Fear in a Handful of Dust

by Brian Garfield

“Fire. Yes.”

  “Wait for me,” Mackenzie said. “I’ll come back.” Then he shuffled out of the camp with his eyes fixed on the summit where Duggai lived.

  28

  He went toward the hills straight up: Duggai would know anyway. Duggai would see him coming no matter which way he came. Duggai saw everything. There was no point trying to fool him. You couldn’t fool the mountain; you could only climb it.

  Purpose drove him. His feet plodded uphill and down. This first leg had to be crossed gently in order to conserve fuel for the climb. He knew quite precisely how much fuel was left in the machinery. He knew it was enough.

  He struck the hills and began to climb. He would come to a steep canyon and he would put a foot up on a rock and place both hands on the knee and thrust himself upright. Then the other foot onto a higher foothold and another boost up. Occasionally he had to descend before he could climb again.

  The shadows were tricky but the moon helped. Once he heard the rustle of something that might have been a rattlesnake. He diverted around the sound and proceeded, forgetting it instantly.

  Behind him he saw the twinkle of a tiny fire in the camp. Perhaps it would hold Duggai’s attention or some part of it. In any case it hardly mattered. He’d wanted the fire mainly for his own purposes: while it burned it meant they were alive down there. It justified his progress up the mountain.

  Now he needed to summon what cleverness he had left. It wouldn’t do to stumble straight into Duggai’s lair. Duggai would only wire him up and drive him back down to the desert and leave him there again. He knew that now. Duggai wouldn’t shoot him unless he left Duggai no alternative. The game had to be played all the way to the end by the rules that Duggai’s demons had prescribed. It was obvious that the singleminded obsession had cleared everything else from Duggai’s consideration.

  My purpose and his are almost the same. But then that was almost always true of mortal enemies.

  This is what I should have done in the first place.

  But up to now it hadn’t made sense. Duggai was a soldier trained to kill. Mackenzie was not a fighting man.

  But he was a hunter. The silversmith had trained a hunter.

  As he climbed higher in the range the terrain became more rocky. He began to slip. He had to discard the footpads. Now he climbed with bare feet and his soles soon began to bleed again.

  Everything wasted but his will, Mackenzie made a few yards’ progress and had to stop, then a few more yards and another halt. The night wore on. But the top wasn’t far now—two hundred yards, perhaps less. He was on the instep of the mountainous foot, going up the open gentle slope of it. He went from boulder to boulder, trying to keep abutments between him and the top, trying to stay in shadow.

  Impulse and caution chased each other elusively through the remains of his rattled mind. There was the raging urge to go in straight up: challenge the monster in the open, fight it out, answer Duggai’s vast strength with a greater strength of his own—the strength of his fury.

  But he would lose that way. Beyond doubt. It required strategy: stealth.

  Now Duggai knows I’m up here batting around someplace. He must have seen me come into the hills.

  And he knows I can’t move very fast and I’m not very strong.

  He’s expecting me. He’s too smart to come down looking for me because he won’t leave the truck unguarded. Even if he leaves it locked I might get it open. I might know how to wire up the starter and drive it without the key. So he’s got to stay with the truck to keep me from stealing it.

  He’ll hang around the truck and when I don’t turn up by daylight he’ll wonder whether I passed out in the rocks or whether I’m creeping up to drop a boulder on his head. He’ll worry a little. Finally he’ll figure out the best way to handle it. What he’ll do, he’ll get in the truck and drive down the back of the range out through the desert, out to the water hole and he’ll spend the rest of the day out there taking a bath and keeping himself cool. Sure. Let me fry up here in these rocks.

  But right now he’s still up there with one eye on the truck and the other eye on the rocks around him. Maybe he’s even sitting inside the truck.

  Only the one way to handle it, for sure. I hope I’ve got the fuel for it. It’s a God damn long walk.

  The yucca plant had broad leaves like those of a giant artichoke. Each leaf was the size of a man’s forearm. The edges were serrated with spines.

