Deathwatch

by Robb White

  It required no effort. The air came down easily and went out easily, and he had only to remember not to breathe in or out through his nose.

  Next he worried that he could hear nothing through the tube in his ear. It was as though the whole world had gone dead silent.

  If he could not hear, all this was useless and he might as well be buried in his grave. Hearing was his only contact with Madec.

  All his senses seemed to concentrate in his left ear, trying to force some sound to come down the tube.

  And then he thought in terror, Is the tube plugged?

  He fought the panic which had now taken shape and become a force he could feel coiling under him like springs that would soon release and hurl him straight up out of there.

  Drawing in a deep breath, he held it for a second and then forced it whistling out of the tube.

  The sound it made at the other end was sharp and distinct.

  He felt the sand move as his body relaxed with pure relief.

  Then he recognized this new danger and began to feel with each breath how much the sand was moving on his body.

  The panic swept over him again in wave after wave of blind terror.

  This is my grave. I’m in my grave. I’m buried alive.

  He couldn’t control it and, as though it had no connection with him, he heard his breath whistling and gasping in the tube. When he could think at all, it was only that he was lying buried here, totally at Madec’s mercy.

  The horror never again left him, but he made himself breathe shallowly, made his stomach stop the wild, panicked heaving.

  Gradually, he realized that the air he was breathing was warmer. The sun must be high now, the day well along.

  Where was Madec? What was he doing?

  Had he already gone by? Was he now at the butte, perhaps already climbing it?

  If Madec had already gone to the butte he would climb it and, when he found Ben gone, would first search the desert with his binoculars and, not finding him, would begin to search the ground for tracks.…

  Ben felt the grave closing in on him again.

  The sotol leaf … a green thing where nothing was green. A leaf evidently torn apart by a man’s hands.

  Was it lying out there on the sand?

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  No. He had buried it.… someone was talking. There were voices.…

  Far away and wordless, but voices. Like the thin sound of television at a long distance. A flat, high-pitched sound.

  It was the radio in the Jeep.

  The voices changed to music and then abruptly stopped, leaving Ben in silence.

  It won’t be long now, Ben thought, hearing his own breath coming out of the tube.

  He breathed more gently and slowly until there was only a whisper of sound.

  There was a dull, indistinct clanking sound coming from somewhere, and as Ben listened, he realized that sounds coming through the tube had no direction; they seemed to originate in the tube itself.

  That clanking sound could have come from the butte—Madec driving a spike—or it could have come from the Jeep.

  In the short time since the radio had been turned off Madec could not have reached the butte.

  Ben realized he must analyze any sound he heard by the sound alone, for there would be no direction, no point of origin to help him.

  He was tired now, the effort of concentration and his fear were draining him.

  Come on, Madec! he thought. Come on!

  13

  IT WOULD BE SO easy for Madec to kill him, Ben thought.

  If Madec noticed his tracks in the path, or if the sand where he was buried was disturbed enough to attract his attention or if he just happened to see the two little tubes sticking up out of the sand, it would be a simple thing for him to walk over to Ben’s grave, stand on top of it and put his finger on the end of the tube. With the weight of Madec added to the weight of the sand on top of him, his arms pinned to his sides, he would be helpless and, in two or three minutes, he would be dead.

  This was a disaster, and too much time had now passed for him to correct it. He could not move now; could not spring up from the sand and escape. He was trapped here, as though Madec himself had planned this thing.

  Ben couldn’t tell from which direction the steps were coming. There was no way to distinguish that. But they were coming. They were only soft whispers of sound at first, but now he could distinctly hear Madec’s hard-soled boots on the small rocks.

  The sound stopped.

  He is standing there, Ben thought in terror. He’s seen something and stopped walking.

  There was a faint, unrecognizable sound in the tube for a second and then silence again.

  Had it been Madec taking the rifle off his shoulder? Or putting the tool bag and rope down?

  He heard the sound again, but it was so soft and so indistinct that he could not even guess what was making it.

  And then he felt a movement, the sand around his body seeming to compress slightly.

  Madec is coming toward me, Ben thought. He’s seen the tubes and is coming.

  He thought of pulling the tubes down below the sand and then realized that in itself would kill him and, to do it, he would have to move an arm—which would also get him killed.

  He was absolutely helpless.

  The almost imperceptible compression of the sand continued—coming, Ben thought, in quick, spaced waves.

  And then there was no more movement.

  Is he standing there, looking down at the tubes?

  What is Madec doing? Why is he taking so long?

  As though in answer Ben heard a faint and apparently faraway chink. A tiny metallic chink.

  He heard it again and then again.

  Madec was hammering on something.

  Ben listened, concentrated.

  He was hammering not on rock but on metal.

  Unless the man completely understood the passage of sound down the tube; unless he knew that it came to Ben without direction and was so distorted as to be hard to identify, then he was at the base of the butte, hammering his spikes in the wall.

  But if Madec did understand, he could be standing within two feet of Ben and simply clicking the sling ring against the barrel of the rifle.

  How would he know what sound would be like coming down a tube directly into your ear?

  I don’t think he knows that, Ben decided.

