The Dancers of Noyo

by Margaret St. Clair

  "Faked it," Tim answered laconically.

  "Then you haven't any right to exclude me from your struggle on the ground that I'd be a fair-weather friend. The Noyo Dancer picked me out to make an example of. It's an experience that changes a person."

  "Um." We had been walking along while we talked, and were now standing on the sand at the river mouth, well away from any of the others. Tim closed his eyes again—it was an annoying mannerism—and thought. Then he looked at me appraisingly. "OK," he said. "I do have a bow I've been working on. If you can string it, you can have it."

  "Fair enough," I said.

  He led me along the sand to a cluster of rocks. After some clambering, he came down with a bow in his hand. "Here," he said as he gave it to me. "Don't worry about it's being soft from the damp. I used waterproof glue."

  It was quite a small bow, the sort of thing a ten-year-old boy in the Noyo tribe might have had to practice shooting with. It was, in fact, almost insultingly small, and I wondered for a moment whether Tim was putting me on. I must have looked bewildered.

  "Go on, string it," Tim said. "It's not as easy as it looks."

  Full of confidence, I put a foot on one end of the bow and pulled the string toward the other. Tim was watching me with folded arms.

  It ought to have been easy, the bow flexing like a willow twig. A little girl ought to've been able to string that bow. But in fact the wood refused to bend at all, though I pulled until I was out of breath. Tim looked on impassively.

  My face was getting red. This was ridiculous. I remembered something Pomo Joe had taught me about mobilizing strength. (It was, he insisted, mainly a matter of breathing.) I did as he had told me, and pulled mightily on the string.

  The bow bent abruptly. But the string was still about a foot from the notch, and I couldn't get it any nearer. Tim's dark face wore an expression of surprise.

  I made two more tries, but I had to give up at last. I was trembling from exertion. Tim said, "How did you manage to do that?"

  "Do what?" I answered, irritated. "I couldn't bend it nearly enough."

  "You shouldn't have been able to bend it at all," Tim answered. "It makes me wonder whether there's something in you ... something extraordinary."

  "I've been studying medicine with an Indian," I said.

  "That might be it, but I doubt it." He seemed genuinely puzzled. "Anyhow, you don't get the bow. Sorry."

  "It wouldn't have done me much good if you had let me have it," I said, "since I can't bend it anyhow. But just as a matter of curiosity, do you mind telling me how that bow had been treated to make it so hard to bend?"

  "Sorry, but I do mind," Tim answered.

  I felt like choking him. I lingered for a moment, but he had resumed his staring out to sea and didn't say anything. I started up to the highway again.

  I got to the Navarro river about five-thirty in the afternoon. I was looking forward to seeing Harvey, since he and I were far more compatible than Tim and I. Also, Harvey was a keen archer; he was sure to have an extra bow about somewhere. I trudged down toward the river mouth.

  There was nobody at Navarro. I mean nobody. Nobody in the huts, at the dancing place, in the sweat-house, on the beach. Nobody. Not one single person. There wasn't even the Dancer.

  Had they all suddenly taken a fancy to abandon their settlement and go elsewhere? The tribe's boats were still drawn up on the shore, wood for fires was stacked up, lines for surf fishing were drying in the slanting rays of the sun.

  I went back through the huts. A number of personal possessions were lying around—headbands and mocassins, a small bead loom. On the ground in one hut I found a bow, with a quiver of arrows lying beside it. The grip of the bow was bound with green cord.

  I knew I'd seen that bow before. Harvey—yes, Harvey had been carrying it the last time I had seen him, six months or so ago. I recognized the cord on the grip. He'd mentioned that it was his favorite bow, the best he'd ever made. He would never have abandoned it willingly.

  I picked up the bow and went outside. In the low rays of the setting sun contours and elevations were exaggerated. I saw that between the huts a looping, sinuous trail led down toward the water. It looked as if chains had been dragged through the sand, or outsize snakes had gone winding down toward the surf.

  Or had something come up out of the water? No, the looped trail started from a well-trampled spot between the huts and ended at the water's edge.

  At any rate, I had my bow. I stood clutching it in the dusk, with a cold feeling growing around my heart.

  -

  Chapter X

  It was a misty day. Mist lay along the highway in banks and patches, drifting across the hills and up from the water. There were occasional spots of sunlight, but generally it was a cold day. I shivered as I walked.

  My mind was busy with speculations about the disappearance of the Navarro tribe. I hadn't seen any foodstuffs anywhere; could they possibly have all gone off berrying, fishing, or something of the sort? It was wildly improbable. Their Dancer would certainly never have gone berrying. And what about Harvey's bow?

  Noon came. I got a lucky shot at a quail, and roasted it, with a few leaves of fennel inside, in the ashes of a fire of dry seaweed. Kelp ashes give a rather pleasant salty flavor to wild meat.

  Feeling much refreshed, no longer shivering, I started walking again. I got to Mallo Pass without really noticing it.

