Relentless

by Brian Garfield

  Watchman touched him on the shoulder and went past to have a look at Walker. Then he began to dig around in the snow for firewood.

  It took a long time to gather enough wood. It was quite wet but he built the fire on top of a burning Sterno can and that dried it out sufficiently for it to catch. He built it close against the rock face of the cliff, under the corner of the lean-to, and the wind whipped up the flames and carried the smoke away up the cliff.

  Vickers and Mrs. Lansford moved close to the fire and Watchman lifted back the flap of horsehide over Keith Walker. The hide had frozen and it cracked when he bent it back. The embryonic figure moved: blinked and muttered. Stevens brought an aluminum cup of coffee and they got it inside the pilot. Walker’s face, when they brought him to the fire, was bloodless and slack, and his jerky rictus smile flashed on and off-the nervous reaction of spasmed relief, the smile of a survivor who had met death.

  Mrs. Lansford gave him a grave look. “How do you feel?”

  “All,” Walker said, and had to clear his throat. “All right. Like a cheap watch somebody forgot to wind up.” He shrank back against the heated rock as if to remove his offensiveness from the rest of them: the smell of dead flesh clung to his hair and clothes. “I guess I was pretty far gone.”

  Vickers said, “You’re in bad trouble, Walker.”

  Mrs. Lansford’s face came around fast. “For God’s sake.” She went back to Walker and her voice changed: “Do you think you can eat?”

  “I’d like to try. I don’t know if I can hold it down.” His eyes were full of fear, darting from face to face, ready to flinch.

  Vickers said, “Are you ready to talk?” in a no-nonsense voice.

  Mrs. Lansford was building a plate for him and Watchman said, “Let the man eat something.”

  “We haven’t got a whole lot of time, Trooper.” Vickers swallowed coffee and addressed himself to the pilot. “It may make a difference to the prosecution if I can tell them you came forward voluntarily and told the whole story to the FBI. But you’re not required to make any statement in the absence of your attorney and you-”

  “Never mind the recitation. I know my rights.”

  “Then you’ve been through this before?”

  Walker had turned sullen. “Nuts. I look at television.” Mrs. Lansford got up to take him his food and stayed there beside him, making a point of it, showing Vickers her defiance.

  Walker ate slowly with the concentration of a monk attending his breviary. Watchman thought it was because Walker was in no frame of mind to take anything for granted just now: the feel and sight and taste of each morsel was reassurance that he was alive.

  Vickers said, “You have information we need, Walker. There are four men up there-how are they armed? What are their plans?”

  “I don’t know-I’m not sure. Things are screwed up, you know?”

  “I won’t accept that for an answer.”

  “You know what it’s like when you wake up and you know you’ve had a bad dream but you can’t remember the details?”

  It had a counterfeit sound but Watchman thought it was probably true; you didn’t always remember clearly things that happened in panic. Walker said, “I’m just not thinking straight. It’s not that I’m trying to hide anthing.” He was no longer sullen; he wasn’t angry at all. His expression had the false serenity of withdrawal.

  Vickers said, “Lansford said they’d taken some rifles. Are they all armed with rifles?”

  “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”

  Mrs. Lansford’s eyes flashed. “Can’t you leave him alone?”

  “Don’t waste your pity on this man, Mrs. Lansford.”

  “He saved my life.”

  “If it hadn’t been for him and his friends your life wouldn’t have needed saving.” Vickers had a nice neat way of drawing lines and putting people on one side or the other. Watchman saw the effect it had on Walker: it closed him up and he quit talking.

  Vickers had a veneer of competent sophistication but underneath he was clumsy, insensitive. He let arrogance take the place of understanding. It wasn’t hard to guess the kind of mistake he must have made that had got him exiled to the boondocks; it was a wonder the Bureau had kept him on at all.

  Vickers said, “I had a look in your pockets. You were their pilot.”

  “Aeah.”

  “The name on the license isn’t Walker.”

  “Is that a fact.”

  “Clamming up now won’t do your case any good, friend.”

  “What will?”

