“Bergen.” She held out her hand and he took it—conscious of how small and fragile it felt.
“Lie very still,” he said. “I’m going to climb out and get help.”
“Bergen,” she said again. “Be careful.”
He ran back to the fissure in the cliff. He would climb out and find the truck. Somehow he would find the truck. If he didn’t it would take a day and a night to walk to Shoemaker’s. Eighteen or twenty hours, he guessed, which was about twelve more than he could spare.
He pushed past the piñon tree into the dark fissure, swallowing his dread of the climb. She had said Hall was smart—brilliant. If he could find Jim Hall, maybe Hall would be smart enough to save the girl he was engaged to marry.
> 17 <
THE SUN WAS almost directly overhead when McKee found the wires. He squatted in the thin shade of a juniper and examined them—a cable about the diameter of his finger paralleled by a lighter wire. Both were heavily insulated with gray rubber, almost invisible on the rocky ground. The heavier one, McKee thought, would carry electrical current. The lighter one might be anything, maybe even a telephone wire. They must be part of the data-collection system for Dr. Hall’s sound experiments, McKee knew, and they gave him the second hope he had felt since emerging from the chimney three hours earlier.
The first had come an hour ago when he had seen the boy on the horse. He had stopped to catch his breath and make sure of his directions on the plateau. He had glanced behind him, and the boy had been there—not two hundred yards away—silently staring at him. A boy was wearing what looked like a red cap. But, when McKee had waved and shouted, the horse and rider had simply disappeared. They had vanished so suddenly that McKee almost doubted his eyes.
“He knows he’s in witch country,” McKee thought, “and he’s spooky.” Trying to follow him would be a foredoomed waste of time.
Following the wires, on the other hand, would be simple. At one end there would be some sort of gadget of the sort which concern electrical engineers. At the other end—with any luck at all—he would find the engineer. And Hall would have a truck and maybe a radio transmitter. The cable ran southeast across the plateau toward the Kam Bimghi Valley and northwest back toward the branch canyon McKee had been skirting. It was an easy choice. McKee trotted toward the canyon, following the cable.
At the rim, the cable looped downward, disappearing under brush and reappearing where it was strung across rocky outcrops. McKee paused at the rim, staring up the canyon after the cable.
This branch canyon was much shallower than Many Ruins and its broken walls offered several fairly easy ways down. From the canyon floor, McKee heard an echoing ping, ping, ping—the sound of metal striking metal. A flood of elation erased his weariness. Hall’s truck must be there, and Hall with it. And it wasn’t more than a quarter of a mile away.
The pain came with absolutely no warning, just as he took a step down off the rimrock. Behind the pain, perhaps a second, he was conscious of the flat snap of a rifle fired a long way off. Then he was conscious only that he was falling and of suffocation—or a terrible need to draw a breath into lungs that wouldn’t work. He was on his back now, on a pile of talus just under the rim. The sky in front of his eyes was dark blue. He could breathe again, although inhaling hurt. And he could think again. He put his hand where the pain was, on his right chest. It came away hot and red. Someone had shot him. Who? The boy on the horse? That made no sense. The Big Navajo. Yes, of course.
McKee pushed himself into a sitting position against the rimrock and gingerly examined the damage. He could feel the bullet hole on his back—a small burning spot. It had come out left of his left nipple, tearing a hole through which blood now welled. Broken ribs, he thought, but the lung must have been missed. It still inflated.
McKee coughed and flinched at the knife in his ribs. He tried to think. The Big Navajo must have returned to the cliff, and had found Ellen. No use thinking about it.
From up canyon he heard the dim, puttering sound of a two-cycle engine. Probably a generator motor. And probably down in the canyon bottom Hall hadn’t heard the shot. Or if he had heard it would have no reason to be warned by it. He had to reach Hall in time to tell him.
McKee pulled himself to his feet, took three steps along the talus and stopped, gasping, supporting himself by hanging on to the rubber-clad cable strung across the rocks. It would take him half an hour at this rate to reach the truck. And he didn’t think he had that much time.
