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Mr. Kanavel must've been shocked at the genuine joy with which his rambling grievance was met. The joy was shortlived. If Craig's vehicle was there, then Craig was lost or injured in the Patterson Hills. That meant Craig Eastern was dead. They had failed him.
A
Paul put in a call to the El Paso Police Department and Betsy McLeod was dispatched back to Guadalupe. Paul gave the phone to Christina to provide the police with exact directions to Frank Kanavel's ranch. The rangers would meet her at the missing man's vehicle.
As they left the Administration building, A
While A
Kanavel met them at the gate to his ranch. He'd been filled in on the particulars and his growling complaints had been replaced with genuine concern. In the deserts of Texas, to survive, one saved one's fellow man, then questioned him and hanged him later if the answers were wrong.
Craig's car was parked along the boundary fence. Looking at the Pattersons a couple of miles distant, it was easy to guess the direction he had probably taken.
Across the flats, to where the desert began to wrinkle back on itself, mesquite and ocatillo etched the arid soil with dusty green. Low cacti, invisible at that distance, replaced the greenery as the hills folded into sharp ridges and ravines. The Pattersons were scattered in a pattern clear only to geologists and the gods. To anyone else they formed a hell of a maze.
One wash cut deep enough to erode a valley into the flank of a tall hill. Eastern would've walked up that wash, A
Paul radioed the base station. "Seven-two-five," Christina's voice replied. A moment's checking discovered Betsy and Nosy less than half an hour from Kanavel's.
They waited.
The policewoman and Harland with the horses arrived at the same time.
Betsy chose to walk. Paul climbed on Pesky, A
Nosy never hesitated. So great was her dedication, even in canvas booties, her tongue and ears flopping, she didn't appear ridiculous. Betsy followed behind the dog. Six or seven yards back, so they wouldn't interfere, rode A
The golden retriever led them across the flatlands toward the wash. Under Betsy's direction, the dog was made to stop and drink every five or ten minutes.
The sun was merciless. A
The horses plodded on with the fatalism of all slave races.
The dry wash provided no relief: no breeze, no shade, only the hard light of the sun reflected back from three sides. A
The policewoman, though game, was unused to the rigors of backcountry desert travel. Paul was the first to notice she was flagging. Under flushed cheekbones, her skin was slightly pale. In her concern for the dog, she wasn't drinking enough or pacing herself.
At the District Ranger's insistence, she climbed onto Jill's back and directed Nosy from there.
A mile and a half in, the canyon petered out. A hill of cactus and scree rose up at a forty-five- or fifty-degree angle above them. They dismounted and hobbled the stock. Betsy leashed Nosy so she wouldn't go over the crest and out of sight. Fa
Topping the hill first, A
The hill was round on top and sloped steeply away on all sides like the hump of a camel. Opposite from where she stood, about a quarter of the way down, a web of desert joined this hump to the next hump over. The bridge of land flattened out along the spine, then dropped off on either side into deep ravines.
A
Paul puffed up beside her, stood a moment, then looked back down. Watching out for other people seemed second nature to him. A
A
"There," Paul said.
A
"There," he said again.
Feeling a fool, A
"At least we know for sure he was here," Paul said. From the camp they would follow scent trails out. At the end of one of them Nosy would find a corpse.
"Craig!" Paul called. Neither of them expected an answer.
The District Ranger started toward the tent and A
"Craig!" Paul called again, but A
Alert for anything that was not as it should be, she walked over to the tent and reached for the zipper on the flap. As her thumb and finger pinched the hot metal of the pull, she heard the tiniest of sounds; a mere whispered rustling. It froze her in her tracks.
"What?" Paul demanded.
Afraid even to shake her head, A
"What is it?" he asked again and, when she didn't answer, he too fell into a listening attitude. Gravel crunched: Betsy and Harland topping the hill. The desert creaked faintly in the heat. Nosy's tongue slopped over her paw. Then A
Seeing a rattlesnake was one thing. Hearing one and not knowing where it was, was another altogether.
Keeping absolutely still, holding her now slightly comic stoop, she searched the area around her feet. The rattling subsided but she was not relieved. The sound had not crept away on a slither of sand and scale, it had stopped. The snake was still there. A