Secret of the Malpais

by Ferber, Richard

  He knelt and took the knife in his hand and looked around. There was a dwarfed, wind-carved pinon growing at the top of the cliff. There were three or four clumps of greasewood. There was nothing else.

  He knelt pondering on it, with several conclusions to choose from. The Apache might have gotten tired of waiting for his relief and gone to wake him up. Or he might have gone down into the rocks below to find a warm place to sleep. Or anything. One thing was sure: he'd put in a lot of work for nothing, and he couldn't make up his mind whether to feel relieved or frustrated.

  Logan crawled along the ridge and found the trail the Apache had used. It was well-worn and easy to follow, and when he got to the bottom of it he saw he had just missed it by a few feet on his way up. It was just getting light enough to see by, to see the rocks and horses coming into shape, to see that there was still no one on the opposite ridge. It didn't add up. And neither did the silence. Most Apache camps had at least a dozen dogs in them, and they should have all let go at once, at the first sign of light. And yet he hadn't so much as heard a yap.

  He hurried across the canyon, still careful to stay in the shadows, and knelt in front of the outcropping.

  "Angela," he said, and pushed the muzzle of the Winchester away from him; she had been expecting the worst.

  "I'm all right," he said. "But something's fishy. There was no one on that cliff, and there's no one on the ridge, either. I don't know why, but they've pulled camp."

  He helped her out through the opening and held her up while she got used to standing. She hadn't stood in several days. She kept stretching her muscles and taking in big breaths of air. Finally he let go of her and rolled a cigarette. It was a pleasure to strike a match without having somebody shoot at it.

  It got light all at once, as it always did in that coun-

  try. The shadows shortened up, then disappeared, and the rock walls turned from black to gray. But it was still cold. Logan went over to the fire he'd laid four days ago and lighted it. Angela came over and stood with her arms outstretched to pick up the first flickers of warmth. She was standing facing the talus slope, and she was the first to see them.

  "Look."

  He got to his feet thinking what a fool he'd been: he'd left the rifle under the outcropping. He took the Colt out and motioned Angela back.

  "Start edging toward that hole. If they make a rush, jump for it."

  But no one on the ridge moved. They looked ghostly in the gray dawn, but they were distinguishable enough. Apaches. All except one. Logan recognized him when he started down through the talus. He wore a fringed buckskin shirt, and he was bigger and paler than the rest. He was Ramsey Moon.

  Logan kept the Colt in his hand. Angela was still edging toward the hole under the rocks, and he didn't stop her. Ramsey Moon or Old Pablo. There wasn't much to choose between them.

  Moon pulled up and looked significantly at the Colt. Logan put it away, dropping it into the holster as lightly as he could so that it wouldn't bind if he had to draw it out again in a hurry. He might.

  "I wasn't expecting you," he said.

  "I guess not," Moon said. He smiled, but it was hard to tell what meaning was behind it. He took a long time looking over the camp: the fire, Angela, the horses, the barricade under the outcropping.

  "I wasn't expecting to see you here, either," he said. "It looks like you've had a little trouble. You're a long ways from home."

  "I've been farther," Logan said. There was going to be trouble, there had to be, why stall around?

  "Yes, I guess you have," Moon said congenially. He folded his arms and leaned down on the pommel of his saddle. "And it's none of my business how far you go, or where. Except when you go on the Reservation. You're on it now."

  "I know it."

  "It's my job," Moon said, leaning farther across the pommel, "to ask you why."

  He was smiling and apologetic... and unbelievable. He wouldn't have followed them this far if he hadn't already known the answer. Still, there was no point in telling him the truth, not entirely. Logan didn't get a chance to anyway.

  "It's about my husband," Angela said, coming back to stand over the fire. "He was in that gold party that got massacred. The one you told us about. You said one of them got away, and we thought it might have been him, and we came to try to find him."

