But the air current was dying. At first Leaphorn thought he had simply been unable to find the area through which it moved. And then he realized that it must be nearing that time of day when this earthly breathing stops-the moment near the mar-gin of daylight and dark when the heating/cooling process briefly reaches balance, when warm air no longer presses upward and cool air is not yet heavy enough to sink. Even in this slanting cavern, where narrowness of passageway multiplied the effect, there would be two periods-morning and evening-when the draft would be dead.
Leaphorn collected a pinch of the finegrained sand between thumb and forefinger and sifted it out into the beam of his flashlight. It fell almost perpendicularly. Almost-but not quite. Leaphorn moved toward the source of air, repeating the process. And the fifth time he bent to replenish his supply of dust, he saw the footprint of the dog.
He squatted, looking at the print and digesting what it meant. It meant, first, that he was not doomed to die entombed in this cave. The dog had found a way in. Leaphorn could find a way out. It meant, second, that the cavity Leaphorn had been following down from high up the cliff must be connected to a cavern that opened on the canyon bottom. As the thought came, Leaphorn flicked off the flashlight. If the dog had been in this cave, it was probably the hiding place of Goldrims.
Even though he now used the flashlight only cautiously, following the dog's tracks was relatively easy. The animal had roamed through a labyrinth of rooms and corridors, but had quickly exhausted its curiosity.
At about 8 P.M. Leaphorn detected a dim reflection of light. Exulting in the sight, he moved toward it slowly, stopping often to listen. He had a single advantage and he intended to guard it: Goldrims and Tull believed he was dead and out of the game. As long as they didn't know he was inside their sanctuary, he had surprise on his side. He became aware of sounds now. First there was a vague purring, which began suddenly and stopped just as abruptly about five minutes later. It sounded like a small, well-muffled internal-combustion engine. A little later Leaphorn heard a metallic clatter, and after that, when he had edged perhaps a hundred yards toward the source of light, a thumping noise. The light was general now. Still faint but enough so that Leaphorn-his pupils totally dilated by hours of absolute darkness-could forgo the flashlight entirely. He moved past one of the seemingly endless screens of stalagmites into another of the series of auditorium-sized cavities which water seepage had produced at this level. Just around the screen, Leaphorn stopped. The light here reflected and shimmered from the irregular ceiling far overhead. At the end of this room, he could see water. He edged toward it. An underground pool. Its surface was about three feet lower than the old calcite deposit which formed the cavern floor. He knelt beside it and dipped in a finger. It was cool, but not cold. He tasted it. Fresh, with none of the alkaline flavor he had expected. He looked down its surface, toward the source of light. And then he realized that this water must be part of Lake Powell-backing into the cave as the lake surface rose with spring runoff and draining out as the level fell with autumn and winter. He drank thirstily.
The dog tracks led Leaphorn away from the water into the next room. At its far end, Leaphorn saw, it, too, opened onto the lake surface. The light here was still indirect-seemingly reflecting out of the water-but it was brighter. There were sounds, blurred by echoes. Voices. Whose? Goldrims and Tull? Father Goldrims and Theodora Adams? And how had a doctor's daughter and a Franciscan priest become involved in this violent affair? He thought of the face of Father Tso as it had looked magnified through binoculars-the eyes intent on the elevated host, the expression rapt. And the face in the reflected glow of the flashlight at the canyon bottom-the man in the gold-rimmed glasses calmly discussing with Tull how to burn Leaphorn to death. Had his eyes tricked him in the flickering light? Could they be the same man?
The hunger cramps which had bothered him earlier were gone now. He hadn't eaten for thirty-three hours and his digestive system seemed to have adjusted to the oddity. He felt only a sort of lethargic weakness-the product, he guessed, of low blood sugar. An intermittent throbbing had joined the ache in his hip-probably the symptom of an infection beginning in the dog bite. That was something he could think about much later. Now the problem was to find a way out of here.
As he thought that, a beam of yellow light flashed across his face.
