Lucifer's Eye

by Cave, Hugh

  Thank God he'swith me, Peter thought as they arrived at the house.

  In the backyard his housekeeper was roasting a breadfruit over charcoal, and the rich, dark smell in the air was like a blessing in its own right. Peter had not talked to her before leaving with Manny for the intake. The pig hunter had come so swiftly in response to his summons that Coraline had trailed far behind. Even then Manny had apologized for being late and explained that Coraline had had to climb to his own hillside coffee field to tell him he was wanted.

  Peter halted before the woman now, and she looked up from her squatting position at the fire, waiting for him to speak.

  "I'm going to need your help, I think," he said. Briefly he explained to her that in response to Sergeant Wray's phone call to Defence Force headquarters there might be more soldiers arriving, and she was to offer whatever hospitality was requested. "I don't know for sure, of course," he concluded. "They may go to Blackrock some other way. But if they do turn up here, please look after them."

  She nodded, seeming a little frightened.

  "Manny and I are going to the John Crow's Nest and try to get down into the gorge," he said. "We think that's where Miss Craig and Mr. Preble may be. If we don't return soon, you'd better send some men to look for us."

  "Yes, suh."

  "If the soldiers do turn up, please talk to the officer in charge. Tell him he ought to question Bronzie Dakin's Gerald about the death of that forestry man. Will you remember that?"

  "Him must have to talk to Gerald. Yes, suh."

  Good Lord, Peter thought—I was going to take Gerald to the hospital this morning. Now I don't know what I'm doing or how it will end. "All right, Coraline. We—"

  "Squire," Manny Williams interrupted. "We will need a rope."

  "That's right, we will."

  "A long one."

  "There's one in the storeroom," Peter said. "Hold on while I get it."

  23

  THEY STOOD TOGETHER ON THE FRIGHTENING precipice called the John Crow's Nest, and Manny Williams peered -at the old juniper leaning out over its brink. Scowling as usual, he said in a muted growl, "You remember looking down from that tree, squire?"

  "Yes, Manny."

  "Me thinking this is the most likely place for us to go down, but let I look around first."

  "Can we get down here, Manny?"

  "Maybe—with the rope."

  So doubtful was he, the pig hunter used up half an hour exploring the canyon's rim before deciding the almost sheer wall beneath the leaning juniper was indeed the best the gorge had to offer. Even then, after he picked up the coil of sisal rope, he shook his head while striding across the table of rock to a sturdy young tree at its inner edge. "This not going be easy," he said as he finished making one end of the rope fast to the tree.

  Back at the cliff's edge he tossed the coil of rope over the brink, then went to the leaning juniper and laid himself against it, peering down. Peter stood watching him. For a suspiciously long moment the old pig hunter was silent. Then he stepped back from the juniper and let his breath out in a noisy gust and shook his head again.

  "The rope not long enough, squire."

  "What?"

  "It short by the length of this table of rock we standing on. Unless me go back to the house for more, we must have to fasten it to this old juniper here."

  "Oh God." Peter thought of Edith Craig and what night be happening to her. "Manny, we can't go back. It would take too long!"

  "So me think, squire. This old juniper good enough anyway, me think. If we careful." Hurrying back to the younger tree, he untied the rope.

  When he had made the rope fast to the juniper, Manny peered down into the gorge again. "But better me do this alone, squire," he said with a frown. "You not used to such things."

  "How old are you, Manny?"

  "Old? Seventy, maybe, or a little more."

  "I'm a little younger. But, anyway, we'd better go down one at a time. If you want to go first, go ahead."

  "In a minute, squire."

  Manny turned away and strode to a clump of saplings near the cliff's edge. Placing his shotgun on the ground, he took a jackknife from his pocket and stripped off a length of light brown bark. In his gnarled hands the thin, supple bark became a sling for his shotgun. When he turned again to the cliff, the sling was over one shoulder and fastened to his rope belt, holding the gun securely against his back.

