by Gwen Moffat
Miss Pink looked around for a continuation of the path that they had been following. They had approached the spoil heap from the right; she walked her mare to the left and looked hopelessly up a steep slope of hard ground strewn with rocks.
‘Hold my horse.’ She handed the reins to Emma and moved back from the tip. At this point there was a sloping shaft in the ground.
‘What are you doing?’ Emma asked.
‘Thinking.’
‘Melinda! Really!’
She came back and took her reins. ‘You’re enjoying yourself.’ It was an accusation.
Emma gave a thin smile and said nothing but her eyes were very bright.
‘You let me sleep.’
The girl’s expression changed but did not soften; in her face now was that curious bleakness of the young villain. ‘What do I have to lose?’ She glanced away. ‘What keeps anyone alive when there’s nothing left to live for?’
‘There’s always the chance that something will turn up.’ Miss Pink was not ironical. ‘When you’re dead there’s no chance.’
‘There’s no pain either.’
‘You recover from wounds.’
‘Do you?’
‘You die of them or you recover. There’s nothing in between: no neutral ground where grief is concerned. Orville didn’t die. You had a wonderful experience, and now that it’s over he’s gone back to live his own life, and you have to go on with yours. Accept that and it’s good. Don’t accept it and I have to say that he wasn’t worth it: that he put his family first and you second. On the other hand—’ the bleak eyes met hers with the slightest spark of interest, ‘—on the other hand Simon would go to the electric chair for you. Can you imagine what it’s like to stand trial, to wait through years of appeals, have them rejected, to live in a cell on Death Row, and finally to be cooked like a fowl in a microwave oven?’ Miss Pink paused. Emma looked sick. She concluded calmly: ‘If you kill yourself, you’ll kill him too.’
‘Whoever said—we’re running, aren’t we?’
‘As slowly as possible. You’re not going to turn that gun on yourself now, but you’re hoping we’ll be overtaken so that someone else may end it for you. What about me? The murderer has to kill me too because I would be a witness. You’d take me and Simon with you?’
‘You chose to come. Simon chose to—’
‘Grow up.’ Miss Pink’s eyes flickered. ‘There’s something white in the bottom. What is it?’
Emma looked. ‘Black and white. It’s the pinto. He’s moving fast.’
‘Whose horse is that?’
‘No one’s in particular. So who would be on him? Haven’t you got binoculars?’
‘I didn’t bring them. Get off. We’ll have to lead the horses. I’ll pick the route.’
‘Where to? Let’s hide in the mine.’
‘It’s a shaft, not a passage. And we can’t hide the horses. We’re going up to the divide. He can’t gallop on the slope so we’ve got a good chance.’ And there’s always the Walther, she thought.
‘Who is it, Melinda?’
But Miss Pink was already on the slope, pulling her horse. Emma scrambled behind, slipping in her smooth soles. ‘We’re out of range,’ she gasped. ‘If that’s what—’
‘He’s out of range; we’re not. D’you think he’s only got a pistol?’
The ground was abominably steep. It would have been hard going for a mountaineer who was unencumbered, but a slow rhythm could have been established. Pulling the reluctant horses that would pause and then lunge at every rock step where a person alone would move up lightly, this was a nightmare. Miss Pink had good friction in cleated boots but Emma slipped constantly. The sun was hot, and dust clogged their nostrils. They streamed with sweat, and flies swarmed about their heads. Far below the rider on the pinto reached the angle in the trail and halted. Emma called: ‘He’s not coming up. Let’s wait and see what he does.’
‘Keep going.’
‘He’s shouting.’ Emma had stopped and was staring down. ‘He’s getting off. He’s—no!’ She flung round and clawed her way up the slope.
The shot was explosive. Echoes rolled round the canyon cliffs. Emma was sobbing, but in fury as much as fear. ‘The bastard, the dirty bastard! He’s shooting at us!’
