Deathwatch

by Robb White

  Ben felt now the way he had as a child when he was awakened by some nightmare and his mother had been there to comfort him. He had never known that comfort in his uncle’s house after the death of his parents. But he felt it again now as he sat beside this little puddle, the smell of guano strong around him.

  His tongue had shrunk to its normal size, his throat, though raw, felt good. His eyes were wet again and he felt strength in his body.

  He was hungry.

  Since the first night on the low range of mountains he had not felt particularly hungry and, in the last hours, had felt no hunger at all. But now his stomach was gnawing at him.

  The intensity of the light had changed as he slept. Now the strongest light came from the end of the tunnel at which he had entered and the far, unexplored end was only a dim glow.

  Even his feet didn’t seem to be so painful as he got up and walked around the puddle and on down the corridor.

  As he neared the end he noticed where the ancient waves had worn the outer wall very thin, in places eating all the way through it so that it looked like a great slab of brownish cheese pocked with little holes.

  The tunnel ended raggedly, the outer wall breaking up as the tunnel widened so that, beyond it, he could see a wide, open ledge of stone slanting upward at about 15 degrees and ending at what was apparently the top of the butte.

  Ben started to walk out on the open ledge, but then for the first time in hours thought again of his enemy. Madec knew that he was somewhere on the butte. He would be waiting for just such a mistake as this.

  Ben went back into the tunnel and got one of the sotol sandals. Then he knelt beside a small hole in the outer wall and slowly slid the sandal out across the opening.

  No bullet ripped into it, no sound rolled up from the desert.

  He tried a larger hole.

  With the dark tunnel behind them these holes might look to Madec like only dark splotches on the stone surface.

  He lowered the sandal and slowly moved until he could see out through the hole.

  Madec was down there, sitting on the hood of the Jeep studying the butte with the binoculars, the .358 across his lap.

  Ben sat down beside his puddle of water. For a long time he stared at the perfectly calm surface of it.

  It was the only weapon he had; water which gave him time. If he could get some food it would add to his time, his life.

  He picked up the slingshot and carried it back toward the wide end of the tunnel until he found a spot safe from Madec. There he cleared off the small pebbles and debris and sat down. He noticed as he did that his muscles were beginning to feel very stiff and painful and that, as he stooped, his back and his wounded arm ached.

  It was the best slingshot he had ever seen. The handle fitted exactly into his hand, the yoke was a wide, strong U of tubular metal from the base of which the brace went down the inside of his wrist to the curved metal piece which lay against his arm, almost halfway to his elbow. There was little strain on his fingers or the palm of his hand even at full pull of the powerful rubber tubes. There was no shaking, no wavering.

  Picking up a small pebble, he fitted it into the leather pouch, drew and let go. The pebble whistled out into the sunlight, hitting the wall of the butte and whining away into the air.

  Gathering a little stock of pebbles, he began to shoot, aiming first at a spot close by on the wall but, as he learned to hit it with almost every try, picking targets farther and farther away, until he found the extreme range of accuracy of the slingshot.

  Then, as the light slowly faded, he just sat and shot the thing, stone after stone, more and more pleased with it as his accuracy improved. He got so he could pick up a stone, pouch it, draw, shoot and hit his target with what seemed to him remarkable speed and accuracy.

  At close range the slingshot was lethal. The rubber tubes were so powerful that, at full draw, Ben was sure the pebbles started out with as much velocity as the pellet of a good air gun.

  Confident of his ability, he at last decided to waste one of the heavy lead buckshot, wondering what difference the smoother shape of the buckshot would make.

  It made a lot.

  He wasted five more of the lead bullets, finding out how much flatter their trajectory was and how much more velocity the round shape gave them.

  Ready, he moved back into the tunnel, taking a position beyond the puddle so that he was almost in darkness. Arranging himself so that he would not have to move anything but his fingers drawing the pouch back, he loaded it with a buckshot and then sat, waiting.

  The first bird was a sparrow hawk.

  It wheeled straight into the tunnel and straight out again, banking in a sharp, whistling turn about five feet from Ben.

  Discouraged, Ben sat watching the empty disk of sky he could see down the tunnel. Not a bird appeared, not even in the far distance.

  Had they stopped using this water hole? Were all these droppings old? Was there water somewhere easier for them to reach?

  Ben did not see them flying or see them light. They were just suddenly there, a covey of Gambel’s quail walking without any hesitation into the tunnel and on toward the water.

  They were talking to each other in a low, soft, fluty chatter, the little curved plumes on the heads of the males bobbing up and down as though they were nodding in agreement.

  He let them come until they reached the water. Then, picking out a male standing alone, dipping his beak down and then raising it high as he let the water run down his throat, Ben drew slowly, aimed and released.

  The bird dropped where he stood, a little dust of feathers settling on him and a little cloud of dust rising as he kicked feebly and then lay still.

  It did not alarm the other quail at all. Some glanced at their fallen companion but did not stop drinking.

  Ben eased another buckshot into the pouch, drew and shot. He did not hit this one as cleanly, apparently striking bone. The buckshot knocked the bird backward a foot or so but killed it.

