by Bacon Thorn
To the east, or opposite them, was a ridge of low hills that started at the bottom of the arroyo and climbed to a height of, perhaps, two hundred feet. Beyond the hills lay the desert plains they had seen the day before from their perch near the mesquite tree.
The view down into the canyon was a dizzying drop Navarre had estimated was four hundred feet. Even with the binoculars, few details could be made out on the floor of the declivity because of the tree growth choking the bottom. It appeared as though the bottom was littered with slabs and fragments of broken stone that had peeled from the face of the cliff and dropped into the arroyo from time to time. Greenery had sprouted, covering most of the stone shards.
The canyon turned to the right, just beyond their viewpoint, and they could only guess that the fiercely steep trail downward was like a slash across the face of the cliff. In many places the trail assumed a downgrade angle of approximately forty-five degrees. It seemed to be impossible to negotiate it on foot, but the two of them had no other choice.
The scarified face of Red Mountain viewed from the top was a jigsaw of sharp angles, splintered stone shingles, and raw edges. The giant, towering monolith was like a monster wearily shedding its skin, shaking free from armament which had become too heavy to bear. When the piercing winds blew into the high arches of the mountain day or night, showers of stones were hurled below and struck any luckless creature that was in the way.
It was Yuma who first spotted the black hound climbing at a distance of about five hundred yards. The dog had not seen her. Her glimpse of the animal was by chance, because of the surface character of the mountain trail. The irregular curvature or outward thrust of the shelves or pathways often created blind corners which could hide visitors while they passed or reveal them when they reached open spaces.
It was Navarre in advance of Yuma who discovered the cleft in the face of the rock near the bottom of the trail. The sight that thrilled him was a huge V cut in the face of the mountain. The top of the cut was a horizontal slice at least 150 feet wide under a row of caves, staring into the distance above a thick ledge which was the foundation for the caverns. Below the cut, two or three feet deep for two hundred feet or more, the facial stone had been neatly evened out and had fallen to cover the mountain path and formed a cross dam, ten to twenty feet high. It was not unusual for lightning storms in high country to drastically alter the prominent features of mountain architecture. The earth was being re-formed all of the time.
Emerging from the cross dam, Navarre saw Yuma, a few feet away, hesitate and study the dusty foot holes that climbed to the empty caves above. Then, she blinked suddenly as comprehension dawned, and she wiped the tears from her eyes. He saw that she had taken in the stairway of crude steps and understood the elaborate effort spent by unskilled men who must have lived before Christ and chiseled a stairway into solid stone with primitive tools. Here was evidence of inspirational faith in action from the earliest times. Here also was an example of a defensive natural tactic that must have discouraged invaders who had tried to climb the broad, bare, featureless approach up the mountain. The shiny surface, redressed by nature, was not glasslike but smooth, with no bumps or handholds to grasp. The ancient stairway that climbed to the caves had been carved into the stone as a fixed ladder with footholds for cave dwellers and their supplies. It was a climbing route and a direct escape track for cave inhabitants to flee their lodges or to attack invaders by stoning them from higher positions.
Reflected heat was the major drawback and danger, for as the sun climbed, it showered the surface with its energy and intensified the stored heat during the day. Burned skin, hands, and knees were the least serious injuries to those who risked the burning face to reach the cave above.
Yuma, hanging from a footrest, turned her head to look past Navarre and froze.
“The dog,” she whispered, “he’s here, behind you, starting up the rock pile.”
Navarre twisted around quickly, then, with a calm he didn’t feel, grabbed a large, flat stone and, holding it tightly, thrust it into a pile of shale and rock hanging like a shelf poised to drop, a foot to the left of the stairsteps. Without pausing to look back, he pressed upward, ignoring the sudden spurting flow of shards, fist-sized stones, dirt, and rock that blossomed sideways from the main rush downward of the small avalanche he’d started.
Encouraged by Yuma, who crawled up the mountain like a supple cat and reported the sweeping rock flow had struck the dog face on, engulfing him in a storm of dust and sharp rock edges, Navarre mounted the crude stairs quickly, slipping only once but catching himself with his fingers.
