Stanton’s mouth worked. “Is it—bears?”
“No, sir,” Riley said, and his dark eyes dusted over Allegra once, quickly, as if they shared a secret joke. “Worse, in my opinion.
Skunks.”
“Oh, Lord, let’s hurry,” Stanton said, striding off toward the maze of rocks, his coat flapping.
“Ladies,” Riley Case said. Making a small, mocking bow, he replaced his floppy hat, picked up his big rifle, and followed Merrill Stanton.
It didn’t take long to roust the people out of the cave, for it hadn’t turned out to be such a great shelter, after all. At least they hadn’t wakened the skunks yet, though Merrill could smell their musk—which was simply part of their normal scent—so strongly that he wondered that any of them could bear it. Later he found out that, of course, they had smelled it; it was just that Galatia Colfax had told them it was probably some kind of fungus growing in the cave, like mold. None of them had ever smelled a skunk, and neither had Merrill Stanton, but he finally and secretly admitted to himself that Riley Case had called it right. It took an imbecile not to recognize that odor for what it was: a sign of danger.
Aside from that, they’d tried to build a fire–-far back from the cave entrance. The cave, of course, had immediately filled with smoke. Also, there were mice and spiders and other things that crawled. The only reason the people stayed there was that Ty and Galatia had insisted that it was still better than being outside in the dampness. But even they seemed relieved to leave the place.
Though it grew dark quickly, and the path they were on was extremely treacherous, Riley Case had brought four torches he’d made from hollow copper pipes he’d had, with a gummy mixture of pine resin and needles and small sticks wrapped around the end. They burned surprisingly long, though they smoked and stank. But none of them had batteries left in the few flashlights they’d brought. That was one reason they didn’t try to travel at night.
Finally they reached Merrill’s campsite, which was, indeed, perfect. Quickly, Merrill, Ty, and Riley made fires, the women started cooking, and everyone started nesting, as humans invariably do when in strange and bewildering places. They searched around, looking for just the right place to pitch a tent or set up a bedroll, and arranged their personal belongings, no matter how scarce, just so.
Merrill—for once not letting anyone else overrun him— staked out the sheltered glade by the stream for his family, and though he helped the others in his group get settled and helped build their fires, he stayed close to Genevieve and Allegra and Kyle and, of course, Perry, who was just one of them now. Riley Case looked around, seeing that everyone was settling in, and said to Merrill, “I killed a deer today—”
Kyle, who was standing by his grandfather and staring up at the mysterious stranger with wide-eyed fascination, breathed, “You did?”
Case looked down at him and answered gravely, “I sure did. A big ten-point buck. Man can’t eat a deer that big all by himself. You hungry, boy?”
“Boy, am I!” Kyle said enthusiastically. “But what you gonna do wif that deer you killed?”
Kyle, of course, couldn’t be expected to comprehend. Killing wild animals had been outlawed since long before he was born; in fact, back in the MAB-dominated world, the penalty for killing a deer was as stiff as a manslaughter sentence. It never occurred to Kyle—or indeed to most people—that these animals had once been killed for meat, because people were hungry. Such things had never been a part of even their darkest dreams.
Case’s dark eyes flashed with amusement. “Well, I think I’ll let your mom explain all about that. Now I’m going to leave for a while—”
“Can I come? And Perry?” Kyle asked eagerly.
“Not this time,” Case answered. “But I’ll be back soon, and then we’ll have something really good to eat.”
True to his word, Case returned quickly with big slabs of raw meat. Allegra, who had very confused feelings about killing wild animals, suddenly found that her confusion was greatly cleared when she ate the delicious steaks fried over an open fire. They didn’t even eat any vegetables. Case also produced a sort of heavy, doughy bread, and they greedily sopped up the juices from the cooking pan with it.
“I got a Dutch oven, with a lid,” Case said to Genevieve. “She’s a real backbreaker to carry, but it’s worth it. You can cook anything in it, even bread.”