  Moon listened attentively, then straightened up in the saddle and sat thinking. He took out his pipe and loaded it and put it in his mouth without bothering to light it. He wore no hat, and his long white hair sparkled in the growing sunlight. It gave him a look of infinite age and wisdom, though he wasn't much past forty.

  "You shouldn't lie to me," he said, his voice suddenly going stern. "And I wouldn't go reaching for that gun, either," he said, turning to Logan. "You can't outdraw me. It wouldn't do you any good even if you could. Those Apaches... You must take me for some kind of fool. It's not some man you're looking for. It's gold."

  Logan kept his hand where it was, just at the tip of

  the holster, and waited for the next accusation. It was bound to come. Moon must know by now who it was that had survived the massacre; he'd had almost a month to find it out. Maybe he couldn't outdraw him... but maybe he could. He could try.

  But Moon merely lit his pipe and took it from his mouth and shook his head, a little sadly it seemed. "It's men like you who cause me trouble," he said. "Hunting gold up here, where you've got no right to be. I ought to run you off the Reservation. I ought to have you arrested, but I haven't got the time.*'

  He looked over at the rock barricade, studying it again. "Besides, you did me a favor; you slowed down Old Pablo for me. He got to raiding off the Reservation a few days back, and a Cavalry squad got after him, and he wiped it out. Every one of them. I've been trying to catch up with him, to get him to surrender before he gets in any deeper than he is. The old coot. He's harmless enough, if people would just leave him alone."

  "He's as harmless as an old she-grizzly with cubs," Logan said. It was a relief to change the conversation.

  "You don't look hurt," Moon said. "Either one of you. His blood is up, though. You're lucky I came along. When did he pull out?"

  "Two or three hours ago," Logan said. "Maybe more. I'm not sure. I was wondering what made him hightail it."

  "It was me, all right," Moon said. "He must have had some scouts laying back, and they spotted us. He's afraid of those Apache police ... not that I'd let them do him any harm."

  He took another look at Logan, Angela, the camp, the horses. "There's just one thing," he said. "You've been pretty lucky so far. Just make sure that your luck doesn't run out. I probably won't be back this way in

  time to bother you. But there's other things that might. Other white men. Other Apaches. Even some woman, maybe. Or just plain fate, if you want to call it that. You never know, when it's gold that's involved."

  It sounded mysterious, but he probably didn't mean it that way. He was used to talking to Apaches, and some of their high-flown vagueness had rubbed off on him. Still, he could talk plain enough when he wanted to. Logan watched him climb back up the slope. He waved when he got to the top, then disappeared down the other side with his Apache police falling in neatly behind him.

  Logan threw some more sticks on the fire, without thinking much about what he was doing. He was thinking about Ramsey Moon. There was one question the Agent hadn't answered. Why had he spent all those nights outside Selina's cabin? Just a case of simple, overriding jealousy, perhaps. Or perhaps something else. He'd said he wouldn't be back this way in time to bother them; but Logan had a feeling he'd be back before then.

  u.

  The man bit into the thigh of the rabbit and pulled at the soft, raw meat. It might taste better cooked, he supposed ... he wasn't sure ... but he was too smart to build a fire. Oh, no, a fire made smoke, and sometimes Apaches saw smoke, and sometimes Apaches...

  He chuckled silently. Besides, if you left meat out in the sun for a few days it got just as tender as any fire could
ever make it. Only one thing bothered him. The rabbits didn't come around him any more, looking all wide-eyed and innocent. And they'd gotten used to his snares. Even the chipmunks kept their distance.

  Maybe it was time to leave. He sat pulling at the rotten meat and staring at the sacks of gold under the tilted hearthstone. He hadn't looked at it lately, not since this morning, and he pretended to have forgotten how much of it there was. It was a game he enjoyed, trying to trick himself into wrong answers. Was there enough to buy a pair of suspenders? Oh ... no ... more than that. Was there enough to buy a new plough handle? No, no, more than that. Enough for a pretty little buckskin pony? No ... heh, heh, heh ... more than that.

