I doubt we’ll get far at all, he thought with dismal clarity.
To his surprise he slept most of the day through. A thin choking swirl of dust awakened him. The dust devil wheeled across the top of his trench; he closed his eyes and curled up protectively. Driven sand needled his flesh and there was a great stinging furor but it passed quickly as the pint-sized whirlwind moved on. He scraped grit out of his eyes and spat dryly and then shot bolt upright in alarm because it just occurred to him the twister was veering west and the solar still lay in its path. The dust devil could pick up the plastic raincoat and carry it miles away.
He saw the plastic begin to flap but the twister careened away on its drunken aimless course; it passed twenty yards below Earle’s bunker and dipped its tail in the empty pit that would have contained Jay. Carrying sand and twigs it veered toward the flats, a great spiraling funnel, obscuring the sun for a time.
He emptied the sand out of his moccasins and laced them up and went to inspect the still for damage. A good deal of dust floated on the water but the cup was nearly full. Withered bits of cactus surrounded it. He peeled the raincoat back and laid it out dry-side down and rubbed his hands on its beaded surface until they were dripping; he tried to wash some of the grit off his face.
The dust devil made its weird dancing way out along the plain, leaving a tan haze smeared across the sky. The six-o’clock sun threw its shadow across rocks and bits of brush. The air in his nostrils felt close and heavy; the temperature still hung well above the hundred mark but it would dissipate quickly now. Mackenzie used a clay pot to scoop a few mouthfuls of water out of the cup; he drank slowly and savored it. On his haunches by the rim of the ravine he squinted out along the hills and knew they would find Jay up that way; the question in his mind was what condition they’d find him in.
The jerky was safe because they’d wrapped it; there’d been no need for a buzzard watch on the meat but he was a bit surprised he hadn’t been awakened at least once during the day by the flap of wings as a bird swept down to inspect the motionless humans in their graves. It gave him bleak pause to wonder whether the buzzards might have found in Jay a more likely source of carrion nourishment. He saw no birds in the sky but that signified nothing.
He tightened the drawstring of his breechclout and shoved the two knives under the belt to free his hands. The dust devil was blowing itself out against a hillside. He studied the folds and creases of the land, trying to think as Duggai would think, trying to spot the most likely place from which Duggai might observe them. You couldn’t expect anything as obliging as a telltale wink of sunlight off his telescope; Duggai knew better than that. He wouldn’t show himself inadvertently.
Rule out anything in a line with the sun’s arc; it would have put the sun in Duggai’s eyes, either evening or morning. He’d be to the north or south of them.
The slope along which they’d scattered their trenches lay in a rough northeast-to-southwest line; it wasn’t very steep but it couldn’t be seen from the south or southeast because the crest was above them there. So Duggai was somewhere along the northerly horizon.
Mackenzie looked north; his eye measured an arc from left to right, about 120 degrees to its limits—logic had narrowed the search to one-third of the visible horizon.
To the northwest the flat extended quite a few miles to the foothills of crumpled mountains. Ten or twelve miles of plain. Duggai needed something substantial enough to conceal the pickup truck. Bearing that in mind, Mackenzie ruled out the flats. It fairly well confined Duggai to the range of hills a mile away to the north and northeast—the area where Jay had disappeared. So Jay had walked right toward Duggai: right by him—or right into him.
The low hills were buckled into crazy involuted contours: the range looked like the surface of a brain. Whatever lay beyond it was concealed. Probably another bowl of flat scrub, foothills after that, mountains eventually—it was a guess but it conformed to the pattern of the district.
He kept prodding the image of the camper-pickup in his mind. Duggai would want to conceal it not only from the ground but also from the air. The camper was wide and high-bodied; a substantial bulk. You couldn’t simply camouflage it with brush—it would make an enormous heap out of proportion with the standard of shoulder-high scattered scrub. Anything that big would be spotted easily from the air; it would be conspicuous enough to draw attention even from twenty thousand feet.
