Fear in a Handful of Dust

by Brian Garfield

  Mackenzie passed a long toe of earth that grew out of the hills like the exposed root of a giant tree. Once past it he stopped in a thicket of creosote and had a look uphill.

  As you moved around the compass it was natural that configurations of terrain had to change. But the hill with the boulder slope that had reminded him of a hogan village was beginning to come in sight around the edge of the stone ridge; it was behind him by now—he’d come past it by going around behind it.

  That meant the other peak had to be ahead of him and off to the left. From this angle it would no longer resemble a human foot but he thought he’d still recognize it if it were in sight. It was not; nothing up there was high enough—the nearer hills blocked off that part of the range. In any case he’d already crossed the camper’s tire tracks. It meant Duggai probably was behind him on the boulder-studded peak.

  From here Mackenzie saw its slope; the top remained invisible behind an intervening ridge. He wasn’t going to be able to advance much farther in the open before he would emerge into Duggai’s sightlines.

  He decided to cross the foothills to the north in order to interpose them between him and Duggai; then he would proceed along the edge of the range in search of Jay’s game trail.

  He turned to the right and walked between the two low hills. A startled jackrabbit flashed away and Mackenzie froze bolt still in a shadow of catclaw because the jack’s sudden movement might draw Duggai’s attention if Duggai were positioned to see it.

  Mackenzie gave it five minutes before impatience boosted him forward again.

  He walked from bush to bush, trying to blend into shadows when he could; he kept hunched low to the ground. The knife in his waistband was beginning to slip through and he repositioned it.

  He thought about taking a drink but decided against it; no knowing how long the water was going to have to last. He’d been moving for about three hours; it was quite cool and he hadn’t worked up too much of a sweat; the system didn’t require water yet.

  He walked out between the hills and bent his course to the left, striking out along the flanks of the foothills. Above him he could no longer see the range itself and that meant Duggai couldn’t see him. He moved along quickly until he brushed a cholla and a segment attached itself to his calf. The needles immediately worked their way into the flesh and he had to stop to knock it off with his knife; then he had to pick a dozen spines out of the skin before he moved on—if they worked their way in they’d fester.

  He passed a notch between hills and searched for any sign that Jay might have come this way but there was nothing like a game track and nothing seemed to have been disturbed. He stopped to empty a pebble out of his moccasin and went on.

  Somewhere in the course of the next half hour he found a well-beaten trail. Relief flooded him.

  Animal hoofs had packed the earth along a single curvaceous rut. Scrub pincushions that tried to grow across it had been trampled; overhanging twigs of catclaw and man-zanita had been gnawed bare of leaves up to the level of Mackenzie’s thigh. It couldn’t be mistaken for anything but an animal path. Something a good deal heavier than jackrabbit. Probably a variety of animals used the trail.

  It was not a path new to this season; it had been here many years because there were no seedling plants along its flanks—they’d sprouted but they’d been eaten immediately.

  A perennial game trail meant one of three things: there was water, food or salt.

  He couldn’t conceive of any food succulent enough to draw animals endlessly along this rutted path—there weren’t any cornfields or orchards out here to draw the constant attention of game herbivores. So it was water or salt or perhaps both.

  Which way? The trail came out of the foothills and threaded the brush out along the flats.

  Jay had said he’d followed it several hours but found nothing. Mackenzie wished he’d asked Jay whether he’d gone up into the hills or out on the plain.

  Logic decided him. Jay probably had followed the trail first up into the hills because to the greenhorn there’d be nothing attractive on the flats: automatically he’d have concluded that if there were a water hole or a salt lick it ought to be up in the broken hill country rather than out along the featureless plains.

  In his first night’s foraging Jay had intercepted the path somewhere around here and must have followed it up into the hills, where Mackenzie had no doubt it branched out into various tributaries and finally dwindled to nothing.

  Because the animals that used this trail weren’t plains dwellers. They had to reside in the foothills in the narrow band of heavier vegetation along the slope where the occasional rain broke.