  He sat giggling to himself. They couldn't fool him. Oh, no. He knew how much gold there was. Enough to load a pack horse. But he stopped eating abruptly and dropped his hands into his lap, leaving the rabbit thigh hanging from his mouth. A pack horse. That was the one thing he hadn't thought of.

  Logan had a feeling he was being watched, but he'd had that feeling all along, since the first day they'd ridden up into the Malpais. It didn't mean anything. It was simply the country; too silent, too empty, to be believed.

  He leaned the rifle against one of the alforjas and sat down and took off his boots. In a week the heels had almost worn off, and his feet hurt; he wasn't used to walking.

  Angela sat on one of the packs and watched him, waiting. It was almost dark, and she'd built up the fire so that the light from it reached all the way to the walls of the canyon. It touched the horses, turning their eyes to bright yellow balls every time they looked directly into it.

  "It's no use," he said., "I've been over every foot of ground for twenty miles around."

  "Maybe tomorrow," Angela said. She meant it to be encouraging, but her voice sounded dead. "Or maybe we ought to move camp. Maybe it's not in this part of the country after all."

  "It's got to be," he said. "It's not more than an hour's ride from that needle-shaped rock. I remember that much, though not the rest of it. The old man kept talking about a hidden canyon, and he was right. It's hidden. It's going to stay that way."

  He sat peering dazedly into the fire. She brought him some food... beans and what was left of the side bacon .. . but he only picked at it. A whole canyon just didn't disappear. It had to be somewhere... some-

  where in sight of that needle rock. And yet it wasn't.

  He got up, dropped the tin plate in the wash water and went over to his blankets. He was too tired to talk any more. He hadn't slept well for the last few nights, or for a month of nights, if he went back far enough. But the last few had been the worst. He was always afraid that something was going to come in at them from the dark: Ramsey Moon, Old Pablo again ... or anything. There was the fear, too ... lying there watching the cold stars ... that the next day wouldn't be any more successful than the last.

  What if they didn't find the gold? It had never really occurred to him before that they wouldn't. It might take days, weeks, months, but sooner or later they had to stumble on the lost diggings; nothing stayed lost forever. Now he wasn't so sure. Gold had never seemed very important before, no more important than anything else he had ever wanted. Now it was, now that there was a chance he might not get it. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it, but scenes kept flitting past: that first day when they'd dropped down into the little canyon and found the gold; the gold dust and nuggets they'd hidden under the hearthstone in the cabin; something that the old man had said, "enough gold to load a pack horse," gold...

  When he awoke the fire was out; there weren't even any embers left. Some sound had awakened him, he thought, and he got up on his elbows and waited for it to come again. It didn't. Except for Angela's breathing ... she was sleeping just a few feet away ... the canyon was entirely silent. He found the rifle and sat up with it, staring out into the darkness.

  Something was wrong out there; the silence was wrong. The horses were used to open country, and they should be grazing now, or sleeping. But they al-

  ways slept on three feet, and in that position it was impossible not to move now and then. They weren't moving at all. They were standing frozen, listening.

  Logan got up and went over to build a fire. One of the horses nickered at him, and once he got the blaze going they all came over to stand just inside its light. But they still kept their heads turned out toward the darkness and one of them ... the big sorrel gelding ... kept pawing the ground. Logan wrapped a blanket around his shoulders, cocked the Winchester, and hunkered down to wait for the dawn.

  "It might have been anything," Angela said. "Or nothing."

  "It was something all right," Logan said. "Not Moon. And not an Apache, either. A painter, probably. Or a jaguar, up from the border. They wander up this way sometimes."

  He dropped the armload of wood and threw four or five sticks in the fire, building it up so high that Angela had to turn her face from it.

  "But you said there were no tracks."

  "There weren't," he said. "It probably didn't come as far as the floor of the canyon. Just stayed back in the rocks, looking for a chance to jump."

  He felt her looking at him. She probably thought he was crazy, that the Malpais was finally getting him down, and maybe she was right. He'd spent another day grubbing around the rocks, tearing himself on the sharp lava, scratching himself on the brush, and with nothing to show for it. He had a right to be edgy.

