» 14 «
Leaphorn had been walking almost three hours, slowly, cautiously, trying to follow tracks in the gathering darkness, when he heard the sound. It stopped him, and he held his breath, listening. It was a soprano sound, made by something living human or otherwise. It came from a long distance, lasted perhaps three or four seconds, cut off abruptly in mid note, and was followed by a confusion of echoes. Leaphorn stood on the sand of the canyon bottom, analyzing the diminishing echoes. A human voice? Perhaps the high-pitched scream of a bobcat? It seemed to come from the place where this canyon drained into a larger canyon about 150 yards below him. But whether it originated up or down the larger canyon, or across it, or above it, Leaphorn could only guess. The echoes had been chaotic.
He listened a moment longer and heard nothing. The sound seemed to have startled even the insects and the insect-hunting evening birds. Leaphorn began to run as quietly as he could toward the canyon mouth, the whisper of his boot soles on the sand the only sound in an eerie silence. At the junction he stopped, looking right and left. He had been in the canyons long enough to develop an unusual and unsettling sense of disorientation of not knowing exactly where he was in terms of either direction or landmarks. He understood its cause: a horizon which rose vertically overhead and the constant turning of the corridors sliced through the stone. Understanding it made it no more comfortable.
Leaphorn, who had never been lost in his life, didn’t know exactly where he was. He could tell he was moving approximately northward. But he wasn’t sure he could retrace his way directly back to the Tso hogan without wasting steps. That uncertainty added to his general uneasiness. Far overhead, the cliff tops still glowed with the light of the sunsets afterglow, but here it was almost dark. Leaphorn sat on a boulder, fished a cigarette out of a package in his shirt pocket, and held it under his nose. He inhaled the aroma of the tobacco, and then slipped it back into the pack. He would not make a light. He simply sat, letting his senses work for him. He was hungry. He put that thought aside. On earth level the breeze had died, as it often did in the desert twilight. Here, two hundred feet below the earths surface, the air moved down-canyon, pressed by the cooling atmosphere from the slopes above. Leaphorn heard the song of insects, the chirping of rock crickets, and now and then the call of an owl. A bullbat swept past him, hunting mosquitoes, oblivious of the motionless man. Once again Leaphorn became aware of the distant steady murmur of the river. It was nearer now, and the noise of water over rock was funneled and concentrated by the cliffs. No more than a mile and a half away, he guessed. Normally the thin, dry air of desert country carries few smells. But the air at canyon bottom was damp, so Leaphorn could identify the smell of wet sand, the resinous aroma of cedar, the vague perfume of piñon needles, and a dozen scents too faint for identification. The afterglow faded from the cliff tops.
Time ticked away, bringing to the waiting man sounds and smells, but no repetition of the shout, if shout it had been, and nothing to hint at where Goldrims might have gone. Stars appeared in the slot overhead. First one, glittering alone, and then a dozen, and hundreds, and millions. The stars of the constellation Ursa Minor became visible, and Leaphorn felt the relief of again knowing his direction exactly. Abruptly he pushed himself upright, listening. From his left, down the dark canyon, came a faint rhythm of sound. Frogs greeting the summer night. He walked slowly, placing his feet carefully, moving down the canyon toward the almost imperceptible sound of the frogs. The darkness gave him an advantage. While it canceled sight, the night magnified the value of hearing. If it had kept Tsos secrets for a hundred years, the cave must be hidden from sight. But if there were people in it, they would unless they slept produce sound. The darkness would hide him, and he could move almost without noise down the sand of the canyon floor.
But there was also a disadvantage. The dog. If the dog was out in the canyon, it would smell him two hundred yards away. Leaphorn assumed that the cave would be somewhere up the cliff wall, as caves tended to be, and in this damp air, his scent would probably not rise. If the dog was in the cave, Leaphorn could go undetected.
Nevertheless, he drew his pistol and walked with it in his hand, its hammer held on half cock and the safety catch off. He walked tensely, stopping every few yards both to listen and to make sure that his breathing remained slow and low.
