Whatever it was, the light gave him heart, for here was an unexpected chance of help at hand, and heart took him into the river, where he managed to stay upright for only a few steps before slipping on the boulders. The cold water was like a slap. He struggled up, fell again, and was swept downriver into the riffle. Backstroking with both arms and kicking with his good leg, he angled toward the far bank, trying to keep his face above water. The first time his head went under, he saw the dancing of the dawn stars from beneath the river’s surface, each star refracted so that he was was seeing two, and fought back up to see two stars become one all across the sky. The second time he went under, he found this heaven on water so fascinating that his chest hurt before he fought back to the surface. A lungful of air and he went under again, at peace with the world now, and as his mind reeled away, the stars blacked out abruptly as something slammed into his chest. A moment later, he felt pressure on his pants leg, and kicked to free himself of it. He surfaced, still kicking at his tether and wondering if he’d become snarled in a piece of old barbed wire.
Marcus struggled to his hands and knees, finding that he was in shallow water and had nearly reached the far bank. He dragged his bad leg up onto the mud, where the dog that never barked shook itself, jumped over him, jumped back, tugged again at his pants leg, and then dug its muzzle under his chin.
For a moment, able to comprehend but not to believe, Marcus thought he must be under the water again, traveling across the universe patterned on the river’s surface, and that, having crossed to the far side, he had crossed into the stardust of heaven, where all men are reunited with their dogs.
“Cochise,” he said.
* * *
—
Harold felt his heart beat against the rock floor of the cave. How long had he been unconscious? An hour? Two? Enough light suffused the cave that he thought the latter. He’d been lucid when Marcus had left, had, for a time anyway, managed to distance himself from his body, discarding the pain as if it was a suit of clothes that one had only to unbutton. He’d told himself it was too early for Job to be returning with his morning slice of bread, and thought, I’ll lie down for just a few minutes, summon my strength. And then I’ll get out of this cave and . . . and do what? Anything, he’d thought, even die, just as long as his final ceiling was sky. But rest first.
He rolled over and looked at the stalactites. Where there had only been a few bats in the night, there were dozens now, further proof of the dawning hour. Harold glanced around the cave, the tangle of the discarded chains, the dark stains of Marcus’s blood where it had dripped onto the rock, his own blood. He’d had a plan before passing out. What was it? Something about the blood. Yes. He’d told Marcus to remove his shirt, and then had bound it tightly over his son’s ankle. There were no major blood vessels ruptured, and what little blood Marcus dripped would be hard to see if he kept to the grasses on his way down to the river.
Harold found that he was thinking more clearly than he had in days, and that for the first time since his capture, moving his head abruptly did not bring a wave of pain. The rabbit he had eaten had not sated his hunger, but it had given him unexpected strength. He’d lost a few hours, true enough, but what he had gained more than offset it.
The problem of what to do, however, remained. Without any definite plan, he started to limp toward the light that betrayed the cave entrance, and then he stopped himself. Something that Marcus had told him nagged at his brain—what was it? Yes, the combination lock. It might be light enough now to read the numbers. He went to where it attached the chain to the iron ring. By canting the face of the lock to catch the directional light, he could in fact read the face. He tried 6-5-5-4, as Marcus had suggested. No luck. He thought back to his time in the Park. Job had a second rifle, also in a metric caliber. It was a heavier rifle than the Mannlicher, his “stopping rifle,” as Job put it. He carried it when he had to follow a blood trail and might provoke the charge of a wounded grizzly bear.
Nine point three by sixty something. By sixty-four? Harold aligned the numbers. No dice. Sixty-two, maybe? He used his thumbnail to turn the tumbler two clicks. And was not as surprised as he might have been when the lock came open.
Harold wrapped the freed chain around his waist four times and knotted the ends. Maybe he could use it as a weapon.
