Fear in a Handful of Dust

by Brian Garfield

  “I don’t like—”

  “What you don’t like is the guilt you’ll feel if you let us out of your sight. You’ll feel you’re not doing your best to protect us. You’ll be abandoning us. You can’t help that feeling, Sam, but it’s the wrong emotion to be guided by. Please try to face that.”

  He stood brooding down at her and saw a tentative smile waver across Earle’s tiny lips.

  “Shirley’s right, you know.”

  His heart resisted it; his mind acquiesced.

  He gathered the things he would need. The water pouch, plastic lined: he took half the water from the still. A bag of jerked meat. One of the knives. He took Shirley along the jackrabbit run, pretending to dismantle the snares that didn’t exist any longer; he took her along the slope two hundred yards to a new trail and showed her how to rig them. He spent half an hour talking to her, telling her everything that came to mind—every trifle of information that could contribute to survival. “As you accumulate pelts you’ll get enough to make clothes. Soak them in animal fats and dry them in the shade—they’ll stink for a while but they’ll cure out a little softer that way. Wash them down with soap morning and night. Wear them hair-side in against your skin. You’ll sweat less. And don’t forget to keep feeding the still with cactus.”

  He cut the raincoat evenly in half—regretted doing it but if he found Jay alive they’d need that much water. Dug a new pit for the still to accommodate the shrunken plastic roof. Tucked two extra pairs of moccasins under his belt. Knelt down by Earle and examined his wasted face. “Don’t go hopeless. It could be a week—could be two weeks.”

  “Could be never,” Earle said, “but I’ll take whatever God dishes out.”

  Mackenzie stood up. He put his arm around Shirley’s shoulders. “I’ll walk you to the ravine.”

  Her hip brushed against him as they walked. At the lip of the ravine he turned her in the circle of his arm and held her roughly.

  She looked up at him. He said: “That’s for Duggai’s benefit. Climb down here with me.”

  He took her hand and jumped into the ravine. Lifted her down. Took her in his arms and lowered her to the ground.

  “We’re out of his sight now. Stay here a while before you show yourself again. He’ll think I’ve gone to sleep.”

  “Post-coital exhaustion,” she said dryly. But she smiled with gentle warmth. “I wish we were really—”

  “No you don’t. Do you.”

  “If it weren’t for Jay.”

  “If my aunt had whiskers she’d be my uncle.”

  “All right, Sam, whatever you say. I suppose I should wish you good luck or something. It seems awfully lame.”

  He left her, going up the ravine doubled over; he picked his way around the distillery pit and climbed toward the low summit. Just before he turned the bend he looked back. She was sitting crosslegged, watching him. He climbed away.

  19

  When he got near the crest he saw there was an open stretch he’d have to cross. It lay twenty yards long in plain sight of the hills across the valley. That was no good; Duggai might be looking this way. Mackenzie slid back down the ravine to consider his options.

  On the eastward horizon a thin first-sliver of moon stood low and pale. It did nothing to brighten the desert; it would be four or five days before there’d be sufficient moonlight to make a difference. The stars made enough illumination to pick out the silvery span of the desert, the darker clumps of growth, the shadow outlines of hills and mountains. You wouldn’t see a man out there unless he moved but you’d see movement quickly enough.

  The air had cooled down rapidly since sundown; it was comfortable against his skin now. Another four hours and he’d be chilly.

  He rubbed his stubble-bearded chin against the skin of his shoulder and searched the slope to either side. Nothing looked useful by way of concealment.

  You never see an animal out here unless it moves, he thought, and it became clear there was only one way to do it. He fought down his impatience and made his start.

  He emerged very slowly from the ravine and lay flat against the earth. The back of his hand before him was hardly visible—the starlight failed to distinguish among colors and the shade of his skin blended well with that of the earth. His head of dark hair would be visible as a dot against the earth—visible perhaps; but noticeable only if it were seen to move.

