by Edward Abbey
The operator slid down the bank, emerged from a cloud of dust and sat down in the jeep. He flipped a switch, put on his earphones, and waited for the transmitter to warm up. “Who you want me to call?” he said. “Glynn?”
“Call Glynn,” Johnson said; he tilted back his head and looked up again, up at the rim of the mountain five thousand feet above. A fringe of snow sparkled there, blue and icy; a plume of cloud floating east made the mountain appear to move, like a great ship advancing across the sky. Falling… The sun would not clear that wall for another hour.
The operator flicked his switches, twiddled with his dials; the mouth of the loudspeaker began to hum and crackle with static—electrical, strange, with a certain mathematic symmetry, like a message in code from another world. The operator spoke into the microphone: “CS-3 calling CS-4,” he said, “this is CS-3 calling CS-4. Can you hear me, CS-4? Over.” He waited; the speaker crackled out its pattern of static, gave no intelligible answer. The operator repeated his call, reversed the switch, waited again. Johnson waited, sitting on the jeep’s fender, listening. No answer. “They don’t get us,” the operator said; “they must be on the other side of the mountains now. When they get up on the rim they’ll hear us.”
Johnson nodded. “Call them other fellas,” he said.
“See if they’re on the way here. Make sure they’ve got the Indian with them.”
“Okay, Morey.” The operator performed his routine and was answered at once: the others were coming across the mesa, the Indian was with them, they would be there in half an hour, over and out. The operator removed his earphones and picked at his nostrils with his little finger.
While Johnson gazed soberly and intently up into the canyon. The trace of smoke was so vague and tenuous that he still could not be quite certain that he really saw it. He muttered to himself, a man with a problem, and scratched in vague distraction at his armpits. Finally he eased his rump off the fender and stood up. “I’m going up the canyon,” he said to the operator; “you stay here with the radio. When the others get here tell one of them and the Indian to come on up the canyon too; the other man stays here. When you get Glynn on the radio tell him to keep a sharp lookout up there on the rim.”
“You think this guy Burns is up in there?”
“He might be,” Johnson said. He started off, stopped and turned again. “Say—call them boys again, tell them not to try to bring the car up the wash. Too rough, they won’t make it. Tell them to go south another mile, then follow the old fence line road. It’ll bring them out pretty close to here.”
“Okay, Morey.” The operator stared after Johnson’s retreating back. “You forgot the shotgun,” he shouted. Johnson flapped his hand downward, not looking back. The operator shrugged and went to work with his radio.
A long walk: the sun came over the rim of the mountain, a furious white heat, fanned by the blue winds; below, Johnson stopped and leaned against the rock, took off his hat and wiped his brow; he was sweating but his feet, still in the shade, were cold. While he rested he heard a mockingbird call, a descending glissando of sweet lilting semitones—faintly derisive. Johnson removed his leather jacket and draped it over his forearm. He looked down: already far below, he could see the jeep, a dull gray object of uncertain dimensions, and the scrubby hills, the road, the dust trail of an approaching car. He looked up and saw rock, nothing but rock, walls and slabs and grottoes of rock. He could see no trace of smoke, from where he stood, and could hear no sound but a whisper of wind, the periodic drip of unseen water, at long intervals the mockingbird’s cry.
He resumed his climb, scaling rock slides, struggling up the canyon slopes to outflank the more difficult dams of rock, trudging up the almost-level stretches of sand between each barrier. Now and then he could make out hoofprints, sometimes the mark of a shod horse, more often the sharp dainty imprints of deer.
The climb and the altitude stimulated an unexpected thirst for water; he began to wish that he had brought a canteen along.
The canyon narrowed and turned, shutting off the view to the west, reaching up toward the high ridges, the pines, the final wall of granite. Johnson climbed another smooth water-worn facing of rock, scored diagonally with a thin feldspar dike, and stopped on the brink of it, gazing ahead. He saw the willow thicket at the foot of the gray water-slide, the bear grass and greasewood, and on the right, a few yards up the slope and about a hundred yards from where he stood, a glistening, bulky object hanging from the limb of a tree. Nearby, from a tiny mound of sand and charcoal, a faint thread of smoke rose up toward the sky.