  Pushing with his arms and the muscles of his shoulders and neck, he forced his head slowly up through the heavy sand, inching up until his elbows were under his back.

  When his head was out of the sand he shook it only enough to clear the sand from his eyes and then opened them.

  Madec was almost to the top of the sheer wall, the wide ledge going up to the top of the butte only a few feet above him. He was standing in a foothold he had cut. The rope around his waist was attached to a tent peg he had driven into the wall just above his head.

  He looked like some huge, distorted fly clinging to the rock as he leaned back, methodically chipping away.

  Ben got out of the grave as fast as he could and began pushing the sand back into it.

  He had almost covered the rubberless yoke of the slingshot, when he changed his mind and fished it out.

  He smoothed the sand hurriedly and then tried to make only indistinct footprints as he went over to Madec’s path.

  Once behind the slab he began to run toward the Jeep.

  As he ran he wondered where Madec’s gun was, trying to remember if Madec had it slung over his shoulder. He could not remember seeing it at all.

  Perhaps Madec, not yet ready to climb the butte, felt so secure that he had not even taken the gun with him. Perhaps it was there in the Jeep with the Hornet.

  Ben brushed the hope aside, not wanting it to cloud anything.

  That gun was what he must concentrate on first. As long as Madec had the gun Ben could not draw him close, could not control him. But once he had the gun …

 
He was still fifteen feet from the Jeep when he saw the beat-up stock of the Hornet sticking out of the steel scabbard below the windshield.

  The sight of it made him feel good. He loved that old, obsolete gun he had had ever since he was a kid. These modern guns were hotter, with more velocity, flatter trajectories, and greater accuracy, but Ben knew to the fraction of an inch what that old Hornet would do—and wouldn’t do—and it was all the gun he had ever needed.

  He streaked around behind the Jeep and there, concealed from Madec, crouched and looked over the back.

  Madec was still hammering away at the wall.

  The big .358 Winchester was on the ground below Madec, standing propped against the wall. The underside of the gun was toward Ben, the metal of the trigger guard black against the polished, light-tan wood of the stock.

  Ben was sure that with one, or at most two, shots from the Hornet he could put the big gun out of commission. He would aim first at the trigger guard, hoping to smash it in and jam the trigger, but if that didn’t do it, he could tear the gun up, jamming the clip, ruining the scope, perhaps even blasting the action loose, before Madec could get down off the wall.

  Still crouched, Ben sneaked along the side of the Jeep and, just reaching up with his hand, got a grip on the Hornet and pulled it slowly out of the scabbard.

  Going back to the rear so that he could crouch there, the barrel of the gun out along the can rack, Ben got down into position, slowly pushed the gun out, and took a preliminary look through the scope.

  The four-power glass brought the trigger guard leaping toward him.

  Fish in a barrel, he thought. He reached automatically for the knob of the bolt to check that a cartridge was chambered.

  There was no knob.…

  There was no bolt.

  Ben looked down where it should have been and could see the top cartridge in the clip, the brass case shiny and new, the brass-jacketed bullet a duller color.

  Without the bolt the gun and cartridges were useless. A metal tube, little containers of gun powder, a magnifying glass.

  Ben moved forward along the Jeep until he could reach into the glove compartment and feel around, identifying things with his fingers—the rubber snake-bite kit, papers, a packet of matches, a pair of gloves, a plastic case for his sunglasses.

  The bolt for the rifle was not there.

  He had to risk being seen as he got into the Jeep and, watching Madec when he could, searched it.

  The bolt was not in it.

  Crouched in the Jeep, his head just high enough to look out through the windshield, he stared at Madec’s gun leaning there against the stone, the sun hot on it.

  Could he run fast enough to get the gun before Madec could come down off the cliff face?

  No. A loop of rope around one of the tent pegs reached all the way to the ground. Madec could come down that rope in a matter of seconds and be standing there, gun in hand, as Ben came panting up.

  For a moment he slumped in the driver’s seat, out of sight of Madec, and felt like crying.

  Then slowly, he began to realize that it was not the missing bolt of the Hornet that was defeating him. It was that man hammering on the wall of the butte.

  Madec.

  And Ben realized that, for the last few minutes, he had not even been thinking about Madec.

  In the mountains and on the butte he had felt that he was locked to Madec, that he could not leave him. And this had made everything he did complicated and dangerous.

  Now, in the Jeep, everything was simple.

  He was no longer chained to Madec.

  All he had to do was drive back to town and go to the sheriff.

  The whole operation would take six, maybe seven hours. He and the sheriff would be back out here in the chopper before sunset.

  Madec, on foot, wouldn’t even be really tired when they picked him up.

  Ben pushed up in the seat high enough to look at Madec, who was now doing something with the rope.

  Suddenly Ben relaxed, realizing that he had all the time in the world.

  Madec still had work to do before he reached the first ledge. That would take time. Before he went up on the ledge, he’d have to come down and get the gun. Then he would have to climb back up.

  The time to go would be when Madec reached the top of the butte and was searching for him down in the tunnel.

