He continued on, moving as swiftly as prudence would allow, often pausing to probe with his foot. He knew Esterhazy would be following; the man had no choice. And he was a superb tracker, perhaps even superior to Pendergast himself. As he walked, he slipped a kerchief out of his bag and pressed it to his nose, trying to stem the flow of blood. He could feel the grating of a broken rib in his chest, a result of the fierce struggle. He silently reproached himself for not checking his rifle immediately before their departure. The rifles had been locked in the lodge’s gun room, as the rules required; Esterhazy must have used some ploy to get at his weapon. It only took a minute or two to remove a firing pin. He had underestimated his adversary; he would not do so again.
Suddenly he paused, examining the ground: there, in a gravelly patch, was the track of the stag they had spooked. He listened intently, peering behind from whence he had come. The mists were rising from the Mire in tattered columns, momentarily obscuring and disclosing views of the endless moors and distant mountains. The tor on which they had fought was wreathed in mist, and his pursuer was nowhere to be seen. A deep gray light lay over all, with a darkness looming to the north, occasionally shot through with flickers of lightning—an approaching storm.
Reloading his Colt, Pendergast headed still deeper into the Mire, following the faint track of the stag as it picked its way along an invisible path known only to itself, threading ingeniously between quaking bogs and sucking pools.
It wasn’t over. Esterhazy was in hot pursuit. There could be only one outcome: one of them would not return.
CHAPTER 3
PENDERGAST FOLLOWED THE FAINT TRACK of the stag as it meandered through the shivering fens of the Mire, keeping to firm ground. As the storm moved in, the sky grew darker and distant thunder rolled over the moors. He moved swiftly, pausing only long enough to examine the ground for signs of the stag’s passage. The Mire was especially treacherous this time of year, when the long summer had allowed green grass to overspread many of the pools of quaking bog, leaving a deceptive crust that would break under the weight of a man.
Lightning flashed and rain started down, heavy drops whirling out of the leaden sky. The wind rose, rustling over the heather, carrying up a miasmic smell from the Inish Marshes to the west: a vast, sheeted surface of water covered with patches of reeds and cattails, swaying in the wind. For more than a mile, he followed the stag’s trail. It gradually led to higher and firmer ground, and then—through a sudden gap in the mists—Pendergast spied a ruin ahead. Silhouetted against the sky at the top of a rise stood an old stone corral and shepherd’s hut, fitfully illuminated by the flickering lightning. Beyond the hill lay the ragged edges of the marshes. Examining the broken furze, Pendergast noted that the stag had passed through the ruins and continued toward the vast swamp on the far side.
He mounted the hill and quickly explored the ruin. The hut was unroofed, the stone walls broken and covered with lichen, the wind moaning and whistling through the tumbled remains. Beyond, the hill fell away to a swamp that lay hidden in a murk of rising vapors.
The ruin, commanding the high ground, offered an ideal defensible position, with unobstructed views in all directions: a perfect place from which to ambush a pursuer or stand against an attack. For those reasons, Pendergast passed it by and continued down the hill toward the Inish Marshes. Again he picked up the track of the stag and was momentarily puzzled; the stag seemed to be heading into a dead end. The animal must have felt harried by Pendergast’s pursuit.
Circling back along the verge of the marsh, Pendergast came to an area of thick reeds where an esker of cobbled ground ambled out into water. A string of glaciated rocks provided a small but obvious cover; he paused, removed a white handkerchief, wrapped it around a stone, and placed it in a precise location behind the boulders. He then passed by. Beyond the finger of cobbled ground, he found what he had been looking for: a flattish rock just under the surface of the water, surrounded by reeds. He could see that the stag had also gone this way, heading into the marshes.
The natural blind was an unlikely place to take cover and an even more unlikely place to attempt a defense. For those reasons, it would suffice.
Wading out to the stone, being careful to avoid the morass on either side, Pendergast took a position among the reeds, well hidden from view. There he crouched, waiting. A spur of lightning split the sky, followed by the crash of thunder; more fog came rolling in from the marshes, temporarily obscuring the ruins on top of the hill. No doubt Esterhazy would arrive soon. The end was in sight.
