Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 01 - The Blessing Way

by The Blessing Way(lit)

  "They always built an escape hatch at the bottom of a wall," he explained. "A hole into the next room, and then they would fill it in with rocks that could be easily pulled out. Kept them from being penned up in part of the structure if they were under attack."

  "Oh," Ellen said. "You think there's a way out, then."

  "I think so. We can find out. It would be in one of the inside corners."

  And most likely, McKee thought, in the corner adjoining the cliff. Bracing over the escape hole would have been easier there.

  The corner was littered with broken cedar sticks. Above, occasional moisture seeping down the cliff face had accelerated the slow work of decay. The builders had cut holes into the soft stone to support the ends of ceiling beams and here the rot had started first.

  McKee selected one of the sticks and began pushing the debris away from the corner. He worked carefully, trying to avoid noise. But the powdery dust rose in a cloud around him. Ellen knelt beside him, pushing the dust back carefully with her hands.

  "Don't make any noise."

  "Do you have any idea what this is all about?" she whispered. "Why does he want you to write that letter?"

  "I don't know what's going on," McKee said. "Maybe they're crazy."

  "I think you know about the letter," Miss Leon said. She stopped digging and looked at him. Her face was chalky with dust. White and strained. McKee looked away.

  "He explained why he wanted the letter," McKee said.

  "And if you believed him, you would have written it," Ellen said. She sat back on her heels, still looking at him. "Why don't you stop treating me like a child? You know as well as I do that if they were going to turn us loose they wouldn't need the letter."

  "O.K.," McKee said. "I think you're right. They want the letter because they know that someday there's going to be a search started for us and they don't want the search to be in here. They don't want the search to be in this canyon ever-or at least not for a long, long time."

  "But why not? Do you know why?"

  "No," McKee said. "Can't even make a good guess at it. But it has to be right."

  He leaned back against the cliff and wiped the dust off his face.

  "I didn't think so at first. I thought that, whatever they were doing here, it was making them wait for something, and they didn't know how long the wait would be, so they didn't want interference. But that's not right, because it seems to be happening today. They could just leave us here, and it would be a long time before anyone found us. A lot more time than they would need to get away."

  That's what I thought of, too," Ellen said.

  "Did you notice how they camped?" McKee asked. "No garbage hole. Put all the cans and stuff in gunny sacks. And Eddie, when he lit the stove, he put the burned match in his vest pocket."

  "I didn't notice. I guess I didn't think of that."

  "When they pull out of here there won't be any traces left. Not after the August rainy season, anyway. Unless there was some reason for a search, no one could ever know anyone had been in here."

  Beneath the pile of debris in the corner, the plaster looked almost new. He jabbed it with his stick and cursed inwardly when the rotten wood snapped. For this he needed his pocket knife and the Big Navajo had taken it when he had searched him. Or had he?

  McKee suddenly was aware of the weight of the knife in his shirt pocket. He had dropped it there with his cigarette pack when he hurried from their tent-hands full of odds and ends-in his futile race to escape. It was a ridiculous place to carry a pocket knife, and the Navajo had overlooked it.

  McKee fished it out and pulled open the blade-noticing he could hold it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand with little pain. With the knuckle back in joint the swelling must be going down. There would be no chance now of persuading the Navajo that he couldn't write.

  The plaster chipped away in sections, revealing a rough surface of stone with mud mortar chinking. A moment later a yard-square sheet crumbled and McKee saw he had guessed right. The fitted stonework ended in a crude half-arch in the corner two feet above the floor. The first stone he pulled on was jammed tightly, but the second slipped out easily.

  McKee rocked back on his heels, looking at the stone. It was about the size of a grapefruit and felt clumsy in his left hand. He tried to shift it to the right, but it fell into the dust.

  Miss Leon looked at the stone and then at him.

  "I think we can get out," he said. "We can if the room on the other side hasn't fallen in and buried this crawl hole under a lot of big rocks."

  "What do we do if we get out?" Her voice was very small.

  "Did you hear them come back during the night?" McKee said.

  "No. I didn't hear anything. But we don't even know if they left. Maybe just one climbed down."

  The Big Navajo said he had to leave," McKee said. "And he said he might not be back until tonight. If Eddie didn't stay up here on the ledge, we'll try to find a way off."

  Miss Leon looked skeptical.

  "Come on," McKee said. "The Hopis lived here long enough to rebuild part of this place and they didn't like being in places where they could be boxed in. There's a good enough chance that they had some sort of escape route off the cliff. They always had a hidden way out if they could."

  There was another alternative. If they found no way off the cliff, he could try to keep Eddie and the Indian from climbing back up. He might surprise them, catch them on the ladder-defenseless from a rock dropped from above. With surprise it might work. But there was a rifle in the Land-Rover. They would be good with it-probably very good.

  "But what if Eddie stayed up here?" Ellen said. "I'll bet he did."

  "I don't know," McKee said. "Just let's hope he didn't."

