I asked, “How much farther?” My voice sounded sudden and loud after the long silence.
“It’s still quite a ways,” she said.
“Has Tony got chains on his car? It doesn’t look as if he could get very far off the pavement today without them.”
She said, “He’s got chains; I hope you have.”
“Never fear,” I said. “I’m the worrying type. Ever since I came out to this part of the country, I’ve been collecting emergency gear. I’ve got tire-chains and tow-chains, extra water and gas, rope, shovel, ax, saw, and a couple of jacks—did you ever try getting out of a really bad spot with just one jack? I did, duck hunting along the river a couple of seasons ago, and went right out afterwards and got another. We may be short on brains, Spanish, but we’re long on equipment.”
We had been driving up a steadily narrowing valley—I think the valley of the Chama River, but without a map I wouldn’t guarantee that piece of geographical information. Now the road began to climb away from the river bottom, first along the side of a hill, and then up a steep and winding canyon. As we gained altitude, we met the first flakes of snow. They melted off the windshield, but there were more behind them. I turned the defroster to high and switched on the lights so that people could see us coming, as the visibility was getting pretty poor although it was barely noon. At the top of the canyon, we came out on the level again, about a thousand feet higher than we had been. Up here the snow was already beginning to stick to the blacktop pavement. The surrounding country was white. I pulled out on the shoulder and stopped the car.
“How much farther now?” I asked, when she looked at me.
“It’s still twenty or thirty miles on this road, I think.”
“It would,” I said, “be nice if you were sure, Spanish. What is the place, anyway?”
“Just a spot where we sometimes camp in the summer. I’ll know the turn-off when we come to it.”
“How much of a jaunt after that?”
“Another twenty-five miles, more or less.”
“Bad road?”
“It’s probably pretty bad at this time of year.”
I grimaced. “Well, in that case we’re bound to need the chains, so we might as well put them on now before the stuff gets knee-deep out there. Let’s go.” Outside the warm and luxurious car it was a different world, cold and bleak, with the big flakes drifting steadily out of the gray sky. I pulled the trunk open, and glanced at the girl, who was pulling her red hat down over her ears. “Sometimes I wonder what goes on in the minds of those characters in Detroit,” I said. “They sell me two hundred horsepower and air conditioning for four thousand bucks. The windows go up and down at the touch of a button. I can put up the radio antenna by wiggling a finger, and move the seat back and forth without exerting more than an ounce of effort. Everything’s been done to make life lovely for me—as long as I stay on smooth, dry pavement. But if the road gets a little muddy or a little snow starts to fall, I’ve got to get out and crawl under the damn car just like my dad did with his Model T. That’s progress?”
She laughed, picked up the chains, sorted out one, and draped it over the nearest wheel while I worked with the jack. There are other ways of doing it, but the new cars have the wheels so wrapped up in streamlining you can hardly get at them without jacking up the rear end. Fifteen minutes later we were under way again. With the chains on, we had a noisy couple of miles at first, until the snow built up enough to stop the racket; then we proceeded in a kind of muffled and vibrating silence. There were tracks in the road to show that we were not alone in the universe; occasionally we met a car or truck heading south, but you couldn’t call it heavy traffic. This was just as well, since everyone was using the same two ruts in the center of the highway, only pulling out into the fresh snow at the sides to pass.
“Take it easy now,” Nina said at last. “I think we’re getting close… Yes, there it is. Turn left at the sign.”
I stopped at the intersection and got out to look around. It was a small state road heading west. It looked here as if it might have a fair gravel surface under the snow, but I didn’t count on that lasting very far. Those small roads usually deteriorate pretty rapidly as you get away from the main highways. Several cars had used it within the past hour or two; the snow had only started to fill in the latest tracks.
“What do you think?” Nina said at my shoulder.
“People have gone that way,” I said. “Or come. I’m not a good enough tracker to tell. Two or three cars at least. One jeep, I’d say. What’s Tony driving?”