  As he looked out on the flats he saw the vegetation grow steadily more sparse. Nothing bigger than jackrabbits out there.

  The big animals lived in the hills but they came regularly down this trail and out into the plain—because there was something out there that drew them.

  Jay had struck out that way on his second expedition. He hadn’t come back. It meant one of several things: he’d crippled himself or got sick or he’d followed the trail until daylight and holed up and continued the trail tonight. Or he’d gone out into the open to a point where Duggai had spotted him and Duggai had come after him and left him maimed or dead out there. Or—it was far-fetched—he’d run into a pack of pigs or coyotes and been jumped. Or maybe he’d been too tired to dig a pit at sunrise and had broiled in the deceptive shade of a bush.

  It could be anything. But the odds were strong that Jay was out on those flats. Maybe fifty yards from here and maybe five miles.

  Mackenzie set out along the game path. He hadn’t gone far before he got confirmation: a decapitated barrel cactus—Jay had cut its top off and drunk the pulp; and there was a little heap of fishhook spines that he’d carefully removed one by one before attacking the plant.

  Mackenzie looked back toward the hills. You still couldn’t see the summit from here. Another quarter-mile out and he was certain it would rise into view.

  He scanned the desert floor. His eyes stopped to examine everything that might be a human form. Each time he rejected the possibility and moved on to the next lump.

  Nothing. He moved on along the trail.

  Thirst was getting to him; he had a short drink from the bag, rolled the water around in little mouthfuls for quite a while before swallowing, put a pebble on his tongue and sucked it to keep the membranes moist.

  One thing was certain. Out at the end of this trail was a water hole or a salt lick. Sometimes you found them together.

  The population of these hills couldn’t be very great—it took a good many acres of this sort of scrub to support much life—but there’d been enough traffic along this path to groove it deep and hard. That meant almost constant travel. If it extended any distance at all then it had to exert a very strong lure. Water alone wouldn’t do it: there were always pockets in hills like these where a man might never find water but a coyote could easily smell it out and dig for it. On the other hand salt alone wouldn’t do it either; a pack might wander to a salt lick every week or two for a treat but it wouldn’t venture such a journey every night.

  If animals were beating this track every night or two it meant a potently seductive attraction at the far end. He concluded there must be ground salt and fresh water quite close together.

  If that was the case and Duggai knew about it then a lot of possibilities fell into place. Duggai might have picked the spot deliberately if he knew he’d have ample water for himself—all he had to do was make sure his victims never found the water hole. If Jay had headed out that way last night then naturally Duggai would have been keeping an intermittent eye on his water supply; he’d have spotted Jay; he’d have had to prevent Jay from returning to the others with the news.

  How much darkness left? Half an hour? An hour?

  He was several hundred yards away from the protection of the foothills. The desert plain receded away from him in all directions, its undulation so gentle there ha
rdly seemed anywhere Jay could be hiding.

  Mackenzie stopped and measured the hills behind him—trying to determine how much farther he could proceed before he walked into Duggai’s line of sight.

  It was sheer guesswork because he wouldn’t see the peak until he was out where Duggai simultaneously would see him. But the contours of the slopes at either end gave him a hint to the altitude of the summit and he felt strongly that he was quite close to the limit of safety here. It might be fifty yards and it might be a hundred and fifty but certainly it was no more than that.

  And if Duggai spotted him on this trail that would end it right here. Bullets in both kneecaps would do the job handily.

  His feet were bruised and raw. The moccasins were beginning to shred but he resisted the thought of changing to fresh ones because of the fifty or eighty miles he’d have to cross to reach the highway—assuming he could get beyond range of Duggai’s eye.

  He was having trouble walking: his breath came in short gasps and the muscles at calf and ankle felt spongy and his knees had developed a wobble. When he thought of the highway and the miles that lay between he didn’t think he’d have the strength for it.