He limped back to the cave mouth and ducked outside. He came to his height for the first time in a week, and stood, fighting vertigo. Though morning was dragging its feet, it was to Harold almost blinding in its intensity, and he found himself blinking as his eyes adjusted. Below him was a thin belt of aspen saplings and thornbushes, and below that a grassy swale, and below that was the river, flowing like gunmetal in the hour’s deep shadow.
He knew now what to do. He would lay down a trail, a blood trail, one that led away from the river and Marcus. With luck, Job would be alone or, if not, both men would follow his trail, giving Marcus that much more time to escape. At the very least, it would split the men apart.
A game trail worked to Harold’s left, contouring the rocky hillside. He gingerly put weight on his left leg, then stepped ahead with his right foot, brought the left up parallel, shifted what weight he could onto it and again reached ahead with the right. In this halting manner he worked along the trail, stopping once to pick up a broken limb to employ as a walking stick. Every few feet he deliberately dragged his left pants cuff against the rocks. He was leaving a blood trail a blind man could follow and told himself to keep moving while he still had the strength.
A quarter mile after taking up the trail, he came to a rockslide. The trail continued across the slide, but the footing was iffy and twice he almost fell. Where the slide ended, the trail skirted the bole of a big pine tree, then angled along the top edge of a cliff before reentering forest. Harold got down on his hands and knees for this part, for if he fell here, he fell off the cliff. He peered over the edge. The cliff was only about a ten-foot drop from top to bottom, but the rocks at the base were jagged. Anyone who pitched over could easily break a leg, or much worse.
He retreated to the tree, whose lower limbs shaded the only bit of flatland for some distance in either direction. An elk had chosen this as a bedding site, leaving as its calling card two piles of pellets. Harold squeezed a few between his thumb and fingers. The pellets, shaped like small acorns, were soft with an insect green slime, and smelled sweetly of wild cattle. Harold guessed that the elk couldn’t have been gone for more than an hour.
Ever since peering over the cliff, a plan had been taking shape in his mind. He unwound the chain, which was about twelve feet long, and tied one end to the base of a pine sapling five or six feet on the far side of the footpath, then crouched behind the big pine. He stretched the chain tight. That it would trip anyone who followed his blood trail, Harold had little doubt—provided, that was, that the person didn’t spot the chain. Harold scooped up a handful of dirt where the elk’s hooves had bitten deep and scattered it over the chain. He continued to do this until he could no longer see the steel links. Then he placed small bits of stick, pinecones, and dead leaves on top of the duff. Again he got behind the bole of the tree, first having draped the end of the chain over a low branch. The chain was invisible now, and if he yanked on the end of it, it would spring up taut about a foot off the ground. With a bit of luck, anyone who tripped on it would fall over the cliff.
Harold had one remaining chore, and carefully picked his way along the rim of the cliff until the trail reentered forest, and then came back on his tracks to the tree, dragging his cuffs. Anyone following him would think that Harold had continued on. Their eyes would be on the smears of blood, not on the tree Harold was hiding behind. He thought about his grandfather, who had taught him to trap animals and birds in all the old ways. He remembered snaring gophers and being shown a very simple trick to catch hopping birds by tying a string to a forked stick that propped a cardboard box up. When the bird hopped under the box,
you yanked the string and the box fell, trapping the bird inside. The first time Harold tried it, he’d baited his trap with a nightcrawler pinned to a chip of wood with a fishhook, and caught a robin. He’d been hiding behind a tree and remembered racing to the box, hearing the flutter against the cardboard, and lifting it, the robin flying up, so close that the tips of its wings brushed his face. The moment had been magic, but he had felt bad about the robin’s panic and had never trapped another bird in this manner.
And now this, a different tree, a different trap, with a different quarry, and the bait his own blood. This time, Harold thought, there would be no release, no wings beating to freedom. He reached into his pocket to worry the femur bone of the rabbit. He felt the sharp point dig into the pad of his forefinger.
