all night, and long past sunup... before he noticed that the horse was staggering a little. Then he stopped. He unloaded the packs and stacked them in a neat pile and went to sleep with his head against them.
Logan knelt and studied the tracks in the dust. They were fresh and they'd been made by horses; that was all he could tell from them. It wasn't much.
"They're a day old," he said to Angela. "Maybe less. They're traveling slow. That means they're having trouble keeping on the trail. Or maybe they've lost it."
"We've got to go faster, Logan," Angela said, though she didn't have the strength for it if her voice was any indication. After three days it was dry, flat, played out. "If they catch up with him before ..."
"They're having a hard time of it," he said, trying to change the direction of her thoughts. She still had some wild notion that they could stop whatever was going to happen. Nothing he had said... no matter how monotonously ... had convinced her otherwise. While there's life, he thought bitterly, and went on studying the tracks.
"Besides," he said, "we can't go any faster. You can't. We'd do better if I carried you ... if you'd let me."
"I won't," she said. "I can keep up with you, Logan. 1 have so far. I'll do it if it kills me." f It'll kill you, he almost said, and looked at her admiringly. She was stubborn, but she was game too. She was game and beautiful... even with her face i caked with dust, her hair falling in gray, dusty strands and he'd misjudged her. It made him sad to think
Richard Ferber SECRET OF THE MALPfllS her'agai?'" ""''' ^"'' '^' opportunity to misjudge
forTwhIirr'K''T" ^ '''^- '"^^'y -""l^d around
to finH .. ^xf '^'y '°'' ''^^ '"" «nd were trying to hnd It again. No, wait " ^
There were other tracks,' and he took them for the
S^ J^el^^r'^ '-'-' "'^'" '^ ''^ '^-^ ^'--
waZf J'^'" ^' f''*• '"^^''^^ AP^^hes probably r.^ ff r '"'^' '*""''"»' ^'"d Moon had to pull
iTnH ' l'""/- "^'^^ ^'^P'^'"' ^hy 'hey milled around so much. I wonder..."
He got up slowly, his legs trembling a little with weakness, and looked around. The country climbed
stand", of'""-' °^ r''''8"'' ''^°'^^» •'y brush and
stands of pmons. Javehnas like pinon nuts. They'd
tay close to them as long as there was water not too
anydlin''' ^' ^ "°'^'"^ '^^'^^ *^'"' ^' '°"S ^'■••
niJ? V? "^n"'!'" **' '^'''- ""^^^ y°" ^^^^ 'asted wild pig? You will, if we can get within pistol shot."
It wasn't quite as easy as he made it out to be. lave-
Imas were no different from any other pies except
that they were smaller, less tasty. mLner. T^ef'trSd
n bands, sometimes as many as two hundred of them
together, and they could rip a man's legs to shreds. Or
the man himself. Logan had known it to happen. Still
foS..daWe.'°°'- ^"' '""^" "''"'' '^- -- '-Angela stood hesitating, trying to make up her mind. He made it up for her. "Ifs been three days since we've eaten anything," he said. "We can still go another day. probably. Then we'll be too weak to move. We'd be tc» weak to kill anything even if there was something to kill, too sick to keep it down even if we got that
lucky. We'd be no use to Jeffrey, or anybody else."
"All right," she said. "Wild pig. They used to come down and raid my garden. They didn't look good to eat. They do now."
She took his arm until the trail narrowed down, then fell in behind him. The trail wasn't hard to follow. It was worn deep and there were tracks everywhere along it, tracks and droppings. The droppings were dry, but that didn't tell anything about their age. The sun could have dried them in a couple of hours. It was hot. They climbed a mile with the sweat trickling off them ... there was still some left... and came out on a wide bench. Logan stopped. "Smell anything?"
They were upwind from the direction of the tracks, but the breeze changed as she was sniffing the air, and she must have caught the pungency. It came sharp and nauseating, and her face turned gray under the gray dust. He thought she was going to faint, and he took hold of her.