“Well,” she said, “I think it started out as a Ford, but the factory wouldn’t know it now. He got two new tires recently, but I wouldn’t recognize the treads.”
I glanced at the sky, and at the surrounding country; a bleak pattern in white and black, without color or intermediate tones of gray. “No sign of this letting up,” I said. “We can make it up to Chama, or back to Santa Fe. But if we head over that way, this late in the day, it could get rough.”
“You’re the one who said he was in danger, Dr. Gregory.”
“Sure,” I said, “but you’re the one who’s going to have to spend the night with me if we can’t get this glamorbuggy back out of there.”
She said, “Aren’t you being a little silly and oldfashioned? I’m willing to risk it if you are.”
I said, “It’s no risk to me, Spanish. I’m not a virgin.”
I heard her breath catch at this; and I looked at her directly and appraisingly, just to make it a little tougher. She had not put her cap back on to step out here, and the snow was melting in her hair. The heavy clothing gave her all the lissome grace of a teddy bear. She had a nice, practical, durable look about her.
I always feel that you can tell a lot about a girl by the way she wears jeans. The first criterion is the size and condition of the garments: if they are big and stiff and new, she’s a tenderfoot; if they are soft and faded and skin-tight, she’s a tramp or a teen-ager working hard at becoming one. The second thing to look for is the treatment she accords the legs. If she turns them up to her calf and beyond in a variety of cute ways, leave her in town. She’ll be a menace in camp. If she wears them all the way down to her instep, but still turns up a six-inch cuff, you can give her the benefit of the doubt if you feel charitable. At least she knows enough to protect her shins from the brush and cactus. She may have seen too many cowboy movies, but she may just have got hold of a long pair by accident. But if the pants just fit like pants instead of like some kind of dancing tights; and if they simply terminate at the ankles without any fancy turn-up, watch yourself, brother. She’s been out in the woods long enough to discover that a turned-up pants cuff is nothing but a dirt-catcher and can cost you a broken leg or worse if it happens to hang up on the wrong thing at the wrong time. Nina Rasmussen was wearing a comfortable-looking pair of jeans that stopped just short of her instep without fuss or apology.
She said quietly, “You didn’t have to say that.”
I said, “Of course I had to. Or something equally crude and convincing. Otherwise you’d have tried to kid yourself that I was some kind of pure and dedicated character, searching for my lost wife like Galahad searching for the Holy Grail. Now, do we go after your brother or do we go back to Santa Fe?”
She laughed. “We go on, Dr. Gregory. And I’ll try not to strain your self-control beyond the breaking point, if we should have to spend the night together.”
I grinned, and we went back to the car. The next hour we covered ten miles and I never worked harder. The cut on my back made it something less than fun. The snow kept falling implacably and the road got progressively worse and you couldn’t tell where the holes were because everything was white. The long, overhanging tail of the Pontiac smacked bottom on the sharper dips; I don’t know what fool ever got the idea of building a car out six feet behind the rear wheels. The second hour we made seven miles. We passed a lumber mill with no sign of life around, and saw one distant ranch house.
There were no longer fences along the road, or even telephone or power lines. There was only the high plain covered with snow, out of which rugged mesas rose all around us, spotted with snow-laden evergreens and, occasionally, with bare rock too steep to hold the snow.
I asked, “Are you going to know this place when we get there, in this stuff?”
“I think so,” she said.
“Is there any kind of shelter around?”
She nodded. “There’s an old cabin… Go slow now. I think we turn just ahead. What’s the speedometer reading?”
“By your figures, we’ve got six miles left to go, approximately.” As usual, I had noted the reading when we left the main road.
She said, “That’s about right. This must be it. Turn right up that canyon.”