  “I will,” Mrs. Lansford said. “I’ll testify for him.”

  Vickers said, “You’re not thinking straight. Think about the police officer they murdered in your house. Think about the bank guard they shotgunned to death.”

  “Walker didn’t kill them.”

  “He did in the eyes of the law.” Vickers got to his feet “I can see he’s not in a mood to cooperate. That’ll go in my report. Now I suggest we saddle up and move in.”

  Watchman was picking up the blankets he had slept in. He walked around the fire and draped the blankets around Walker’s shoulders. The pilot looked up at him, showing thanks, and murmured, “The Major and Baraclough. You want to look out. You’re Indian, aren’t you?”

  What did that have to do with anything? “Yes.”

  “Then maybe you know a little something about snares and traps and ambushes. But I’ll tell you this-Hargit maybe knows more than you do. And Baraclough. Maybe they’re better Indians than you are. You want to look out.”

  Vickers, listening close, made a scoffing sound. “Don’t let them assume monolithic proportions, Trooper. They’re just soldiers gone bad.”

  Walker looked up at him. “You go on thinking that way and I won’t have to worry about what you put in your report because you won’t live to write it.”

  “All right, they’ve thrown a scare into you. But you’re imagining things. They’re on the run-they’re just as scared as you are.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Walker said.

  Mrs. Lansford said, “He’s right.” She said it to Watchman as if she knew there was no point talking to the FBI agent. Vickers had a genius for tuning out what he didn’t want to hear.

  Vickers was lifting his saddle off the lean-to. “Come on, Trooper. Your partner can stay here and watch the prisoner and look after Mrs. Lansford.”

  “They can look after themselves,” Watchman said. “We’ll need Buck with us.”

  “And let this man make a run for it as soon as we’re out of earshot? You know damn well Mrs. Lansford wouldn’t lift a finger to stop him. Hell she’d probably go with him.”

  Mrs. Lansford’s face reddened; she didn’t speak. Walker said drily, “You could always handcuff me to a tree.”

  “I thought of it,” Vickers said. “But there’s a chance we might not come back.”

  “You mean a chance of getting killed.”

  “Yes.” Vickers was stubborn about rules, about going by the book. It wasn’t his sense of humanity, it was his sense of reputation. It wouldn’t look good in his obituary to have it pointed out that he had left an unattended prisoner chained to a tree to die in a blizzard.

  Watchman shook his head. “Trooper Stevens is under my orders, not yours. He comes with me. You can come or stay, that’s up to you.”

  “I don’t like your implication, Trooper.”

  “I’ll spell it out in short words then. I trust Buck not to make mistakes up here. He grew up in the Arizona hill country-he’s been hunting out here since he was ten years old. When his daddy gave him two cartridges he was supposed to bring back two cottontails and he did it.”

  He caught the grin behind Stevens’ hand. Stevens didn’t make any comment but when Vickers replied, Stevens’ eyes sought inspiration from the sky: Good God.

  “I’ve done my share of game hunting,” Vickers said. “I’ve told you that.”

  “In New Jersey?” Watchman tried hard to keep the acid out of his voice. “Y
ou fellows have a very big crime-busting reputation and it’s probably deserved, mostly, but can you navigate these mountains in this weather? Can you make sense out of sign? Spot an ambush in the woods? You heard Walker, he knows these men. Hargit may be a better Indian than I am; he’s bound to be a lot better Indian than you are.”

  Stevens drawled, “Better red than dead, Mr. Vickers.” His grin was amiable.

  Vickers flashed an irritable glance toward the rookie. “Next you’re going to tell me he can smell a white man in a blizzard.”

  Watchman said, “I also grunt and wear feathers and consider myself a member of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Now if we’re through with the ethnic discussions let’s get these horses saddled.”

  4

  Helping him rig the horses, Buck Stevens said mildly in a voice too low to reach Vickers, “And I don’t even have Medicare. Amigo, one of these days they’re going to come and get you with a butterfly net. I hope they don’t write this up as kemo sabe ’s folly.”

  “What’s the matter, white man, you fresh out of silver bullets?”

