Listening Woman jlajc-3

by Tony Hillerman

  » 16 «

  T

  he watch hands and numerals were suspended, luminous yellow against the velvet blackness. It was 11:03 A.M. Almost fourteen hours since the dog had first attacked him on the canyon floor, more than twenty-four hours since he had eaten, and two hours since the thundering fall of the boulders Goldrims had dislodged to block his exit. Resting, Leaphorn had used those two hours to assess his situation and work on a plan. He wasn’t happy with either. He was caught in a cave. Two quick inspections with his flashlight told him that the cave was extensive, that it sloped sharply downward, and that like most large caves-it had been leached out of a limestone deposit by ground water. Leaphorn understood the process. Rain water draining through soil containing decaying vegetation became acidic. The acid quickly ate away the calcite in limestone, dissolving the stone and forming caverns. Here when the canyon formed it had drained away the water, and checked the process. Then an earth tremor had cracked open an entrance to the cave.

  Since air flowed through it, there must be another entrance. Leaphorn could feel the movement now: a cool current past his face. His plan was simple-he would try to find another exit. If he couldn’t, he would return here and try to dig his way out. That would involve dislodging the boulders that Gold-rims had rolled into the hole, causing them to tumble downward. Doing that without being crushed would be tricky. Doing it without noise would be impossible, and Goldrims would probably be waiting.

  Leaphorn flicked on the flashlight again and began edging downward. As he did, a blast of air struck him, and with the concussion, a deafening explosion of sound. It knocked him from his feet and sent him tumbling down the limestone slope, engulfed in a Niagara of noise. He lay on the cool stone, his ears assaulted with slamming echoes and the sound of falling rock. What the hell had happened? His nostrils told him in a second as the stench of burned dynamite reached them. The flashlight had been knocked from his hand, but it was still burning just below him. He retrieved it and aimed its beam upward. The air above was a fog of limestone dust and blue smoke. Goldrims had dropped dynamite into the cave entrance to kill the policeman with concussion, or crush him, or seal him in.

  There’d be damn little hope now of getting out the way he’d come in. His hope, if there was hope, lay in finding the source of the air which had moved upward through this cavity.

  Leaphorn moved cautiously downward, his ears still ringing with the aftereffects of the blast. At least there was no worry now of Goldrims or Tull following him. He was, from their point of view, dead or neutralized. The thought was small consolation, because Leaphorns common sense told him such a theory was probably accurate.

  The cavity sloped at about sixty degrees, angling toward the face of the canyon cliff. As he lowered himself deeper into it, it widened. At places now the space overhead rose at least a hundred feet. The luminous dial of his wrist watch read a little after three when he first detected reflected light. It originated from a side cavern which led upward and to his right. Leaphorn climbed up it far enough to conclude that the light leaked in from some sort of split in the canyon cliff. The approach to it was too narrow for anything larger than a snake to navigate Leaphorn let his head slump against the stone and stared longingly toward the unattainable light. He felt no panic-only a sense of helpless defeat. He would rest for a while and then he would begin the long, weary climb back up to the entrance Goldrims had dynamited. There’d be almost no chance he could dig his way out. The blast must have dislodged tens of tons of stone. But it was the only possibility. He backed out of the crack into the cavern itself, and sat thinking. The silence was complete. He could hear his heart beating and the breath moving past his lips. The air was cool. It pressed against his left cheek, smelling fresh and clean. It should smell of burned dynamite Leaphorn thought. Why doesn’t it? It doesn’t because at this time of day, air would be moving upward through the cave, pushing the fumes out. The air was still moving. Did that mean that the exit hadn’t been entirely sealed by the blast? Leaphorn felt a stirring of hope. But no. The air was moving in the wrong direction. It was moving past his face into the crack toward the light source. Leaphorn thought about what that implied, and felt another stirring of hope. There must be another source of air, deeper in the cavern, Perhaps this eroded cavity intersected with the cliff wall somewhere below.

  At 6:19 P.M., Leaphorn reached a bottom. He squatted, savoring the unaccustomed feel of level flatness under his boot soles. The floor here had been formed by sediment. It was calcite dissolved out of the limestone walls, but over the calcite there was a thin layer of gritty sand. Leaphorn examined it with the flashlight. It seemed to be the same sort of sand one would find at the canyon bottom outside a mixture of fine particles of granite, silica, limestone and sandstone. He flashed the light around. This flat surface seemed to extend from the declivity he had been descending along the length of this long, narrow compartment. The sand must have washed in from below or blown in on the wind. Either way, he should be able to see daylight. He turned off the flashlight and stood, seeing nothing but blackness. But there was still the moving air the faint feeling of pressure against his face which seemed characteristic of this cave. He moved into the air movement now, as he had ever since he had entered the cave. For the first time, the going was relatively easy a matter of walking instead of climbing. He saw that originally the cave had continued its downward plunge here-but an invasion of water had filled it with a sedimentary floor. The floor was level, but the ceiling sloped toward his head. He had to stoop now, to pass a cluster of stalactites. Beyond them his flashlight beam prodded to the inevitable point of intersection where slanted ceiling met level floor.

  Leaphorn squatted under the lowering roof, moving forward. He advanced on hands and knees. Finally, he crawled. The angle between floor and ceiling narrowed everywhere to nothing. Leaphorn let his forehead rest against the calcite, fighting off the first nudgings of panic. How much longer would the flashlight last? It was a subject he hadn’t allowed himself to consider. He moved the tip of his nose through the film of gritty dust and was reassured. His reason told him this sandy stuff must have been carried in from the outside-from the world of light. But here in this cul-de-sac there was no air movement. He began crawling backward. He would find the moving air again and try to follow it.

  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 fine-grained 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 dogs 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 a
nd 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 doctors 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 Leaphorns 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 boot soles 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 outside, 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 mans 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. Goldrims glanced toward the source of the sound, his face in profile now to Leaphorns 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.

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  Leaphorn 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 re-flooded 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.