Listening intently, Johnson surveyed every visible surface and aspect of the surrounding terrain. He saw rock walls, talus slopes of sand and gravel, the trees, cactus, brush, a pair of ravens hunched on a boulder near the head of the draw—but no man, no horse. He could hear nothing but the thin vibrations of flies somewhere ahead.
He waited for another minute with straining senses, then relaxed a little and walked ahead, hearing his boots crunch loudly in the sand. Even his breathing sounded much louder than normal, as if the pervading stillness of the place and the towering walls amplified every noise. He was aware of slight echoes repeating each sound that he made, following him from all sides; he felt as conspicuous and self-conscious as a tourist tramping into a silent cathedral. But after the first few uncomfortable moments he overcame the sense of being an intruder, and held his attention to his business.
As he approached the hanging object he saw it as it was, the skinned, partially-dismembered carcass of a doe. Going closer he saw the sand-covered heap that had been a campfire, near it a smoothed-out plot of ground about the size of a grave, where a man had evidently slept the night before. Close to the deer was a crude rack made of green willow branches, supported some three feet above the ground by crosspoles resting in the crotches of forked stakes. Beneath this lattice were the remains of another small fire—charred stubs of juniper protruding from the sand.
Johnson noticed a piece of paper, brown and torn, fluttering against the deer. He went toward it; as he did so the limb from which the carcass was suspended suddenly rose a little, quivering, as a big dirty raven launched itself into the air and flopped away down the canyon. Johnson stared after it, startled, his hand on his pistol butt, then stepped on toward the deer. Flies swarmed around the flayed carcass and crawled in battalions over the ripe, glistening flesh. The piece of paper was impaled on a twig, part of the brush still jamming the interior of the animal; with averted face Johnson reached out through the flies, slipped the paper free and backed away to read what was written on it:
I HOPE YOU BOYS HAVE SENSE ENUF TO USE THIS VENISON BEFORE THE BLOWFLIES SPOIL IT ALL. I WAS GOING TO JERK IT BUT YOU RUSHED ME.
Johnson smiled tiredly and dropped the paper to the ground. He examined the ashes of the fire under the rack, found them still warm. He poked around some more, finding plenty of bootprints and hoofprints, the seep of water behind the willow thicket, the place where the deer had died, the scattered remains of its innards surrounded by the tracks of mice, vultures, ravens, and what might have been—he was not certain—the marks of a cougar. But he was unable to find what he wanted to find, the trail of Burns’ departure. The ground was too dry, too stony, and everywhere but on the floor of the canyon, too steep. He climbed up around the cliff back of the spring and looked on the sandy glen above for a sign of man or horse, without success. He paced out a small arc on the canyon’s northern slope—the sunny exposure, the side of the cactus—and could find nothing; he did the same on the southern slope among the piñons and juniper. Here he discovered what could have been traces of a horse’s passage: a freshly-broken dead branch, an overturned stone, certain faint depressions in a bank of gravel. These were signs, possibilities, but so indefinite and scattered as to be almost useless; if they led anywhere, it appeared to him, it was straight up the slope—and the slope ended, fifty yards above, in a perpendicular wall of rock. Johnson paused and stared around him at the emptiness of
the canyon, at the almost mythical remoteness of the cliffs above, and again became intensely conscious of the exaggerated uncanny stillness. A notion came to him, an absurdity: impulsively he yielded to it, and cupped his hands around his mouth, inhaled deeply, and shouted out into the dizzy heights and the gulfs of space surrounding him—
“Burns!”
The echoes rang out, amplified at first and then fading rapidly as they ricocheted from wall to crag to mountain rim—
—BURNS… Burns… burns.…
“Come on back!”
And the canyon echoed—
—ON BACK… On Back… on back.…
“You can’t get away!”
—GET AWAY… Get Away… get away.…
“Come back!”
—-COME BACK… Come… come back.…
The echoes faded, dying away among the towering cliffs, farther, farther, like the cries of vanishing ghosts…
Johnson stood listening until the last echo of an echo had sounded back again. Then he sat down on a rock and unwrapped another stick of chewing gum; he waited.
The stillness was emphasized, not broken, by the stark clear sinking notes of the mockingbird.