The ascent to the top took only five harrowing minutes, delayed once by Yuma clinging from the face of the cliff like a leech, while she paused and reconnoitered the dog’s fate.
The dog was limping as he shook a thick layer of dust from his fur, sneezed repeatedly, and pawed at his bloodied nose. Then, he began to lick himself. He did not even raise his head to locate the fugitives who had wounded him.
After discovering the dog’s injury, Navarre and Yuma rolled their bodies over the rim of the open V formation and found themselves stretched out on the lip of a deep cave. Resting for a moment to catch his breath, Navarre raised himself on his elbows and examined the dog, 120 feet below them. He was still applying his tongue to his injured left leg and ignoring his tormentors staring down at him.
“That’s one nasty animal,” Navarre said. “He’s going to get up to us, but first he’s got to repair his wounds. We’ve got to stop him.”
Suddenly aware that the morning sun, now high in the eastern sky, was boiling the air at the mouth of the cave that lay behind them, he knew they had to find shade inside it. And they had to prepare a reception—he knew not what—for the hound that would recover faster than the humans he was pursuing. Also, their energy was depleted; they had been without food, except for the pinole, for a day and a half. Both were suffering from near exhaustion. The combination of smothering heat, the stress of running from Esquivel, the attack of the dogs, the lack of substantial food to replenish their bodies, and their anxiety over the pursuing hound had drained their reserves.
But the rattling sound of movement below forced Navarre to look down the steps they had ascended. And there he saw the black hound picking his way cautiously up the footholds. He paused for a moment, his chest heaving slightly, staring up with his obsidian eyes at Navarre, and then he came on deliberately.
Inspired to fresh fear by the hound’s confidence, Navarre said desperately to Yuma, “Quick, into the cave. Look for stones, big ones. The ancients used to push big rolling stones to the edge of the ledge and make piles of them to throw down on their enemies. Maybe . . .”
While Yuma disappeared into the darkness of the cave, Navarre explored frantically along the rim for stones—of any size—to slow the dog. He found three fist-sized sandstones and lobbed them at the climbing animal. Two missed their mark, but the third struck the hound a glancing blow on its thick, muscled chest.
In a small explosion, dust puffed into the still, hot air, marking the accuracy of the rock. The blow had no disabling force, and the hound swung its huge, ugly head to regard Navarre with increased menace and a raspy threat from its mutilated throat. Then, the dog dug his claws deeper into the perpendicular footholes in the sandstone to launch a springing attack at Navarre and was suddenly airborne, thrust forward by the powerful force of his hind legs. Navarre flung himself sideways, out of the direct path of the huge animal, barely dodging the beast, whose massive chest, thick forelegs, and clublike head threw a large shadow over the place Navarre had kneeled. Then, without thinking, Navarre scraped his hand in the gritty rock dust that formed a heavy film on the stairsteps. And at the same moment as the dog’s hot breath blew sickening moisture and death in his face, Navarre slapped the pumice-like dust he’d gathered flat handed into the hound’s eyes. His blow drove the minute particles of pulverized rock in an explosive slap that clogged the dog’s vision. The dog reared back, ut
tered a deep moan, and then, torn between his eagerness to kill and the excruciating pain in his streaming eyes, he wiped his paws clumsily across his nose. Round and round he turned in a frenzied circle, shaking his enormous head to eliminate the pain and blindness and find the man who had harmed him.
And that was the moment, as Navarre skittered back from the tortured, dangerous brute, that Yuma ran out of the darkened cave and screeched, “Look what I found!”
Involuntarily, Navarre, who had risen to his feet, stepped back. “My God, what are you going to do with that?”
“Kill the dog,” she said calmly, skirting the hound that was still circling and pawing ineffectually at his nose and streaming bloody tears from his eyes.
Then, extending her right hand, curled in a hard fist around the wicked head of a desert diamondback rattlesnake, buzzing ominously and twisting futilely in her strong clutch, Yuma deliberately dropped the snake expertly on the neck of the dog.