Miss Pink gulped air and risked a glance upward. On the left junipers showed against the sky. She angled that way and a shallow gully with hard clay banks opened at her feet. The only way to cross such ground is to contour: running fast into the bed at the back and out on the same level. She knew the mare would not run. She held the reins at full stretch and started across, trying to pick out embedded pebbles that would serve as holds, thinking of Emma’s leather soles. The mare followed, got halfway across, and her hind hooves slid from under her. Miss Pink let the reins go but the horse, instead of rolling down the gully, lunged forward. Miss Pink leapt for the stony bed, made it and tried to gain a few feet upwards before the animal reached her. There was no impact. She clung to the ground and looked down. The mare was lying in the gully some twenty feet below, her back against a boulder, her legs uphill. She was struggling to get up.
Miss Pink descended, careful not to send any loose rocks down. From the side Emma watched blankly.
Below the boulder against which the mare had come to rest there was a steep drop. If her struggles moved the rock, the beast was lost. Below them the pinto was coming fast up the path to the mine.
‘Can you get it on its feet?’ Emma called.
‘She’s just winded.’ Miss Pink hoped that this was true. ‘You find an easier way across the gully and make for the junipers on top. I’ll catch you up.’
The pinto disappeared from sight behind a shoulder of the hill. There was silence except for the mare’s gasps. She had stopped struggling and lay with her head on sharp stones. One had the ridiculous feeling that something should be put under the head, such as a coat. Above them the cat called urgently. Miss Pink heard it and gave it no thought but the mare rolled her eyes and staggered to her feet. She grabbed the reins and led the horse up the gully bed to where Emma was crossing without trouble. They made their way to easier ground by a water-worn runnel.
The climb went on: a breathless, painful scramble towards the junipers that never seemed to get any closer while behind them the canyon sank from view below the convex slope. The angle was easing, the horses moving better, but the women were drenched with sweat, their shirts torn, their arms and hands scraped and bloody. Miss Pink had lost her hat in the gully, at some point Emma had abandoned her sheepskin.
At last, swinging their horses downhill, they were able to mount, but the tired animals could take the easing ground only at a walk. The riders no longer looked back.
They felt a breeze and the ground levelled off. Miss Pink suppressed a groan. They had reached no ridge but a plateau, and there was no sign of Bighorn Basin. The ground was a mosaic of small flat stones interspersed with desert holly and prickly pear among stunted trees.
They ripped twigs from the juniper and lashed their horses which, unaccustomed to whips, responded immediately, but they could ride fast only for short distances on the broken ground.
A mountain appeared ahead, then a line of them, cut off by the trees, then they were in a low dense woodland, threading their way between the pines, leaping fallen trunks, ducking to avoid branches. The ground rose, they topped an incipient ridge—and something crashed through a tree. The bark of a rifle rang out. Behind them, about half a mile away, the pinto showed, the rider firing without dismounting.
They whipped the horses and plunged downwards. Through a gap in the trees a point appeared, layered in pink and black: the butte in Bighorn Basin. Emma was drawing ahead.
‘Emma!’ She stopped and Miss Pink came up. ‘Give me the gun.’
‘No.’
‘Ride on to the ranch. Get help. I’ll hold him off.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘It’s our only chance. He’s overtaking us.’
�
�There’s nowhere to hide. I’m not leaving you.’
She turned and Miss Pink was forced to follow. They were now in clear view of the ridge behind them. Below, the basin was revealed, even the Stone Cabin: a square speck with something outside that was striking sparks from the sunshine.
They came out on the lip of an escarpment. Below them was a band of cliffs: sheer, a precipice. Emma headed rightwards and as Miss Pink angled to intercept her, glancing sideways, she saw a tawny flash through the trees: an alien colour, an animal colour. The palomino? There were two people closing in? Something was wrong; she’d made a mistake. She looked down. Emma had disappeared.
She took the fall-line and slithered to the top of the cliff. The rifle spoke. If she could hear it then she had not been hit. How long would this last? How long could it last?
Emma was shouting: ‘Melinda! Here, down the gully!’
She looked down a depression to the girl, still mounted: looked straight down on her as she would on climbers at the foot of a pitch.
‘I can’t!’ she shouted. ‘I can’t get down there!’
‘The horse can. Sit tight.’