Over the rim he could see nothing at first. An expanse of plateau, sparse clumps of buffalo grass, a scattering of drought-dwarfed piñon, juniper, and creosote bush, a stony surface on which nothing moved. Then he saw, to his left, the figure of a man. The man walked slowly, a rifle with a telescopic sight held across his chest. He moved unhurriedly, relentlessly, inexorably toward the point of rimrock from which McKee had fallen. Five hundred yards away, walking almost casually toward him under a broad-brimmed black hat, was certain death.
McKee fought down a desperate impulse to run. When he conquered the panic he found it replaced by a hard, cold, overpowering anger. He looked around for a weapon and became abruptly conscious of the soft rubber insulation of the cable gripped in his palm.
You son of a bitch You bastard. You won’t just finish me off like a crippled animal. You’ll have to come and get me.
Had the Big Navajo been careless, had he simply walked his slow walk directly to the rimrock, McKee would have run out of time. But the Big Navajo took no chances at all. When McKee finally heard his boots, the sound came from below. The hunter was stalking cautiously, skirting the point on the rim where he must have seen McKee knocked down by his bullet, taking his time.
McKee had worked feverishly. He pulled the slack cable over a boulder and slammed it twice with a rock. The cable severed and the end sprang away in a shower of sparks. He stripped five feet of the thick rubber tubing from the dead end with his pocket knife. While he worked, the plan formed in his mind. Just up the canyon, a huge ponderosa had fallen against the rocky cliff—a dead log half obscured by a thick growth of pine saplings. He would crawl into that darkness, tie the rubber to two sapling trunks to make a catapult, cut himself a lance from another sapling, and hope the Big Navajo made a mistake.
The Big Navajo was making no mistakes. McKee could see him now, moving in a half-crouch ten yards below the rimrock. The big man stared upward at the place where McKee’s blood smeared the boulder. McKee could see his profile, shaded under the broad rim of the new black hat. It was a handsome face, hawklike and intent. The Big Navajo moved up to the boulder and knelt beside it. He examined the bloody talus debris and then stood, scanned the slope below, and began walking carefully along the route McKee had taken.
McKee pushed his heels deeper into the pine needles and tested his lance against the tension of the rubber. He had cut a yard-long length of a three-quarter-inch pine stem, given it a crude point, and then hammered the punch tool of his knife into the soft wood six inches from the heavy end. Snapped off, this prong of steel provided the hook on which he had caught the rubber.
He was lying almost flat, his weight pulling against the tough rubber. Down the shaft of the sapling, he saw the Navajo’s hat rise into view as he moved slowly up the slope. Then his shoulders, then his belt. The man stopped. He looked at the fallen tree, at the growth of young ponderosa. He stared intently from the sunlight into the deep shadows.
McKee held his breath, fought against the dizziness. Four or five steps closer, he prayed. Keep coming. Keep coming.
The Navajo stood, staring directly at him. His face was thoughtful. Suddenly he smiled.
“Well,” he said. “There you are.”
It seemed to McKee to take quite a little time. The Big Navajo’s right hand brought the rifle butt smoothly up to the right shoulder, the left hand swung the barrel toward him, the Navajo’s face moved slightly to the right, behind the telescopic sight. All this while McKee was releasing the lance.
&
nbsp; Most likely the telescope made the difference. Over open sights, the Indian would have seen the lance at the moment of its launch, seen it soon enough to simply step aside. Behind the sight, he saw it too late. There was a sound—which McKee would remember—something like a hammer striking a melon. And the clatter of the rifle falling on the rocks. And the sound of the Big Navajo tumbling backward down the slope.
McKee crawled out of the thicket and picked up the rifle. It seemed incredibly heavy. The Big Navajo had slid, head downward, between two boulders. McKee looked at the man and hastily looked away. The pine shaft had struck him low on the chest. There was no chance at all that he was alive. The black hat lay by the boulder, the sun reflecting off the rich silver of its concho band. And up the slope was a furry bundle tied with a leather thong. McKee untied the thong. A wolf skin unrolled itself.