"The Mexicans call them musk hogs," he said. "But they don't smell much once you get them dressed out." "I'm all right," she said. "I've smelled worse, I guess." He waited until he was sure she was steady, then went on. The bench narrowed down to a trail between the rocks and opened up once more. The breeze shifted, came back at them again, and this time the smell was rank and overpowering.
"They've gotten wind of us," Logan said. "They smell worse when they're frightened. Or angry. They're probably both. Wait here. If they come this way, climb that ledge and stay there. No matter what happens."
He took out the Colt, checked the load, pulled back the hammer. The bench was covered with brush, with an occasional pifion standing out in it like a tree caught
in high water. There were no javelinas in sight but he could hear their httle warning squeals as he went toward them. He took his time, the gun held forward, ready. They'd come out of the brush all at once, and there was no telling which way they would turn. Away from him. Toward him. He wished he could sit down; his legs were shaking. Or better yet, retrace his steps He wasn't hungry any longer. His stomach had tightened up; there were no more rumblings of emptiness. A young pig came out into the open, sniffed, and seemed to find nothing wrong. The sow came trotting out after it, tried to root it back into the brush, and Logan shot her just behind the shoulder. She fell on her side and lay kicking in the dust. The young pig squealed. Logan kicked it aside, drew the knife and started to carve the musk gland from the old sow's back.
He never finished. Something hit him from the side, and he didn't bother to see what it was. He knew. He got up and started to run, and tripped over the piglet. They were on him before he hit the ground.
He could hear Angela's scream, faint and far away above the grunts and squeals. He pushed himself up, one arm covering his face, and staggered to his feet! The tusks slashing at his legs made him frantic, and he fired around him wildly. Not that the wildness mattered. Each bullet struck home. The squeals and shrieks got louder, that was all. He tried running again... it was like running through deep water tripped again, got up, and finally Angela's hand was reaching down to him from the ledge above. He hardly had the strength to drag himself up.
"Pull," he kept saying. "Jesus Christ, Angela, pull."
When he got onto the ledge he lay there for awhile. Then he got up on his knees. He pushed the empty
cartridges out of the chamber of the Colt and reloaded it, all the time watching the stinking, swirling mass of pigs below. They were trying to clamber up the rock, climbing on each other's backs, their dainty little feet slipping, shrieking, squealing, grunting. When he was finished reloading, he emptied the gun at them. More shrieks, more squeals, more grunts. He started to reload again, and Angela yelled at him.
"LoganI They can't get up here. You're wasting bullets."
He stopped, but he kept staring down at them. Their tusks flashed white in the sun, and some of them flashed red. With blood. His blood. All right, he couldn't waste any more cartridges on them. But who was to stop him from using rocks? He'd kill them, he'd kill every Goddamned one. He tried to pry a boulder loose, but it wouldn't give. "If I ever get out of here," he shouted, "somebody'll pay for this. Somebody..." Then he lost his balance and fell back, too weak to get up again.
He lay there, and he could feel the blood oozing from his legs. He wanted to look at it, but Angela held him down. She was trying to stop the bleeding, he thought. She had taken off the shirt and was tearing strips from it; and through a blur he could see that she had been wearing nothing underneath. Nothing at all. Nothing. And his legs were killing him. The wounds were like razor cuts. Oh, those filthy pigs. Oh, my God...
When he came to he found she had somehow dragged him back into the shade against the rock, and he was cold. The sun was beginning to drop. He got up on one elbow and looked down at the bench and saw that the jav
elinas were still there. They had gone back to feeding, but they were watching too.
^^^ Richard Ferber SECRET OF THE MALPAIS
"Lie still, Logan," Angela said, and tried to make
him he down again. He sat up instead and looked at
his legs. She'd bandaged them wherever she could
There was just enough left of the shirt to cover her
breasts, and she was shivering.
^ "That's the trouble with wearing pants," he said.
'No petticoats for bandages." She smiled, but only out of politeness, he thought.
She was worrying about him. "I'm all right," he said.
"If I only had some water, I could clean those wounds."