Allegra stared at him, then wiped her mouth with her hand. It was slightly greasy, but she didn’t care. Licking her lips with enjoyment, she finally asked, “Who are you? Some kind of guardian angel?”
He shook his head vehemently. “No, ma’am, I’m sure not.”
Merrill said slowly, “How long have you been out here, in these hills?”
Riley Case took a sip of coffee from his tin cup, then threw the grounds into the fire. It hissed as if in anger. “I left Hot Springs the night of the blackout.”
“So—you’ve been following us?” Merrill asked evenly.
It might have been called a smile on another, less grim man, but on Riley Case it was more like a twisting of his mouth. “Mr. Stanton, when you march you straggle out anywhere from a mile to three. You sound like a herd of buffaloes tramping around. You leave a trail half a mile wide. It’s not that I’ve been following you. It’s that I can’t get away from you.”
“You could,” Stanton remarked casually, “if you weren’t following the same path as we are.”
Case nodded curtly. “The signal fire. That’s where I’m going. Where you people are going is your own crisis, and I don’t believe in poking my nose in other folks’ business.”
“Then why did you help us today?” Allegra challenged him.
“Because, Mrs. Saylor, you people are going downhill fast. I’m no one’s keeper, but I don’t want these hills littered with bodies, either. So, if you decide to go on, then I don’t see why we can’t travel together, and maybe I can help out some. At least keep some of you from dropping dead on the road from starvation. Or getting killed by some bear or mountain lion.”
Genevieve reached over, took Case’s empty cup, and refilled it from the enormous old blue tin coffeepot that she used to use for a flower vase. “Mr. Case, may I ask you something?” she politely inquired.
As Case was a rough-edged man, with little use for niceties, he considered the question before answering with brutal honesty. “You can ask, ma’am.”
A ghost of a smile lit Genevieve’s smooth, sweet features. “If you left Hot Springs on the same night we did, and if you are going to the signal fire—may I ask what’s taken you so long? Surely a man such as you would have reached that mountain long ago, if you’d simply gone straight to it.”
As will happen in men unaccustomed to even polite deception, his eyes gave him away. They slid to Allegra—for the briefest of moments—and then he looked down and deliberately took a long sip of coffee. “Mrs. Stanton, I don’t believe I’m going to answer that question. Let’s just say that I’m enjoying the journey, so I’m not in any big hurry.”
Merrill Stanton, like most men, hadn’t noted the significance of the exchange, or Riley Case’s unspoken meaning. Both Allegra and her mother had, though they gave no sign. Merrill said quietly, “Do you still know where the path lies, Mr. Case? Since the fire’s gone out?”
He answered quickly, “I do. And so do you, Mr. Stanton. You’re leading these people in the right direction.”
“Am I?” Merrill sighed.
Case’s impenetrable gaze raked over him. “Let’s get something straight, Mr. Stanton. I’m no dunkhead. I’m no mystical Moses leading people around in the wilderness. Looks to me like that’s your department. If you people are going on, I’ll help. If not, I’ll see you in the next life.”
Merrill Stanton nodded, then straightened his shoulders and set his face. “We’re going on, Mr. Case. By the grace of God, we’re going on.”
EPILOGUE
COMING AWAKEWAS FOR ZOAN very simple. In the depths of his mind, which no man, only God, wou
ld ever plumb, would come a knowledge, a silent signal, and he would pass through a doorway from the place of shadows and whispers and wanderings to the place of light and sounds and visions.
He lay quietly under the rough blanket, immediately aware that though it was still night, the dawn was near. With his curious synchronization, all of Zoan’s senses were resurrected at one time. The alkali odor of dust and ancient stones was mingled with the aromatic and pungent smell of pinon trees. Miles away, a coyote called, a lonely and poignant song. A whispering sound as of old dead voices came to him, but it was only the wind caressing the worn stones of the houses. Darkness was heavy in the small room. Most men, with their puny earthbound vision, could have seen nothing. But Zoan could see everything, every one of his few precious possessions, every wrinkle in his blanket, the clever mortaring between each stone.