  He did not miss a single shot. When the birds had drunk enough they turned and walked, still chatting, out of the tunnel, leaving five dead on the floor.

  He gathered them up and took them to the funnel end where there was more light. They were still warm as he plucked them, the feathers remarkably hard to pull out.

  The little carcasses looked pitiful, as they lay in a row on the rock, the heads unplucked, the gay plumes limp now and colorless.

  Ben tried not to look at them as he gouged them open with his thumbnail, their juices covering his hands. He debated about throwing the entrails away but at last did, thinking that other quail would be back for water in the morning.

  Ben looked at the raw, bloody thing in his fingers, the bones showing ghastly white in what was left of the sunset.

  Then, and with his eyes shut, gagging, he put it to his mouth and tore the flesh off with his teeth. Close to nausea, he did not chew at all, just swallowed the tough, slimy stuff, forcing his throat to accept it.

  He ate them all, the process getting no easier. When they were all gone he looked at his hands, dark with blood, and felt the blood around his mouth and almost lost the meal.

  I can’t go on doing that, Ben decided.

  If the birds came back in the morning he would dress them out and then put them in the sun. No matter how hungry he felt he would make himself wait until the sun on the stone had cooked them—at least a little.

  His mind went on, dealing only with small things, not wanting to deal with the one enormous thing which, as he slowly admitted it into his thoughts, was like the darkness creeping up the side of the butte and into the tunnel.

  10

  THERE WERE VOICES in the wind. Off and on all night Ben had listened to them: the whispering, the faint dry laughter, the chattering that sometimes sounded insane. As a little boy he had heard these wind voices and they had scared him, but his father had told him that the desert had to talk at night. That it was so silent during the day it just had to break out into a
ll this talk at night.

  Ben had never been afraid of the voices after that.

  He had slept all night, guarded against Madec by birds that had come at sunset to roost at the mouth of the tunnel. Every time Ben moved in his sleep they fluttered and cried out, hustling away from him.

  At dawn he had shot six birds, using only pebbles in the slingshot, saving the buckshot for a time when he might need the greater velocity and greater accuracy. He had plucked and cleaned them more efficiently than he had the others and now they were lying out on a smooth, clean rock, the sun already beginning to cook them.

  Using water from the puddle, he had cleaned all the wounds he could reach and was pleased to see how fast they were healing. He had inspected his slingshot, examining the rubber tubes carefully to see that they were not beginning to break or wear at any place.

  His beard was now six days old, for he made it a practice not to shave during long trips in the desert; a beard helped protect his face from the sun. When he looked at himself in the surface of the water his beard was very black and thick and gave him a strange, Satanic look; he looked dangerous.

  Ben had a pleasant sense of well-being as he sat down in the tunnel out of reach of Madec’s gun and started practicing with the slingshot. His wounds only hurt when he moved carelessly, his arm only ached a little and, although he was hungry, he was content to wait until the carcasses became more appetizing.

  He was getting so good with the slingshot that he could hit within an inch of where he aimed at thirty feet. At fifteen feet he was accurate even with a stone.

  A nine-inch whiptail lizard came into view, and Ben threw a pebble at it to get it moving and then nailed it on the run at twenty feet.

  He added it to his cooking birds and then stopped for a moment and looked through his peekhole at Madec.

  The man had pitched camp at the foot of the butte, getting the Jeep in close to the breccia. He had parked facing the butte and had put up the tent behind the Jeep. The water cans were in under the awning of the tent, lined up in a neat row in the shade.

  Madec was doing something around behind the Jeep. Ben could see his shadow moving.

  As he sat down again and fitted the slingshot back into his hand he knew that it was foolish to imagine that he was safe just because he had food and water and Madec could not shoot him.

  Madec would change that.

  He was locked to that man down on the desert. They were chained together.

  Perhaps a different man would have left the desert by now, sure that Ben could not make it out. But Madec would not do that. He would stay until he saw that his plan had been worked out to the last detail.

  Madec would not leave him here alive.

  As Ben sat going over in his mind what had happened since the first roar of that .358, a thought formed and became clearer and clearer until he realized that it was the only thing he could do.

  The chain between them was hundreds of feet long now, stretching from high on the butte down the steep side, across the breccia and the smoother, sandier desert and over to the Jeep, locking at last to Madec.

  For me to live, Ben thought, that chain must be drawn shorter. It must be drawn in link by link until he and I are face to face.

  And somehow when we do come face to face, he must be as naked as I am.

  I cannot let Madec come to me, Ben thought. I cannot let him choose his place and his time and his method of coming.

  I must either go to him or I must pull him to me.

  Ben laid aside the slingshot and went over to a hole in the wall.

  Madec was walking toward the butte.

  He had the big gun slung over one shoulder and the coil of tow rope over the other and was carrying the heavy canvas bag in which Ben stowed tools and gear.

  He’s coming to me, Ben thought. Coming at his choice of place and time and method.

  Madec disappeared from view as he moved in close to the wall of the butte.

  Ben went on to the end of the tunnel and waited there, not exposing himself.

  The sound was clear but faint. Listening to it he could almost see what Madec was doing down there.