  He ate a string of jerky because it might perk him up; and moved on, scanning the brush to either side of the game run, searching the flats, looking back with each step to see whether Duggai’s summit had climbed in sight, ticking off the array of imponderables and obstacles that loomed before him, seeing not much hope at all.

  A voice rocked him back in terror:

  “Mackenzie.…”

  21

  Jay had dug himself a pit on the north side of a manzanita twice Mackenzie’s height. The hole was invisible under its deep shadow. Mackenzie homed on his voice and didn’t see him until he was within arm’s length.

  Only head and shoulders; Jay was down in the pit.

  “Are you all right?”

  “More or less. I stepped on a fucking cactus. Better keep your voice down. He’s right up there.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “Several times. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m still alive, right?”

  Mackenzie opened the water bag. “Here.”

  “God. Thank you.”

  “Don’t guzzle it.”

  He watched Jay critically. The Adam’s apple lunged up and down but Jay reluctantly lowered the bag after three swallows. “I pulped a cactus but it’s not the same thing. Right over there—that’s a juicy barrel cactus but it’s right out in the open—I didn’t dare demolish it. He’d spot it right away.”

  “I saw the one you cut open back up the trail.”

  “He can’t see that one from up there.”

  “How bad’s the foot?”

  “Not too bad. I got all the splinters out. Spines. It swelled up some and I couldn’t walk on it last night. I’ve experimented—it still hurts but think another twelve hours should do it.” His voice was rusty, tired. “I let you down.”

  “Forget it.”

  “No. I wasn’t looking where I stepped. It’s entirely my fault. I’m responsible—you can’t pass it off as an accident.”

  Mackenzie wondered if Jay had spent the past twenty-four hours flagellating himself with self-humiliation.

  Jay said, “This is as far as I got but you look at these tracks, you know there’s got to be something out there.”

  “Water hole and salt lick, I imagine. You did a good job finding this trail.”

  “Sure—sure.” Jay’s breath ran out of him. “When you were a kid did the other kids ever take you on a snipe hunt? That’s what I’ve been feeling like since last night. All I need’s a burlap sack and a flashlight to complete the picture.” Jay humped himself up onto the lip of the excavation. His face came into stronger light and Mackenzie saw unhealthy blisters under his eyes.

  Jay had to wait to get his breath before he spoke again: “I started out with the best intentions but I’m a stinking amateur. It’s a wonder I’m still alive. Lying here all day in this grave—I couldn’t get to sleep. All that resolute ambition drained right out of me. Then I heard you coming—thought it was Duggai. I made myself as small as I could. I didn’t recognize you until you’d gone right by. Thank God you came. I’m not sure I could make it back alone.”

  “We’re not going back,” Mackenzie said.

  “Once in a while he takes a turn along the top of the ridge up there. He’s got field glasses. He searches the whole area. Takes his time. Two or three times I could have sworn he was looking right at me.”

  “Any pattern to it? Does he show up at regular intervals?”

  “Not that I could tell. Twice yesterday—maybe more than that but I saw him twice. Once tonight since sundown. For a while he had a campfire up there. I couldn’t see the fire but I saw the flicker on the hillside. It’s gone out now, or gone down.”

  “He’s got to sleep sometime,” Mackenzie said.

  “I wonder about that. With him anything’s possible.”

  Mackenzie was thinking: if he’s using hand-held binoculars then they’re not stronger than eight-power. It was useful knowledge.

  “What are we going to do, Sam?”

  “Find that water hole after dark.”

  “He’ll see us if we go out there.”

  “Maybe. Right now I’ve got digging to do.”

  “I’ll give you a hand.”

  They picked a spot behind a greasewood clump. Mackenzie scraped a pit for himself while Jay dug a still.

  By the time Mackenzie had gone thirty inches down it was dawn and he was worn out. He kept his attention on the hilltops waiting for Duggai to appear. They stretched the half-square of plastic across the still and weighted it with a stone. Mackenzie divided his ration of meat with Jay. “Get as much sleep as you can.”