  With a glance at Peter he lowered himself to a sitting position on the canyon's rim and took hold of the rope with both hands. His feet groped for the first outcrop. Peter lay belly-down at the edge of the rock and watched, with an apprehensive glance now and then at the old tree to which the rope was fastened. Not forgotten was the time when he, Peter Sheldon, had leaned against that tree and been almost afraid to breathe, lest any sudden movement tear its roots out of the rock and send him plummeting to his death.

  Far below, the white water in the canyon's depths looked like a length of white string dropped from above. Sunlight never wholly penetrated this deep rift in the mountainside, he guessed. Not even ordinary daylight could do so with any brilliance.

  Slowly, very slowly, the old pig hunter descended into that near darkness. Then his voice came back up, triumphantly shouting that he had reached the bottom.

  It was Peter's turn.

  Like Manny, he sat on the edge and reached for the rope. Like Manny he swung out into space and struggled to turn himself so he would be facing the canyon wall. He was heavier than the pig hunter, he reminded himself. He must be even more careful not to put the old tree to any sudden test.

  The cliff was no less vertical here than elsewhere, he presently decided. What had caught Manny's attention was its comparative irregularity. Other sections had been too sheer. Here, ledges a few inches wide at least appeared to be arranged in a pattern vaguely suggestive of a ladder. When his feet found those, his fear subsided a little. But each time he swung out in space again with his full weight on the rope, the terror returned.

  Below, when he found nerve enough to chance a downward glance, the thread of white water appeared to grow more distinct. He was only sixty or seventy feet above it now, he guessed. Manny Williams stood there, gazing up at him.

  Fifty feet to go now. Forty. He was almost there, thank God. Suddenly he heard a sound above him and felt himself falling. And heard, from below, a shout from his companion.

  "Squire! Watch out!"

  Some thirty feet above the canyon floor, he could not swing himself out of danger with the rope; it had gone limp. His only hope was to grab at the cliff wall somehow and hope the thing that was crashing down on him would miss him. He let go the rope and clutched an outcrop of rock. Missed and clawed at another as he slid downward. This time his fingers caught and hung on.

  The tree came down past him like some pursuing monster in a nightmare. One whipping branch, like an out-flung arm, slashed across his back as it went by. Then he felt himself sliding half-conscious down the last few feet of stone. Felt the upthrust arms of the old pig hunter, Manny Williams, catching him. And heard Manny saying, "Easy now, squire. You is going be all right."

  He must have passed out, either from the tree's blow or from fright. The next thing he knew, he was seated on the canyon floor with his back against the wall. Manny Williams gently stroked his face, as if he were a child.

  "You is better now, squire?"

  Peter turned to look at the tree. It had crashed with its nearest branch tip not four feet from where he sat. Had he not made his move when he sensed his peril, he would have been under it when it landed. "I'm all right, Manny—I think."

  "Let we rest a few minutes, then, before we go on."

  There was a new warmth in the older man's voice. "You a good man, squire."

  "We can go now, Manny. We mustn't waste time."

  They had been talking loudly because of the muffled roar of the stream. The old-timers of the district called this stream Wild River, Peter remembered. How many could have seen this por
tion of it, where the water that gave it that name was almost certainly wilder than anywhere else along its course? Reaching for Manny's hand, he pulled himself to his feet.

  They should go downstream now, Manny suggested, and look for some sign that the three they sought had come this way. Downstream they went, circling the fallen juniper that had so nearly brought the venture to a sudden end.

  It was slow going. The canyon walls were but twenty yards apart here. The river transformed most of that span into a roaring rush of foam over a bed of boulders.

  Where, Peter wondered, had the boulders come from? Not from the walls, obviously; those were solid rock. Had the gorge once been a cave, or part of one, and the boulders part of the cave's collapsed roof? According to geologists, that kind of thing had happened many times in this land of caverns and underground rivers.

  As they picked their way along, trying to avoid the angrier rapids and deeper pools, Manny Williams never stopped looking for what he called "sign." When asked what kind of sign—"so I can help you, Manny"—he shrugged and said it was not possible to tell a man what to look for.