Almost speechless, Navarre watched the wicked viper wrap its sinuous body in a quick, strong coil around the dog’s neck and sink its needlelike fangs into the flesh of the hound. The deep probe behind the animal’s left jaw, with its deadly deposit of poison, entered the carotid artery, which pulsed near the surface of the skin. Even as dog and viper toppled, tumbling down the ancient stone stairs, the snake’s sinuous length remained wrapped tightly around the hound’s neck. As they slid down the incline in a death embrace, Navarre saw the dog’s forelegs stiffen and his body jerk spasmodically. And before the animal and viper swept to the bottom of the slide in a flood of stones, dust, shale, vegetable matter, and a white cloud of talcum-like grit, the huge hound was dead, his heart stopped.
The snake survived, crawling out from under the canine’s body and writhing away over the cross dam.
Yuma peered down at the dead dog and departing rattler with a speculative frown. “I’m strong,” she said, “but rattlers are wiry and tough, and I’m sure its poison sacs were full. We don’t have to worry about the dog anymore. In case you’re wondering, I wasn’t in any danger. I know about snakes. It was angry, and I knew it would strike at the first enemy within range.”
Navarre’s fatigue had flown like a hawk. He felt revitalized and inspired by the cinnamon-blond woman, who explained briefly that during her California high-school days she worked after classes for a herpetologist who taught her how to milk snakes for their venom (which he sold) and coached her on safely catching and handling the dangerous American pit vipers.
Amazed at their good fortune with the rattler, which Yuma had almost stumbled upon in the cave, she and Navarre cast one final look at the stilled dog partially submerged in the rock flow that had carried him and the snake to the bottom of the V cut in the cliff, and then moved into the half-light of the cave.
To the question that hovered on Navarre’s lips, Yuma said, “Oh, catching a snake’s not difficult if you know what you are doing. It’s a matter of distracting the reptile. One way is weaving your hands quickly in the air, like you’re washing them in the wind. Then, you strike, faster than the snake can move. I knew when I saw him he was our answer for the dog.”
Yuma paused, and then pointed to a corner of the large chamber of the cave.
“Do you see it?” she asked.
“Yes! I’ll be damned! This cave has been occupied, probably—well, God knows how many centuries ago! Pre-Pueblo people, probably.”
Navarre stepped over to the corner and stopped his fingers before they touched an ancient rope ladder. It was suspended, he saw, like a relic from history, from an overhead ledge that protruded from the rear wall of the cavern. He was positive that it would collapse and disintegrate if he brushed against it. It was when he stepped back three paces that he could make out a second, higher ledge that seemed to lead to a rectangular opening. A door? The incredible sight that greeted his gaze above the uppermost ledge, growing from it, or on it, took his breath away. It was a variety of dark green lichen, bordered with a paler moss that indicated the presence of water.
Excitedly, he turned to Yuma and said with astonishment in his voice, “There’s water up there. A tiny little spring, a godsend in this dry land.”
Yuma’s eyes grew large, then she let out a joyous whoop—a sound of triumph, of which the ancients who once occupied the cave would have approved.
From their replenished water bag, Navarre poured water into Yuma’s cupped hands, and then into the puddle he drizzled a small mound of pinole from the leather pouch. Quickly, with his finger he stirred the parched ground corn into a wet mixture and grinned as Yuma lifted her hand to her mouth and chewed.
When she had swallowed the cereal and wiped her lips, it was Navarre’s turn to eat, and she laughed at the particles of ground corn that stuck to his unshaved skin. Later, under the cover of the saltillo, they fell asleep on their second night in the desert amid the secrets in the silent cave of the ancients. Their arms were wrapped protectively around each other, and they lay breathing quietly.
Navarre awakened about an hour later and rose up on his elbow so that he could look into Yuma’s eyes when she turned her face to him. They were shadowed, and the big Apache moon riding high in the sky above them splashed soft radiance into the mouth of the cave and struck glints of pale fire in her hair.
“Did you sleep at all?” he asked.
“Some. You look better, rested. Are you too tired?”
“For what?”