They came eventually, two sun-washed men toiling up over the quartzite and granite and sand, faces dark under wide-brimmed hats, bodies pale in the scorching glare. One of them saw Johnson and waved—“Hey.” They came closer; the deputy was carrying a portable radiotelephone set and a submachinegun, the Indian an old walnut cane. “Hey,” the deputy said, grinning at Johnson—“where’s the outlaw?”
Johnson munched on his gum, staring across the canyon. “Come on up,” he said.
“We heard somebody hollerin a while ago,” the deputy said. “Was that you?”
“You heard more than I did,” Johnson said.
They came up the slope, sweating a little, and sat down near him. The deputy was panting like a dog in the sun; the tracker breathed easily, as if he had just rolled out of a hammock. The Indian was short and squat, with a face brown as tobacco juice and wrinkled as a dried apple.
The deputy passed cigarettes around, Johnson declining. “I coulda swore I heard someone hollerin,” the deputy said. “Sounded a long way off but it was a man. You didn’t hear it, Morey?”
“No. What’re Glynn and that other fella doing? Any word from them yet?”
“Not yet. That’s a long drive, Morey, through the canyon and up to the rim. Nearly forty miles.”
Johnson nodded. “And how about the State Police? Are they coming around with that airplane or still stalling?”
“I don’t know. He was callin em when we started up here.”
Johnson sighed gently, scratching his belly. “Well, you boys might as well get started. Don’t know what kind of luck you’ll have—I didn’t find much, but maybe you can do better.” It had better be the man we’re looking for, he was thinking. He stood up. “I’ll show you what I found.”
He led them around, pointing out the signs he had seen on the south slope. The Indian seemed more interested in the half-butchered deer than anything else. He brushed off the flies with a big knife, cut a pair of steaks from flank and brisket, wrapped them in the big dirty bandana from his hip pocket and stowed the bundle inside the front of his shirt. “Good meat,” he said; “lunch.”
Johnson waited; presently the Indian came over, squatted down near the broken branch, the overturned stone. “Okay,” he said, “a horse went up here.”
“How long ago?”
“Maybe an hour, maybe a week.”
Johnson nodded, frowning; he could smell the whisky on the Indian’s breath. “It’s all yours,” he said; “I’m going back down. You boys do the best you can.” He noticed the deputy sagging under his burdens. “Don’t drop that Walkie-Talkie; and give me that burp-gun— you’re not hunting a nest of Japs.”
“This guy’s an Anarchist, Morey. And he must have a rifle.”
“Then he’s already got the drop on you. That thing’s just gonna be in your way. You’ve got a thirty-eight, that’s enough.”
The deputy stood there pouting, like a cranky child, the submachinegun in his arms, a revolver at his hip, the radio outfit strapped on his back. “I might need this, Morey.”
The Indian was already far above them among the trees, poking around with his walnut stick. “Horse piss,” he yelled down under his arm, and continued his investigations.
Johnson looked up. “All right.” He turned to the deputy. “Well, keep it if it’s so dear to you. But don’t use it unless you have a good target.” He looked up the slope at the dark figure of the Indian limping along at the base of the cliff, headed up the ridge. “And don’t let that fella get out of your sight.”
“I won’t Morey.”
“Okay.” Johnson picked up his jacket and started down the canyon. He was thinking: Children, my children. The sun burned into a strip of exposed skin on the back of his neck. A bunch of damned children… He clambered down over the smooth face of the first ledge, holding on with fingertips and toes. He dropped the last four feet onto the sand below, went trudging on. Damned children, he was thinking—and then he remembered the echoes. He smiled. Those wonderful, magical, vanishing echoes…
Half an hour later he reached the arroyo. Another deputy and the radio operator were sitting on the hood of the jeep, drinking Coca-Cola. The patrol car was parked on the old road below the ruin.
The operator saw Johnson coming. “They seen him!” he yelled, then tipped up the bottle again.
“And the General wants to talk to ya,” he deputy said, grinning.
Johnson pushed back his hat and rubbed a few drops of sweat out of his eyebrows. “The General?” he said, surprised. “And who’s seen him? Seen who? Burns?”