  "If them did come this way, me will know it, squire. People's boots do things to rocks and weeds that water don't do."

  But he discovered no sign, and after half an hour they found themselves at a place where the walls of the gorge closed to within ten feet of each other, and the river leaped into space. Gingerly feeling their way out to the funnel through which it leaped, they gazed down on the pool from which Armadale drew its water. The same pool from which, earlier that morning, Manny had peered up at this same cascade and said there was no way to reach the place where they now stood.

  With a shake of his head the pig hunter said, "Them never did come this way, squire. Them never could climb up here."

  Peering down at the pool, Peter thought of how close they were to the Great House as a John Crow might fly, and how very long it might take them to get there from where they stood. "I agree, Manny. They couldn't have climbed up here. But we can't get down there, either. So how do we get out of here?"

  "We must have to go back up the gorge, squire."

  "To where we came down? We can't climb that cliff without the rope, man!"

  "There must have to be some other place." Manny leaned over the fall's brink for one last look at the pool below, then turned away and began walking upstream. There was nothing for Peter to do but follow. Again thinking of Edith Craig, he did so with a feeling of hopelessness.

  Where was Edith? How was he to find her?

  The journey upstream was harder. By the time the pig hunter first stopped to rest, Peter was bone weary and soaked with sweat. Shaking his head, he sank onto a streamside boulder and looked up.

  Against the strip of blue sky overhead—so far overhead it seemed to be in another world where the ever-present gloom and river roar of this one did not exist—the place where the old juniper tree had leaned out over the brink seemed strangely naked. The cliff wall below it would have posed problems for a lizard.

  If the ancient tree had appeared to be a nightmare monster when it came plummeting past Peter, it was a dead monster now. They went on by it, Manny again feeling his way with extreme care around the more dangerous pools and whitewater runs. Tiring again, Peter had to stop a second time. Again seeking a place to sit, he looked at his companion in disbelief.

  "How old did you say you are, Manny?"

  "Squire, it not a man's age that count. Not him color, either. Plenty people younger than we not going to be down here doing what we doing this minute. Not for all the money in St. Alban."

  It was meant to be a compliment, Peter realized. But the fact that a man in his seventies was still reasonably fresh while Peter Sheldon was close to collapse did not make it seem a valid one. Then he glanced up at the cliff wall they had conquered in descending to the stream and changed his mind. It was a compliment. Not many men of any age would have accepted that challenge.

  Why, really, had he done it? He was not one to take crazy risks. Had he allowed Edith Craig to become that important to him despite her being engaged to marry someone else?

  Manny, peering upstream, said in a voice just audible above the river's snarl, "Squire, now we must hope the Lord good to we."

  Peter was not sure he had heard it right. "What, Manny?"

  "Me know the rest of this gully from the top, and me don't recall any place we can climb out without a rope; Let we hope this old man wrong for once."

  He peered at Peter, awaiting a reply. On getting none, he turned and continued upstream.

  Peter followed in silence. What if the old man was right? he thought. If they had to return to the waterfall that plunged sixty feet to the plantation's intake—if the only way out of this gorge was to ride that savage chute of water down to a shallow pool full of boulders, what would be their chance of getting out alive?

  The thought of it made him shiver.

  Peering at the canyon walls with the total dedication of a cat watching for lizards, the old pig hunter now continued upstream so slowly that he seemed scarcely to move at all. Behind him, Peter, too, desperately sought a way out of the trap they were in. But the walls were even more vertical here. They were smoother. With every bend of the gorge they were higher.

  Peter's faint hope for a miracle gave way to despair. What was this kind of thing called in the old American West? A box canyon? A cul-de-sac? Here it could only be called a grave. A three-sided grave with its open end suspended sixty feet above a drowning pool.

  Rounding still another bend, they saw the end of it.