McKee felt a whirling dizziness. Always wanted a witch’s skin. Hang it on my office wall. Maybe give it to Canfield.
He remembered, then, that Canfield was dead, and was conscious that his side was wet and his pant leg was sticking to his thigh. He put the wolf skin over his arm and started down the slope toward the canyon floor. He fell once. But he remembered Ellen Leon and got back to his feet. And finally he was on the sandy canyon floor, where walking was easy.
“Put down the rifle.”
“What?” McKee said. A boy was standing behind a clump of willows. There was a horse by him, the reins dragging.
“Put down the rifle.” The boy had on a red baseball cap and he had a short-barreled rifle in his hands. An old .30-30. It was pointed at McKee.
McKee dropped the Big Navajo’s rifle. The wolf skin fell with it, dropping in a folded hump on the sand.
“Where’s the other witch?”
“What?” McKee said. It was important to think about this. “He’s dead,” he said, after a moment. “He shot me and I killed him. Back up there under the rimrock.” McKee pushed the wolf skin with his toes. “This is his witch skin,” he said, speaking now in Navajo. “I am not a witch. I am one who teaches in school.”
The boy was looking at him, his face expressionless.
“There is a truck a little ways up here,” McKee said. “You must let me get to that truck and the man there will help me.”
“All right.” The boy hesitated, thinking. “You walk. I will walk behind you.”
He was within thirty yards of the truck before he saw it—parked in a thicket of tamarisk and willow just off the canyon floor. Beside it a gasoline generator was running. The back door of the van stood open, a padlock dangling in the hasp. Through the doorway McKee heard the faint sound of someone whistling and then of metal tapping on metal.
McKee stopped.
“Hello,” he shouted. It didn’t sound like his voice.
McKee took two more steps toward the truck, conscious the whistling had stopped.
A man appeared in the doorway of the van, blond, in a denim jacket, taller than McKee and younger, with a hearing aid behind his left ear. His blue eyes rested for a second on McKee, registering surprise and shock.
“What the hell happened?” he said. And then he was out of the truck, coming toward McKee.
“Got shot,” McKee said. “Somebody shot me.” His voice sounded thick. “Get the bleeding stopped.” He sat down abruptly on the sand.
The blond man was saying something.
“Don’t talk,” McKee said. “Listen. Are you Jim Hall?”
“How did you know that?”
“Listen,” McKee said. “Tell this boy here that I’m not a witch and he will help you.” He paused now and started again, trying to pronounce the words.
“Ellen Leon was shot, too. Ellen Leon. She’s up at that big cliff dwelling in a canyon….” McKee tried to think. “In that canyon that runs into Many Ruins south and west of here.”
The man was squatting beside McKee now, his face close. McKee had trouble focusing on the face. The face was surprised, amazed, excited, maybe frightened.
“You said Ellen?” the man said. “What the devil is she doing out here? What happened to her?”
“Man shot her. Needs help.” McKee said. “Go help her.”
“Who shot her?” the man asked.
“Man named Eddie.” McKee said. He was very tired. Why didn’t this fool go? “Don’t worry,” he said; “Eddie’s dead now.” He heard the man asking him something but he couldn’t think of an answer. And then the man’s hands were on his face, the man was talking right into his face.
“Listen. Tell me. What happened to Eddie? What happened to Eddie? And was there a man with him? Where’s the man who was with him?”
McKee couldn’t think of how to answer. Something was wrong.
He tried to say, “Dead,” but Jim Hall was talking again.
“Answer me, damn you,” Hall said, his voice fierce. “Do the police know about this? Has anybody told the police?”
McKee thought he would answer in a moment. Now he was concentrating on not falling over on his side.
Hall stood up. He was talking to the boy with the red baseball cap, and then the boy was talking. McKee could hear part of it.
“Did you see the witch he killed?”
He couldn’t hear what the boy answered.
“You were right when you guessed that,” Hall was saying. “This man here is a Navajo Wolf. Give me your rifle.”
