Listening Woman jlajc-3

by Tony Hillerman

  He eased his way to the edge of the slab and peered around it. Below, logs and brush were still burning at a dozen places, and hot coals glowed at a hundred others. He could see neither dog nor man. Perhaps they were gone for good. Perhaps they were merely waiting for the fire to cool enough to climb the crevasse and make sure he was dead.

  Leaphorn thought about it. It must have seemed impossible, seen from below, for any living thing to survive in that flame-filled crevasse. Yet he couldn’t quite convince himself that the two men would take the risk. He would try to climb out.

  He burned himself a half-dozen times before he learned to detect and avoid the hot spots left by the fire. But by the time he was 150 feet above the canyon floor heat was no longer the problem. Now the cleft had narrowed but the climb was almost vertical. Climbing involved inching upward a few feet and then an extended pause to rest muscles aching with fatigue. The climb used up the night. He finally pulled himself onto the cap rock in the gray light of dawn and lay, utterly spent, with his face against the cold stone. He allowed himself a few minutes to rest and then moved into the cover of a cliff-side juniper.

  There he extracted his walkie-talkie from its case on his belt, switched on the receiver and sat, getting his bearings. His transmission range was perhaps ten miles hopelessly short for reaching any Navajo Police receiver. But Leaphorn tried it anyway. He broadcast his location and a call for help. There was no response. The Arizona State Police band was transmitting a description of a truck. The New Mexico State Police transmitter at Farmington was silent. He could hear the Utah Highway Patrol dispatcher at Moab, but not well enough to understand anything. The Federal Law Enforcement channel was sending what seemed to be a list of identifications. The Navajo State Police dispatcher at Tuba City, like the ASP radio, was giving someone a truck description a camper truck, a big one apparently, with tandem rear wheels.

  Leaphorn had himself placed now. The mesa that overlooked the Tso hogan was on the southwestern horizon, perhaps three miles away. Beyond that was his carryall, with his rifle and a radio transmitter strong enough to reach Tuba City. But at least two canyons cut the plateau between him and the hogan. Getting there would take hours. The sooner he started the better.

  If there was any life on this segment of the plateau it wasn’t visible in the early morning light. Except for whitish outcrops of limestone, the cap rock was a dark red igneous rock which supported in its cracks and crevasses a sparse growth of dry-country vegetation. A few hundred yards west, a low mesa blocked off the horizon. Leaphorn examined it, wondering if he’d have to cross it to reach his vehicle.

  From the radio the pleasant feminine voice of the Tuba City dispatcher came faintly. It completed the description of the camper truck, lapsed into silence, and began another message. Leaphorns mind was concentrating on what his eyes were seeing seeking a way up the mesa wall. But it registered the word hostages. Suddenly Leaphorn was listening.

  The radio was silent again. He willed it to speak. The rim of the horizon over New Mexico was bright now with streaks of yellow. A morning breeze moved against his face. The radio spoke faintly, with the meaning lost in the moving air. Leaphorn squatted behind the juniper and held the speaker against his ear.

  All units, the voice said. We have more information. All units copy. Confirming three men involved. Confirming all three were armed. Witnesses saw one rifle and two pistols. In addition to the Boy Scouts, the hostages are two adult males. They are identified as Discontinue this. Discontinue this. All units. All police units are ordered to evacuate the area of the Navajo Reservation north of U.S. Highway 160 and east of U.S. Highway 89, south of the northern border of the reservation, and west of the New Mexico border. We have instructions from the kidnappers that if police are seen in that area the hostages will be killed. Repeating. All police units are ordered . . .

  Leaphorn was only half conscious of the voice repeating itself. Could this explain what Goldrims was doing? Had he been setting up a Buffalo Society kidnapping? Preparing its base a hiding place for hostages? Why else would police be ordered out of this section of the reservation?

  The radio completed its repetition of the warning and finished its interrupted description of the male adult hostages, both leaders of a troop of Scouts from Santa Fe. It launched into a description of the hostage boys.