How would I hide something that big?
It would require an excessive run of luck to find a spot under a rock overhang big enough to conceal the camper. The hills ran to patches of bare earth separated by strewn fields of giant boulders but there weren’t any dramatic cliffs or overhangs; it wasn’t that sort of terrain. You had to go pretty far east or north to find redrock mesa country. These were tan-gray boulders weathered round and smooth by erosion.
Well you could bury it, he thought, but he couldn’t see Duggai doing that amount of work or rendering the truck that inaccessible. In any case Duggai was undoubtedly living in the truck. The cab was air-conditioned. You couldn’t run it all day long but you could use it for temporary relief during the hottest stretches.
So it needed to be hidden but accessible. Probably in the shade. There were no trees big enough to cast worthwhile shade.
I think I know what I’d do. I’d back it up into a high-sided ravine. Wedge it close to the wall under the shadow of a big rock if I could find it. Sprinkle rocks across the roof. Plant a couple of bushes on the hood and the roof to break up the straight lines of it. Paint it with mud. Make it blend. But keep a clear track straight ahead so I could start the engine and bust right out of there full-speed if I had to.
It suggested the sort of place where Duggai probably had his camp.
It would be in a wash or gully—something big enough to serve as hiding place and road. It would be in the steep boulder-littered part of the range. And it would be near a point of high ground to which Duggai could walk: a point he could use for surveillance.
The range slanted away. The near end lay perhaps three-quarters of a mile distant. It sloped from there toward the north, slanting along a tangent—its sinuous spine ran roughly from northwest to southeast—and the far end where the range petered out into the flats lay due north of Mackenzie about three miles away. There were some high humps of ground up near that terminus but he ruled those out from Duggai’s point of view: too far away. Even with keen eyes and a good glass you couldn’t see much at three miles at night. Duggai would be closer than that so that he could keep close tabs on them.
By that reasoning he ruled out the left-hand half of the range and now he had narrowed Duggai’s probable location to a stretch of hills to the northeast in an arc measuring no more than a mile in width. He ticked off the criteria he’d previously postulated and concluded that there were only two summits in sight that could serve as Duggai’s observation posts. One was a flat-topped ridge with boulders scattered along its western slope like hogans in a Navajo compound. The other had the highest peak in the range; it had the shape of a human foot cut off jaggedly above the ankle—a very steep slope to the right where the heel would be and a much gentler slope to the left trailing off into an uneven tangle of toes. It stood perhaps a hundred feet higher than the hogan-village ridge but it was a quarter of a mile farther away; the ridge appeared to be not more than a mile from Mackenzie.
One of those two. But what if I’m wrong?
The sun dropped; it stood briefly balanced on a mountaintop, a great bloody disc against the pale sky. Mackenzie’s shadow lay far out along the earth like something in an El Greco and at the end of it Shirley’s head appeared, her cropped hair standing out in red tufts. She didn’t see Mackenzie against the sun until he stood up. His shadow covered her. She came down for water.
They ate a meager supper in twilight. Mackenzie built up a new fire. When it was burning he piled logs high on it. Earle said, “I thought we were leaving. What’s the fire for?”
“To give
Duggai something to look at. And give Jay something to home on.”
“I don’t understand. If we’re leaving—”
“I think we can intercept him. The only way he’s going to find his way back here is to follow the tracks he made when he left. When he comes in sight of the fire he’ll walk straight toward it. We’ll spot him.”
“Seems to me we could pass each other in the dark.”
Mackenzie shook his head. There were no clouds; there’d be light enough to see movement against the open ground. He said to Shirley, “Take a look at those hills. Just to my right you’ll see a flat-top ridge with big boulders down the left side. Got it?”
“I see it, but what—?”
“Now off to the left a bit there’s a peak that looks like a man’s foot. See that?”
“Yes.”
“I believe Duggai’s watching us from one of those two peaks. They’re the most likely places.”