  He broke off eight big leaves and rubbed their edges against the coarse surface of a boulder until he had removed the spines. Again he made lashings of tensile bark. Again he had shoes: yucca-leaf soles layered four leaves thick. They lasted, amazingly, clear to the bottom of the range before they shredded away. Then he made footpads from creosote as he had done before—the yucca did not grow down here—and he continued. One foot before the other: one measured advancement after the last: goal and purpose fixed precisely in the dwindling bright core of his consciousness.

  Nearly dawn and he had to hurry. He’d intercepted the game trail a while ago; he’d followed it past the point where he’d found Jay in the pit. The holes were still there. The game trail took him a pace at a time through the ravine where they’d first seen the javelina pack.

  When the footpads wore away this time he went on barefoot.

  He kept listening for the sound of the truck. If it came now he was lost.

  When he dug the pit he broke off a half-dead catclaw bush near the ground—it was brittle enough to give way. He climbed down into the pit and placed the bush above him across the opening to conceal it.

  The light grew and he watched the sky through the interlaced branches. He licked fresh water—from the water hole—off his shriveled lips and let his eyes drift shut. Suspended in unthinking existence he listened to the wind. The cold damp earth enveloped him. Possibly he would not be able to rise from it. He was beyond worrying about that. He would do what he could; no one could ask more than that of him.

  But he thought, I have not yet failed.

  There was lucidity enough in his mind for thoughts that ranged far beyond his body and the hole in which he lay buried. Without willing it he speculated that there might be a future. He rated the chances at about one in a hundred but the possibility was there and he had nothing else to think about and he couldn’t afford to sleep because he had to listen for Duggai.

  Thoughts jazzed like butterflies and he couldn’t hold onto them. He wondered if he would return to the mountain station and find the dog waiting. He pictured the fire tower and the table of solitaire cards. If I have a chance, if I live, will I go back to that?

  He’d go back, if only to find out about the dog, but would he stay?

  The sensible thing to do would be to settle in the middle of the biggest city he could find and surrender to the comforts of civilization. A tap that provided water whenever you wanted it. A refrigerator with an automatic device that made ice cubes endlessly. Air conditioning. Bedsheets on a king-size mattress. Butter-soft steaks from a butcher’s frigid meat-storage room. An air-conditioned car with a thermos of water kept freshly filled at all times. A woman to ease his nights and make inconsequential talk: someone with whom he’d never again have to pry straight through to the rock bottom of existence. The freedom to be trivial, the luxury to take comfort for granted.

  He would clutch at it—greedily, just as he’d clutch now at a filled canteen—but the brain in his dehydrated skull throbbed with a glowing residue of desperate health and the knowledge seeped through it that his brain would need more than comfort: it would need stimulus, challenge. This thing of Duggai’s had bred restlessness in him. He couldn’t settle for anything: he couldn’t go back to the solitaire pack.

  No way to foresee what form it might take. Adventure came in many ways. Duggai’s weren’t the only demons: there-was an endless variety against which a man could pit himself.

  But he couldn’t go back to forestry. Or psychiatry. Or even to Shirley.

  Shirley. That had been
another world. In any case she’d decided at the last to make her peace. She and Jay had found each other again. Mackenzie had left them comforting each other like children in the dark: holding hands while the world ended. If it didn’t end after all—if they lived—they would go out of this place fused into unity. They weren’t Navajos, they weren’t built to play Duggai’s games, but they were whole, within themselves. Mackenzie had seen them grow stronger. The final setback had shocked them into temporary surrender—they’d given up, accepted the fate Duggai had decreed, but they’d resolved to do it together and that was the thing they’d remember when it was over.

  It’s not that I don’t want her. Maybe I always will.

  But the memory of all this would make it impossible. The same experience that had welded Shirley and Jay together would pry Shirley and Mackenzie apart. She would look at Jay and remember how it had brought them together, how they’d found the strength in each other; then she would look at Mackenzie and remember how he had come between them; and any warm feeling she had for Mackenzie would be destroyed, in time, by the awkwardness of gratitude. It would get in the way of anything deeper.

  In his dank grave, waiting silently, Mackenzie felt eased by fatalism.