  He went up the slope an inch at a time, crawling with toes and fingers and caterpillar humps of belly and chest musculature. It was distressingly time-consuming but it was the only answer: he was out in plain sight and his only invisibility was his motionlessness. From a mile away his movement was no faster than that of the moon: imperceptible but deliberate.

  He was thinking about Duggai’s possible arsenal of equipment. It was remotely possible Duggai had a heat-seeking infrared scope but Mackenzie found it highly doubtful. Duggai would have had to raid a military armory for that. All the equipment Mackenzie had seen in the camper appeared to be the sort of things you could steal from a private dwelling. The rifle—he hadn’t taken too close a look but he was sure it hadn’t been a military weapon. It was some sort of big-game rifle, a civilian arm, scope-sighted and expensive.

  Assume Duggai had a five- or six-power scope on the rifle. Assume—for safety—that he had binoculars as well. Ten-power? Certainly not more than twelve magnifications. The nearer of the two possible lookout positions stood a mile away by Mackenzie’s rough naked-eye measurement. A twelve-power glass would bring that down to about 150 yards—but a twelve-power glass had to be tripod-mounted or rested because no human hand could hold it steady enough for practical use. Even so: how much could Duggai see, given a twelve-power lens with good night-resolution, at an effective distance of 150 yards?

  Mackenzie looked to his left, turning his head with infinite slowness. He picked out a maguey that he judged to be 150 yards from him.

  If a man was lying beside that century plant would I see him?

  He decided he could not.

  Heartened, he continued his crawl.

  When he was over the top he slid down the back of the ridge and had a look around. Nothing he saw surprised him. A flat pan of earth stretched away to the south and west; mountains stood around in small ranges and there seemed to be a fairly high sierra along the far southern horizon but that might be clouds. From this bit of elevation he probably was surveying distances of thirty miles or more; there was not a single light.

  The air was so dry that the stars did not twinkle they were steady incandescent chips. Mackenzie set off along the back of the ridge and followed its curve around toward the north keeping an eye on the horizon because he didn’t want to blunder out in plain sight of Duggai.

  His passage disturbed a few lizards and exploded an owl out of a bush. There was a patch of broken country—cut-bank gullies and sand washes: he had to do a bit of scrambling and he abraded one knee climbing out of an arroyo. It was impossible to move swiftly because the ground was dotted with pincushions of miniature cactus and you didn’t see them until you’d nearly trod on them. He moved as fast as he could but it was a stroller’s pace. In the hours of darkness that remained he might be able to cover six or seven miles at this rate but that calculation was immaterial because soon he would have to start doubling in order to stay out of Duggai’s range of vision.

  The ridge petered out toward the flats and he went right down to its bottom. Soon he was bent double and then there was no cover at all.

  He crouched behind a greasewood bush. To his left he could make out winking reflections of Shirley’s fire against bits of growth on the slope.

  It was going to use up time but he saw no alternative to a long sweeping circuit that would bring him around the flats and up into the main range of hills south of the higher peaks. It meant he’d be going behind Duggai’s position but that was all right: his chances were better there—Duggai wouldn’t be looking for anything behind him.

  He had to retrace a hundred yards; then
he struck out along a shallow arroyo that meandered into the plain. Half-dead brush lined its banks—it had been a long time since the last rain. The slow rise to his immediate left was enough to block out any view of the hills beyond; he moved quickly up the arroyo—if he couldn’t see the peaks then Duggai couldn’t see him.

  Sun had cracked the hardpan arroyo floor and pulverized it into fine soft dust but there were rocks hidden in it and he had to set his feet with care: the jackrabbit moccasins were too thin.

  The arroyo made a wide bend and cut its way south. He climbed out and went along the flats with high ground to his left obscuring view of the peaks. He’d gone a mile out of his way but it kept him out of Duggai’s purview.

  Then there was a dip in the ground on his left and he found himself facing fifty yards of exposed plain.

