Relentless

The man was bending over him, stripping off a glove, laying his fingers behind Walker’s jaw hinge. Walker felt his own pulse beat against the man’s hard fingers, and he heard the man’s voice—not the Major’s voice, not any voice he’d ever heard before: “You’ll be all right. Come on.” And the man was picking him up under the arms, lifting him onto his feet.

11

At first he thought it was a cave they dragged him into but when he looked around he saw it wasn’t quite that. A rock cliff, a slight overhang, an improvised lean-to of dead logs and saddles piled cleverly to form a kind of triangular shelter. The wind was not canceled, but at least it was reduced. Two men squatted inside; the woman went in and crowded between them for warmth and the man who was dragging Walker pushed him inside and he collapsed on the ground, drawing his knees up foetally.

The woman was crying. “Look at me. I can’t stop.”

“Take it easy, Mrs. Lansford.”

Walker felt dizzy; he couldn’t breathe. The man who had dragged him inside turned and Walker glimpsed his face. He looked like an Indian.

The others were huddled together watching him. The Indian said, “Vickers, your horse is just about done anyway. Bring him here.”

“What for?”

“Do it.”

And one of the men got up with a grunt and went out, stepping across Walker. The Indian was kneeling beside him again and began to slap his cheeks. Walker tried to jerk his head away but the Indian kept slapping him. “Got to get your circulation going, man. Don’t fight me.”

His cheeks began to sting dully. The woman said, “There’s no way to build a fire?”

“Not till the wind lets up.”

The other man came into sight leading a horse that was limping badly where balls of ice had formed in its hoofs.

The Indian went back into the shelter and reappeared with a rifle and Walker’s face crumpled. The Indian stood up and shot the animal in the head.

The horse fell right beside Walker and the Indian put the rifle away and came out again with a hunting knife. Faint streaks of light flashed fragmentarily from the blade when it moved toward the horse and plunged in, opened a great slit in the dead horse’s belly. The Indian methodically gutted the horse, throwing the insides away in the wind, and the smell of escaping gases made Walker turn his face away. He began to lose consciousness, not unpleasantly; sleep drifted vaguely into his mind and somehow his concentration focused on the numbness of his bad tooth.

They were shaking him violently. He tried to push them away but they kept shaking him and finally he cursed thickly and opened his eyes.

The Indian said, “Come on—get inside.”

“Inside what?”

The Indian began to tug him toward the dead horse. He saw a gaping maw: flap of hide folded back, several ribs torn away. “Inside,” the Indian said. “Pull it shut over you. It’s going to stink like hell but it’ll get you warm, keep you thawed out.”

The smell nauseated him. The woman was kneeling beside him. Her slender fingers reached out. “Thank you.” Eyes full of concern.

The Indian shoved him into the carcass. The hide flapped down, closing him in stinking warm darkness. The heat enveloped him and there was no wind. He sagged against the sticky wetness of his black cavern and gagged on the stench. He felt an insistent hammering behind his eyes; the beat of his heart was loud; needle pricks quivered the flesh of his hands and feet and face, and sleep rolled his head against the warm rib cage of the dead horse.

CHAPTER

7

1

Watchman batted his hands together and thrust them under his armpits and squeezed into the lean-to. The woman was lifting the mess-kit cup of instant coffee off the Sterno. She sucked at it and passed it on to Buck Stevens and said to Watchman, “Do you charge extra for the coffee or does it come with the rescue service?”

“The coffee’s free. So’s the weather.”

“Do you think he’ll be all right?”

“He’ll be fine.” Maybe a touch of frostbite, but not serious. The temperature wasn’t all that low; it was the wind effect that seemed to drive it down. Without shelter you could die out there but the pilot would pull through now.

Paul Vickers was blowing his nose, giving Mrs. Lansford a bloodshot look. He was taking the weather badly. He had lost his hat in the blow and his hair stood out in wild disorder. “I’d like to know what really happened up there—why this man helped you get away. What he expected to get out of it.”

“Maybe he found a streak of humanity in him.” Mrs. Lansford said it a bit sharply, as if in rebuke.

“I don’t see that. I don’t want to put down your gratitude to the man, Mrs. Lansford, but if he thinks that will get him off he’s mistaken. Two men have been murdered—by this man and his friends.”

“I don’t think they’re his friends.”

“Then why was he with them?”

Buck Stevens stirred in the back of the shelter. “Can’t you leave her alone? Why don’t you just shut up for a while?”

Vickers’ head whipped around. It was the first time the rookie had talked back to him and it seemed to catch him off guard: he didn’t know whether to bluster or sneer or ignore it. He twisted his gloved knuckles, looking cranky.

Watchman’s voice was rusty, tired; it had been a bad day for them all. “Let’s all settle down and try to get some rest.”

Vickers turned to him. “They’re right up the mountain there.”

“Then go get’em, tiger.”

“I know my limits, Trooper. I couldn’t find that cabin in this storm to save my life. But you could.”

“Look at your watch, Vickers.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“The sun’s going down. Another half hour and what little light we’ve got will be gone. We’re not going anywhere for a while—neither are they.”

2

It had to be the fire-lookout station they were heading for; Watchman had known that by midmorning, before the blow had hit, following the tracks and seeing which way they were heading. They were boxing themselves into a series of step-up mountain passes that could only lead them toward the ranger cabin and once he had determined that much it had become u

The fugitives most likely believed they had left pursuit far behind. If they had reached the shack at all it could be assumed they wouldn’t leave it again before the storm blew over: its comfort would be too compelling and there was nothing outside except the risk of dying in the snow.

Of course there was a good chance they had never reached the cabin. Maybe they had got separated in all this madness and were perishing one by one on the exposed flanks of the mountains. Maybe they had given up their try at the summit and doubled back, passing their pursuers unseen in the wheeling murk, heading back down toward the plain. But if they had done that they would run into police lines sooner or later and Watchman doubted they had tried that; when they hadn’t fallen for the bonfire invitation he’d set by the abandoned trucks he’d accepted the idea that the fugitives were well led by a man confident of his wilderness skills.