by Bacon Thorn
She sighed. She realized suddenly, deeply, why she was so strongly attracted to Thomas Navarre. He represented the passion that had been absent in the men she had known. It was a passion that could draw a man and woman headlong into an adventure which could last their lives together. Thomas had the passion, the lust for life, and the fury to fight against its unfair ending, which he’d demonstrated in the graveyard. He was still injured, convalescing, and wary of opening himself to more loss. She knew that much about him instinctively. He was hiding, still in the shadow of unhappy memory and uncertainty. And there was something dark and frightening in his hurt that she did not understand. He was older than her by ten years, she guessed. Not a young man anymore, but a mature one that had, as many men failed to do, shed the false vanity and pride of posturing maleness without losing its potency and vigor. He was intelligent, strong minded, and warm. Most of all, she acknowledged, Thomas Navarre possessed integrity and an enduring belief about the rightness of things that couldn’t be swayed.
Navarre awoke when he became aware of Yuma’s fingers touching his face lightly. He felt a flush rise in his skin as she lifted her hand from his forehead. “No fever. That’s good. You look better. I’m still shaky. Will you hold me closer until it’s light? If it wasn’t for that dog . . .”
She snuggled into the soothing strength of his arms, relief from the emotional drain of the dogs’ attack melting away her tension.
Navarre awoke half an hour before dawn and raised himself stiffly from the hard shelf that had deadened the left side of his body. Yuma was curled in a tight knot on the slab, and gently he moved the hair that had fallen across her mouth with his fingers. He rubbed his arms briskly to restore warmth to his chilled skin and looked up in the semidark at the top of the cliff, where he heard movement. The black form of the dog bulked large in the gloom, still vigilant and patient.
“I thought he might get tired and go away. Fat chance,” Yuma whispered, sitting up and running her fingers through her hair. “God, I’m a mess. What I wouldn’t give for a toothbrush.”
She rested her hand on Navarre’s bare shoulder and in a serious tone said, “Have you given much thought to how we get off this ledge?”
Navarre smiled as he looked into her face, gaining definition from the sky in the east. “Yes, I’ve got an idea, but I can’t show you while it’s still dark.” Softly, he added, “We might as well relax and enjoy the sunrise. It will be breaking in a little bit. It should be spectacular from where we’re sitting.”
He paused, then reached for Yuma’s hands and, squeezing them gently, said in a low voice, “What you did at the graveyard took courage. You saved our lives and gave us the chance we needed to escape. I can’t tell you how I . . .”
“Don’t,” Yuma said quickly, touching her fingers to his lips. “I know how hard it is for you to say what you feel. Don’t confuse the old emotions you’ve got bottled with how you feel about me and what I did and what we did yesterday. If there’s a future for us, you have to sort out what’s troubling you.”
Navarre sighed, stared at the sky streaked with long waves of purple, crimson, and gold, and felt as though Yuma’s words had lifted a great weight from his shoulders. He was grateful and deeply moved by her insight. He said, “You are right. I have bottled up old emotions. Father Hebrano told me the same thing.” He hesitated, and then the resistance that had always blocked him from revealing his nightmare crumbled. Slowly, methodically, as if he were speaking about a stranger, he told Yuma about the dark figure that had kicked him in the face as he crawled to his dying wife.
In a horrified whisper spoken as low as his voice, Yuma said, “My God, who would rape an injured, dying woman? That’s what you think, isn’t it? That’s what’s been on your mind for two years? That’s what really got you back to Mexico?”
Navarre sighed, his face suddenly changing from grief to stone. “Yes, it’s been on my mind. It keeps coming back like a bad dream with the same terrible ending.”
He lifted his eyes and looked squarely at Yuma. “You’re the only person I’ve spoken to about that night, except Gracia Esparza. I told you how she paid for talking to me.”
“And you feel responsible for her death, don’t you? Because you asked questions about that terrible night when her father found you and your wife in the wreckage.”
Navarre looked sharply at Yuma. “Of course I feel responsible. If I had left her alone, she’d probably still be alive, and we would not be fugitives.”