  “Sam, the first time I ever laid eyes on you I knew you’d be one of those guys who had to do everything the hard way. You know damn well that story about me and the two cartridges and the two rabbits was as phony as a plastic flower. I wouldn’t be surprised if old Vickers is a hell of a lot better at it than I am.”

  “The difference being, I can depend on you at my back.”

  “You really think he’d cut out on you?”

  Watchman shrugged. He doubted Vickers was a coward but he had no confidence in Vickers’ private idea of priorities. When you were in the middle of a play you didn’t want your pass receiver to change his mind and head for the wrong end of the field. Vickers might get that sort of wild-hair notion; Buck Stevens wouldn’t. He could be depended on to be where he said he’d be, when he said he’d be there, and to stay there until told to move.

  Stevens smoothed the saddle blanket and heaved the saddle up. “You know Walker won’t be the only one gets reamed out in that report of his. The way you keep needling him you could end up unemployed.”

  “I don’t want to lose these jokers on his account.”

  “You’re making it into a crusade.”

  “Jasper isn’t any less dead today than he was yesterday,” Watchman said, but then he had to think about that. He hadn’t been raised to believe in eye-for-an-eye retribution; that was a white man’s concept. Indian law didn’t lean hard on revenge and punishment; it emphasized compensation of the victim instead. But you couldn’t compensate Jasper Simalie. The question had run through his mind at odd intervals in the past two days and although he had never developed much of an introspective habit he was beginning to realize what was behind this dedication of his that had come out of nowhere and taken him by surprise and stripped away a good many superficial layers of easygoing indifference. When you came right down to it, it didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense: they had killed a Navajo, therefore they needed to be caught by a Navajo. It was a streak of-what? nationalism? tribalism? — he had never thought he had in him. And there was another idea, too, hard to articulate: somehow he needed to demonstrate that they couldn’t be allowed to kill a Navajo brother and get away with it.

  He looked across the horse’s withers while he was snugging the cinch and saw Vickers by the fire, shouldering into his heavy coat. It didn’t strike Watchman until a moment later that ten minutes ago he hadn’t been able to see that far through the driving snow. Now the camp was quite clearly visible. Snow was falling at a slant, not too heavily, and the wind was breaking up into gusts, with intervals of near-silence. He turned, hung onto his hatbrim and threw his head back to look up. The cliff receded into a mottled gray haze of drifting snow but he could make out the rim a hundred feet-above him and the bellies of fast-moving clouds.

  Vickers tramped over to him, boots kicking up little powder flurries. The snow was settling quickly onto the exposed flats, which it had not done before; until now it had blown across the open ground and collected in high drifts against windbreaks.

  “We’ll all go,” Vickers said.

  “Them too?” Watchman was astonished.

  Vickers shook his head. “I didn’t mean that. We’ve only got three horses. They’ll be on foot-they wouldn’t get far in all this snow. I told them we’d come back for them within twenty-four hours. I think I impressed it on Walker that his best chance is to stay here and wait. If he doesn’t he’ll be run down and caught eventually. He’s not as important as the other four right now.”

  “All right,” Watchman said, not displeased that Vickers was using his head for a change. “We’ll leave some of the provisions here.”

  “I’ve taken care of that. Are we ready to go?”

  “As soon as you saddle your horse.”

  Vickers’ expression changed a little-a pinching of mouth corners. Evidently he had expected somebody to saddle up for him. Watchman didn’t take the hint. He was nobody’s hired wrangler.

  Getting to be a pretty proud Innun, aren’t we. He chastised himself silently for his childishness and went over to the fire to gather his things. Mrs. Lansford was trying to comb wet tangles out of her walnut-brown hair with her fingers; she looked up at him and her smile showed him the same resilient strength he’d admired last night. “Thanks for what you’ve done, Officer.”

  He said impulsively, “My name’s Sam Watchman. Sam.”

  “All right. Thanks, Sam.”

  Keith Walker said, “Remember what I said about the Major and Baraclough.”

  “I will. Listen, if we’re not back here by daybreak tomorrow you’d better start down the mountain. And watch your footing in the drifts.”