Come on, you bastard. Come to Harold.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Showdown at Table Rock
Through the scope of the Winchester rifle, Martha Ettinger watched Sean’s slow progress as he backtracked Marcus’s trail.
“What’s taking you so long?” she muttered under her breath.
She swung the crosshairs away from Stranahan’s back and painted the circle of magnification across the landscape—the staircasing cliffs, V-shaped patches of pine forest, the bony ridge opposite the camp, knobby as a crocodile’s back, that terminated in the mushroom-shaped architecture of Table Rock. Below the rock, the cliff fell away steeply to the river.
Once and once more, she cursed herself for having dropped her binoculars onto rocks earlier in the float, which had thrown the ocular alignment out of whack. And for what? A closer look at a pair of Canada geese and their puffball offspring, trailing them like corks. How many geese had she seen in the last three days—five hundred, a thousand? You’ve seen one gosling and you’ve seen them all. But she had dropped the binoculars, and so was reduced to looking through the scope, which was half the power of the 8×42 glasses and a more limited field of view at that.
Behind her, some twenty yards away, in a runoff channel that was running bank-full with snowmelt and couldn’t be seen until you were standing directly over it, Marcus sat on a patch of sand with his hands around his knees. Already thawed once by the fire, he was now twice warmed by Cochise, who lay with his head in his lap.
When Sean and Martha had found him on the riverbank, Marcus’s body was shivering so violently that the dog on his chest appeared to tremble. His teeth were chattering so hard that he was impossible to understand.
“We’ve got to find my dad,” was the first definite sentence they could decipher. He’d insisted that he’d take them there, that there was no time to waste. But as he’d been unable to walk the hundred yards to the fire without assistance, on level ground, guiding them to the cave was out of the question. This presented a dilemma, because it meant someone had to stay behind with him, with every likelihood that either Job or his henchman would come looking. Stranahan was the tracker, so that left Martha to hold down the fort, the “fort” being a cottonwood tree felled by beavers. The tree and its stump were still attached by splinters of green wood, and the natural V between the trunk and the stump, cushioned by Martha’s hat, made a solid rest for her rifle.
Thirty yards downriver stood their blue dome tent, and just beyond it, the fire ring. Before taking cover, Martha had built up the fire; then, flashing to the image of the half scarecrow at the pictograph ledges, she’d laced together a few sticks and limbs and hurriedly draped them with the wet clothing they had peeled off Marcus. On top of this effigy, she placed his hat. It would never be confused with the artistic creations of the Scarecrow God, but from a couple hundred yards away, and partially obscured by wood smoke, it might pass muster. The last touch, the hat, had been Marcus’s suggestion, which in turn gave her another idea. Assembling her fly rod, she tied a big fly called a Sofa Pillow to the leader and hooked it into the hat. Then she paid out line as she walked from the fire to the downed cottonwood. One jerk of the line and the hat would come off, and the decoy would look alive.
Maybe.
Repositioning herself behind the log, she swiveled the rifle so that the scope once again drew crosshairs on Stranahan’s back. He was still working out the trail on the apron of grass, but was nearing a line of trees. Ever since he’d taken his kayak across the river and started backtracking, Martha had half expected the serenity of the morning to be split with the thunder of a shot.
“Where is he?” It was Marcus’s voice from the depression.
“He’s at the top of the opening, working to his right. Okay, he’s in the trees.” Now that he’d made cover, she found that she was breathing deeply for the first time in minutes.
“Look up from there. Can you see something blue? I tore off a strip of my shirt and tied it to a tree. It’s just below the cave.”
“I see it. I wish I’d known so I could have told Sean. He could have stayed in cover.”
“I’m sorry. I forgot, I guess. I wasn’t thinking real clear.”
“It’s okay. He’s there now. So far so good.”
“He’s a good man, right? I mean with a gun and all.”
“He couldn’t hit sand if he fell off a camel.”