“And you feel responsible for Meg too? She’s the reason you’ve nursed that flame of hate in you? Don’t you know what it can do to you?”
“Yes, I know,” Navarre replied, his face frozen like the devastated bronze casting Yuma had seen once in Athens. With the sun’s early first rays striking his jawline and sculpturing with black shadows the planes of his face, Navarre resembled for the moment a classic death mask, resolute, unforgiving, a sculpted figure of implacable hate.
As if he had overheard her thoughts, he said, “It was hate that kept me alive after emergency treatment by the vet Gracia’s father took us to in his cart. Meg was dead. I learned later at the hospital in El Paso, where I was flown, that I was barely alive when they brought me in. When I came to after all the surgery, they told me it was a miracle I survived. Ruptured lung from a broken rib, skull fracture, smashed pelvis, internal injuries. It took a year to recover. The rehabilitation was painful, but hate is a tonic that gives you purpose.”
Navarre signed deeply. “When I was better,” he said, “I went to Meg’s grave in Vermont, where she was raised. I made a promise to her. And I’m going to keep it.”
“Your promise is to find the man who raped her and kill him. Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“But you never saw his face!”
“Yes, I did. In the library at the farm before they made us get in the van. I saw him in the flesh, and he told me how they killed Gracia and, before her, Raldon de la Garza, the man I came to meet. And he confirmed with his eyes what he did to Meg when he told me I should never have come back to Mexico.”
“Ah, well,” Yuma sighed. “Thanks for telling me . . . everything.” She halted, frowned, trying to find the right thing to say. “I wish I had the words to help you, but I don’t. Except to say, I’m sorry.”
She hesitated, then said with awe in her voice, “That curse you told me about. I never believed in phony predictions like that. Hocus-pocus, mumbo jumbo. A woman with two mouths will speak for a dead one. You will straddle a mountain and dance in the air. Both of them came true, didn’t they? How could that be? How could a stinking, one-eyed old Indian you never met before know things like that in advance? It’s crazy. It doesn’t make sense!”
Yuma’s stubborn rejection, faltered disbelief, and conviction struggled in her mind and showed in her expression of exasperation. In a small voice, she murmured, “I can’t believe what I don’t understand, and that makes me feel scared and unsafe.”
When Yuma stopped talking, dismayed with her frustration and her sense of unreality, Navarre said sympathetically, “I don’t have the explanation you want. We are alone in a primitive world that can be terrifying. I don’t understand the powers of the Zopilote, but I’m convinced they come from the human heredity of good and evil. That’s not much help. The sin eater is shrewd. He encourages the absolute belief in superstitions the Indians live by. He promises to cure their ills.
“The cave people out here are afraid of dozens of things. Eclipses of the sun and moon terrify them, because they fear eclipses cause sickness and death. And death inevitably follows either of those events, unless they hide their eyes. As a precaution, they sprinkle water over their huts or in their caves. This will keep out the evil spirits that bring disease. The Indians practice the same ritual after a shooting star flashes across the sky. They are simple, haunted people who have outlived their past.”
Navarre shrugged. “You cannot understand the power of ignorance and evil
any more than I. But we can protect and defend ourselves against it when we know it’s coming.”
Navarre pointed to the dawn sky turning slowly from deep carmine to blazing pink and yellow. They could feel the cool morning air shifting like a soft wave retreating, and he said, “In a minute I think we’re going to see why they call this mountain Montaña Roja, Red Mountain.” Almost before he completed his statement, there was a sudden blaze as the rising sun, clearing the horizon to the east, hurled a blinding burst of incandescence. It struck the mountain with a shower of dazzling light, and the whole four-hundred-foot rocky face—the ledge where Navarre and Yuma sat, the cracks, fissures, crevices, planes, and traps—was instantly painted with a brilliant coating of deep, glowing red. It radiated and pulsed as if it were breathing. It lasted no longer than a few seconds, and then blinked out.
“My God, what a show,” Yuma exclaimed.