Before Leaphorn could react, the light was gone. He stood looking frantically for a place to hide. And then he realized that whoever was behind the light apparently hadn't noticed him. He could see the light only indirectly now, reflecting off the limestone far down the cavern. It swung and bobbed with the movement of the person who carried it. Leaphorn moved toward it as swiftly as he could without risking noise.
The flat calcite floor deposit quickly gave way to rougher going-a mixture of stalagmite deposits jutting upward and outcrops of some sort of darker non-limestone extrusions which had resisted the dissolving water. The light disappeared, then its reflection appeared again between a high ridge of lime deposit and the cavern ceiling. Leaphorn climbed the ridge gingerly. He peered over the top. Below him, a thin man wearing a blue shirt and a red sweatband around his forehead was squatting beside a pile of cartons, gathering an armload of boxes and cans. The man rose and turned. He clutched his burden to his chest with his right arm, awkwardly retrieved an electric lantern with his left, and walked quickly from Leaphorn's view the same way he had come. The bobbing light of his lantern faded away. Leaphorn lay a moment, listening. Then he slid over the limestone barrier and climbed quietly down to the boxes.
They contained groceries-canned vegetables, canned meats, cartons of crackers and cookies, pork and beans, canned peaches. Sufficient, Leaphorn guessed, to feed a family for a month. He made a quick estimate of the missing cans and boxes. About enough gone to amount to thirty or forty man-days of eating. Either this cave had been occupied by one person a month or more, or by several persons for a shorter period. Near the cache of groceries was a row of five-gallon gasoline cans. Eight of them. Leaphorn checked. Five were full of gasoline and three were empty. Beyond them was a wooden crate. The word explosives was stenciled across the loosened lid. Leaphorn lifted it and looked inside. Dynamite sticks, neatly packed. Six of the twenty-four sticks were missing. He replaced the lid. Beside the dynamite case was a padlocked metal toolbox and two cardboard cartons. The smaller one contained a roll of blue insulated wire. The larger one originally had held a pair of Justin boots. Now it held what looked like the works of a large clock-a timing device of some sort. Leaphorn put it back and rearranged the paper padding as he had found it. He squatted on his heels. What might he do with dynamite and a timing device? He could think of absolutely nothing useful, beyond committing suicide. The detonators seemed to be kept somewhere else-a healthy habit developed by those who worked with explosives. Without the blasting caps the stuff could be fired by impact-but it would take a heavy blow. He left the dynamite and selected a box of crackers and an assortment of canned meats and vegetables from boxes where they seemed least likely to be missed. Then he hurried back into the darkness. He would hide, eat, and wait. With food and water, time was no longer an enemy. He would wait for night, when darkness would spread from the interior of the cave to its mouth. Then he could learn more about what lay between him and the exit.
Even during the long days of August, darkness came relatively early at the bottom of a canyon. By 9 P.M. it was dark enough. His bootsoles and heels were rubber and relatively noiseless, but he cut the sleeves from his shirt and wrapped the boots carefully to further muffle the sound of his footsteps. Then he began his careful prowling. A little before 11 P.M. he had done as much exploring as caution permitted. He had learned that his escape would certainly involve getting wet, and would probably involve getting shot.