  Mrs. Lansford said, “You’ll be back.”

  “They may have headed down the back of the mountain by now. Don’t wait past morning. All right?”

  “All right, Sam.”

  Walker only nodded bleakly and Watchman walked to his horse.

  5

  It wouldn’t have taken half an hour to reach the ranger cabin if it hadn’t been for the drifts. A good part of the way the horses were up to their bellies in snow. Twice Watchman had to double back and find another way around.

  At the summit the wind was still brisk but nothing like the previous day’s gale. Ramps of snow lay against two sides of the cabin all the way to the peaked roof line. The spindle tracery of the wooden watchtower loomed above the cabin in silhouette against the clouds. Watchman signaled a halt at the side of a twenty-foot boulder and took a good long time to look the place over. He didn’t see any smoke at the chimney but that didn’t need to mean anything. The blowing snow had almost erased a line of indentations in the crust that emerged from the cabin door and made an abrupt right turn and disappeared down over the far crest. It could mean they had moved on; it could mean they had laid tracks to invite their pursuers into an ambush. Watchman dismounted and dragged his rifle out of the saddle boot. Without the need of instructions Buck Stevens got down with his rifle and braced his aiming arm against the abrasive side of the boulder, training the rifle on the cabin door. Watchman nodded to him and struck off on foot to make a wide circle and come in at the cabin from its blind side. When he looked back he saw Vickers coming after him.

  The scatter of boulders made it possible to keep cover until he had come up within twenty feet of the cabin. When he stopped Vickers bumped into his back and muttered, “Sorry.”

  “Keep a little distance,” Watchman said, and swept the summit with a careful inspection. Nothing stirred except the wind and snow. He looked across the little flat and made a hand signal to Buck Stevens, and Stevens’ hat lifted and fell in acknowledgment. Watchman stripped off his right glove and put it in his pocket; fitted his hand into the rifle’s trigger guard and sprinted for the side wall of the cabin.

  He was ready to drop and slide but his run drew no fire. Against the cabin he spent a good while listening. Heard nothing and glanced back. Vickers was s
till in the rocks, training his rifle on the cabin. Watchman nodded to him and Vickers made his run, skidding to a stop beside him.

  Watchman went along to the front corner of the log shack and poked his head out. Stevens had the door covered but that didn’t keep anyone in the farther rocks from having it covered too.

  The snow right in front of the door had been churned up and was brown with mud, thinly covered with a fresh white fall that had coated it since the tracks had been made. Watchman tried to judge how long that might be but it was hard to estimate-ten minutes, maybe two hours; the cabin roof overhung it and a lot would depend on the changes in the wind during the past hour or two.

  A few blunt icicles hung from the edges of the roof. Watchman eased around the butts of the corner logs and moved along to the door, and stood there studying it and studying the rocks beyond. Vickers’ head appeared at the corner, an inquiring lift of eyebrows, and Watchman held up a palm to keep him where he was.

  There was a padlock hasp, badly bent; no lock. What held the door shut was a wooden throw bar, a dowel handle of which protruded through a slot in the face of the heavy plank door. You had to slide the dowel about eight inches to the right. Watchman thought about that for a while, not touching the door, and after he had considered the temptations he went back to the corner and said, “Wait here. Don’t touch the door.” And looked both ways and jogged over to Buck Stevens’ post in the rocks.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing, I hope. Hand me that coil of rope, will you? Thanks.”

  “Want me to stay put?”

  “Yes. Make noise if anything moves.”

  Watchman carried the lariat back to the cabin door and dropped it on the ground. Vickers was scowling at him. Watchman said, “Be a good idea if you went over to those rocks for a minute.”

  “Why?”

  “Just prudent,” Watchman said. He picked up the noose end of the rope and pulled it down tight into a small loop. Then he made sure the coil of rope lay properly on the ground, and gently hung the little loop on the dowel handle of the door bar. He did this very gingerly. Finally he reached down for the free end of the rope and began to pull it slowly. The rope began to uncoil, not disturbing the latch.