  “Hard to sleep not knowing when he may take a notion to wander down this way.”

  “If he does there’s not much we can do about it.”

  By noon his eyes felt sticky and the hovering glare had given him a headache. He had slept a few hours and been too keyed up to sleep any more after that. His tired lids took longer to blink as he watched the summits through the lacework of creosote branches.

  Concern for Shirley and Earle rubbed against him. He hadn’t wanted to leave them behind; he’d had to face the necessity; but bitterness made him irritable. If we get out of this and they don’t.… It was something he doubted he’d be able to live with.

  The inimical desert was leaching him of strength; it was a steady deterioration that no amount of primitive ingenuity could halt and what worried him was the knowledge that he was the strongest of them: if he couldn’t resist it then what chance did Shirley and Earle have? Even if he managed to drag himself and Jay beyond Duggai’s range they would still have endless miles to crawl and by the time they reached the destination it might be too late for the others.

  Something moved on the summit.

  The distance was perhaps a thousand yards and Duggai’s figure was tiny against the sky but the silhouette was etched in crystal-sharp outline and Mackenzie saw it when Duggai lifted the binoculars to his eyes and began to search the flats. There was no sky reflection off the lenses and that meant there were rubber antiglare hoods around them. Duggai was wearing a wide cowboy hat and his shirt and trousers were pale and loose: Mackenzie could see the shirttail flap in the breeze.

  He knew logically that Duggai couldn’t see him. He was behind a thick bush; there was nothing above ground but his eyes and hairline; he was in shadow. But he understood the coppery dry fear Jay had expressed: Duggai was looking straight at him.

  Duggai was only being sensible—keeping a check on his rear—but the terror couldn’t be denied. Suppose I left visible tracks last night?

  It was mitigated by the fact that Duggai kept turning the glasses steadily, sweeping in slow arcs. But still it was like one of those paintings: wherever you stand in the room it stares you in the eye.
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br />   He must have seen Jay come into the hills. He didn’t see him leave. He knows Jay’s got to be around here somewhere.

  He’s giving us rope, that’s all.

  Then he thought: is it possible he didn’t see Jay the other night?

  Had Duggai been asleep during that hour?

  It would explain why Duggai hadn’t made any effort to come looking for him. It was the sort of coincidence that easily could have happened but Mackenzie was reluctant to credit it.

  In any case they’d have to predicate their actions on the assumption that Duggai knew he had at least one of them behind him.

  Duggai walked up to another vantage point, a fifty-yard hike to the west, and repeated his scan.

  From the corner of his eye Mackenzie glanced at the plastic still. They’d heaped earth around the edges and it lay to the north of the catclaw fifteen feet from him but they had to put it out where the sun could hit it. To look at it Duggai would have to be able to see through the catclaw but the sky might make enough of a reflection on the plastic. With luck he might take it for mica or pyrites or quartz—the desert made a blinding glitter anyway.

  Now Duggai put his right shoulder to Mackenzie and began to search the country to his west. It was then Mackenzie realized he’d nearly stopped breathing. He drew a long hot dry gust into his lungs.

  Shortly thereafter Duggai walked back behind the ridge and Mackenzie didn’t see him again until late in the afternoon when Duggai repeated the ritual.

  It was full dark before they ventured out of their cool graves. “How’s the foot?”

  “A little tender, what the hell. I can walk. You name the program, I’ll follow it.” Jay regarded him eagerly but his face had a gray tired look and folds of trenchant weariness bracketed his mouth. He’d been remarkably agreeable ever since Mackenzie’s arrival—that was partly relief and gratitude but mostly it was the sense that Mackenzie had some sort of magic that was going to save his life. There was a toadying obeisance in the way Jay looked at him. Jay must have persuaded himself that he didn’t have to obey but that he would comply because if he argued or refused he’d be letting Mackenzie down.