop it!”
“Can’t go on without my bag, George.”
“What the hell is that?”
“My medical bag.”
“For chrissake, we don’t need that. Let’s go.”
“Just a moment.” Doc finally gets his satchel out, shoves the rest of the backpack over the edge. “I’m ready.”
Hayduke glances back. Shadows scamper over the rock, flitting among the junipers, approaching rapidly. How far? One hundred, two hundred, five hundred yards? In the crazy moonlight he can hardly guess. A hand-carried spotlight flicks on, the bright beam seeking prey.
“Run for it, Doc.”
They pound over the stony terrace where they’d last glimpsed Bonnie and Smith. And find them waiting on the other side. They carry only a couple of canteens.
“Right behind us,” Hayduke gasps, running past them. “Keep going.”
Without a word all follow, Smith moving up to run at Hayduke’s side. “George,” he says, “let’s use that rope … before we get … rimmed up….”
“Right.”
Doc lags again, blowing hard, the satchel bumping against his knee at every pace. Bonnie grabs it, carries it on.
They run along the edge of the small canyon, Hayduke looking for a tree, a shrub, a boulder, a stony knob, some sort of projection to double the rope around. Rappel time again. But there is nothing usable in sight. How far down? Ten feet? Thirty? A hundred?
Hayduke stops at a point where the wall below is neither overhanging nor vertical but bulges outward, sloping a bit, not much, toward the bottom. Good rappel pitch. He peers down. Can’t see the bottom. Darkness and silence below, the faintly perceived forms of shrub and juniper.
“Here.” He uncoils his rope, shakes it out and, as Doc and Bonnie come close, panting desperately, faces flushed and glistening with sweat, he takes them both without a word in a big embrace, loops one end of the rope around them and ties it snug with a nonslipping bowline knot.
“Now what?” Bonnie says.
“We’re going down into the canyon. You and Doc first.”
Bonnie looks over the edge. “You’re crazy.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll belay you. You’ll be all right. Seldom, gimme a hand here. Okay, down you go. Back off the edge.”
“We’ll get killed.”
“No you won’t. We’ve got you. Back over the edge there. Lean back. Lean way back, goddammit. Both of you. Keep your feet flat against the rock. Okay, that’s better. Now, walk down, backward. Don’t try to crawl down, there’s no way. And don’t grab the rope so hard, that won’t help. Lean back. Lean back for chrissake or I’ll kill you! Feet flat on the rock. Just use the rope for balance. Walk on down. Easy, see? That’s better. Keep going. Keep going. Holy sweet motherfuck. Okay. Fine. Where are you? You down?”
Muted grumbles from the shadows below. Sounds of crackling brush, the scuffle of tangled feet.
Hayduke peers down into the
gloom. “Untie the knot, Bonnie. Free the rope. Hurry up!” The rope comes slack. He hauls it up. “Okay, Seldom, your turn.”
“How’re you gonna get down, George? Who’s to belay you?”
“I’ll get down, don’t worry.”
“How?” Smith runs the doubled rope between his legs, around one side and over the opposite shoulder, preparing to rappel.
“You’ll see.” Hayduke unslings the rifle. “Take this down for me. Wait a minute.” He stares back the way they’ve come, trying to spot their pursuers. The pallid moonlight lies weak on stone and sand, on juniper and yucca and blackbrush, and on the cliffs beyond, a shifty and deceptive illumination. You can hear men’s voices and the slap of big feet on sandstone. “You see them, Seldom?”
Smith is squinting in the same direction, shading his eyes from the moon. “See two of them, George. Three more way behind.”
“Ought to crack off one little shot, slow ’em down again.”
“Don’t do it, George.”
“Make Christians out of them Saints. Put the fear of Rudolf Hayduke into them. A rifle shot would make them stop and think.”
“Gimme the rifle, George.”
“I’ll shoot over the fuckers’ heads.”
“They might be safer if you aimed at ’em.”
“Those fuckers were shooting at us. Shooting to kill and maim.”