  In the canvas bag there was a geological hammer with a flat peen on one end and a long, rock-breaking spike on the other. Madec was down there at the foot of the butte cutting a stairway up the side of it.

  The sound ceased for a moment and then a new sound came up, clear and almost musical, the sound of metal hammering metal.

  Now he was driving a piton into a crack in the rock.

  For a moment Ben wondered what Madec was using for a piton. Then he thought of the long steel pegs he carried in case he had to pitch a tent in stony ground with a high wind.

  With the rope secured to the tent pegs driven into the face of the wall and with handholds and footholds hacked out of it, Madec was starting to climb the butte.

  Although he knew that Madec probably could not see him, Ben took no chances as he left the tunnel and went out on the wide ledge. Staying low against the far side, which rose in a smooth wall, he hurried along, noticing as he went how the ledge not only slanted upward but was narrowing.

  At last the ledge became so narrow that he could not walk on it and, a few feet farther on, faired back into the escarpment.

  The escarpment was a wall of smooth stone, inclined outward. This leaning wall towered above him for more than fifty feet and formed, it appeared, the top of the butte.

  About twenty feet beyond where he stood, but above him, was another ledge, wide and slanting upward; an easy path to the top of the butte.

  No force in the world would hold him against that leaning wall long enough to cross those twenty feet to the wide avenue of stone going to the top.

  Nor was there any way a naked man with no tools could scale the escarpment.

  He was confined to this narrow ledge and the tunnel. He was imprisoned here.

  And Madec knew that.

  Ben could now see exactly what Madec was planning. About where Madec was, Ben remembered, there was a smooth, unclimbable wall from the breccia to a ledge about thirty feet up.

  Ben had studied this place longingly, for once on that high ledge it had looked to him as though the rest of the way to the top would be no more than a stiff walk. Without tools and rope he hadn’t been able to conquer the first, smooth, vertical obstacle.

  Madec had everything he needed.

  Ben studiedthe stone butte, from where Madec would start on the first ledge to where he would end at the top.

  Wherever Madec would be in sight he would be out of range of the slingshot.

  And at those same places Ben would be an easy target for the gun.

  He realized slowly and bitterly that he could not stop Madec from climbing. He could not even harass him and slow him down.

  Ben looked across at the ledge twenty feet above him. He studied it for a moment and then slowly looked back along his own ledge and on into the deep shadows of the tunnel.

  From the wide ledge toward which he was climbing Madec could stand—or even sit comfortably, his elbows wedged down against his legs for firm support—and shoot him.

  Ben could see from one end of the dark tunnel to the other. Not even the bend in the tunnel was enough to conceal him.

  There was no place to hide.

  Ben went back along the ledge and into the tunnel to where the slingshot lay beside the little pile of stones he had gathered.

  The sound of the hammer seemed to beat against him as he sat beside the slingshot and idly fitted it into his hand.

  Ben was listening so intently to the hammer that it was a long time before he realized he had also been hearing the sound above him.

  It was a hollow, rattling, irritating noise. He ran to the mouth of the tunnel and looked up.

  The helicopter was like transparent gold floating in the sky, coming nearer and nearer.

  He could not make out the markings on it, but he was sure that it was the Game and Fish chopper on a routine patrol. />
  It was the most beautiful thing Ben had ever seen in his life.

  11

  BEN COULDN’T BE SURE, but when the chopper went into a sharp skid and floated gently to the ground not a hundred feet from the Jeep, he would have bet money that Denny O’Neil was flying it.

  Ben felt so good he was jumping up and down on the ledge, yelling his lungs out as the dust of the chopper’s landing blew away and he saw a man get out of it and run, stooped, out from under the rotors.

  He had expected to see a game warden and had hoped that it would be the supervisor, Les Stanton, but the man was in civilian clothes.

  Ben calmed down, saving his breath and waiting for the chopper blades to stop but, as he waited, he realized that although the engine had slowed and the blades were just lazily turning, it hadn’t stopped.

  It wasn’t going to stop. Not if Denny O’Neil were flying it. Denny had told him once, “Ben, the trouble with you is that you think engines want to run. Well, I got news for you—they don’t. Any time they can get away with not running, believe me, they’ll do it. And engines are smart. And they’re mean. When everything’s going good up in that chopper and you can see forever, that engine’ll run, but you get in trouble in bad weather and get down in a gorge you got to fly out of and that engine’ll quit. Engines don’t like people and you better believe it.

  “Out there on the desert,” Denny had told him, “in that chopper, I know that engine’s just waiting for me to get myself in a bind so it can quit. Well, I don’t let it. I start that booger up in the morning, and I don’t let it quit until I’m home again.”

  Ben went to the edge of the cliff, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled as loudly as he could. He kept on yelling and moving, jumping, swaying, waving his arms.

  Denny O’Neil didn’t get out of the chopper. The other man walked over to Madec, who was now beside the Jeep, and Ben watched them as they talked.

  They probably had to yell at each other to be heard over the sound of the engine.

  The man looked like Les Stanton, but he had on a purple shirt outside his yellow trousers and he wasn’t wearing a hat.