  Ben looked out across the desert, picking his track. For at least a mile he could keep the Jeep in two-wheel drive. The ground here was firm enough to let him really gun it at the start and in seconds he’d be going thirty or forty miles an hour.

  With any luck he’d be out of range of the big gun before Madec even reacted to the sound of the engine.

  He sat for a moment longer just enjoying this sudden feeling of freedom. The chain linking him and the man on the stone wall was broken.

  Ben grinned as he decided it might look better if he didn’t drive into town naked. Rolling out of the Jeep, he crawled around to the rear. There were no clothes in the Jeep so he went on to the tent.

  Madec made a neat, orderly camp, his cooking fire still smoldering a little in its ring of rocks, all the water and rations in out of the sun. Inside the tent the sight of Madec’s sleeping bag almost made Ben laugh out loud. It was neatly rolled and stowed in the tote bag.

  You didn’t think you’d need it for another night, did you, Madec? Ben thought.

  Well, you won’t. They’ve got a real bed for you in the jail.

  Madec’s leather suitcase was locked, and the heavy canvas duffel bag was closed at the throat by a thin metal cable and was also locked.

  There was no sign of his, or the old man’s, clothes, and Ben guessed that he had them out of sight in the duffel.

  There’d be plenty of time later on to get the duffel open, he thought. Leaving the suitcase and sleeping bag and Coleman lantern in the tent, he loaded the duffel bag, water and food into the back of the Jeep.

  Ready now, he slid back into the driver’s seat and looked again at Madec on the wall. The man had almost reached the ledge.

  Idly, Ben felt for the ignition key.

  Somehow he was not surprised when his fingers found that the key was gone.

  That’s what a dude from the city would do, Ben thought. Take the keys out—with a car a million miles from nowhere in the middle of the desert.

  Probably had the key in his pocket, the idiot.

  No problem. Hot-wiring a Jeep was only a matter of yanking the left-hand wire off the switch and wrapping it around the right-hand post.

  He was reaching under the dash to do this when he glanced at Madec again.

  The man wasn’t doing anything. He was just hanging in his rope sling, looking up as though studying what his next move would be.

  The silence worried Ben a little. This was a brand-new Jeep—he remembered the trouble he’d had starting it when he went up to get the old man—and Madec had bounced it around some more since then.

  No use taking a chance on a loose wire. Once he snapped that hot wire on the post the Jeep would have to move.

  Madec was hammering again as Ben, on his hands and knees, crawled around the Jeep unlatching first one side of the hood and then the other and lifting it just enough to get his hands underneath.

  The first thing he touched was the top of the distributor cap.

  The black plastic felt warm and oily.

  It was lying loose on the plug wire harness.

  The rotor was gone, the mortised metal shaft sticking up like something naked.

  Ben slowly withdrew his hand and let the hood down.

  Numb, he crawled around to the back of the Jeep and sat down. He knew that he should be searching for the rotor, should be breaking open that suitcase and the duffel bag, he should be rooting in the food cans and fishing in the water cans, should be under the Jeep where Madec might have taped both the rotor and the Hornet bolt.

  But he just sat there, knowing that no searching would do any good. The key, the bolt, a
nd the rotor were in Madec’s pocket or in the tool bag Ben had seen on the ground at the butte.

  Madec’s hammering sounded almost gay, a steady tinkling beat in the silence.

  The chain between them was there again; he and Madec were, again, locked together.

  The feeling that he had had in the tunnel came slowly back. He, not Madec, must gather in that chain. He must draw Madec to him, closer and closer until at last he could reach out with his hand and touch him.

  Ben picked up the slingshot yoke where he had dropped it on the sand and then found the two rubber tubes, still lying on the tailgate.

  Getting the leather thongs out of the bullet pouch, he strung the tubes in place and tested them, drawing the empty holder back to his chin.

  Standing up, but concealed by the Jeep, he studied the ground between him and the butte.

  He could not go to Madec, could not risk being seen out there on the open desert. With the Hornet he could have done it, holding Madec on the wall with the gun. But the slingshot could not do that.

  Madec would have to come to him.

  One toot on the Jeep’s horn would accomplish that—in a hurry.

  But he would gain nothing if he made Madec come to him armed and ready to shoot.

  He must come to me carelessly, Ben thought. He must come feeling safe and unthreatened.

  Opening the leather pouch, he emptied a dozen of the buckshot out on the white, flat surface of the open tailgate and then lined them up carefully with his finger so that each one lay about an inch from the others. Then he put the slingshot down and reached into the glove compartment.

  Watching Madec as he moved, he went into the tent and unzipped the tote bag.

  He felt a little twinge of regret as he pulled out Madec’s sleeping bag. It was a beauty, all soft nylon and goose down; it had probably cost Madec more than a hundred dollars.

  He unrolled it, pushing it close to the tent wall and then threw the tote bag over against the other wall.

  He unhooked the Coleman lantern, glad, for once, that Madec was such a methodical man. There was no sloshing around in the fuel tank.

  Unscrewing the filler cap, Ben doused the sleeping bag and the tote bag with the ninety octan white gas and then dumped the last few ounces on the ground cover.