  Juvenile subject one is identified as Norbert Juan Gomez, age twelve, four feet, eleven inches tall, weight about eighty pounds, black hair, black eyes. All juvenile subjects wearing Boy Scout uniforms.

  Juvenile subject two is Tommy Pearce, age thirteen, five feet tall, weight ninety, brown hair, brown eyes.

  Juvenile subject three . . .

  They all sound pretty much alike, Leaphorn thought. Turned into statistics. Changed by exposure to violence from children into juvenile subjects three, four, five and six, to be measured in pounds and inches and color of hair.

  Juvenile subject eight, Theodore middle initial F. Markham, age thirteen, five feet two inches, weight about one hundred pounds, blond hair, blue eyes, pale complexion.

  Leaphorn converted juvenile subject eight into a pale blond boy he had noticed last summer watching a rodeo at Window Rock. The boy had stood at the arena enclosure, one foot on the bottom rail, his hair bleached almost white, his face peeling from old sunburn, his attention on the efforts of a Navajo cowboy trying to tie the forelegs of a calf he had bulldogged.

  Juvenile subject nine is Milton Richard Silver, the radio intoned, and Leaphorns mind converted nine into Leaphorns own nephew, who lived in Flagstaff, whose blue jeans were chronically disfigured with plastic model cement and whose elbows were disfigured from the scars of skateboard accidents. And that thought led to another one. Tuba City would remember he had gone to the Tso hogan. They’d be trying to reach him to call him out of the prohibited zone. But that didn’t matter. Goldrims knew he was here. Knew he had been here before the warning. What mattered was to get moving. To get his rifle.

  Leaphorn walked rapidly, flinching at first from the stiffness in calves and ankles. He considered dropping his equipment belt, leaving binoculars, radio, flashlight and first-aid kit behind to save the weight. But though the radio and binoculars were heavy, he might need them. The radio had completed its descriptions of the hostage Scouts with juvenile subject eleven and was engaged in responding to questions and transmitting orders. From this Leaphorn pieced together a little more of what had happened. Three armed men, all-apparently Indians, had appeared the night before at one of the many Boy Scout troop encampments scattered around the mouth of Canyon de Chelly. They had arrived in two trucks a camper and a van. They had herded the two Scout leaders and eleven of the boys into the camper and had left two more adults and seven other Scouts tied and locked in the van.

  Leaphorn frowned. Why take some hostages and leave others? And why that number?

  The question instantly answered itself. He remembered the propaganda leaflet in the FBI file at Albuquerque. First on the list of atrocities to be avenged was the Olds Prairie Murders, the victims of which had been three adults and eleven children. The thought chilled him. But why hadn’t they taken three adults? Theodora Adams. Was she the third?

  The Buffalo Society evidently had planned to dramatize the deaths of eleven Kiowa children from a century ago by taking eleven Boy Scouts hostage. They’d known this would launch an international orgy of news coverage, would make for nationwide suspense. There would be television interviews with weeping mothers and distraught fathers. The whole world would be watching this one. The whole world would be asking if an Indian named Kelongy simply wanted to recall an old atrocity or if his sense of justice would demand a perfect balance. Leaphorn was wondering about this himself when he heard the dog.

  It came from above him on the cap of the mesa an angry, frustrated sound something between a snarl and a bark. He had forgotten the dog. The sound stopped him in his tracks. Then he saw the animal almost directly above him. It stood with its front paws on the very edge of the rim
rock, shoulders hunched, teeth bared. It barked again, then turned abruptly and ran along the cliff away from him, then back toward him, apparently looking frantically for a way down. The creature was even bigger than he remembered it, looming in the yellow firelight of the night before. At any minute it would find a way down a rock slide, a deer trail, almost any break in the cliff which would lead to the talus slope below.