“The father of mountains saying good morning to us,” Navarre answered.
He smiled at her, and then rose stiffly to his feet, extending his hand to help her up. “Make certain you don’t move suddenly or erratically. We don’t want to alarm the dog. Now,” he said, “I’m going to get us ready to move down.”
“What do you mean, move down?” she asked. Casually, he pointed to a long crack running from the outer edge of the shelf upon which they stood until it encountered the face of the cliff about seven feet away. Where it began at the edge of the outthrust shelf, the crack was about two inches wide, and it rapidly narrowed as it traveled to the cliff.
“This is the way down for us,” he said confidently, pointing to the narrow, open seam at the drop-off side of the ledge.
“What’s so interesting about a crack in the rock?”
“I’m going to tie a big knot in one end of our rope and lodge it securely in the crack.”
Yuma started to ask why when her eyes widened in alarm, and she turned her face up to Navarre and whispered incredulously, “Are you crazy? You want to use the rope for us to climb down to the next shelf? What if it pulls free? What if we fall while we’re hanging out in space?
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Chapter X
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“Good God, Thomas, you’re flirting with suicide. What about me? I could never do anything like that. Maybe it’s only fifteen or twenty feet, but heights petrify me.”
“I’ll get you down,” he promised.
“Yeah, and what about the dog? You think he’s going to sit still while you’re lowering me through thin air?”
“No, I think he’s going to run up and down the top of the cliff until he figures out that there’s no safe way down. Then, because I think he’s a damn smart dog, he’s going to figure out that the shelf below angles down close to the bottom. That’s where he’s going to meet us.”
“Meet us? Oh, great! If you think he’s going to do that why even start out?”
The fear and anxiety on Yuma’s face prompted Navarre to reach out and place his hand in a calming gesture on her cheek. Gently, he said, “We can’t stay here. In another hour or so the sun will make this ledge unbearable. Besides, we couldn’t stay here even if we had food and water to last for a while. Don’t forget, Esquivel is behind us, probably closer than I’d like to think. We’re on our own, Yuma. Completely. Nobody’s going to come and rescue us. It’s up to us if we want to stay alive. I think the ledge below is our best chance, even if we don’t know whether or not it goes all the way to the bottom.”
Yuma was nodding her head even before Navarre finished with his logic. “I know, I know, you’re right.” She raised her face and looked appealingly into his eyes. “I just panicked for a minute,” she said. “Of course, we’ll go down the rope. It’s the only sensible thing to do, but first hold me. I need your arms around me.”
Navarre opened his arms to his sunburned companion and as he held her briefly, they were stirred emotionally and physically.
“Much more of that,” Yuma said with a grin as she pushed back from Navarre’s embrace, “and we’ll be stalled before we start.”
He smiled at her certainty and said, “Before we start, we’ve got to eat something.” He reached for the bag of pinole, told her to open her hand, and poured a portion of the sweetened ground corn into her palm. “Take a mouthful of water from the bag, and then swallow the corn.”
She followed his instructions, and then mumbled, “It sticks to your teeth.” After another sip of water, she bobbed her head. “Tastes like cornmeal with sugar in it.”
Navarre served himself, and then said, “It’ll keep us going for a while.”
With only the briefest glance at the dog that was stretched out at the edge of the cliff with his big head resting on his front paws, Navarre uncoiled the rope he had placed against the face of the cliff the night before. Carefully, he tied a huge knot at one end and pulled and stretched it tight.
Yuma’s hissed warning that the black dog had risen to his feet and was regarding Navarre suspiciously didn’t prompt him to look upward. The animal’s hostile curiosity merely confirmed his judgment that the hound was bright. Nor, when Navarre dropped to his hands and knees and crawled cautiously to the outer edge of the rocky shelf, was he surprised to hear the dog emit a raspy warning sound from his hollow throat.
Ignoring the dog, he lay flat on his stomach with his shoulders protruding over the edge of the shelf. He gulped a quick, shaky breath as he looked down momentarily into the four-hundred-foot drop to the rock bottom. As for the shelf below, it was much wider than the one on which he lay, jutting outward from the face of the cliff twelve to fifteen feet. This meant that there was a wide safety margin for the two of them when they descended. Also, the shelf sloped downward at a sharp angle of thirty degrees or more.