"It doesn't matter," he said, and it wasn't just to put her mind at peace; he meant it. His legs might turn blue and rotten, filthy and gangrenous, but one thing was fortunate: they wouldn't be around to see it hap-pen. Hunger was going to get to them first. Their string had run out. It had run out a long time ago, if they'd just had the sense to admit it. But how was he soing: to tell her? ^ ^
"We'll have plenty to eat, anyway," she said. "As soon as those pigs leave. You killed at least a dozen of them."
He took out his tobacco. There was just enough of it left for one cigarette, and he sat thinking. The last cigarette. There would probably be a more propitious moment for it, and he could wait. He wouldn't have to wait long. He put the sack back in his pocket.
"They may not leave," he said. "They may stay around all night, and maybe tomorrow. They may never leave at all... for all the difference it will make. None. You can't eat that meat now. I tried to cut the musk gland out of the old sow, but I never got a chance. If you don't do it right away, the meat turns rank. You won't be able to keep it down."
She looked as though she didn't believe him at first. She shrugged, said she could eat anything, and thought it over for awhile longer. Then it must have rushed in on her all at once, not only the significance of what he'd said, but the meaning of what he hadn't said at all.
Some women would have broken down and cried. She'd done it plenty of times before, but now she was dry-eyed. She came over and sat down next to him, leaning against him, and watched the javelinas feeding along the bench. She was calm, and they might have been sitting on a front porch somewhere with the sun going down and the chickens scratching their way toward their roost and the cattle grazing contentedly ... after a hard day's work in the field. Neither of them spoke for a long time, for fear of breaking the
spell.
"How do you feel, Logan?" she finally said, and she pulled back a little in order to see him. She was really interested, and it amazed him. Woman's curiosity. It took a lot to destroy it. It kept flickering, right down to the very end.
"I'm not sure," he said, and now his curiosity matched her own. Just how did he feel? Cold, hungry, bitter, angry, afraid. All of those, and more. He could probably go on listing them forever... for as long as forever lasted... but one feeling kept cropping up and shutting out the rest. Regret.
He was tempted to tell her, but he thought better of it. Recriminations were useless, and would only lead to a long string of counterefforts. "No, Logan, it was my fault... if I hadn't been stubborn ..." she would say, and go on insisting, stubbornly. The thought of it made him smile.
She noticed it, but she must have had some regrets
of her own; she settled back against him without demanding any answers from him. The sun went down behind them and the javelinas gradually took on the darkness, until only their white collars showed distinctly. Angela sighed. "Hold me in your arms, Logan."
^.^l^l^.' ^^} ""^ '^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ shi^t was gone, and she shuddered under his touch.
"You're cold," he said. "I'll build a fire. There's some brush..."
"In a little while," she said, and put her face in the hol^w of his neck and talked against it, her voice muffled and drowsy. "Not now. Hold me closer, Logan Closer. I know what you were thinking before because I was thinking it too. About all the things you might have done wrong, all the things you didn't do at all. None of them count... except one. There's one thing we've never done, and we should have. A Ions time ago." °
He knew what she meant. He knew a long time before she took his hand and put it on her breast Her breast was bare, and cold, and he thought: what better way to get her warm. He wanted to kiss her, but she didn't lift her head. She went on talking, her lips moving against his neck, and he might have understood her without hearing the sounds, like some inverted braille.
"That feels good, Logan. Why didn't you do that before? Gently, Logan. It's my fault, I guess. And now I can't make up for it. Not enough. How many times can I make up for it, Logan?"
He lifted her head and kissed her finally. Then let go of her. "You don't know what you're getting your self into," he said, and laughed. 'Tve still got some strength left. More than I figured... I'll build a fire "
He got up and began pulling brush from the crevices between the rocks. It was hard work... the brush clung tenaciously to life... but after an hour he had enough. Enough to last through the night, if they were careful, he hoped. He wanted it to last that long. The small black hours before the dawn would be the worst, and fire would help. Anything would help.
He built up a pile of tiny branches and set it ablaze. She leaned back on her hands and watched it, and him. The fire sent little shadows moving across her breasts.