  In the old days, when California was first opened to Europeans, Mallo Pass had the reputation of being the most difficult place to get past on the whole coast. The sides are exceptionally sheer, the gulch exceptionally long and high. Pack-mule trains used to take a couple of days to get through it. The highway engineers had eventually dealt with it in a radical manner, putting one enormous fill in the middle of the pass and running the highway over it. There had been a spur road off to a spectacular "vista point."

  It had been that way when California had been still one state. A succession of severe earthquakes, plus dynamiting by assorted tourists, had blown the fill all over the landscape; and when the Republic of California had taken Highway One over, it had run the road somewhat back from the water, crossing the pass at a point that required considerably less fill. So a pedestrian crossing the pass couldn't see down to the water at the mouth of the pass itself. For that he would have to leave the road.

  I was in the middle of the long loop across the pass when I received an abrupt, stabbing impression of distress. Somebody down in the pass—somebody out in the water of the pass—was silently screaming for help.

  Harvey! It must be he; I was convinced it couldn't be anybody else. The next instant I doubted not only the identification but the very impression of distress. I had been under constant stress for days. I must have fancied it.

  I hesitated. Common sense prevailed. It was so improbable that Harvey should be somewhere below that I could ignore the possibility. But when I had made the long loop and was once more back at the cliff edge, and Mallo Pass was really past, the impression returned, this time with an intensity that was staggering.

  Was it really so unlikely that Harvey should be somewhere below? He had disappeared under mysterious circumstances, along with a lot of other people, and ...

  Feeling like a fool, but very much relieved that I had decided to yield to my uneasiness, I ran back along the road to a point where I could get down over the side. I dumped my bow and quiver at the edge of the road and then plunged through the brush, sliding along gravel and stone and half falling for yards at a time—it was a very steep slope—until I was near enough to the beach to see the rocks.

  Over to the right, where the long sharp ridge reached out. picturesquely into the water, there was a lower double pyramidal spire of rocks, like two scaled-down Matterhorns, that rose jaggedly from the foaming, slate-colored water. Low down against the rock of the spire, only a few inches above the waves, there was a dark spheroid. It moved, and I thought I heard a feeble cry. Harvey! How had he got there? My esp must be
better than I had thought. As the wave receded, I caught the glint of metal and realized that he was chained to the rock.

  Chained to the rock. And the tide was rising. I'd have to get him out. It wouldn't be easy. There was a lot of deep, choppy, white-frothed water in between.

  A boat? Oh, rot. Even if I'd had one, it would have capsized two seconds after I launched it. I ran along the shallow beach looking for something—anything—that might prove useful. Big pieces of driftwood had piled up in a sort of forest at the base of the cliffs. If I could ...

  I grabbed a small, light-looking piece of wood, about two feet long by eight inches thick, and with it under one arm waded out into the chilling surf.

  I was off my feet almost immediately. The wood proved finely buoyant; I clung to it as to a life raft. But it wasn't possible to paddle it at all, and I began to feel that I could drown in four feet of water. Currents and cross-rips tore at me, waves sucked the breath out of me and hit me in the ears with a greenish roaring flood. Harvey, meantime, had given another feeble cry from his rock.

  Was it possible to use my piece of wood as a vaulting pole? It was. awfully thick and unwieldy for such work, and unless I could vault clear across to the rock where Harvey was, I should only land in a worse welter of reefs and white water. It wouldn't do Harvey any good to have a drowned rescuer.

  I was almost out of my head with indecision and perplexity. Finally I went back to the beach, found a long, slender, strong-looking pole, and ran back to the water. I found a solid point in the surf for the pole, and jumped.

  I landed just short of Harvey's rock. I wasn't so much afraid, here, of drowning as I was of falling and breaking a leg. Holding on to the pole, I half swam, half squirmed to the spot where Harvey's head was intermittently above the waves.

  Harvey was chained by what seemed to be a length of galvanized chain, the sort of thing one would use in tethering a dog. It was wound two or three times around his body and a thick upright tongue of rock, so that Harvey was lashed upright with his face out from the rock. Each wave pounded his head against the rough stone surface, and each wave was higher. Harvey didn't seem to know I was there.

  The chain must be fastened in some way; it wasn't a rope, to be secured with knots. I mean, it must have ends that were secured somewhere. I hunted around the rock with numbed fingers, embracing the jagged tongue in my arms, in almost as much danger of drowning as Harvey himself. It was impossible to work the chain over his head—it was far too tight—and they couldn't simply have wound a closed circle of chain around him, either.

  I found the fastening at last. It was a sliding snap, like the fastening on a dog lead, and it was located well out of the reach of Harvey's fingers, deep in angry water, at the base of the rock tongue.

  I fumbled with it, my head underwater almost continually. My hands were so cold that half the time I couldn't tell whether or not I had the chain between my finger at all. I was still in possession of the pole, my right leg hooked around it to keep the waves from washing it away.

  At last I got the slide of the snap pushed back and worked it loose from the metal link it was closed in. I unwrapped the chain from Harvey and let it drop away into the waves. Harvey must have realized that he had been released, for he turned his head toward me and muttered something.