He heard very little: the faint sound of his own boot soles placed carefully on the sand, the distant barking of a coyote hunting somewhere on the surface above, the occasional call of a night bird, and finally, as the evening breeze rose, the breathing of air moving around the rocks, all against the background music of frog song. Once he was startled by a sudden scurrying of a rodent. And then, mid stride, he heard a voice.
He stood motionless, straining to hear more. It had been a mans voice-coming from somewhere down the canyon, saying something terse. Three or four quick words.
Leaphorn looked around him, identifying his location. Just down the canyon bottom, he could make out the shape of a granite outcropping. The canyon bent here, turning abruptly to the right around the granite. To his left, at his elbow, the cliff wall split, forming a narrow declivity in which brush grew. Checking his surroundings was an automatic precaution, typical of Leaphorn making sure that he could find this place again in daylight. That done, he renewed his concentrated listening.
He heard in the darkness the sound of running, and of panting breath. It was coming directly toward him. In a split second the adrenal glands flooded his blood. Leaphorn managed to thumb back the pistol hammer to full cock, and half raise the .38. Then looming out of the darkness came the bulk of the dog, eyes and teeth reflecting the starlight in a strange wet whiteness. Leaphorn was able to lunge sideways toward the split cliff, and jerk the trigger. Amid the thunder of the pistol shot, the dog was on him. It struck him shoulder-high. Because of Leaphorns lunge, the impact was glancing. Instead of being knocked on his back, the animal atop him, he was spun sideways against the cliff.
The beasts teeth tore at his jacket instead of his throat, and the momentum of its leap carried it past him. Leaphorn found himself in the crevasse, scrambling frantically upward over boulders and brush. The dog, snarling now for the first time, had recovered itself and was into the crevasse after him. Leaphorn pulled himself desperately upward, with the dog just below him far enough below him to make Leaphorns dangling legs safe by a matter of perhaps a yard. He gripped a root of some sort with his right hand and felt carefully with his left and found a higher handhold. He squirmed upward, reaching a narrow shelf. There the dog couldn’t possibly reach him. He turned and looked down. In this crevasse, the darkness of the canyon bottom became total. He could see nothing below him. But the animal was there; its snarl had become a frustrated yipping. Leaphorn took a deep breath, held it a moment, released it recovering from his panic. He felt the nausea of a system overloaded with adrenaline. There was no time for sickness, or for the anger which was now replacing fear. He was safe for the moment from the dog, but he was totally exposed to the dogs owner. He made a quick inventory of his situation. His pistol was gone. The animal had struck him as he swung it upward and had knocked it from his hand. He hadn’t, apparently, hit the dog, but the blast of the shot must have at least surprised and deafened it and given Leaphorn time. No worry about concealment now. He unhooked his flashlight from his belt and surveyed his situation. The dog was standing, its forepaws against the rock, just below him. It was as huge as Leaphorn expected. He was neither knowledgeable nor particularly interested in dogs, but this one, he guessed, was a mongrel cross between some of the biggest breeds; Irish wolfhound and Great Dane perhaps. Whatever the mix, it had produced a shaggy coat, a frame taller than a mans when the dog stood as it now stood, on its hind legs, and a massive, ugly head. Leaphorn inspected the declivity into which he had climbed. It slanted steeply upward, apparently an old crack opened by an earth tremor in the cliff. Runoff water had drained down it, debris had tumbled into it, and an assortment of cactus, creosote b
ush, rabbit brush and weeds had taken root amid the boulders. It had two advantages-it offered a hiding place and was too steep for the dog to climb. Its disadvantage overrode both of these. It was a trap. The only way out was past the dog. Leaphorn felt around him for a rock of proper throwing size. The one he managed to pull loose from between the two boulders on which he was perched was smaller than he wanted about the size of a small, flattened orange. He shifted the flashlight to his left hand and the rock to his right, and examined his target. The dog was snarling again. Its teeth and its eyes gleamed in the reflected light. He must hit it in the forehead, and hit it hard. He hurled the rock.
It seemed to strike the dog between its left eye and ear. The animal yelped and retreated down the slope.
At first he thought the dog had disappeared. Then he saw it, eyes reflecting the light, just outside the mouth of the crack. Still within accurate rock range. He fished behind him for another rock, and then quickly flicked off the light. On the canyon floor behind the dog he saw a glimmer of brightness a flashlight beam bobbing with the walking pace of the person who held it.