“Good Lord, then that means Jay—”
“Probably walked right past him last night, yes.” Mackenzie went right on without allowing her time to think about it. “I want you both to memorize the shapes of those two peaks. When we clear out we’ll keep to low ground and try to keep things between us and those peaks. If you can see the peak it means Duggai can see you. Keep them out of your line of sight when we move.” He took a drink and passed the bowl to Earle. “Well start in the ravine where we’ve got the raincoat pit. We’ll bag the rest of the water and take it with us. We go up the ravine—it seems to notch itself right up to the top of this slope and it’ll give us concealment that far. We worm our way across the top and down the back of this little ridge. That’ll put us out of Duggai’s sight. We’ll cut northeast until the ridge flattens out and see where we go from there. If Jay turns up we’ll be able to see him out on the flats.”
“Won’t we be heading straight toward Duggai?”
“It can’t be helped as long as Jay’s out there. Once we’ve linked up with him we can divert away from Duggai.”
“But he’ll know we’re gone.”
“If we do it right he won’t know till morning. That may give us enough of a jump on him. If he has to wear himself out searching for us it’ll give us an advantage we didn’t have before.”
He saw Shirley’s troubled gaze move from point to point along the slope above him. She was visualizing the path. She turned slowly and looked out across the mile of flats between here and the hills. “Sam—what happens if Jay doesn’t come?”
“Then we go to him.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“We know where he disappeared into the hills. It was roughly midway between those two peaks. If he doesn’t turn up in the next few hours we’ll have to get around behind Duggai and pick up Jay’s tracks there. Follow them to wherever he is.”
“Won’t Duggai think of that too?”
“He will—but he may not think of it fast enough. The idea is to convince him that we’re still here. If he doesn’t get suspicious until morning we’ve got a good chance.”
“How do we do that?”
“We put on an act for him,” Mackenzie said.
18
First he made a show of setting his traplines along the jackrabbit run. What he actually did was to gather up the snares and loop them securely around the belt of his breechclout. From any distance it would look as if he were stringing new traps.
Shirley walked a hundred yards out onto the flats and peered out toward the hills: it was an act contrived to persuade Duggai that they were alarmed about Jay but in fact there was no fraud in it. After a while she returned to camp with a physical show of worried dejection.
They lifted Earle and set him down near the fire where he would be comfortable for the night. But Mackenzie made a point of interposing a heavy clump of fuzzy cholla cactus between Earle and the peaks. Setting Earle down he said quietly, “You’ll have to make your own way into the ravine. Drag yourself on your elbows. Take it easy—take all the time you want. And go directly that way. Keep the cactus between you and him. If you keep low enough he can’t see you. It’s only fifteen feet. Remember—keep in a straight line. Crawl to that catclaw, go straight under it, slide right down into the ravine. “Okay?”
“Wait—don’t go yet. Something I want to say.”
Mackenzie glanced at the fire. It would need more wood before they left. Shirley began to sponge Earle down with ash-soap. Earle drew a ragged breath and spoke with matter-of-fact control:
“I’ve been thinking about this. Had a long time to think it out. It makes sense, so hear me out and keep your protests to yourselves until I’m finished.”
Mackenzie knew what was coming but he only said, “Go ahead.”
“I’m not going to apologize for being a drag on you. It wasn’t my fault, this damn leg. But we haven’t even got anything to make a crutch out of. You’re going to have to carry me—maybe I can hobble along on one foot for a while but I still need somebody’s shoulder for support. Now you just said we’ll have to cross a lot of the ground pretty low. We’ll have to crouch and crawl. I’m not much good for that, am I. I mean it’s all right sliding ten or fifteen feet from here to that gully but that’s not the same thing as miles and miles.”
Shirley said, “Earle, for heaven’s sake we’re not going to leave you here.”
“I asked you to hear me out. Will you let me finish?”
Mackenzie said, “Go on, Earle.”