He had found the cave mouth by edging his way down the waterline, wading at times where the limestone formations forced him into the water. Just around one such outcropping, he had seen a wide arch of opalescent light. The night o
utside, dark as it was, was immensely brighter than the eyeless blackness of the cave. The cave mouth showed as an irregular, flattened arch of light. This bright slope was bisected by a horizontal line. Leaphorn studied this optical phenomenon a moment before he understood its cause. Most of the mouth of the cave was submerged in the lake. Only a few feet at the top were open to the air. Leaving the cave would involve swimming-simple enough. It would also involve swimming past two men. A butane lantern on a shelf of stone to the left of the cave entrance illuminated the men. One was Tull. In the dim light, he was sprawled against a bedroll, reading a magazine. The other man had his back to Leaphorn. He was kneeling, working intently at something. Leaphorn extracted his binoculars. Through them he saw the man was working on what seemed to be a radio transceiver, apparently adjusting something. His shoulders were hunched and his face hidden, but the form and clothing were familiar. Goldrims. Leaphorn stared at the man, pulled optically almost into touching distance by the lenses. Was it the priest? He felt his stomach tighten. Fear, or anger, or both. The man had tried to kill him three times. He stared at the man's back, watching his shoulders move as he worked. Then he shifted the binoculars to Tull, seeing the undamaged side of his face in profile. From this angle the deformity was not apparent. The face, softly lit by the yellow flare of the lantern, was gentle, engrossed in whatever he was reading. The lips suddenly turned up in a smile, and the face turned toward Father Goldrims and mouthed something. Leaphorn had seen the ruined face before in the flickering firelight. Now he saw it more clearly-the crushed cheekbone, the mouth pulled forever awry by the improperly healed jawbone, the misshapen eye socket. It was the sort of face that made those who saw it flinch.
Suddenly Tull's lips stopped moving. He swung his head slightly to the left, frowning, listening. Then Leaphorn heard the sound that had attracted Tull's attention. It was faint and made incoherent by echoes, but it was a human sound. Tull said something to Goldrims, his face angry. Goidrims glanced toward the source of the sound, his face in profile now to Leaphorn's binoculars. He shook his head, said something, and went back to work. Leaphorn lowered the binoculars and concentrated on listening. The sound was high-pitched, shrill and excited. A female voice. Now he knew in what direction he would find Theodora Adams.
17
L eaphorn moved carefully back into the labyrinth, circling to his right beyond the cache of supplies into another arm of the cavern. The calcite floors here were at several levels-dropping abruptly as much as four or five feet from one flat plane to another-suggesting that the cavern had flooded, drained and reflooded repeatedly down through geological time. The darkness was virtually total again and Leaphorn felt his way cautiously, not risking the flashlight, less fearful of a fall than of giving away his only advantage. The distant sound of the voices pulled him on. There was a hint of light from ahead, elusive as the sound, which echoed and reflected, seeming no closer. Leaphorn stopped, as he had a dozen times, trying to locate the source exactly. As he stood, breath held, ears straining, he heard another sound.
It was a rubbing, scraping sound, coming from his right. At first it defied identification. He stared into the blackness. The sound came, and came again, and came again-rhythmically. It became louder, and clearer, and Leaphorn began to distinguish a pattern to it-a second of silence before the repetition. It was something alive dragging itself directly toward him. Leaphorn had a sudden hideous intuition. The dog had tumbled down the cliff. But he hadn't seen it hit the bottom. It was alive, crippled, dragging itself inexorably after Leaphorn's scent. For a second, reason reasserted itself in Leaphorn's logical mind. The dog couldn't have fallen three hundred feet down the face of that cliff and survived. But then the sound came again, closer now, only a few yards away from his feet, and Leaphorn was again in a nightmare world in which men became witches, and turned themselves into wolves; in which wolves didn't fall, but flew. He pointed the flashlight at the sound, like a gun, and pushed the button.
There was, for a moment, nothing but a blaze of blinding light. Then Leaphorn's dilated pupils adjusted and the shape illuminated in the flashlight beam became Father Benjamin Tso. The priest's eyes were squeezed shut against the light, his face jerked away from the beam. He was sitting on the calcite floor, his feet stretched in front of him, his arms behind him. His ankles were fastened with what appeared to be a strip of nylon.
Now Tso squinted up into the flashlight beam.
"All right," he said. "If you'll untie my ankles, I'll walk back."
Leaphorn said nothing.
"No harm trying," the priest said. He laughed. "Maybe I could have got away."
"Who in the hell are you?" Leaphorn asked. He could hardly get the words out.