There’s the dog, a voice said. Don’t put the light on it, Tull. The son-of-a-bitch has a gun.
The flashlight beam abruptly blinked out. Leaphorn eased himself silently upward. He heard the same voice talking quietly to the dog. And then a second voice: He must be up in that crack there, the man called Tull said. The dogs treed him.
The first voice said, I told you that dog would earn his keep.
Up to now he’s been a pain in the butt, Tull said. The son-of-a-bitch scares me.
No reason for that, the first voice said. Lynch trained him himself. He was the pride of Safety Systems. The man laughed. Or he was before I started slipping him food. Hell, Tull said. Look what I just stepped on. Its his gun! The dog took the bastards gun away from him.
There was a brief silence.
Its the right one all right. Its been fired, Tull said.
The flashlight went on again. Leaphorns reaching hand was exploring an opening between the boulders. He pulled himself further into the slot, stood cautiously and looked downward. He could see a circle of yellow light on the sandy canyon bottom and the legs of two men. Then the light flashed upward, its beam moving over the rocks and brush below him. He ducked back. The beam flashed past, lighting the space in which he stood with its reflection. To the left of where he was crouching, and above him, an immense slab had split away from the face of the cliff. Behind it there would be better cover and the faint possibility of a route to climb upward.
The first voice was shouting up toward him.
You might as well come on down, the voice said. Well hold the dog.
Leaphorn stood silent.
Come on, the voice said. You cant get out of there and if you don’t come down were going to get sore about it.
We just want to talk to you, the Tull voice said. Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?
The voices paused, waiting for an answer. The words echoed up and down the canyon, then died away.
Its a police-issued pistol, the first voice said. Thirty-eight revolver. There’s just one shot fired. The one we heard.
A cop?
Yeah, Id guess so. Maybe the one that came nosing around the old mans hogan.
He’s not going to come down, Tull said. I don’t think he’s coming down.
No, First Voice said.
You want me to go up and get him?
Hell, no. He’d brain you with a rock. He’s above you and you couldn’t see it coming in the dark.
Yeah, Tull said. So we wait for morning?
No. Were going to be busy in the morning, First Voice said. There was silence then. The flashlight beam moved up the crevasse, back and forth, to Leaphorns hiding place, and then above it Leaphorn turned and looked up. Far above his head the yellow light reflected from sections of unbroken cliff. But the cleft, he saw, went all the way to the top.
Four cautious steps into the opening and the flash caught him. He scrambled desperately, blinded by the beam, toward the crevasse behind the slab. There was a sudden explosion of gunshots, deafening in the closed space, and the sound of bullets whining off the stones around him. Then he was behind the slab, panting, the flashlight beam reflecting off the cliff.
What do you think? Tull asked.
Damn. I think we missed him.
He’s sure not going to come down now, Tull said.
Hey, buddy, First Voice said. You’re stuck in a box. If you don’t come down, were going to set this brush on fire here at the bottom and burn you out. Hear that?
Leaphorn said nothing. He was considering alternatives. He was sure that if he came out they would kill him. Would they build the fire? Maybe. Could he survive it? This slot would give him some protection from the flame, but the fire would roar up the crevasse much like a chimney, exhausting the oxygen. If the heat didn’t kill him, suffocation would.
Go ahead and start it, First Voice said. I told you he’s not coming down.
Well, hell, Tull said. Don’t a fire draw a crowd out here?
Voice One laughed. The only light that’ll get out of this canyon will reflect straight up, he said. There’s nobody in forty miles to see it, and by morning the smoke will be all gone.
Here’s some dry grass, Tull said. Once it gets going, the damp stuff will catch. Its not that wet.