  Manny Williams sat on a flat stone at the river's edge and looked at the right-hand wall and shook his head. He looked at the left-hand wall and rubbed his jaw. In front of them the canyon had widened, yes, but into a barrier of stone, unbroken except for a narrow, dark slit that seemed to end a few feet farther in. The stream boiled up from a hole in the canyon floor.

  "Lord Jesus, we in trouble," Manny said. Then with a low growl of defiance he pushed himself to his feet. "But, squire, we must go the whole way before we return to we death at the fall of water. You hunting a hog, you must have to follow him track to the end."

  Trudging the last few yards of the cul-de-sac, he stopped within reach of the wall and looked first to his left, at the stream rushing up from some underground passage. Then, pushing forward, he put his hands on the sides of the vertical slit in the rock face and leaned forward, trying to see into it.

  "Well now, look here, squire!" he called.

  Peter splashed forward to his side and peered into the slit with him. "A cave, Manny?"

  "It sure do look like one. A passage of some kind, for sure. And it seem wide enough for skinny men like we, anyway. And no water to stop us, you notice. The river come up from the ground there. Squire, let we find out where this go to!"

  24

  THE DARKNESS WAS FULL OF SMALLSOUNDS, AND THEY had brought no flashlights—a mistake, Peter realized now, but how could he have foreseen a development such as this? Most prominent of the sounds, and most disturbing, was that of flowing water, although, as Manny had pointed out, no water flowed in the narrow passage through which they advanced.

  Was there a parallel passage beyond the wall on their right, where the sound seemed to come from? Everything about the place seemed threateningly wet.

  Water dripped from the ceiling here. Peter could hear the drops striking the floor and feel them on his head. Other sounds pushing back the silence were those made by Manny and himself as they blundered forward, slipping on the rough floor, careening into the walls, and by their increasingly heavy breathing as forward progress became more uphill and difficult.

  Now and then Manny's voice drifted back, and the sound was comforting even though the tunnel distorted it. "Watch you step here, squire. The floor truly rough rough rough rough. . . ." Or, "It truly wet here, squire. Be careful you don't fall all all all all. . . ."

  Time passed. Surely twenty minutes. Then Peter saw a crooked slit of d
aylight ahead, with his companion's moving figure outlined against it.

  The pig hunter stopped, and Peter caught up to him. "It seem we will get through, squire, if that opening is big enough to let we out," Manny said with a grin in his voice.

  But as they groped toward the light, the ceiling sloped downward and the walls closed in. Still more than fifty feet from their goal, Manny had to drop to hands and knees, then flatten himself and proceed on his belly. With the shotgun now thrust ahead in one hand, he then seemed to be trapped by the narrowness of the passage, but after a prolonged struggle managed to squirm on through.

  From the sliver of daylight his voice came back in a yell of triumph. "Me is out, squire! Come!"

  Flattening himself to begin the crawl, Peter was apprehensive. He was larger than Manny; he weighed more. On reaching the place where his companion had become wedged, he felt the walls squeezing his shoulders. The more he squirmed, the more the grip tightened. He struggled until his feet and knees ached from pushing, his fingers bled from clawing the stone, his shoulders felt black and blue.

  "Manny." He knew he was trapped. Knew he would die here. "I can't get through."

  "Squire, just hold still a minute. Me soon return." The pig hunter disappeared from the opening, leaving Peter to lie there staring helplessly at a tantalizing gutter of sunlight that was so close, yet out of reach.

  In a few minutes Manny was back. Headfirst he came wriggling into the tunnel, holding not the shotgun now but a three-foot length of green sapling an inch or so in diameter. Propelling himself forward like a salamander, he stopped with his face close to Peter's and said quietly, "You not to worry you'self now, squire. Old Manny going get you out of here."

  One end of the stick had been stripped of its bark, Peter saw in the dim light from the opening. Manny thrust that end against a wall of the passage and methodically rubbed it back and forth, pushing each forward stroke to the point where the stone held Peter fast. When he was finished, the wall was coated with a layer of slime, as though a giant slug had slithered over it.