McKee stopped listening. He was asking himself how Jim Hall knew about the man with Eddie, asking himself why Hall was acting the way he was acting. Almost immediately, with sick, despairing clarity, he saw the answer. Hall was the Big Navajo’s other man.
The boy hadn’t given Hall the rifle. He was standing there, looking doubtful.
“Put the rifle in the truck then,” Hall said. “We’ll leave the witch here. Tie him up first. And then we’ll drive to Chinle and tell the police about him.” Hall paused. “Hand me the rifle and I’ll put it in the truck.”
“Don’t,” McKee said. “Don’t give him the rifle.”
Hall turned to look at him. McKee focused on the face. It looked angry. And then it didn’t look angry any more. Another voice had said something, something in Navajo.
It said, “That’s right, Billy Nez, don’t give him your rifle.” And the anger left Jim Hall’s face as McKee looked at it, and it looked shocked and sick. Then it was gone.
McKee gave up. He fell over on his side. Much better.
The metallic sound of the door in the van slamming and then a voice, the voice of Joe Leaphorn, and a little later a single loud pop.
I can’t faint now, McKee told himself, because I have to tell him about Ellen. But he fainted.
> 18 <
HE WAS AWARE first of the vague sick smell of ether, of the feel of hospital sheets, of the cast on his chest, and of the splint bandaged tightly on his right hand. The room was dark. There was the shape of a man standing looking out the window into the sunlight. The man was Joe Leaphorn.
“Did you find her?” McKee asked.
“Sure,” Leaphorn said. He sat beside the bed. “We found her before we found you, as a matter of fact.” He interrupted McKee’s question. “She’s right down the hall. Broken cheekbone and a broken shoulder and some lost blood.”
He looked down at McKee, grinning. “They had to put about ten gallons in you. You were dry.”
“She’s going to be all right?”
“She’s already all right. You’ve been in here two days.”
McKee thought for a while.
“Her boyfriend,” he said. “How’d it all come out in the canyon?”
“Son of a bitch shot himself,” Leaphorn said. “Walked right away from me into the truck, and slammed the door and locked it and got out a little .22 he had in there and shot himself right through the forehead.” Leaphorn’s expression was sour. “Walked right in with me just standing there,” he added. He didn’t sound like he could make himself believe it.
McKee felt sick. Maybe it was the ether.
/> “You’ve got more Navajo blood in you now than I do,” Leaphorn said. “The doc said you had a busted oil pan. Took ten gallons.”
“I guess you had to tell her about Hall.”
“She knows.”
“He must have been crazy,” McKee said.
“Crazy to get rich,” Leaphorn said. “You call it ambition. Sometimes we call it witchcraft. You remember the Origin Myth, when First Woman sent the Heron diving back into the Fourth World to get the witchcraft bundle. She told him to swim down and bring back ‘the way to make money.’ “
“Knock off the philosophy,” McKee said. “What happened? How did you find her?”
“I’ve noticed this before,” Leaphorn said. “Belacani women are smarter than you Belacani men. Miss Leon got herself over to that camp stove on that cliff. She poured out the kerosene and made herself a smoky little smudge fire. You could see it for miles.”
He grinned at McKee.
“Something else she figured out that you might like to know about. She was having her doubts about Hall when I got there. All excited. Said you’d gone to find him and she was afraid something might happen to you. Miss Leon wanted me to climb up that split in the cliff and go chasing across that plateau to rescue you.”
McKee felt better. He was, in fact, feeling wonderful.
“Why didn’t you think of something simple, like making a big smoke?” Leaphorn asked. “Climbing up that crack in the rock was showing off.”
“How was I going to know you’d be wandering around out there?” McKee asked. “It’s supposed to be the cavalry that arrives in the nick of time, not the blanket-ass Indians.”
McKee had a sobering thought. “I guess you know I killed those two men?”
“Not officially, you didn’t,” Leaphorn said. “Officially, we’ve got just two dead people. Officially, Dr. Canfield and Jim Hall were killed in a truck accident. Miss Leon and you were hurt in the crash. And officially Eddie Poher and George Jackson never existed.”
The Blessing Way Page 17