  He sculled along the floor of a ravine and this took him half the distance but then the ravine doubled back on itself and there was nothing to do but cross the open. He did it as he’d done it before—an inch at a time on his elbows.

  He had a clear view of the silhouette of the boulder-strewn peak. The peak was hardly half a mile away and at that distance Duggai might spot him even if he wasn’t moving. But the alternatives were to quit or to waste the rest of the night making a far circle across the boundary of the plain. If he did that he’d get caught in the open by daylight. This was a risk but it would put him safely into the hills with at least three hours’ darkness left in which to search for Jay. Mackenzie banked on the fact that Duggai had no reason to look in this direction.

  Nevertheless at the back of his neck the short hairs prickled.

  He fought down a cough and slithered behind the dead-black shadow of a rock. It was the size of a small car and gave him safety and breathing time but he listened cautiously for the scrape of scales that might indicate snake.

  He peered around the far end of the rock. A shoulder of rising ground to the left blocked the peak from sight. Mackenzie dodged into the foothills.

  The plan was to circle behind Duggai’s position and try to intercept the line of Jay’s tracks. He’d go northeast until he judged he’d crossed the better part of a mile and then he’d make a ninety-degree left turn which should take him behind Duggai and bring him toward the point where Jay had gone through the range. With luck—assuming Jay hadn’t doubled back—he’d have to cross Jay’s tracks somewhere back in there.

  The foothills began to squash in against themselves and heave more violently. He had no trouble keeping land masses interposed between himself and the peaks but the ground was covered with fist-sized rocks and he couldn’t move recklessly for fear of dislodging them and setting up a racket Duggai would hear.

  He picked his way around boulders that weighed as much as battleships. In the boulder fields virtually nothing grew except trivial tufts of cactus that sprouted out of cracks in the rock. The surface of the earth was covered with layers of pulverized stone; it crunched softly underfoot but that wasn’t noisy enough to carry. What worried him was the likelihood of kicking something loose that might roll downslope and start a slide.

  He crabbed his way along the side of a talus hill toward the groined head of a dry canyon. Stepped around a boulder and climbed toward the dip in a saddle that appeared to give access to the hills above. But when he reached it he found an open bowl in front of him as regularly spherical as an inverted helmet.

  If he crossed it he’d expose himself to view from the nearer peak. There was no option but to go around. He spoke a silent oath and turned to the right.

  The detour ate up half an hour but then he was in the center of the range with the spinal divide directly in front of him. He had to cross it. That was a matter of choosing a pass through to the far side.

  Pick wrong and it would cost an hour in false movement. He considered the high divide with patient speculation.

  The highest peaks probably stood about a thousand feet above the desert floor but he’d already climbed several hundred feet through the foothills and it wasn’t a mountain-climbing problem; it was simply a matter of avoiding box canyons. Most of the gullies that ran up toward the ridge didn’t go all the way to the top. The trick was to pick the one that did.

  It wasn’t easy; the bends and humps of the earth made it difficult to determine whether the canyon that opened invitingly at the bottom was the same one that made a V at the top.

  The thin rind of moon stood directly overhead. Mackenzie made his choice and struck out toward the divide.

  The twisting canyon carried him up a dry-wash bed; he walked along one bank of it to avoid the litter of rocks that had been carried down in flash floods. At each bend the bank cut close to the wall and sometimes the floods had carved little cliffs and overhangs.

  At times he had to make heroic little leaps from boulder to boulder—that or squander a good deal of energy and time on descents and detours.

  The high shoulders of the canyon narrowed the sky and reduced what light there was; there were points where he had to feel his way through the shadows. It was good likely rattlesnake country and he moved respectfully with his ears straining to probe each faint signal the night had to offer.

  He’d made the right choice; the climb brought him to an open pass through the divide. He posted himself briefly in the heavy shadow of a looming boulder and had a look down his backtrail.