Smith extricates the rifle gently from Hayduke’s hands and slings it over his free shoulder. “Belay me, George.” He backs to the edge. “Testing belay, George.”
Hayduke takes up the slack, plants his feet, the rope around his hips. “Okay. Belay on.”
Smith backs over the rim and disappears. Hayduke holds the rope lightly in his hands as Smith goes quickly down the pitch. Smith’s weight, transmitted by the rope, is supported by Hayduke’s pelvis and legs. In a moment he feels the rope go slack; the voice of Smith rises from the darkness below. “Okay, George, off belay.”
Hayduke looks back. The enemy is moving closer. And now that hand-carried spotlight is switched on and the dazzling beam turns directly toward him, at once, blind bad luck, no escape.
Nowhere to go. Nothing but air to rappel from.
“How far down there?” Hayduke croaks.
“About thirty feet I’d say,” replies Smith.
Hayduke lets the rope, now useless to him, fall into the canyon. The light beam sweeps over him, goes past. A double take by the glaring Cyclops eye. The beam is jerked back and stops, fixed on Hayduke’s crouching figure, burning into his eyes, blinding him.
“You there,” someone bellows—a vaguely familiar voice, amplified majestically by bullhorn. “You stand right there. Don’t you make a move, son.”
Hayduke drops to his belly on the verge of the rock. The light remains on him. Something cruel, silent, swift as thought, sharp as a needle, keen as a snake, whips at the sleeve of his shirt, stinging the flesh beneath. He draws his gun; the light goes out. He hears at the same instant the crack of a second rifle shot. (In the east a crack of dawn.)
He calls down to the others, “That a juniper below me?” The light comes on again, pinning him down.
“Yeah”—Smith’s warm and homely voice—“but I wouldn’t try that if …” His words fade off in doubt.
Hayduke holsters his revolver and slides on his stomach over the edge, facing the wall, feeling the cool unyielding bulge of the stone against his chest and thighs. He hangs for a moment to the last possible handhold. Friction descent, he thinks, what they call a friction fucking descent. He looks below, sees only shadows, no bottom at all.
“I change my mind,” he says desperately, inaudibly (losing his grip), speaking to nobody in particular—and who is listening?—“I’m not going to do this, this is insane.” But his sweaty hands know better. They release him.
Coming down, he yells. Thinks he yells. The words never get past his teeth.
28
Into the Heat: The Chase Continúes
This vulture soars above the Fins, the Land of Standing Rocks. Soaring is the vulture’s life, death his dinner. Evil foul black scavenger of the dead and dying, his bald red head and red neck featherless—the better to slip his greedy beak deep into the entrails of his prey—he feeds on corruption. Cathartes aura, his Latin title, derived from the Greek katharsis, meaning purification, and aura from the Greek for air, emanation or vapor. The airy purifier.
Bird of the sun. The contemplator. The only known philosophizing bird, thus his serene and insufferable placidity. Rocking gently on his coal-black wings, he watches a metallic dragonfly tracking methodically back and forth above the Fins, above the Standing Rocks, making a violent unfitting noise.
The vulture circles higher and tilts his wrinkled head to observe with keener interest, three thousand feet below, the movement of four tiny wingless bipeds who scurry, like mice in a roofless maze, down a winding corridor between towering red walls of stone. They dash furtively from shadow to shade, as if the sand were too hot for their feet, as if hiding from the blaze of the sun or the other searching eyes in the sky.
Something limp and halting in the gait of two of those creatures suggests to the vulture the thought of lunch, arousing his memory of meat. Although all four appear to be still alive and active, it is nevertheless a well-known truth, the vulture reasons, that where there is life there is also death—that is, hope. He circles round again for a better look.
But they are gone.
“Didn’t know they could fly them goldanged things right down into a little canyon like this’n here,” he says, “and what’s more I say there oughta be a law agin it; it’s bad for the nervous system. Makes my whole system nervous.”
“I’m hungry,” she says. “And my feet hurt.”