  Leaphorn became aware of a cold knot of fear in his stomach. He looked around him, hoping to see something he could use for a club. He broke a limb from a dead juniper, although it was hopelessly inadequate to stop the animal. Then he turned and ran stiffly back toward the main-stem canyon. It was the only place where having hands could give him an advantage over an adversary with four legs and tearing canine teeth. He stopped at a twisted little cedar rooted into the rock about six feet from the lip of the cliff. Behind it he hurriedly unlaced his boots. He knotted the laces securely together, doubled them, and tied the strings around the trunk of the bush. Then he whipped off his belt, looped it, and tied it to the doubled boot strings. As he tested its strength, he saw the dog. It had worked its way along a crack in the caprock, and was bounding down the talus slope toward him, baying again. Last night it had attacked without a sound, as attack dogs are trained to strike, and even after it had cornered him had only snarled. But he must have hurt it with a rock and it had apparently forgotten at least a little of its training. Leaphorn hoped fervently that in its hate for him it had forgotten everything. He picked up his juniper stick and trotted out across the cap toward the dog, his untied boots flapping on his ankles. Then he stopped. The worst mistake would be going too far, waiting too long, and being caught away from the edge of the cliff. He stood, the stick gripped at his side, waiting. Within seconds, the dog appeared. It was perhaps a hundred fifty yards away, running full out, looking for him.

  Leaphorn cupped his hands. Dog, he shouted. Here I am.

  The animal changed direction with an agility that caused Leaphorns jaw muscles to tighten. His idea wasn’t going to work. In a matter of seconds he would be trying to kill that huge animal with a stick and his bare hands. Still, the cliff edge was his best hope. The dog was racing directly toward him now, no longer barking, its teeth bared. Leaphorn waited. Eighty yards now, he guessed. Now sixty. He had a sudden vision of his laceless boots tripping him, and the nightmare thought of falling, with the dog racing down on him.

  Forty yards. Thirty. Leaphorn turned and ran desperately in his flapping boots toward the cedar. He knew almost at once that he had waited too long. The dog was bigger and faster than he had realized. It must weigh nearly two hundred pounds. He could hear it at his heels. The race now seemed almost dreamlike, the looped belt hanging forever outside his reach. And then with a last leap his hand was grabbing the leather, and he felt the dogs teeth tearing at his hip, and his momentum flung him sideways around the bush, holding with every ounce of his strength to the belt, feeling the dog fly past him, its jaws still ripping at his hip-knowing with a sense of terror that their combined weight would pull his grip loose from the belt, or the nylon strings loose from the tree, and both of them would slide over the cliff and fall, the dog still tearing at him. They would fall, and fall, and fall, tumbling, waiting for the hideous split second when their bodies would strike the rocks below.

  And then the teeth tore loose.

  In some minuscule fraction of a second Leaphorns senses told him he was no longer connected to the dog, that his grip on the belt still held, that he would not fall to his death.

  A second later he knew that his plan to send the animal skidding over the cliff had failed.

  The dogs hold on Leaphorns hip had saved it. The animals back legs had slid over the edge as it had turned, but its body and its front legs were still on the cap rock and it was straining to pull itself to safety.

  There was no time to think. Leaphorn flung himself at the animal, pushing desperately at its front feet. The hind paws dislodged stones as the beast kicked for lodging. It snapped viciously at Leaphorns hand. But the effort cost it an inch. Leaphorn pushed again at a forepaw. This time the dogs teeth snapped shut on his shirt sleeve. The creature was moving backward, pulling Leaphorn over the edge. Then the cloth tore loose. For a second the animal stood vertically against the cliff, supported by its straining front legs and whatever grip its hind paws had found on the stone face of the canyon wall. It was snarling, its straining efforts aimed not at saving itself but at attacking its victim. And then the hind paws must have slipped for the broad, ugly head disappeared. Leaphorn moved cautiously forward and looked over the edge. The animal was cart wheeling slowly as it fell. Far down the cliff it struck a half-dead clump of rabbit brush growing out of a crack, bounced outward, and set off a small rain of dislodged rocks. Leaphorn looked away before it struck the canyon bottom. But for luck, his body too might be suffering that impact. He pulled himself back to the cedar and inspected the damage.

  His pants were bloody at the hip, where the dogs teeth had snapped through trousers, shorts, skin and muscle and had torn loose a flap of flesh. The wound burned and was bleeding copiously. It was a hell of a place to fix. No possibility of a tourniquet, and putting on a pressure bandage would require securing it around both hip and waist. He took tape from his first-aid kit and bandaged the tear as best he could. His other wounds were trivial.