He could even see the painting, though it was done in dull earth tones of ocher and brick and sand and had faded in the centuries. But because it pleased him, he kept his gaze on it for some time. The scene was of a stick-man lifting a spear to throw at a stick-deer, no more than this. But for long stretches of time Zoan had sat, thinking about the artist, even seeing him, a short man with a flat face and sparkling, lively eyes and stubby, agile fingers. Though Zoan didn’t understand exactly what he saw, or how he saw it, he did comprehend that the man was now no more than bones in a shallow grave. The few lines captured the vivid action of the hunt in a mysterious fashion, and Zoan knew that the artist had been greatly gifted. He never would have said so to anyone. Zoan never, unbidden, offered his opinions about anything. It never occurred to him that anyone would ever be interested.
With quick movements, Zoan threw back his blanket and stood. Moving to the door, he stepped outside and lifted his eyes. He watched as a small sailing cloud raced across the sky, and then it hit the moon. The cloud seem to nibble at the moon, for piece by piece the silver disk was lost, and only the light of the stars reached the earth.
Chaco Canyon brooded around him, majestic, mysterious, timeless. Aeons of living had worn the stones, smoothing them with wind and the action of fine sand. Zoan’s eyes were filled with the vision, his ears full of the music; he even sucked in its breath, loving this land and aware that others before him had stood and loved even as he did.
An impulse came, touching his mind even as the most fragile strand of a spider’s web will brush against the face. He had learned to obey these silent commands. With quick, efficient movements he pulled on his boots and wrapped his treasured Navaho blanket–-a gift from Cody—around his boyish shoulders. Hurrying out into the path, Cat appeared mystically at his side and walked with him. Her sleek body moved as if propelled by steel springs, her satiny, silvery fur gleaming in the moonlight.
Overhead, Bird was circling, waiting for dawn. Glancing upward, Zoan was pleased, as always, by the smooth patterns that the creature made. Now the huge raptor doubled up into a streamlined missile and dropped from the sky. Zoan could not see the impact, nor did he especially trouble himself to envision it. But he knew that death had fallen out of heaven on some living thing. He accepted this facet of existence as he accepted the sunshine and the rain and the slow turning of the earth itself.
Zoan stopped before one of the huts that stood alone, high on one of the smallest mesas in the canyon, in splendid solitude. He did not enter but called out softly, “Cody . . .”
Bent Knife came awake instantly. His awakening was somewhat similar to that of Zoan’s for he never had the moment-by-moment processes of awakening that other men seemed obliged to pass through. At the first sound of the soft call, his eyes flew open and his body stiffened. Automatically his hand reached for a weapon, closing around the shaft of the razor-sharp knife that he always kept on the table beside him.
Coming off the bed smoothly, he did not pass at once through the door. Deep, almost buried and forgotten instincts, slowly coming alive in him, made him cautious, and he stood to one side waiting. The voice came again and Cody recognized Zoan’s voice. This astonished him; he could not recall the strange young man ever initiating a conversation.
Stepping outside, he greeted Zoan, then, as was his curious custom, said, “Hello, Cat,” in a tone of respect. The form of the jaguar, shadowy and silvery and fearsome in the moonlight, as always, imprinted Cody with the cold touch of a primeval fear. The animal was under control, it seemed, but he recalled without volition the lines of a poem that he had read long ago:
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
The simple, deadly elegance of the lines—and the jaguar— bemused him. Cody Bent Knife was sensitive to such moments of revelations of beauty, and he allowed himself to enjoy it for a brief time. He knew that Zoan would wait.
Finally, his eyes still on Cat, who was watching him as if she could discern his fear and reverence, asked, “What is it, Zoan?”
Zoan did not speak, which was not unusual. Language for him was a different thing from what it was for other people. He had long known that. What they could put into words and phrases and sentences came to him almost like visions, with intricate words like deep colors, and lovely phrases like the canyon at sunset and leaping sentences like Cat as she ran . . . he could see the words, drink them in, even love them, but could never quite use them right. People laughed at him so often when he tried. It didn’t really hurt his feelings—the concept was foreign to Zoan—but it frustrated him. He simply stood there, mute, frowning a little.