“They try that again I’ll drop them,” Hayduke says. He holds his rifle cradled in his arms. Proud sweet weapon. The walnut stock polished with his sweat, hand-rubbed, the sniper scope sooty blue, the bolt, breech and barrel glowing with a silky sheen. Trigger, trigger guard, the checkered pistol grip, the rigorous precision of the action as he opens the bolt and inspects the firing chamber, slams it closed and springs the trigger. Click. Chamber empty; seven rounds in magazine.
“Thirsty and hungry and my feet hurt and I’m bored. Somehow it just isn’t much fun anymore.”
“Well I just hope they didn’t spot our tracks. Can they set that thing down in here?” Smith, his hat off, hair plastered down with perspiration, looks out from under the overhang, out of the shade into the heat, the glare, toward the sunbaked stone, the leaning red walls of the gorge. “’Cause if they can I’d reckon we got to find another hole mighty quick. Maybe quicker.” He wipes his shining and unshaven face with a red bandanna that is already dark and greasy from sweat. “How about it, George?”
“Not right here. But maybe up the canyon, around the bend. Or down the canyon. Fuckers might be creeping up on us right now. Shotguns loaded with buckshot.”
“If they seen us.”
“They saw us. If they didn’t they will next time.”
“How many men can they get into that thing?”
“Three in that model.”
“There’s four of us.”
Hayduke grins bitterly. “Yeah, four. With one handgun and one rifle.” He turns to the dozing Dr. Sarvis. “Unless Doc has a pistol in that bag of his.” Doc grunts, a vague but negative reply. “Maybe,” Hayduke adds, “we could shoot ’em with one of Doc’s needles. Give ’em each a shot of Demerol in the ass.” He rubs his bruised limbs and abraded hide, the lacerated palms.
“You’re due for another shot yourself,” Bonnie says.
“Not now,” Hayduke says. “The stuff makes me too groggy. Got to keep awake now.” Pause. “Anyway, you can bet your bottom dollar if they did see us they’ve radioed the Team. That whole crew will be marching down here in an hour.” Another pause. “We have to get out of here.” Shifts the rifle from crook of arm to right hand. “Can’t wait for sundown.”
“I’ll
tote that rifle for a while,” Smith says.
“I’ll keep it.”
“How do you feel?” Bonnie asks Hayduke. She gets a mumble for an answer. Bonnie appears on the verge of heat exhaustion herself. Her face is flushed, damp with sweat, eyes a bit dreamy. But she looks better than the battered Hayduke, with his clothes in shreds and his elbows and knees stiff with bandages, so that he walks when he walks like a prefabricated man, Dr. Sarvis’s hand-made monster. “George,” she says, “let me give you another shot.”
“No.” He modifies the growl. “Not right now. Wait till we find a better hole.” He looks at Doc. “Doc?” No response; the doctor lies sprawled on his back in the deepest coolest corner of the alcove under the cliff, eyes closed.
“Let him rest,” she says.
“We ought to get going.”
“Give him ten more minutes.”
Hayduke looks at Smith. Smith nods. They both look up at the narrow strip of blue between the canyon walls. The sun has drifted high into noon. Wisps and horsetails of vapor hang on the planes of heat. One of these days it’s going to rain. One of these days it’s got to rain.
“I’m not asleep,” Doc says, his eyes shut. “Be up in a minute….” He sighs. “Tell us about the war, George.”
“What war?”
“Yours.”
“That war?” Hayduke smiles. “You don’t want to hear all that. Seldom, where the shit are we anyhow?”
“Well, I ain’t sure, but if we’re in the canyon I think we’re in, then we’re in the middle of what they call the Fins.”
“I thought we were in the Maze,” Bonnie says.
“Not yet. The Maze is different.”
“How so?”
“Worse.”
“That war,” says George Hayduke to nobody in particular and also to nobody in general, “they want to forget it. But I won’t let them. I won’t ever let the bastards forget that war.” Talking like a dreamer, a sleepwalker, talking not to himself but to the stony silence of the desert. “Never,” he says. Silence. “Never.”