  "You ought to get some sleep, Logan."

  "I'll get some," he said. He had dragged his bedding over to the fire. He pulled a blanket over his shoulders and laid the rifle across his knees. "I'll get some just as

  soon as I find out what was bothering the horses. They would have let on if it was any kind of man, any kind of human. No, it had to be a lion or a tiger. Or.. .'*

  "Or what?"

  He didn't know, and kept silent. Finally she went over and rolled up in her blankets, and after a while he could hear the deep breathing that meant she was asleep. He threw some more sticks on the fire. The horses grazed peacefully; nothing disturbed them. The nighthawk had come to feed over them again, cutting intricate patterns in the air over their heads.

  He dozed off and lost his balance and came awake with a start. But nothing had happened, the scene was the same: the horses grazing, the bullbat. The fire had burned down and he built it up and watched the light reach out for the crevices in the canyon wall. Then his eyes began to grow heavy again and he tried to hold them open. He couldn't.

  It was gray dawn when he awoke; still too dark to see clearly, but he didn't have to. Even before he became fully conscious, he knew something was wrong. He got up, holding the rifle, and started out into the grass. He stopped, listening. No sound. The horses stood stiff and frightened, as they had the night before. He kept watching them, looking for some sign, and it was a long time before he realized that one of them was missing.

  Logan sprinted for the trail that led through the two high walls. The rope that he'd tied across the entrance was down; he stumbled over it in the half-dark and stopped to listen again. He could hear something now, up in the rocks ahead. So he'd been wrong after all. It hadn't been a painter or jaguar; they didn't untie ropes and lead off horses. Some renegade Apache, probably. Well, he'd make short work of him.

  He went up through the rocks. The trail was faint, what there was of it, but it was still too dark to track anyway. The sound ahead was enough. Sometimes he would lose it; then he would hear it again, just when he thought he had lost it for good. The sky was getting lighter, and he seemed to be drawing closer to the sound. In another moment or two he'd be close enough for a shot. He hadn't made any noise himself; somebody was in for a surprise.

  But fifteen minutes went by and nothing came in sight. The rocks were like a maze, and the sound from the horse's hoofs bounced around in them; it was hard to tell just exactly where they were coming from. Finally the sound stopped altogether. Logan stood for a minute, waiting to hear it again. Then he ran.

/>   The pile of rocks gave way suddenly... but there was nothing beyond them. Just a long sagebrush flat, walled by high cliffs; gray, lifeless, empty. Logan slid down and stood surveying it. The sun had cleared the place of shadows ... and everything else, apparently. That was the part he couldn't understand. The horse had been only a few yards ahead the last time he had heard it. Whoever was leading it had reached the flat, and everything made sense up to there. Little patches of grass grew on the flat, free of rocks, and horse and man could have moved across them with comparative silence. But they couldn't have gotten out of sight, not even at a run, not with the little time they'd had.

  He stood trying to find an answer, but none came. There was nothing extraordinary about it, probably. There wasn't a cantina between Durango and the border that didn't have an old man in it who could tell you about disappearing mules, disappearing horses, disappearing gold mines ...

  Gold minesl There was something about this

  place... He looked across the sage flat at the high rock wall, for the thirtieth time, probably, but now it seemed familiar. He looked north and saw the sun striking the top of the needle-shaped rock, and suddenly everything fell into plac^. The rock, the flat, the high blank wall. Except it wasn't nearly as blank as it appeared. There was an opening in it... the Hell-gate ... that couldn't be seen at any distance. But he didn't have to see it. He knew it was there. He turned and went back the way he had come, slipping and scrambling through the rocks... and for once not minding it.

  Angela was up putting wood on the fire, and she saw him coming and must have thought something was wrong, that someone was following him. She started to edge toward the hole under the outcropping, but he caught her and spun her around. Then he lifted her off her feet, and she began pounding him on the chest, and he didn't care. He laughed.