A sound like a sob escaped Miss Pink, then she pushed the mare forward, feeling a wave of nausea. I am going to faint, she thought: to faint from fear, and she laughed.
The horse went down like a deer: front legs out, hind quarters bunched under her. Miss Pink had no idea what was happening. She saw the boulders below, felt the big tough body under her, all springs and muscle and good solid bone, and she sat tight and stayed on. The world was full of sound and movement: crash and slither, stones falling all around, and another familiar sound from above and behind. The echoes stunned her. She did not see what had happened below, only heard Emma scream something, scream like an animal, then her shout: ‘Get off, get off! He’s reloading!’
The mare pulled up beside the other horse which was lying immobile in the bed of the gully. One look was enough: this one would not get up. Miss Pink slid to the ground, staggered, and, before she could recover her balance, was hit by a violent impact which sent her reeling against the gully wall. Thinking that it was all over, that no more could be demanded of her, she was unmoved to see her mare leaping apparently unscathed down the rest of the gully. At the same instant she recalled hearing the bullet crack on rock. A ricochet in this context could mean only a graze; resentfully she tested her limbs—resentfully because, after all, it was not over. They were still running. It was no bullet but Emma who had thrown her against the wall, out of the line of fire.
‘Go ahead and find a good hole.’ Emma was saying. ‘I’ll come behind.’
A broken ledge led out of the gully, widened to a terrace on the face of the cliff and ran for some two hundred feet to a corner. Halfway along the terrace and below it was a chimney roofed by a huge capstone. At the foot of the chimney was another ledge.
‘Can you climb down that?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘Probably. Let’s go along here. It’s easier.’
‘No. That’s the way he’ll think we’ve gone.’
Miss Pink went first down the chimney, facing inwards, lowering herself on big holds, pausing, telling the girl where to place her feet. Emma had tucked the pistol in the top of her slacks. Miss Pink thought that if the girl fell the gun would go off and she’d be shot in the guts.
After some thirty feet they reached the lower ledge and moved along it towards the gully that they had been descending originally. On its edge they stopped under an overhang and listened. A boulder came down and they drew back sharply. Emma pushed Miss Pink against the wall and raised the gun. More rocks came down but after a few minutes they stopped. The women looked at each other questioningly, then Emma indicated the gully. Miss Pink pointed to the opposite side of the depression. And then they heard the cat.
For a long moment they were startled out of their senses. It was not the same cat. If the other was a female searching for a mate, this was a tom: arrogant and demanding. The calls rose and fell, part tenor roar, part howl, and as Miss Pink saw the terror in Emma’s eyes and knew that this was no cat, and yet that it was a cat, at the same moment she saw their chance, and plunged across the gully, the rattle of their progress covered by a roar.
From the escarpment above came the answer: a kitten’s mew. Quietly the women moved along a rake to a group of boulders above the screes. The scree slope and every yard from here to the Stone Cabin could be in full view to the gunman on the cliff. They slipped behind the boulders and crouched, peering through clefts among the rocks. They could see a stretch of the rake but in every other direction the view was cut off.
Miss Pink looked at her watch but did not note the time; it was a reflex gesture: what one did as one settled down to wait.
They did not have long to wait. Perhaps he was a climber too, perhaps the terrace had not been continuous after all and he had realized that the chimney was the only feasible way down, perhaps he had found some trace of their route. He was suddenly there, walking towards them along the rake, the rifle ready. His hat was gone and he looked drawn but excited. He was smiling. Emma threw one amazed glance at Miss Pink and raised the Walther, her left hand steadying the butt.
Suddenly he whirled, the rifle levelled behind him. But he’d know that stones can trickle down a gully long after people have passed. He turned back and they saw the momentary relaxation of muscles, the commencement of the movement to step forward again, merely wary—and then he froze, only the rifle barrel gently, very carefully being lowered: an almost imperceptible movement as he stared downward.
The explosion beside Miss Pink was deafening. And then everything seemed to be in slow motion: his eyes coming up, the look of wonder on his face, the long stare at the boulders before his hands opened and the rifle clattered on rock. Another report, and his hands tried to rise, perhaps to his chest where now the blood was gleaming, but his knees buckled and he collapsed with a small crash on the stones.