  It was impossible to think of getting this man, almost as heavy as I was and certain to be a dead weight, to go back to shore as I had come. I couldn't carry him, and he seemed hardly able to stand, let alone use the pole as a vaulting rod.

  I clutched at the front of his sweatshirt with one hand, holding him against the rising rage of the water, and tried to think. Finally I decided the only possible thing was to take him back up over and along the steep rock ridge from the mainland.

  I tried to explain my plan to him, but he seemed dazed. I put an arm around him, still holding my trusty pole, and started upward, out of the reach of the waves, pulling him with me. The slope was very steep, but not slippery, and I had the pole to lean on.

  Harvey seemed lighter than I would have expected. My moccasins were so thoroughly wet that they clung to the rock like my bare feet, and this was a big help. I pulled Harvey along—he walked stiffly and high-kneed, like a puppet—and though there were two occasions when I was sure we would both go over and break our skulls on the rocks below, there was only one bad stretch of angry surf we had to cross.

  "Hold on to the pole!" I told him. My plan was to use the wood as a holdfast, wedging its end horizontally between the rocks, so Harvey and I could get from rock to rock to shore with the pole to cling to. I wedged it duly, but when I stood back to let him go first, he shook his head and remained holding to my arm.

  I felt exasperated. But if he felt he couldn't, he probably couldn't. I led him into the water and almost pushed him across, making him go ahead of me. Just as my feet touched sand the pole broke, but by then we were both safe. Chilled and panting, we stood upon the scanty beach.

  "Whew!" I said. "Harvey, that was a—" and then halted. The person with me wasn't Harvey at all. And, now that the scales had fallen from my eyes, I wondered how I could ever have mistaken this slender girl for Harvey. True, she was taller than women usually are, and her long black hair looked not unlike Harvey's. But her figure, though not buxom, was unmistakably feminine. Her face was scratched and gashed and bruised, her clothes were torn and slit in a dozen places. One of her eyes was swollen almost shut hi a bluish bruise.

  For a considerable time she stood leaning on me, shuddering and gasping for breath. Then she leaned over and vomited, a long gush of clear water. She must have swallowed a lot of it.

  "Thanks," she said finally. She was still panting hard, and spoke between gasps. "You saved my life ... My name's Francesca O'Hare."

  -

  Chapter XI

  "O'Hare?" I said. "Are you related to O'Hare, the man that developed the Dancers?"

  "I'm his daughter." Her teeth had begun to chatter, but I was too excited to notice it.

  "If you're his daughter, he must have told you a good many things about the Dancers. Did he ever tell you how they—"

  She began to cough, a long paroxysm that ended in a fit of retching. "Couldn't we sit down someplace?" she asked when she could control her windpipe. "They tied me up on the rock this morning, and I've been there all clay. I thought I was going to die. I'm ... tired." Her teeth were chattering so hard I had trouble understanding her.

  It was clearly no time to question her. I helped her up the side of the gulch to a fairly level spot behind a clump of ceanothus, where we were sheltered from the teasing wind. When I touched her, I realized how cold she was. Her hands and arms had the bitter chill of sea water. She made me feel warm to myself.

  I'd have to get her warm somehow. She was sitting with her head between her knees, exhausted, while her dark hair lay sodden along her back. I hunted around on the steep slope until I found a few dry lengths of branch and pieces of root. Then I got out my fire-making stuff.

  Francesca had raised her head and was looking at me. "I don't know about a fire," she said doubtfully. "They might see the smoke." Her teeth were not chattering quite so badly, but they were chattering enough that her speech was still blurred.

  "They'?" I asked.

  "The Avengers. The people who tied me to the rock."

  I looked around. The fog was coming in and the sun had almost set. "I don't think anybody will see the smoke or the glow," I said. "I'll only make a small fire."

  "All right."

  After I got the fire going, I took her hands and began to rub them. They were just as cold as ever, and the water from her sodden sweatshirt was still running down her arms.

  I decided she'd better get out of the clothes she was wearing and give the fire a chance to warm her up. I started to pull the sweatshirt over her head, and she cooperated, instead of getting indignant or acting coy. I liked that.

  When she was out of shirt and slacks I wrung them, out as well as I could and hung them on t
he side of the ceanothus. They wouldn't dry much at night, with the fog coming in, but it was better than her wearing them.

  I started to ask her about her father, and then reflected that she had a lot of rock cuts on her face and hands. These are nasty wounds, apt to infect, and slow to heal at best. So I went sniffing around on the canyon-side until I found a nice patch of yarrow plants. I stripped the leaves from a couple and held them over the heat of the fire until they were wilted and soft and pliable. Then I pressed them down closely over her cuts, like a poultice. Yarrow is a good healing herb.

  The wads of leaves must have felt good, for she smiled at me. "Do you feel well enough now to talk?" I asked her.

  "Yes, if I don't have to talk too long."

  "Well, then, why were the Avengers trying to kill you?