  He tried to make his grin reassuring without much success. He was thinking of the way Eddie handled the pistol. For the first time it occurred to him exactly what his problem might be. He might have to find a way to kill a man. He turned away from the thought.

  Outside the hole he stood tensely, listening. The ravens had flown away now and the only sound was the morning wind and the faint whistling of a horned lark on the canyon rim high above him. The Hopis had repaired this room, too. He could tell from the remnants of plaster. But a slab of stone had fallen from the cliff, crashing through the roof and tumbling much of the east wall outward. Denied this support and protection, the roof had collapsed and centuries of wind had drifted a hump of sand and dust against what remained of the wall. Over this hump, McKee surveyed what he could see of the east end of the ruins.

  The shelf gradually narrowed to the east. From what he remembered seeing yesterday from the canyon bottom, this entire east end was filled with ruined walls, ending just short of the point where a structural fault split the canyon wall from floor to rim. That would be the place to look for an escape route. That narrow chimney would be the only possible way up. The thought of it made his stomach knot. As a graduate student, he had climbed down such a slot to reach a cliff house at Mesa Verde, and the memory of it was an unpleasant mixture of fear and vertigo.

  He climbed cautiously over the rubble of the exterior wall at the edge of the shelf and looked down into the canyon. The Land-Rover was not in sight. That should mean the Navajo had not returned from wherever his business had taken him. Nor was there any sign of Eddie. That meant nothing. Eddie might be sleeping below him in any of a thousand invisible places. Or Eddie might be only a few yards away on the cliff.

  Here the Anasazis had crowded their building almost to the edge of the cliff, leaving along the lip of the precipice a narrow walkway, which was now buried under debris. McKee moved along it gingerly, keeping as close as the fallen rocks would allow to the wall of the storeroom. At the corner, behind a water-starved growth of juniper, he stopped.

  When he looked around the corner, Eddie would be standing there. Eddie would have the pistol in his hand and would-without any change of expression-shoot him in the head. McKee thought about it for a moment.
Eddie might look faintly apologetic, as he had when he had introduced himself at the Land-Rover. But he would pull the trigger.

  McKee stood with his back pressed against the stones and looked out across the canyon. It was almost full dawn now. Light from the sun, barely below the horizon, reflected a reddish light from a cloud formation somewhere to the east onto the tops of the opposite cliffs. A pi¤on jay exploded out of a juniper across the canyon in a flurry of black and white. He heard the ravens again, far up the canyon now. It was a beautiful morning.

  McKee leaned forward and looked around the wall.

  Eddie was not in sight. The stretched tarp was there, and the stove, and other equipment. Both sleeping bags were gone. So was the ladder. McKee felt himself relaxing. Eddie must have climbed down and left them alone on the shelf.

  McKee was suddenly aware that he would be plainly visible from below. He moved back behind the juniper and stood, thinking it through. He glanced at his watch. Five A.M. Then he heard Eddie whistling.

  Eddie walked around the jumble of fallen rock at the west end of the shelf, not fifty feet away. He was carrying his bedroll under his right arm and his coat slung over his left shoulder-whistling something that sounded familiar. He dumped the bedroll, folded the coat neatly across an outcrop of sandstone, and squatted beside the stove.

  McKee stared numbly through the juniper. Of course the Big Navajo had left nothing at all to luck. He had taken the ladder but left the guard behind.

  Eddie was combing his hair. His shoulder holster, with the pistol in it, was strapped over his vest. About twenty yards away, McKee guessed. He could cover maybe ten yards before Eddie saw him, and another five before Eddie could get the pistol out, and then Eddie would shoot him as many times as were necessary.

  The first plan McKee considered as he worked his way slowly back along the cliff edge involved waiting in ambush at the corner of the storeroom until Eddie mounted the ladder to bring them their breakfast. He imagined himself sprinting the fifteen feet before Eddie, encumbered with food, could draw the pistol, knocking the ladder from under him and triumphantly disarming him.

  It might work-if Eddie brought them breakfast. There was no reason to believe he would. Much more likely he would first check on his prisoners with pistol in hand.

  The second plan, even more fleeting, involved having Miss Leon raise a clamor-perhaps shouting that he was sick. This would probably bring Eddie up the ladder to look in the hole in the storehouse roof. But he would come cautiously and suspiciously. The third plan survived a little longer because-if it worked-it did not involve facing Eddie's pistol. He and Miss Leon would work their way-unmissed and unheard-to the east end of the shelf. There they would find the Hopi escape route in the chimney and would climb to freedom. It was a pleasant idea and utterly impractical. It was far from likely that Ellen could make the climb and impossible for anyone to make it without noise. McKee considered for a moment how it would feel to be hanging on handholds a hundred feet up the chimney with Eddie standing below aiming at him. He hurriedly considered other possibilities.

  One involved finding a hiding place back in the ruins and waiting in ambush, rock in hand, for Eddie to come hunting for him. The flaw in this one was easy to see. There would be no reason for Eddie to hunt. He would simply wait for the Navajo to return, believing there was no way off the cliff.