Cody sighed and slipped the knife into his belt. “Well, Zoan, you’ve got your little band of lost souls here now and I’ve got my followers.” He bit his lip for a moment, considering Zoan, whom he loved but had no idea how to tell him this or anything else. He began again, awkwardly, with a topic that was close to Zoan’s heart, he knew, and hoped maybe this was what he really wanted to talk about, and so sadly, could not. “This is a perfect hiding place. I’m even starting to wonder myself if your God hasn’t had something to do with it.”
The silence ran on for some time and finally Zoan spoke haltingly and with some difficulty. “That’s why I woke you up, Cody.” This seemed to exhaust his stock of words for a moment but then he managed to add, “That’s why I needed to talk to you.”
Cody smiled, thinking that Zoan could not see . . . but of course, he could. “I understand. Go ahead.”
After an inner struggle that was apparent from the way his features twisted, Zoan whispered, “We’re not hidden.”
Cody was startled, wary. “We’re not hidden? What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t know yet—exactly—where we are.”
“Who is he, Zoan?”
Again Zoan did not seem to hear. “He’ll try—to—he’s trying to find us. He’ll come looking for us.”
Cody Bent Knife was a man of great physical courage, even though he was young. Long ago Cody had envisioned, and come to grips with, his own death, and once a man conquers that fear, all others seem to pale beside it. But this conversation, Zoan’s words, Zoan himself, was strange and unsettling and even beyond the ken of contemplating death.
Cody Bent Knife, though he shunned it, was afraid. But his courage, like his will, rose to combat, as it had done his whole life. He spoke with surety, showing nothing of his deep foreboding.
“Zoan, try to explain. Try to tell me who is searching for us, who is coming to look for us.”
Zoan’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper of such an unearthly timbre that Cat half growled deep in her throat in an uncanny response. She moved forward, lifting her enormous head, seemingly to search Zoan’s face and to listen.
“The wolf . . . the wolf of the evenings.” Zoan swallowed and touched his lips as if he were shocked at what they had uttered.
“He can see in the dark, you know . . . like me.”
Cody Bent Knife could not move; he felt as if bands, tighter and tighter, bound no
t only his legs and arms but also his mouth.
Zoan went on in the cadences of a poet and a prophet: “Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.”
Zoan fell silent. He looked up.
Zoan’s eyes caught the reflection of the moon so that they themselves seemed to be pure silver for a moment. Cody flinched, physically, visibly, as suddenly he was loosed, but he felt so weak he thought he might fall. The dread that was trying to overcome him was like a terrible specter, floating, touching and tapping with dead fingers at the window on a dark night when the wind is howling . . .
“The horsemen are loosed, Cody,” Zoan whispered, and now he sounded merely tired, and sad. “The horsemen are loosed.”
Cody blinked, still unsure if this was some uneasy dream. “What—what can we do?”
Suddenly Zoan moved forward. Oddly—he had never initiated a touch of another human being, as far as Cody knew—Zoan grabbed his hand, then placed it on his own chest. He then placed his hand over Cody’s heart. For a moment, Cody imagined that their blood became intermixed, interwoven, and flowed from their hands to their hearts in a symbiotic, never-ending circle.
Then Zoan whispered, “We are the last of our people, Cody. You and I are the last. And we must overcome!”
For two nights the heavens had displayed a celestial fireworks that dazzled, and delighted, the eyes. The moon itself seemed to be twice its normal diameter—whether from some trick of the atmosphere or whether the size lay in the eyes of the beholders was not entirely certain to Noemi Mitchell as she stood quietly beside her husband. The two of them had come out to Sky Rock. Together they stood, silent, looking up at the myriad of pinpoints of light flung by a mighty hand with awesome power to spangle the sable curtain of the skies. Stars were falling, dying. Six shot across the horizon as they watched, leaving dusky streaks of light as their trail.
The Beginning of Sorrows Page 42