I said, “First let’s take a look,” and stopped the car in the middle of the road, where I could hope to get it started again. We got out, and waded over to the culvert that carried the side road over the shallow ditch. I said, “A car with chains has gone up and is still up there. Or, possibly, it was up there and came out after the snow started. A jeep with chains on all four wheels has gone in and come out. We can’t have missed it by too much; the tracks are still fresh.”
She glanced at me, and we turned quickly and hurried back to the car. I sent it bouncing over the culvert, the rear end struck bottom as usual—it occurred to me that I’d better take a look at the tailpipe at the next opportunity—the hydramatic shifted gears as the road started to climb, and the canyon walls closed in on us. We clattered across a wooden bridge over a good-sized creek flowing clear and brown among snow-covered stones and ice. Presently we were in among the pines.
“It’s an old logging road,” Nina said. “There are some pretty good trout in the creek.”
“I used to fish when I was a kid,” I said. “Then my time got too scarce for both hunting and fishing, and I liked hunting better, so I gave my tackle away.”
“How far now?” she asked.
“Four and a half by the clock.”
“If the jeep came out again, why didn’t we meet it on the road?”
“It went on to the west,” I said.
“It’s fifty miles to the highway, that way.”
“They can make it,” I said, “in a jeep. You can do anything in a jeep, except make love. Maybe that, too. I wouldn’t doubt it’s been tried.”
She smiled. “You seem suddenly to have sex on your mind, Dr. Gregory.”
“What’s wrong with sex?” I asked. “It’s better than what you’ve got on your mind, isn’t it?”
She was silent. We hit a curve a little too hard. I missed the tracks of the vehicles that had gone before, plowed into fresh drifted snow, and came to a halt with the rear wheels turning futilely. I backed up and tried again, but my own tracks threw me out where I had been. I backed up a second time, a little farther, stepped her all the way down, hit it hard, and made six feet. I backed up a third time, charged the soft barrier again, and gained another six. On the next try she broke through and kept going. We crossed the stream again, and then a third time. I was glad I wasn’t in the first car to cross those bridges that afternoon. It occurred to me, however, that I was probably in the heaviest.
There was a wind starting to blow now. Twice I had to back up and take a run at spots where the previous tracks had drifted over—and this was in a sheltered canyon. Out in the open it was going to be a bad night. Already now at a little past three in the afternoon the light was beginning to fade. Nina gave me no warning although she must have known we were getting close. Suddenly we came around a bend and there was the jalopy parked under the trees ahead. I found a spot where I could turn the Pontiac and leave it pointing downhill. There did not seem to be anybody around.
We got out. “Where’s the cabin?” I asked.
“Up there through the alders,” she said, pointing. “He must have…”
She stopped and looked around, frowning. I heard the sound at the same time; the engine of the jalopy was running. We ran through the snow toward it.
“Look!” Nina cried.
A rubber hose ran from one of the twin exhaust pipes alongside the car and up into the rear window, which was open enough to receive it. All other windows were closed. I stepped forward and pulled the right door open. A wave of exhaust gas hit me in the face. There was nobody in the car. I ran around to the other side, Nina stumbling along beside me. The left door was not fully latched, as if it had been opened and allowed to swing shut of its own weight. There were marks in the snow. We followed them up into the trees and found him lying there.
FIFTEEN
THE CABIN WAS a log shanty with a sloping roof, set up at the edge of the pines on higher ground, out of reach of the spring floods that come roaring down all those canyons—and not always in the spring, either. It had a door, a window, a cast-iron stove, and a built-in bunk. The door had no lock and not much in the way of hinges. The window lacked some glass, but black roofing paper had been tacked over the broken panes. The bunk held the remnants of a straw mattress and probably lots of other things as well. The stove was rusty but looked in reasonable shape otherwise, and was the only thing that really mattered as long as the walls stood and the roof did not fall in. We dragged the boy inside and stretched him on the floor. Nina peeled off her Mackinaw and put it over him, and knelt beside him.