Quickly, Navarre averted his eyes and groped with his right hand over the edge of the shelf, feeling the depth of the crack in the rock with his fingers. “Thank God!” he breathed, withdrawing his hand; the crack penetrated all the way through.
It was the work of only a few minutes for him to dislodge dirt, pebbles, and the crumbles of rock lodged in the crack and to brush them over the edge. He wanted no sharp edges or impediments to grind or cut into the fabric of the rope when it was secured tightly in the crack, taut with the descending weight of Yuma, then him. Their lives would depend on his preparations.
When Navarre completed his chore of clearing gravel and refuse from the crack, he could see the shelf below through the crevice. Next, he pulled the rope into the open seam as far as it would go, making certain the rounded knot he had tied could not squeeze through the crack. Then, he turned to Yuma and said, “That’s our safeguard. The rope will break before the knot gives way. All we have to do is put a safety loop around your waist, and then I’ll guide you down.”
“You want me to go first?” Yuma cried.
“Yep,” he said matter-of-factly. “After you’re down, I have to lower the canteen, binoculars, saltillo, and rebozo to you. Don’t want to lose them. Then, after I’m down, I’ll dislodge the knot.”
“What’s the dog going to be doing all this time?
“I’m betting that the minute he sees you on the rope, he’s going to go a little crazy, then he’ll get smart quickly and run down the back of the rock we came up and meet us at the bottom.”
“The real reason you want me to go down first is because you’re not sure of the dog. You’re not sure he won’t get excited when he sees me on the rope and jump down on you.”
Navarre smiled. Suddenly, with a determined lift of her chin, she said in a scolding voice, “We’re in this together, Thomas. Alone, I’d be lost. I’ll go down first because it makes sense, not because you want to shield me from harm. Now, tie the rope around my waist.”
Navarre formed a loop in the rope about eight feet, he judged, from the point where the line would slide over the edge of the shelf on which they were standing. Then, while the black hound stationed himself in a trembling crouch at the very edge of the cliff and whined in a threatening, wispy vo
ice, Navarre quickly adjusted the loop across Yuma’s chest above her breasts and under her arms.
Following Navarre’s directions, she positioned herself flat on her stomach and wormed backwards until she was bent at the waist over the edge, with her legs pointing down. Then, with Navarre taking the strain of her descending weight on the rope, he smiled encouragingly as she let herself slide over the edge, her right hand holding tightly to the rope, while her left hand pushed her body away from the edge of the shelf to permit the rope to descend with her weight pulling it down.
Just before her tawny head disappeared, Yuma attempted a smile, but her widened eyes revealed her fear and her lips were trembling. Her descent took less than a minute. In a voice of surprise and relief, she shouted up to Navarre, “Hey, that was easy. Forgive me for being such a ninny. There’s plenty of room for you to come down without worrying about the edge. This shelf is at least twice as wide as the one above. As soon as I see your legs, I’ll guide you down.”
Relieved that Yuma was safe, Navarre attached the binoculars and water bag to the rope and lowered them to Yuma. Then, he lodged the flashlight in the front pocket of his slacks. When he looked up for the dog, it was gone, headed for the arroyo at the bottom of the cliff, he thought.
His own descent to the lower shelf was as uneventful as Yuma’s had been. After removing the equipment he was carrying, he set about dislodging the rope from the crevice above their heads. Clinched fast into the crack, the rope resisted removal, but eventually the vigorous action of Navarre cracking the rope in whipsawing fashion released the sturdy line.
Five minutes later, wearing the protective hats and separate coverings, the two stood for a moment in awe at the head of the trail they would have to travel down to reach the bottom of the arroyo, the floor of the canyon. To the left, or west, stood the towering sandstone cliff from which their shelf, and others, protruded; it was a vertical rampart much larger than Navarre originally had estimated.