‘Wait,’ Miss Pink whispered. ‘Don’t move.’
For at least a minute there was silence until on the screes a rock settled back gently with the sound a rock makes as a heavy body passes, and then a big golden animal like a lioness was on the rake: a beast with a soft and rippling body apparently without bone, large-pawed and with a long tail tipped dark at the end.
Hal Brewer moved and one hand scrabbled in the stones. The puma stood by the man’s head, watching the moving hand, and then it looked away and stiffened. The tail waved gently.
She came round the corner, crying softly, and halted, her eyes wide: a slimmer, smaller animal—a tawny queen. Brewer moaned and she snarled, turned, and was gone. The male stalked after her without any appearance of haste.
‘Will they come back?’ Emma whispered.
‘I shouldn’t think so.’ Miss Pink staggered to her feet. ‘Leave me the gun. You go for help.’
‘He’s beyond it.’
‘He’s still alive.’
They moved out from the rocks and advanced and turned him over. His eyes were closed. He had taken both bullets in the chest but he was still breathing.
‘You’ve got the rifle if the pumas come back,’ Emma said. ‘Look there’s someone outside the Stone Cabin, more than one person.’
‘I can’t see that far.’
‘I’ll go and fetch them. I’ll leave the pistol with you too. It would only get in the way. I want to catch your horse.’
Miss Pink sat down and looked at the striped butte. After a long time a voice said, low but clear: ‘What happened?’
She looked at the face which appeared quite relaxed despite the dirt and the way the flesh sank as life ebbed: a man’s face with clean innocent eyes.
‘You were shot.’
‘Who?’
‘Emma.’
He showed no emotion. Perhaps part of the brain was already dead. She sighed. ‘Why did you kill Janice?’
He stared at the sky without speaking. She looked back at the Stone Cabin and saw something dark in the s
age. A figure moved towards it: Emma and the loose horse.
‘Why you?’ came a whisper.
She turned her head. ‘Janice was coming home, hitch-hiking,’ she said. ‘You picked her up: you and Tony?’
‘Yes.’
‘And killed her?’
‘Not—then.’
‘Rape?’
He smiled.
‘Where did you bury the body?’
There was no answer. ‘You were careless,’ she went on. ‘You should have killed Bunny.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Tony’s dead.’
‘So it’s a hooker’s word against yours?’ She got to her feet and picked up the rifle. She hesitated. ‘Should I leave this with you? The pumas are still around.’
‘I’m—tired.… Don’t go. It’s getting dark.’
Miss Pink made no sign. The sun was glaring.
‘Where did you bury Janice?’
‘Rattlesnake Pass.… coyotes.… puma.… don’t.…’
Chapter 17
‘We found the grave,’ Stuart said. ‘It was easy enough once we knew where to look. It had to be sandy soil, probably with some rocks around they thought would keep the coyotes off. Tracks show forever in the desert. The sandstorm had covered them here and there but they’d blown clear again. There were a number of tracks: hunters and kids in off-road vehicles. We followed each one until we found disturbed ground and rocks and coyote tracks. Took a bit of work: a chopper, my old hunting dog, but we found it. They’re analysing the dirt now, or will be when it reaches the laboratory, but my old dog’s told me already. It was where they put her all right.’
It was the following day. When Brewer died she had started to walk to the Stone Cabin and was met by a stranger leading her mare. He introduced himself as the pathologist. The helicopter had blown its battery but Stuart had gone out with Nielsen to send for a replacement chopper; the pilot and pathologist had stayed at the cabin, or rather in the stranded helicopter because Doyle’s body was still in the cabin.
Stuart arrived in the second helicopter then, and Miss Pink and Emma were flown to the ranch. Miss Pink had answered his questions but was careful to omit any reference to Emma’s relationship with Orville Fraser. At the ranch she learned that Nielsen was searching for her, as Stuart had intended to do once he had dealt with the body in the Stone Cabin. They had disregarded her message, delivered by Myron, that she was taking Emma out of the valley and would contact them when she found a telephone.