  It would be necessary to make Eddie come after him.

  McKee dropped on his stomach at the crawl hole.

  "I'm right here," Ellen whispered. "I heard him whistling. Did he see you?"

  "No," McKee said. "He's cooking breakfast."

  "You know what," Ellen said. "I said it would take a magician to get out of this room. You're a magician."

  "Um-m. Look-make sure your watch is wound," McKee said. "I want you to wait thirty minutes and then come out here and make some sort of noise. Knock a rock off the wall or some thing to attract him. But don't run. Don't give him any reason to shoot."

  "What are you going to do?" Her whisper was so faint he could hardly hear it.

  "Remember. When he comes, give up right away. Put your hands up. And tell him I'm climbing up the escapeway back where the cliff is split at the east end of the ruins. Tell him I'm going for the police."

  "Is there really a place you can climb out?"

  "I don't know yet," McKee said. "The idea is to get the jump on him."

  "There isn't any place. He's going to kill you." She made it a flat statement.

  If Ellen said anything else, McKee didn't hear it.

  "Ellen," he whispered. "Do you understand what to do?"

  "Yes. I guess I do. But is thirty minutes enough?"

  McKee thought about it. Every minute that passed might bring Eddie checking. Or it might bring the Big Navajo back. He was suddenly acutely conscious that he was probably setting the time limit on his life.

  "I think thirty minutes," he said.

  It was eight minutes more than Eddie allowed him.

  It had taken very little time to defeat his hopes that the ruins would offer a point of ambush. Along the narrow pathway which followed the lip of the shelf, the walls were too crumbled to provide a place of concealment from which he could attack. Under the cliff itself the ruins were better preserved-some still standing in two stories-but they offered only a hiding place, no place from which to launch an attack. At the end of the shelf, where a massive geologic fault had shifted the earth's crust eons ago and split the cliff, there was no effective cover at all. McKee edged his way carefully past the dwelling's final crumbled corner.

  Here the path was buried under tumbled stones. A misstep meant a plunge into the crevasse left by the fault.

  McKee looked at his watch. He had used thirteen minutes and accomplished nothing. Here at its mouth the crevasse was about fifteen feet across. Beyond it the shelf continued. It was slightly lower and after a few yards tapered away to nothing.

  From where he stood it was impossible to see what the crevasse in the cliff offered. The Anasazis had built their structure to the very base of the cliff wall. The exterior wall had fallen outward over the precipice, but the spreading limbs of pi¤on screened the narrow opening.

  He moved carefully over what remained of partition walls, pausing once to look down into the crack. The split was sheer, and although the narrow slot was partly filled with broken slabs of rock flaked off the walls above, it was much too far to jump.

  McKee hurt his hand again climbing what remained of the back wall. He had forgotten the finger for a moment in the overpowering need to know if the crevasse held some possibility for him, and had shifted his weight to it. He was still sick with the pain when he lowered himself into the darkness behind the wall. A minute ticked away as he sat in the dust, holding his hand stiffly in front of him, letting the throbbing diminish and his eyes adjust to the darkness. What he saw both disappointed and encouraged him.

  There was no natural pathway into the crevasse as he had hoped. The shelf did not extend into it. But the Anasazis had cut foot and hand holds into the sandstone, making it possible for a person to work his way back into the slot. Somewhere back in the darkness where the crack narrowed, where a man could brace himself between the opposing walls, there would be a way to the top. If he could dispose of Eddie, he could make it. But what about Eddie?

  McKee studied his position. There were two ways into this dark cul-de-sac where he now sat between wall and crevasse-over the crumbled wall as he had come, or by pushing past the out-thrusting branches of the pi¤on. Eddie would probably come over the wall for exactly the same reason he had done so. The pi¤on had angled outward toward the sunlight. One could force his way past it, but bending by the heavy branches would require a tightrope walk along the very lip of the crevasse. Not knowing where McKee would be, Eddie wasn't likely to risk that. He would choose the wall.

  McKee thought about it. If Eddie came over the wall fast-moving from the bright morning light on the shelf into this darkness-then there would be a chance
. But that wasn't likely to happen. Eddie would be taking no risks. He would climb the tumbled rocks of the wall slowly, pistol ready. He would pause at the top, studying the gloom. And, if he did, McKee would be a mouse in a trap.

  He tested the extending main branch of the pi¤on. If he could pull it back enough and tie it to something, the route past the tree would be inviting. He could use his shirt as a rope, and tie one end well out on the branch. By putting his full weight against it, he could bend the tree well back from the lip of the cliff-opening an easy walkway. But where could he tie it?

  A second after the ideas came to him, he heard Ellen.

  Her voice was high, almost hysterical. He heard Eddie, an angry sound, and Ellen again-shouting now. And then the shot. A single crack of noise which released a rumble of echoes to bounce up and down the canyon.