“Yes,” the operator said. “I was just talkin with Glynn. He seen him.” He tossed the empty bottle back over his shoulder; it hit the bank and rolled, clinking and bouncing, back down to the bottom. “Way up there somewhere.” The operator pointed toward the mountain, indicating several square miles of craggy wilderness. “Glynn saw a man leadin a horse through a hole in the rocks, over this ridge, and down into the canyon on the other side. Then he couldn’t see him on account of all the big boulders.”
“Couldn’t he get him?” Johnson asked.
“No, there ain’t no way down from where he is. It was too far to shoot. Glynn says it would take him hours to climb down that wall.
“What are they doing now?”
“Glynn is stayin near the car. The other guy’s movin along the rim trail to see if he can foller this guy from above.”
Johnson thought for a while, staring at the sand and kneading his cheeks. “What’s this about a general?” he said.
“That’s right,” the operator said. “From the Air Base. The C.O. out there—Desalius, his name is. Wants to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Something about a helicopter.”
“A helicopter?” Johnson scratched at his ribs. “See if you can-contact him now.”
“Right.” The operator slid off the jeep’s hood and went back to his transmitter.
Johnson became aware of the uniformed deputy, idle and indolent in the sunshine. “Our man seems to be heading south,” Johnson said. “Why don’t you do a little scouting around over in Bear Canyon?”
“Who me?”
“Yes, you.”
“Is there a road?”
“There used to be. If it’s washed out you can walk. Drive over as far as you can, climb up on the south ridge and sit there for a spell. If you can get there fast enough this cowboy friend of ours might come ridin right up to you. If you don’t see anything within say three hours come on back here. If we’re not here— well, we’ll radio you.” He rubbed his nose. “Don’t get lost,” he added.
“Okay, Morey.” The deputy climbed off the jeep and up the arroyo bank. “Shoot on sight?” he said, from up there.
“What?” Johnson had already forgotten him; he was
listening to the radio operator and the radio: static, questions, the murmur of Air Force second lieutenants. “Shoot on sight?” Johnson said; the question penetrated his indifference. He looked up at the deputy, annoyed, “What the hell do you mean? We’re not after a murderer.”
“This guy’s supposed to be dangerous, Morey. The papers say he’s a Red.”
“I don’t give a hoot in hell what the papers say. You oughta know better yourself. You just hold your fire—this is no coon hunt. Now get outa here before I get mad.”
The deputy grinned; he had a young pleasant face with small pale-blue eyes, like turquoise buttons. “Sure, Morey,” he said, and disappeared. From above came the slam of a car door, the sound of an engine starting, stones banging on metal…
These bloodthirsty kids, thought Johnson—where do they all come from? Scowling, he turned back to the radio. The operator was saying:
“Yessir, just a minute, sir.” He motioned to Johnson. “Here’s Sheriff Johnson now, sir.” Johnson took the microphone. “General Desalius,” the operator said in his ear.
Johnson nodded. “This is Johnson speaking. What can I do for you, General? We’re pretty busy right now. Over.”
The loudspeaker crackled for a moment. Then a voice, grand and stately and powerful, boomed out of it: “Sheriff Johnson, how are you? This is General Desalius, Kirk Field Air Base. I understand that you are now engaged in a hunt. A hunt, am I not correct? For an escaped criminal—some species of Anarchist, I understand. Is that correct, Sheriff?” Without pausing for an answer the magnificent voice rolled on: “Sheriff, I wonder if you would be good enough to allow me to make a modest contribution to your chase? One of my helicopters, for example, and perhaps a brace of my Air Police? With automatic rifles?” The voice seemed to issue from a genial, sly-smiling face. “My men need a bit of field work, and my helicopter, I should imagine, could be very useful to you in that mountainous terrain. I shall instruct the helicopter pilot to operate under your direction, of course. What do you think, Sheriff? Over to you.”
Johnson answered at once. “Thank you, General. We don’t need the Air Police but a helicopter would certainly be a big help. We are now near the bottom of the west wall, at the mouth of Agua Dulce Canyon, which is about two miles north of Bear Canyon and about ten miles north of the highway. Tell your helicopter crew to look for three bunched cottonwoods, a ruined adobe, and a jeep. I’ll give the pilot instructions by radio when he finds us. Over.”