  There’ll be another woman somewhere, sometime.

  He could wait.

  He was getting good at waiting.

  When the truck came he listened to it with critical attention. His body was lax in the shaded hole. Messages of pain from his feet threatened to drive everything else from his awareness and he had to force pain from the arena. There was no leeway now for anything but the two contestants: gladiators in the sand.

  He sat up until the top of his head lodged against the branches of the catclaw. He couldn’t see the truck from here; he hadn’t expected to; but his ears placed it and in his mind’s vision he watched the truck.

  It went along past him, below his level. Growling slowly along the uneven ground. A dry axle-spring creaked dis-rhythmically. At its closest point it probably wasn’t more than twelve feet away from where Mackenzie sat hidden. It went on, went as far as it could and then stopped. The engine switched off. In the sudden silence he heard the metal ping with heat contractions.

  The truck door opened. Springs creaked. The door chunked shut. Mackenzie heard a dull click—Duggai locking the door?

  He was neither surprised nor gratified that Duggai had obeyed his prediction. The luxury of such emotion was far behind him: he had room left now only for pragmatic objectivity.

  When he turned his head he could see the sun and he judged the time: probably around eight o’clock. Not hot yet. He heard Duggai’s footsteps. They didn’t alarm him; Duggai wouldn’t come this way. Coming to this spot Mackenzie had eradicated every footprint behind him. In any case he’d left no spoor on the rock. There’d been a smear of blood but he’d scrubbed it off.

  A wave of faint dizziness toppled him against his shoulder; he rested against the wall of his foxhole and drew long deep breaths. He felt the engine skip a few beats, then pick up again. Not yet, he thought. Not just yet.

  Duggai made random noises; it wasn’t possible to tell what he was doing. Mackenzie waited in mindless patience.

  When he heard the splash he made his move.

  He pushed the catclaw aside and got out of the hole and sculled on elbows and knees and toes to the rim of the cliff. Inch by inch he lifted his head until he could see down the face of the sheer rock.

  Beneath him and to his left was the water hole. The salt lick threw scattered reflections at him; the pool itself was out of the sunlight. Insects jazzed around above the tanque.

  Duggai was naked in the pool, floating, paddling.

  The truck was in the shade under the cliff, its tailgate overhanging the tanque: out of habit Duggai had backed it in.

  Mackenzie hadn’t realized Duggai would be able to get the truck that close to the pool.

  Bleak realization desolated him. The truck was in Duggai’s sightline. There was no way to get to it without being seen.

  He looked at the pool again.

  Duggai was looking right at him.

  Mackenzie let his breath trickle out slowly through his mouth. It occurred to him after a moment that with the bright sky in his eyes Duggai couldn’t see him. Duggai floated around, splashing lazily, benign. By the bank of the pool his clothing was heaped and the Magnum’s blue gleam came from the top of the pile of clothes. Duggai was within arm’s reach of it.

  Duggai stiffened and listened to something and then relaxed, having identified and dismissed it.

  The rifle wasn’t there.

  So the rifle was in the truck. But the truck was visible to Duggai and probably the door was locked.

  When Duggai rolled over in the water and began to wash his face Mackenzie backed away from the rim, moving by inches. He had to fight a cough down. He slithered back along the slope until he was concealed from below. The sun blasted him into the ground but he found his feet and got upright and swayed when the last strength tried to run out of him as if a drainplug had been pulled.

  He tightened everything. Massive effort. Down to raw quivering nerve ends he walked the tangential incline to the point where he’d ambushed the javelina. The cliff ended here. He stumbled out onto the game trail. The splintered ground punished his feet into an agony that was almost blinding.

  Rich light streamed across the desert, its color too bright: it made his head swim. Hot wind soughed through the brush. Mackenzie feebly went up along the game trail in a silent crippled crouch.

  He went past a dispirited mesquite and around the jutting rock. The truck came in sight, its snout facing him. Beyond it he heard splashing in the pool.