  The foothills stretched out beneath him in pale silver lumps. He was surprised to see how much distance he’d covered. The campfire out on the flats seemed quite far away—much too far, certainly, to see any human movement with the naked eye. He could see a vast distance beyond it from this elevation. The landscape seemed as dead as something on the moon.

  A tumbled mass of rocks hoisted itself above him and cut off all view of anything to the west and northwest—Duggai had to be up that way somewhere. Across the pass a gentle slope of barren ground made its way up to a stone promontory from which the spinal ridge continued southeastward; this pass had been a weak point in the granite backbone and the winds had eroded it away.

  Ahead of him to the north the land gave way gradually. He saw strings of brushy foothills and a stretch of broken badlands at the bottom perhaps half a mile from him; beyond that was more of the familiar desert and on the horizon the vague outlines of another range.

  It was what he’d expected to find. He looked to his left along a slant down the backside of the range: more foothills followed by more flats. Somewhere down there Jay had gone foraging and not returned.

  He began to pick his way down the north side of the range.

  20

  The descent went faster because the north slope was a gentler one and there wasn’t the clutter of boulders he’d had before; because of the angle of the spine he was in the lee of the prevailing winds here and the erosive forces had been less pronounced on this side. Winds in this corner of the world tended to come up from the Gulf of California and from the Pacific Ocean off San Diego: they were westerlies and southwesterlies. When they carried low clouds the ridgetop would break them and therefore on this slope there was more vegetation. It was the same in kind but it grew more densely and some of the manzanitas had substantial limbs. It meant more forage for bigger animals and that was why Jay had found a game trail back here.

  He kept looking over his left shoulder as he progressed down the hillsides: he didn’t want to blunder into the open where Duggai might spot him. But there was a mass of heavy rock up there and it looked as if Duggai would have to come across the divide before he’d be able to see anything out this way.

  Mackenzie made good progress. In the foothills he made his left turn and followed the flank of a narrow little valley toward the northwest. After half an hour he began to search the ground ahead of him for an indication that Jay might have passed this way.

  A shallow wash crossed his path. He looked up to the left before he entered it. The wash penetrated the range and made a bend out of sight, its walls growing higher and steeper.

  Down in t
he sand he found tracks. Not Jay’s tracks. Tire tracks.

  He bent low and crossed slowly with his attention welded to the canyon into which the wash disappeared.

  Duggai almost certainly was up there—the truck parked somewhere in the canyon, Duggai camped on a mountain-top above it. Could he command a view in this direction? There was no way to tell from here—the odds were blind odds but Duggai should have no reason to be looking back this way. On the other hand Duggai was wise to the wilderness and could be expected to spare occasional surveillance for his flanks and rear.

  No choice but to take the risk.

  He went straight across and holed up briefly in the manzanita along the bank.

  If anything was moving toward him he detected no sign of it. After a moment he moved on, eyes to the ground.

  It wasn’t likely Jay had crossed the range this far to the south—if he picked up Jay’s track it would probably be at least another quarter-mile north of here—but there was no purpose in carelessness; he couldn’t afford to miss the trail and have to make a second sweep. There wasn’t time.

  He wasn’t likely to find Jay anyhow: it was drawing too close to morning. How much darkness left? Two hours at a guess. Tracking in hardpan wasn’t a job for nighttime but he had an advantage in the fact that Jay wasn’t a woodsman and had no desire or ability to conceal his tracks. If you knew what to look for you might spot signs of his passage—it didn’t need anything as specific as footprints. Mainly what Mackenzie had was Jay’s reference to the game trail he’d picked up. Find the game trail and it would lead him to Jay.

  But two hours probably wouldn’t be enough.

  He hurried along, making the best time he could: if he didn’t find Jay before dawn it would have to wait for nightfall but that could make the difference between Jay’s living and dying if he were injured—or even if he weren’t: he hadn’t carried water with him and he’d already been gone too long.