Judson Esterhazy paused to examine the ground, reaching down and fingering some gravel that had been pushed aside by the passage of the stag. Pendergast’s footprint was much less obvious, but he could see it in the form of pressed earth and flattened stems of grass nearby. The man was taking no chances, continuing to follow the stag on its winding course through the Foulmire. Clever. No one would dare venture in here without a guide, but a stag was as good a guide as any. As the storm rolled in, the fogs thickened; it became dark enough that he was glad to have the flashlight—carefully shielded—to examine the trail.
Pendergast clearly intended to lure Esterhazy out into the Mire to kill him. For all his pretensions to southern gentility, Pendergast was the most implacable man he had ever met, and a dirty bastard of a fighter.
A bolt of lightning illuminated the desolate moors and he saw, through a break in the mist, the ragged outline of a ruin standing on a rise a quarter mile away. He paused. That would be a logical place for Pendergast to go to ground and await his arrival. He would approach the ruin accordingly; ambush the ambusher… But even as his practiced eye roamed over the site, he considered that Pendergast was too subtle a man to take the obvious course of action.
Esterhazy could assume nothing.
There was very little cover in this barren landscape, but by timing his movements he could take advantage of the heavy fogs coming in from the marshes to provide the cover he needed. As if on cue, a new bank of mist rolled in and he was enveloped in a colorless world of nothing. He scurried up the hill toward the ruins, able to move fast on the harder ground. About a hundred yards below the summit, he circled the hill so as to approach from an unexpected direction. The rain came down, heavier now, while the rumblings of thunder marched away over the moors.
He crouched and took cover as the fogs cleared for a moment, allowing him a glimpse of the ruins above. No sign of Pendergast. As the fog rolled back in he moved up the side of the hill, rifle in hand, until he reached the stone wall surrounding an old corral. He moved along it, keeping low, until another break in the mist allowed him to peer through a gap in the rocks.
The corral was vacant. But beyond it stood the roofless hut.
He approached the structure from along the perimeter of the corral, keeping below the wall. In a moment he had flattened himself against its rear wall. Creeping up to a broken window, he waited for another gap in the fog. The wind picked up, sighing through the stones and covering the faint sounds of his own movement as he readied himself: and then, as the air cleared a little, he swung around into the window and swept his rifle across the inside of the hut, covering it from corner to corner.
Empty.
Vaulting over the sill, he crouched inside the hut, thinking furiously. As he suspected, Pendergast had avoided the obvious. He had not occupied the strategic high ground. But where had he gone? He muttered a curse; with Pendergast, only the unexpected could be expected.
Another bank of fog rolled in and Esterhazy took the opportunity to examine the area around the hut, looking for Pendergast’s track. He found it with difficulty: it was quickly disappearing in the heavy rains. Continuing down the far side of the hill toward the marshlands below, he could glimpse the lay of the land through gaps in the mists. It was a dead end of sorts—beyond lay only the Inish Marshes. So Pendergast must have taken cover somewhere along the marsh edge. He felt a low-grade panic take hold. Through the breaking mists, he scanned the area; surel
y the man wouldn’t be hiding in the reeds or cattails. But there was a finger of land that extended into the marshes; he pulled out his spyglass and noted a scattering of glacial boulders that provided just enough cover to hide a man. And by God, there he was: a patch of white, just visible behind one of the rocks.
That was it, then: he had taken the only cover there was, and was waiting in ambush for Esterhazy to pass as he followed Pendergast’s trail along the edge of the marsh.
Once again: the unobvious thing. And Esterhazy saw just the way to thwart him.
The welcoming fog returned; he started down the hill and was soon back among the treacherous bogs of the Mire, following the double track of Pendergast and the stag. As he approached the verge of the marshes, he found himself stepping from one hillock to another over quivering sheets of morass. He regained firmer ground, moving off the trail, toward a position where he would have a clear line of fire to the area behind the rocks concealing Pendergast. Taking up a position, he crouched behind a hillock, waiting for the mists to part so he could take a shot.