She raised her head and kissed his lips. “You can be awfully thick headed,” she murmured, making swift, sure movements with her hands, unbuttoning her blouse and skirt. He put his arms around her and drew her body against him. She smelled wild, of sun and salt, tangy of mesquite, and faintly of her own perfume. Then, her breathing grew shallower and their breaths mingled and her mouth softened urgently against his. Her fingers stroked his hair, reaching, holding, and tugging at his locks; he rolled over onto his back and cradled her in his arms, caressing her hair, neck, and face gently. The two began their initial journey of mutual exploration. Then Thomas kissed her lightly on the forehead, signaling her that they had reached their unspoken boundary. Yuma sighed. The moon tilted and the rock cave seemed to move and the deep sky reeled.
In the early morning, after slowly topping off their water bag from the spring, they descended into the arroyo at the bottom of the cliff. They arrived at the lower elevation only a few minutes after they carefully backed down the hand-carved stairway which had served as their route of salvation from the ferocious hound.
A harsh blue wind had risen during the night and by dawn swept along the floor of the desert in swift, dusty currents that raised sand aloft in fitful streams. Sharp grit shifted over hills and shallow valleys. It blew across bare mesas, topped the summit stones of spiky mountains, and descended with gusty force to strike at the backs of Navarre and Yuma. The wind bit at their unprotected hands and faces, forcing them to seek shelter in the arroyo below the cave where they had slept.
For two hours the powdery dust pounded them, piercing every crevice in the fugitives’ clothing, rasping their skins, clogging their noses, and penetrating their ears.
Then the blowing stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The shifting current of yellow glowing disappeared, and a silence deeper than night replaced the rushing storm. Miserable, their faces, hair, and skin caked with a layer of powder, Navarre and Yuma poured water in their hands to clear their eyes and wash their skin. Their efforts left streaks, rivulets, and pockets of mud on their faces and their scalps, thick with dust.
“God, I hate to feel so dirty,” Yuma swore. “I want to scratch all over. I feel like every hair on my head is coated with grime.”
Forced to plod on, Navarre and Yuma discovered that the floor of the arroyo was covered with slabs and sheaves of cliff stone tumbled like refuse to the bottom of the mountain when intermittent volcanic activity had shaken it and loosed showers of rock.
It was among the particles of limestone, where they treaded carefully to avoid injur
y and bruising of their feet and ankles, that they were surprised. A sudden swarm of flies rose from the ground. They were followed by the awkward flapping of three turkey buzzards rising from the carrion on which they had been feasting. Feathered, dark brown, with speckled pink heads and curving beaks at the end of long, crooked necks, the heavy birds clawed through the air as they gained height. Their paths took them low over the heads of Navarre and Yuma, and as they passed, they filled the air with a terrible, gagging stink, an effluvium of decay and death that made Yuma cover her mouth and nose with her hands.
It was Navarre, squinting at the ruined carcass on the ground, who recognized the remains of the Beauceron who had impaled his teeth on the shirt Navarre had used to tease him over the edge.
He guided Yuma, whose throat was still working from her revulsion, quickly past the broken body, and they both breathed deeply when they had removed themselves from the predators’ feeding grounds.
“What a revolting smell,” Yuma mumbled. “I feel like it’s in my clothes, my skin, my hair . . . That was the dog that almost took you over the edge with him, wasn’t it?”
Yuma suddenly interrupted herself with a small gasp of discovery and focused with hard intensity on a dwarf pine tree a few feet ahead of her that rose about ten feet from the ground. Without explanation, she strode to the tree, inserted her arm between two dusty green branches, and whirled around to face Navarre. She held in the palms of her outstretched hands the chromium-plated police special Navarre had taken from Elidio and lost on the mountain.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, removing the weapon from her hands and inspecting it with wonder and awe. He opened the cylinder and counted the bullets in the six chambers. There were four live shells. The remaining two were hollow, discharged when he fired twice at Esquivel.
Closing the cylinder after discarding the two empties, he carefully pushed the safety on and deposited the revolver in his right front pocket. Then, cupping his hand to shade his eyes from the sun, Navarre leaned his head back to stare upwards at the cliff, fourteen stories high to the top, where he and Yuma had sat two days before in the scarce shade of the mesquite tree. He turned his head and regarded Yuma solemnly. “All that distance it fell, and landed in the tree. It’s unbelievable,” he said thoughtfully. “How did you spot it?”