But her eye was back in the scope and she didn’t hear herself speaking. She’d seen something flash. It was to the south of where she’d last seen Stranahan, quite some distance away, where a scree slope made a break in the forest. There it was again, a quick glint like the turning of a trout in clear water. And . . . ?
And nothing. It was gone. She placed two fingers against the artery in her neck. Calm and steady, Martha, she told herself. And to the two men who meant more to her than all the rest in the world put together. Don’t you dare die on me. Not on this river. Not here, not now.
* * *
—
When Harold heard the rock tilt, and then settle back, he put the sharpened femur between his teeth and took up the slack in the chain that was wrapped twice around his right hand. He gripped the chain with his left hand a foot farther up and waited. Earlier, he had stripped off his flannel shirt, thinking that his skin tone offered the better camouflage, being similar in hue to the patches of lichen that splotched the limestone rocks. Once more, the scuffing sound, drawing closer now. Harold squeezed his eyes to slits. He could feel his bare chest thudding against the forest floor.
Just don’t look down, he thought, trying to will this message to the man he could hear now, but not yet see.
But when you are following a trail of blood, and you have a rifle in your hands and a finger on the trigger, your eyes are the eyes of a predator. You are looking forward to the last splash of crimson, not at your feet. Harold could hear breathing and knew it to be Job, the slight wheeze of his inhalations as distinctive as a fingerprint. He had reached the elk’s bed, was probably giving it a cursory glance, the hunter in him assessing the size of the animal that made it. Almost as soon as the thought came to his mind, Harold heard the mutter of Job’s voice.
“Good bull.”
Another footfall. Harold could see the right shoe advance and tap for foothold. Now the left came up to join it. He’d be looking at the precipice now. His next step would be shorter, more carefully placed. The boot inched forward, the sole coming down squarely on the camouflaged chain. Would he look down? No, he’d just think he’d stepped on a stone. Harold saw the foot kick at the obstruction and cringed, knowing it would expose the chain.
Just one more step.
And even as he willed it, the right foot lifted and inched forward. Now!
Harold jerked the chain, felt the vibration as it came taut between Job’s boots. A sudden hard tug as Job’s left shin caught the chain, and he was stumbling, reaching out to break his fall with his right hand. Harold heard the clatter of the rifle as Job dropped it and then the sharp smack as it hit the rocks below the cliff. Now Job was scrabbling at the loose rocks on the edge of the precipice, and Harold,
looking full into his face, saw his wild-eyed grimace changing to a look of inquiry. And that’s the way he went over, a question on his lips. A moment later, Harold heard a cracking sound as the body struck the rocks.
He edged to the lip of the cliff. The rifle came into view first. It had ricocheted off the rocks and slid down the slope in an avalanche of small gravel. Job was lying on his right side, both hands clutching at his left leg, which bulged grotesquely. He emitted a thin scream. He screamed again; then, stretching out his neck in a fishlike way, he twisted until he was staring up at Harold. He looked from Harold to the rifle, which was thirty feet down the slope. Wrenching himself onto his stomach, he began to roll down the hill toward the rifle, grunting with pain each time his left leg went under the weight of his body.
With no time to find an easy way down, Harold let himself over the cliff face, still holding on to the chain. He had descended no more than a couple feet before the knot holding the end of the chain to the tree slipped, then broke. He hit the rocks feetfirst, the chain cascading on top of him. He struggled to his knees, looking around for the bone that he’d instinctively spit out when he was falling. Not finding it, he began to half crawl, half stumble in a race with Job to get to the rifle.
Harold could move faster and was closing the gap, but Job had a head start. Realizing that he was going to lose, Harold lunged, grabbing at the leg Job had been favoring and yanked on it. Job screamed, but the rifle was in his grip now, and as he swiveled with it, Harold felt the world slow, saw the bore of the rifle peer his way like a lazy, unfocused eye, and as he pulled with all he had on Job’s injured leg, the crack of the rifle and the man’s scream were simultaneous.
A Death in Eden Page 27