A minute passed; a gap appeared in the mists. He could see the little bit of white from Pendergast’s hidden position; it appeared to be part of his shirt and it offered enough of a view to accept a bullet. He raised his rifle…
“Stand up ever so slowly,” came the disembodied voice from behind him, almost as if from the marsh water itself.
CHAPTER 4
ESTERHAZY FROZE AT THE SOUND OF THE VOICE.
“As you rise, hold your rifle in your left hand, extended away from your body.”
Still, Esterhazy found himself unable to move. How was it possible?
Whing! The round smacked into the ground between his feet, kicking up a spray of dirt. “I won’t ask again.”
Holding his rifle out by his left hand, Esterhazy stood up.
“Drop the rifle and turn around.”
He allowed the rifle to fall, then turned. There was Pendergast, twenty yards away, pistol in hand, himself rising from a clump of reeds apparently standing in water—but Esterhazy could now see there was a small meandering path of glacially deposited rocks at the water’s surface, surrounded on both sides by quickmire.
“I just have one question,” said Pendergast, his voice thin in the moaning wind. “How could you murder your own sister?”
Esterhazy stared at him.
“I require an answer.”
Esterhazy couldn’t quite bring himself to speak. Looking into Pendergast’s face, he knew he was a dead man. He felt the unutterably cold fear of death fall upon him like a sodden cloak, mingling with horror, regret, and relief. There was nothing he could do. He would not, at least, give Pendergast the satisfaction of an undignified exit. Even with his death, there would be pain enough for Pendergast in the months ahead. “Just get it over with,” he said.
“No explanations, then?” asked Pendergast. “No whining justifications, no abject pleading for understanding? How disappointing.” The finger tightened on the trigger. Esterhazy closed his eyes.
And then it happened: a sudden, overpowering crash of sound. Esterhazy saw an explosion of reddish fur, the flash of antlers—and the stag burst through the reeds, one antler swiping Pendergast, catching his gun and sending it flying into the water. As the stag bounded away, Pendergast staggered and thrashed—and Esterhazy realized he had been thrown into a pool of mire with only a skimming of water covering its surface.
Seizing his own rifle from the ground, Esterhazy aimed and fired. The round caught Pendergast in the chest, slamming him backward into the pool. Esterhazy aimed, preparing to fire again, then paused. A second shot, a second bullet, would be impossible to explain—if the body was found.
He lowered the rifle. Pendergast was struggling, held fast now in the mire, his strength already ebbing. A dark stain was spreading across his chest. The shot had struck him off center but was sufficient to do catastrophic damage. The man looked a sight: clothing torn and bloody, pale hair streaked with mud and darkened by rain. He coughed, and blood came burbling from his lips.
That was it: as a doctor, Esterhazy knew the shot was fatal. It had punctured a lung, creating a sucking wound, and its placement left a good possibility it had torn up the left subclavian artery, which was rapidly filling the lungs with blood. Even if he wasn’t sinking irretrievably into quicksand, Pendergast would be a dead man in a few minutes.
Already up to his waist in the quaking bog, Pendergast stopped struggling and stared up at his assassin. The icy glitter in the pale gray eyes spoke more eloquently of his hatred and despair than any words he might have spoken, and it shook Esterhazy to the core.
“You want an answer to your question?” Esterhazy asked. “Here it is. I never did murder Helen. She’s still alive.”
He couldn’t bear to wait for the end. He turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 5
THE LODGE LOOMED UP, THE WINDOWS CASTING a blurry yellow light into the driving rain. Judson Esterhazy grasped the heavy iron door ring, heaved it open, and staggered into the entry hall, lined with suits of armor and huge racks of antlers.
“Help!” he cried. “Help me!”
The guests were standing around a roaring fire in the great hall, drinking noontime coffee, tea, and small glasses of malt. They turned and looked at him, astonished.
“My friend’s been shot!”
A boom of thunder temporarily drowned him out, rattling the leaded windows.
“Shot!” Esterhazy repeated, collapsing to the floor. “I need help!”
After a moment of frozen horror, several people rushed over. On the floor, his eyes closed, Esterhazy felt them crowding around, heard the low babble of voices.
“Step back,” came the stern Scottish voice of Cromarty, the lodgekeeper. “Give him air. Step back, please.”