I said, “You can look at him later. He’s breathing; that’s all we need to know right now. Run back and get his clothes out of his car and all the covers you can carry. Then get him out of those wet things and wrap him up good while I see about getting a fire going.”
I stood there after she had hurried out, looking down at the kid, not because I cared what he looked like at the moment, but because hauling the heavy end of him three hundred yards through the snow and alders had taken a lot out of me and I needed puffing time. As far as my physical condition was concerned, I had picked a hell of a time to go adventuring. The kid had a funny pink look that made him seem rosy with health at first glance; that would be the result of the carbon monoxide.
When I was in graduate school, one of my fellow-students got depressed one night over the possibility that he might not pass a forthcoming exam, and turned on all the Bunsen burners in one of the small labs without bothering to light them. I saw him when they carried him out dead the next morning; I was one of those summoned hastily from up the hall to help air out the place before it blew up the building. I could remember thinking callously that if I were going to kill myself over an exam, which wasn’t likely, I’d at least wait until the damn thing was over and I had been officially informed that I had flunked…
Tony seemed to be breathing fairly regularly. I went over and cleaned out the stove, checked the stove-pipe inside, and then went out and climbed on the roof, cautiously, to check it outside. There was no sense in hauling him all this way just to dose him with more monoxide. On my way to the car for an ax and saw, I met Nina staggering under a load of blankets and duffel bags. We didn’t speak; we’d met before.
Half an hour later the cabin was warming up enough so that she looked up in annoyance when my opening the door let in a draft of cold air. I dumped an armload of wood on the growing pile and said, “If you’ve got him warm, put your coat back on and start bringing in the stuff from the trunk of my car. And there’s a pint of whisky in the glove compartment. Bring that, too.”
She said, “Dr. Gregory, come here a minute. Look.” She lifted the boy’s head and touched the rear of it gently and showed me blood on her fingers. “They knocked him out and… and put him in the car to die!” she said. “It was supposed to look like suicide! If he hadn’t come to and managed to get the door open—”
“Sure,” I said. “We’ll put a Bandaid on it. Later. Now will you stop mooning over him and do a little work before it gets dark? I want everything out of the trunk except the tools and spare tire; and all your stuff out of the rear seat.”
She said sharply, “If you want it, wh
y don’t you get it yourself?”
“Spanish,” I said, “I would just love to do all the work while you sit and hold his head; unfortunately I spent a month or two in the hospital not so long ago, and while I wouldn’t hesitate a moment to work myself to death for you, it might leave you kind of lonely up here.”
She looked up at me for a moment; then she picked up her Mackinaw and started for the door, stopped to pull the coat on, and looked back as she fastened it about her.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Gregory,” she said. “I haven’t been much help. I’m just… scared to leave him, I guess. He looks so helpless.”
I said, “I’m sorry, too. I get even meaner than usual when I get tired, although it hardly seems possible.” She smiled at this, and started to turn away. “Nina,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget the rifles and ammo.”
She gave me a quick look, nodded, and went out. I went over to give a couple of licks to the pump of the gasoline lantern that was making the little shack a bright and cheery place, at least in comparison with the howling twilight outside. I looked around for a safe place to hang the thing—any gasoline-burning appliance indoors makes me very nervous. I finally wired it solidly to a nail in one of the rafters. The roof was beginning to leak a little here and there as the heat melted the snow above. There were drafts from various cracks between the logs, but the stove was doing a fine job. For any purpose except romance, a stove is worth fifteen fireplaces.
I stood over the boy for a moment. She had bundled him up well and covered him with blankets. He was still unconscious, but still breathing. If he stopped, we’d have to try artificial respiration, but I had no faith in it. Under the circumstances, he’d pretty well have to make it on his own or not at all. Methylene blue was supposed to help, but we didn’t have any. I understand that sometimes they give transfusions, but we didn’t have the equipment for that, either. We were even, at this altitude, a little short of the oxygen he badly needed.
Assassins Have Starry Eyes Page 11