Leaphorn had made his decision without consciously doing so. He would not climb down to be shot. The men below him started the blaze in a mat of brush and canyon-bottom driftwood caught at the crevasse opening. In moments, the smell of burning creosote bush and piñon resin reached Leaphorns nostrils. The fire below would be interfering with the men’s vision. He looked down at them. The dog stood behind them, backed nervously away from the blaze, but still looking up its pointed ears erect and its eyes reflecting yellow in the firelight. To its left stood a large man in jeans and a denim jacket. He was holding a military-model automatic rifle cradled over his arm and using the other hand to shield his face from the heat. The face looked lopsided, somehow distorted, and the one eye Leaphorn could see stared upward toward him curiously. Tull. The second man was smaller. He wore a long-sleeved shirt and no jacket, his hair was black and cut fairly short, and the firelight glittered off gold-rimmed glasses. And behind the glasses Leaphorn saw a bland Navajo face. The light was weak and flickering, the glimpse was momentary, and the gold-rimmed glasses might have tricked the imagination. But Leaphorn found himself facing the fact that the man trying to kill him looked like Father Benjamin Tso of the Order of Friars Minor.
» 15 «
The problem would be flame, heat and lack of oxygen. Behind this slab, the flames would not reach him unless they were drawn in by some freakish draft. That left heat, which could kill him just as surely. And suffocation. The light from the fire below grew, flickering at first and then steady. Leaphorn worked his way further behind the slab, away from the light. His boot sole suddenly splashed into water. The slab had formed a catch basin which had trapped the days rain water as it poured down the cliff face. Behind him now the flames were making a steady roar as brush higher up the crevasse heated and exploded into fire. He pulled himself into the water. It was cool. He soaked his shirt, his pants, his boots. Through the slot behind him now he could see only fire. A gust of heat struck him, a searing torch on his cheek. He ducked his face into the water, held it there until his lungs cried for air. When he raised his face, he drew in a breath slowly and cautiously. The air was hot now, and his ears were filled with the roar of the fire. As he looked through slitted eyes, weeds in the lip of the slot wilted suddenly, then exploded into bright yellow flame. His denims were steaming. He splashed more water on them. The heat was intense, but his lungs told him it would be suffocation that would kill him unless he could find some source of oxygen. He climbed frantically between the cliff face and the inner surface of slab, working his way away from the fire. The first breath he took seared his lungs. But there was a d
raft now, sucking past his face. It came not from the flames but from somewhere, below, pulled through the slot by the heat-caused vacuum.
Leaphorn forced himself into the increasingly narrow gap-away from the furnace and toward this source of blessed air. Finally he could go no farther. His head was jammed in a vise of stone. The heat varied, now unbearably intense, now merely scalding. He could feel steam from his soaked pants legs hot on his inner thighs. The fire was making its own wind, sucking air extremely hot air past his face. If the draft changed, it would pull fire up this slot and char him like a moth. Or when his clothing dried and. ignited, this draft of oxygen would turn him into a torch. Leaphorn shut this thought out of his mind and concentrated on another thought. If he stayed alive, he would get his rifle, and he would kill the dog and the man with the lopsided face and, most of all, he would kill Goldrims. He would kill Goldrims. He would kill Goldrims. And thus Joe Leaphorn endured.
The time came when the roar of fire diminished, and the draft of air around his face faded, and the heat rose to a furnace intensity. Leaphorn thought, then, that he would not survive. Consciousness slipped away. When it returned, the noise of burning was nothing more than a crackling, and he could hear voices. Sometimes they sounded faint and far away, and sometimes Leaphorn could understand the words. And finally the voices stopped, and time passed, and it was dark again. Leaphorn decided he would try to move, and found that he could, and inched his head out of the crevasse. His nostrils were filled with the smell of heat and ashes. But there was little fire. Most of the light here came from a log which had tumbled into the crack from above. It burned fitfully a hundred yards overhead. Leaphorn eased himself downward, toward the pool of water. It was warm now, almost hot, and much of it had evaporated. Leaphorn put his face into what remained and drank greedily. It tasted of charcoal. Hot as the fire had been it had not been enough to substantially raise the temperature of the massive living stone of the cliff which was still cool and made the temperature here bearable. In the flickering light, Leaphorn sat and inspected himself. He would have blisters, especially on one ankle where the skin had been exposed, and perhaps on his wrists and neck and face. His chest felt uncomfortable but there was no real pain. He had survived. The problem now was just as it had been how to escape this trap.
Listening Woman jlajc-3 Page 13