"It's not much," he said. He had spent a long time thinking about how it would finally be, and he had never once imagined it would be like this. A warm bed, in a warm room. The rustle of her petticoats in the darkness. The long, unendurable silence before he heard them slide to the floor. The longer moment, more exquisitely painful yet, before he touched her. Instead...
It was strange how little all those things counted. Nothing came out as you expected, planned, and it didn't matter in the end. Nothing mattered. Not tomorrow. Not the next day, if there was one. Not his hunger. He had room for only one hunger at a time, and she would be more satisfying than any food.
"You should see yourself, Logan," Angela said.
"Why?"
"You have such a blank face, Logan. Usually. Not now. Do you know what I see there?"
"I know," he said. "You're cold." He started to give her his shirt, but she stopped him.
"No, you'd just have to take it off again. Come here,
Logan."
He went over to her, knelt down, held both her breasts this time. They were warm. She was warm. She lifted her head and kissed him, then pulled her
lips away almost imperceptibly, pulling him down. "Come here, Logan," she said.
He threw a few sticks on the fire and watched it flare up. It would be light in an hour or so, but now the night was as black as it would ever be. Black, empty, silent. Not even a coyote cared to wail; there was nothing to wail at. Angela stirred, sighed, went back to sleep. He had one arm around her, and he wondered if he could still roll a cigarette with one hand. It was years since he'd tried; not since he was a kid, when such tricks were important, when you could justify them with: "You never know when it'll come in handy."
It came in handy now. He could still do it, though it took a long, careful time, and occupied all his mind. Until he was finished and had lighted it. Then his mind made room for all the other thoughts again, and he sat smoking and staring out at the empty darkness beyond the fire. Until the cigarette burned down and went out.
The sun had been up for an hour before Jeffrey really noticed it. He had stumbled often in the darkness, and he was still stumbling now. Some kind of haze had come over his eyes, and it was hard to see things clearly. Bushes and trees wavered before him, and when his eyes did clear at times, those same bushes and trees took on strange shapes: painted ponies, painted Apaches They were all around him. Everywhere.
It was hard to remember things, too. Sometimes he thought he was still carrying the lead rope, and he'd pull on it, and nothing would happen. Then he'd look at
his hand, then in back of him for the pack horse, and then he'd remember. The pack horse was dead. That's right, he remembered now: dead. Though it was hard to understand. It had simply lain down, given a little sigh as though it were going to sleep, and no amount of tugging and hauling had gotten it up again. It just sprawled there ... asleep with its eyes open.
He played his game now and then, to keep his mind off the tree-Apaches that kept popping up around him. How much gold? Enough for a new pair of suspenders? Oh no, heh, heh, heh. More than that. More than that.
But there was something wrong. Something that didn't quite make sense any more. He would stop and try to figure it out, and he'd notice the tiredness in his arm then, and he'd look down it and see the single
bag of gold. Just one bag. What had happened to the rest? Oh yes, he remembered, there was nothing to worry about. He couldn't carry it all after awhile, and he'd hidden it, one bag here, one bag there; he'd hidden it well. Nobody could find it. Nobody.
Still, the game wasn't quite as much fun any more. The one sack he had left was small, and when he came to the part where he said, "More than that, more than that," it wasn't quite as funny. Maybe it would be better to play the other game: hoot, hoot, hoot. Bark, bark, bark.
There were Apaches all around him now, and he was frightened. He mustn't let them see him. He got down on his knees and crawled through the rocks. There, that was more like it. They couldn't see him down here. There were ten of them, a hundred now, a thousand, and he was crawling right through them, as slick as you please. Stupid Apaches.
He got through the stand of pines and crawled into some brush. He looked back. There was a stand of trees back there, but no Apaches. They'd given up, and he could rest awhile. Not for long, though. He was too smart for that. They'd come looking for him again. He'd done something, and they were mad at him for it. He wished he could remember. It wasn't fair of them to be mad, when he couldn't remember.
Secret of the Malpais Page 10