“I’ve seen how that plastic distillery contraption works. I assume if you made it smaller it would make less water, but it would still make water. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose you were to cut off one-quarter of the plastic and leave it with me. I’d have enough water to live on. There’s enough dried meat and saltbush and grass around here for me to stay alive for quite a while. I’ve got that pit in the ground to keep me out of the sun. I can live as long as you can—probably longer when it comes right down to it because I’ll be staying put while the rest of you are wearing yourselves out. The Good Lord’s provided for me so far—I think he’ll go on providing. Long enough for you to get out of this desert and get a rescue helicopter to me. Now Sam, that fire can’t burn for more than two or three hours after we leave it. Even if Duggai doesn’t come down here until morning he’s bound to come. He’ll see there’s nobody moving and he’ll come down to see if we’ve died or what. When he finds us missing he’ll start following our tracks. It won’t take him long to catch up, will it. But if I keep the fire burning and he sees me moving around in the morning he won’t have any reason to come down here.”
With baleful triumph Earle leaned his head back against the earth. “That’s what I wanted to say.”
Shirley touched Earle’s chest. She lifted her eyes to Mackenzie. “He may be right.”
“No. I’d thought of it but it won’t work.”
“Why on earth shouldn’t it work?”
“For one thing, Earle hasn’t got enough mobility. We’ve pretty much cleaned out the immediate areas for cactus and saltbush. He’d tear his leg to pieces dragging himself across this ground gathering food. For another thing there isn’t that much meat. Even if we left him all we’ve got it wouldn’t do for more than three or four days—and we won’t be out of here that fast. But the main thing’s Duggai. He’s got a telescope on that rifle. He may have binoculars too. He’ll see it’s only Earle down here. He’ll wonder what’s happened to you and me. When we don’t turn up he’ll come down for a look. He’ll find Earl here alone and I imagine he’d kill Earle before he came looking for us.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Earle. I’m grateful for the offer.”
Shirley was staring off into the night—the dark mass of the hills. Mackenzie had been watching them for the past half hour hoping to see Jay but nothing stirred out there.
Earle said, “Survival of the fittest, Sam. Isn’t it better that he kills one of us than all of us?”
“I don’t think you
can quantify that kind of thing,” Mackenzie said. “I want us all to live.”
“I still think my idea gives us the best chance of that.”
Shirley said, “What if I cast my vote with Earle? It’s two against one then.” She regarded Earle gravely.
Mackenzie bit a chapped shred off his lip. “I told you. I’m not putting things to a vote.”
She said, “There’s another alternative, you know.”
Earle looked up. “Let’s hear it.”
“I could stay with Earle.”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“It’s the sensible solution, Sam. You know it is.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind.”
“He’ll see the two of us here. If he notices you’re gone he’ll think you’ve only gone looking for Jay. It can give you and Jay time to reach the highway and get help for us.”
“How long do you think he’d stay fooled?”
“Sam, anything’s a risk.”
He fought it bitterly. “You’re talking about suicide.”
“I’m not and you know it. I’m trying to give all of us the best chance. Sam—we don’t know if Jay’s alive or dead. He may be injured. He’s already been out there through the heat of one day. We’ve got to find him as fast as we can—and you know Earle’s right, we can’t move quickly if he goes with us. There’s only one choice. You go alone—find Jay, do what you can for him, take him with you if he’s able. Get to the highway. Isn’t that really the only thing we’ve got left?”
“And suppose Duggai ambushes me. Where does that leave you?”
“No worse off than we are anyway.” She scratched her scalp violently. “You can’t go by that—you can’t decide on the basis of suppositions. What if Duggai comes down here now and shoots us all? The only thing we know is we’ve got to make the best of what we have. Earle’s right. You’ve taught us how to stay alive here. We can do it as long as we have to. The only thing Earle can’t do is move. Now you’ve got to be sensible.”
Fear in a Handful of Dust Page 13