A glass of whisky was pressed to his mouth. He took a swallow, opened his eyes, struggled to sit up.
“What happened? What are you saying?”
Cromarty’s face loomed over him: neatly trimmed beard, wire spectacles, sandy hair, angular jaw. The deception was easy enough; Esterhazy was genuinely horror-struck, chilled to the bone, barely able to walk. He took another swallow of whisky, the peaty malt like a fire in his throat, reviving him.
“My brother-in-law… we were stalking a stag in the Mire—”
“The Mire?” said Cromarty, his voice suddenly sharp.
“A real giant…” Esterhazy swallowed, tried to pull himself together.
“Come to the fire.” Taking his arm, Cromarty helped him up. Robbie Grant, the old gamekeeper, bustled into the room and took Esterhazy’s other arm. Together they helped him shuck off his saturated camouflage jacket and led him to an armchair by the hearth.
Esterhazy sank down.
“Speak,” said Cromarty. The other guests stood around, faces white with shock.
“Up on Beinn Dearg,” he said. “We spotted a stag. Down in the Foulmire.”
“But you know the rules!”
Esterhazy shook his head. “I know, but he was a monster. Thirteen points. My brother-in-law insisted. We tracked him deep into the Mire. Down to the marshes. Then we split up—”
“Are you bloody daft, man?” It was the gamekeeper, Robbie Grant, speaking in a shrill tenor. “You split up?”
“We had to corner him. Drive him against the marshes. The fogs were coming in, visibility was poor, he broke cover… I saw movement, fired…” He paused, heaved a breath. “Hit my brother-in-law square in the chest…” He gasped, covered his face.
“You left an injured man on the moors?” Cromarty demanded angrily.
“Oh, God.” Esterhazy broke into racking sobs, hiding his face in his hands. “He fell into the bogs… Got sucked down…”
“Hold on,” said Cromarty, the tone of his voice as cold as ice. He spoke slowly, quietly, enunciating every word. “You’re telling me, sir, that you went out into the Mire; that you accidentally shot your brother-in-law; and that he fell into a bog? Is that
what you’re telling me?”
Esterhazy nodded wordlessly, still hiding his face.
“Christ Jesus. Is there any chance he’s still alive?”
Esterhazy shook his head.
“Are you absolutely sure of that?”
“I’m sure,” Esterhazy choked out. “He went down. I’m… I’m so sorry!” he suddenly wailed. “I’ve killed my brother-in-law!” He began rocking back and forth, head in his hands. “God forgive me!”
A stunned silence.
“He’s out of his head,” the gamekeeper muttered. “As clear a case of moor fever as I’ve ever seen.”
“Get these people out of here,” Cromarty rumbled, gesturing at the guests. He turned to the gamekeeper. “Robbie, call the police.” He swung on Esterhazy. “Is that the rifle you shot him with?” He gestured roughly at the rifle Esterhazy had carried in, now lying on the floor.
He nodded miserably.
“Nobody touch it.”
The guests left in murmuring groups, speaking in hushed tones, shaking their heads. The lightning flashed, a boom of thunder following. Rain lashed the windows. Esterhazy sat in the chair, slowly lowering his hands from his face, feeling the welcome warmth of the fire creeping through his wet clothing. An equally marvelous warmth crept into his inner being, slowly displacing the horror; he felt a sense of release washing over him, even elation. It was over, over, over. He had nothing more to fear from Pendergast. The genie was back in the bottle. The man was dead. As for his partner, D’Agosta, and that other New York City cop, Hayward—killing Pendergast had cut the head off that snake. This was truly the end. And by all appearances, these Scottish dunces were buying the story. There was nothing that could come to light to contradict anything he’d said. He had gone back, collected all the shells except the one he wanted them to find. Pendergast’s rifle and the shells from their fight he had deposited in a bog on his way back, and they’d never find that. That would be the only mystery—the missing rifle. Nothing strange in that: a rifle could easily get permanently lost once sunk in the Mire. They knew nothing about his handgun, and Esterhazy had made that disappear as well. The stag’s tracks, if they survived the storm, would be fully consistent with his story.
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