  He put his shoulders against the cliff and inched toward the truck until he could see the far rim of the tanque beyond the narrow passage between truck and cliff. Past the rim he could see the desert and pale blue mountains far away. Forward another few feet and he could see halfway down into the tanque. If he were to step forward as far as the truck’s door he’d be in plain sight of Duggai.

  Duggai, he thought, all this time through all this anguish we have dueled with each other at long range until now and I’ve longed to get within reach of you, you God damned cocksucking motherfucking miserable pissing son of a bitch, and now we stand within thirty feet of each other and I can’t get at you.

  He sagged back against the wall of the cliff and brooded at the dusty drab hood of the truck. Through the windshield he could see a pillow scrunched up in the slot behind the driver’s seat. Duggai probably used it for dozing through the heat of the day, sitting in the cab with the air conditioner running.

  Mackenzie worked forward another foot, stepped out in front of the truck, put his palms lightly on the hood and stretched forward on tiptoe trying to see if the rifle was in the cab. The bulk of the truck blocked him from Duggai’s view but if he stepped on either side he’d be seen.

  He saw the front sight and the muzzle, tipped up against the inside of the passenger door. So Duggai hadn’t slung it in its rack under the camper roof. He’d kept it in the cab. It stood, no doubt, with its buttplate on the floor, the stock wedged firmly between seat and door so that it wouldn’t carom around inside the cab. If Mackenzie could only get that passenger door open the rifle would fall right out into his hands.

  It was that easy. And that impossible. The rifle might as well have been in Texas. The lock buttons on the sills of both doors were punched down in the locked positions; and the windows were shut.

  He backed silently away from the truck and leaned against the cliff and tried to think.

  Beyond the rock lip he heard Duggai grunt with pleasure and splash gleefully, slapping the surface of the water like a child learning to swim. Mackenzie scowled at the distraction and tried to focus his thinking on the truck, the problem of the truck, the Chinese box puzzle dilemma of the truck. Then something tickled his foot and when he looked down he saw the scorpion.

  It was a small one not more
than half an inch high with the whiptail stinger curled up over its golden back. It’s the little ones that kill, he thought dispassionately. The little ones had the most virulent poison. He watched it move alongside his foot, coming out away from the base of the cliff where it must have been holed up in a crack between the rocks. He stood absolutely still in his terror and watched it. The scorpion stopped, one tiny leg pressed against the knuckle of his little toe, and he thought perhaps it was licking up the blood by his foot. The curled stinger twitched back and forth.

  His mouth twisted with the irony of it. Stretch the scorpion out straight and it might not measure three inches from antennae to stinger but it was deadlier than Duggai’s two hundred-odd pounds or Duggai’s engine-block-busting Magnum.

  It was one of Duggai’s demons. Mackenzie knew that without thinking anything through. Nothing mystical about it. Sheer logic. Duggai had posted the scorpion here as a sentry.

  He wanted to laugh.

  The scorpion leaned momentarily away from his foot, following the trace of the blood Mackenzie had left. Mackenzie whipped his foot away, hopped mightily away along the face of the cliff—more than a yard in the single jump and then he kept retreating until he saw that the scorpion had scuttled back into its hole, startled by his sudden movement. When Mackenzie stopped he felt the pain flood up through his feet but it wasn’t the pain of a poison sting, it was only the same pain as before; anyhow he’d been watching the scorpion when he fled and he was sure it hadn’t had time to whip him.

  Frozen against the cliff he waited: had he made noise?

  The water rippled once or twice. Then he heard nuzzling snorts: Duggai playing in the water. So he hadn’t heard anything.

  Mackenzie watched the scorpion’s hole with abiding suspicion but the creature didn’t reappear for a while and finally he switched his attention to the truck again, the truck and the rifle locked inaccessibly within it.

  He stood there for a very long time filled with nagging frustration because his mind had gone blank.

  Duggai’s voice startled him: his heart seemed to stop. Then he realized Duggai was only singing. Chanting a Navajo song softly to himself. The voice was too soft for the words to reach Mackenzie but he knew the song. It was a young boys’ campfire song of no particular consequence. White Painted Woman and Coyote and legends from faraway times—a sort of nursery-rhyme song.