The priest frowned into the light, his face puzzled. "What do you mean?" he asked. Then he frowned again, trying to see Leaphorn's face through the flashlight beam. "I'm Benjamin Tso," he said. "Father Benjamin Tso." He paused. "But aren't you... ?"
"I'm Leaphorn. The Navajo cop."
"Thank God," Father Tso said. "Thank God for that." He swung his head to the side. "The others are back there. They're all right. How did you... ?"
"Keep your voice down," Leaphorn said. He snapped off the light and listened. In the cave now there was only a heavy, ear-ringing total silence.
"Can you untie my hands?" Father Tso whispered. "They've been numb for a long time."
Leaphorn switched on the flash again, holding his hand over the lens to release only the dimmest illumination. He studied the priest's face. It was a lot like the face of the man he had seen with Tull and the dog, the face of the man who had tried to burn him to death in the canyon.
Father Benjamin Tso glanced up at Leaphorn, and then away. Even in the dim light Leaphorn could see the face change. It became tired and older.'
"I guess you've met my brother," he said.
"Is that it?" Leaphorn asked. "Yes, it must be. He looks something like you."
"A year older," Father Tso said. "We weren't raised together." He glanced up at Leaphorn. "He's in the Buffalo Society. My returning didn't help his plans."
"But what made you... how did you get here?" Leaphorn asked. "I mean, to your grandfather's hogan?"
"It was a long trip. I flew back from Rome, and then to Phoenix. And then I took a bus to Flagstaff and then to Kayenta, and then I caught a ride."
"And where's the Adams girl?"
"He came to the hogan and got us," Tso said. "My brother and that dog he has." Father Tso stopped. "That dog. He's around here and he'll find us. Are there other police with you? Have you arrested them?"
"The dog's dead. Just tell me what happened," Leaphorn said.
"My brother came to the hogan and brought us to this cave," Father Tso said. "He said we'd have to stay until some sort of operation was over. Then later... He shrugged and looked apologetic. "I don't know how much later. It's hard to keep track of time in here and I can't see my wrist watch. Anyway, later, my brother and a man called Tull and three other men brought a bunch of Boy Scouts and put them in with us. I don't understand it. What do you know about it?"
"Just what I heard on the radio," Leaphorn said. He knelt behind Tso and examined the bindings on his wrists. "Keep talking," Leaphorn said. "And keep it at a whisper." He fished out his pocket knife and sawed through the strips, a type of disposable handcuff developed for use by police in making mass arrests. The BIA police had bought some during the early stages of the American Indian Movement troubles, but they'd been junked because if the subject struggled, they tightened and cut off circulation. Tso's hands were ice cold and bloodless. It would be a while before he could use them.
"I just know what I heard, too," Father Tso was saying. "And what the Scout leader told us. I guess we're involved in some sort of symbolic kidnapping."
Leaphorn had the strips cut from Tso's ankles now. Tso tried to massage them, but his numb hands dangled almost uselessly from his wrists.
"It takes a while for the circulation to come back," Leaphorn
said. "When it does, it hurts. Can you tell me more?"
Tso began rubbing his hands briskly against his chest. "Every couple of hours or so Tull or my brother comes back and they have two questions they ask the Scout leader or one of the boys. It's to prove everyone is still alive or something. It seems they told the police they have to stay completely out of this part of the reservation. I think the deal is if they see any police they say they'll kill the hostages. Otherwise the police get to broadcast questions every couple of hours, and he-"
"Questions? What sort of questions?"
"Oh, one was where did the Scout leader meet his wife. And one was why he was late for a trip, and where was the telephone in his home. Trivial stuff that no one else could know." Father Tso grimaced suddenly and inspected his hands. "I see what you mean about hurting."
"Keep rubbing them. And keep talking. Do you know the timetable?" Leaphorn asked. "Did you hear anything about that?"
"They told the Scouts they'd probably be here about two or three days. Maybe less. Until they get the ransom."
Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 03 - Listening Woman Page 16