  A bitten place on his right wrist from which a small amount of blood was oozing, and a gash, probably caused by the dogs teeth, on the back of his left hand. He found himself wondering if the dog had been given rabies shots. The idea seemed so incongruous that he laughed aloud. Like giving shots to a werewolf, he thought.

  The laugh died in his throat.

  On the mesa, not far from where he had first seen the dog, sunlight flashed from something. Leaphorn crouched behind the cedar, straining his eyes. A man was standing back from the mesa rim, scanning the rocky shelf along the canyon with binoculars.

  Probably Goldrims, Leaphorn thought. He would have been following his dog. He would have heard barking, and now he would be looking for the animal and for its prey.

  Leaphorn contemplated hiding. With the dog out of the picture he might succeed, if he could find a place under the rim of the cap rock where he could hang on. And then he realized the man had already seen him. The binoculars were turned directly on Leaphorns cedar. There would be no hiding. He could only run, and there was no place to run. He would climb down the cleft again. That would delay the inevitable and perhaps in the cover and loose boulders of that steep slope the odds would improve for an unarmed man.

  Improve, Leaphorn thought grimly, from zero to a hundred to one.

  The man didn’t seem to have a rifle, but Leaphorn kept under cover as well as he could in reaching the place where the canyon wall was split. As he lowered himself over the cap rock, he saw the man emerging on the talus slope under the mesa, using the same route the dog had taken. Leaphorn had maybe a five-minute lead, and he used it recklessly taking chance after chance with his injured leg, with precarious handholds on fire-blackened brush, with footholds on stones that might not hold. He had no accurate sense of time. At any moment Goldrims might appear at the top of the slot above him and end this one-sided contest with a pistol shot. But the shot didn’t come. Leaphorn, soot-blackened, reached the sheltered place where he had survived the fire. He would give Goldrims as much excitement as he could for his money He would climb once again up behind that great slab of stone to the place where he had lain when the fire was burning.

  Goldrims would have to climb after him to kill him. And while he was climbing, Goldrims might leave himself momentarily vulnerable to something thrown from above.

  A small cascade of stones slid down the cleft with a clatter. Goldrims was beginning his descent. It would be slower than his own, Leaphorn knew. Goldrims had no reason to be taking chances. That left a little time. Leaphorn looked around him for rocks of the proper size. He found one, about as big as a grapefruit. The binoculars would also m
ake a missile, and so would the flashlight. He began to climb.

  It was easy enough. The face of the cliff and the inner surface of the slab were less than a yard apart. He could brace himself between them as he worked his way upward. The surfaces were relatively smooth, the stone polished by eons of rain and blowing sand since some ancient earthquake had fractured the plateau. Above him Leaphorn saw the narrow shelf where he had jammed himself and huddled away from the fire. His heart sank. It was too narrow and too cramped to offer any hope at all of defense. He couldn’t throw from there expecting to hit anything. And it offered no cover from below. Goldrims would simply shoot him and the game would be over.

  Leaphorn hung motionless for a moment, looking for a way out. Could he squeeze his way to that source of air which had kept him breathing during the fire? He couldn’t. The gap narrowed quickly and then closed completely. Leaphorn frowned. Then where had that draft of fresh air originated? He could feel it now, moving faintly against his face. But not from ahead. It came from beneath him.

  Leaphorn moved downward, crabwise, as rapidly as he could shift his elbows and knees.

  It was cooler here, and there was dampness in the air. His boots touched broken rocks.

  He was at the bottom of the split. Or almost at the bottom. Here the stones were whitish, eaten with erosion. They were limestone, and seeping water had dissolved away the calcite. Below Leaphorns feet the split sloped away into darkness. A hole. He kicked a rock loose and listened to it bouncing downward. From above and behind him came the sound of other rocks falling. Goldrims had noticed the crack behind the slab and was following him. Without a backward glance, Leaphorn scrambled downward into the narrow darkness.