Страница 41 из 49
“That soon?”
“We’ve covered at least twenty-five miles since we left camp. A lot better than I expected. It may not be much more than fifteen, twenty more miles.”
It perked Jay up. When they continued Mackenzie saw him searching the plains ahead for headlights.
Toward morning the earth began to tilt; they faced a gradual upward climb. It was a shallow slope but it extended miles and they could see nothing beyond it but sky.
The climb sapped them; they had to stop every quarter hour, then every ten minutes.
“Maybe we should call it a night?”
“I want to see what’s on the far side.”
“You’re stumbling like a drunk, Sam.”
“So are you.”
“If we burn ourselves out we won’t get far tomorrow night.”
“Earle needs help as fast as we can get it to him.”
“All right. You know best.”
Dawn, then daylight. He’d long since stopped counting the days of the ordeal. The earth ran uphill endlessly in front of them: they would reach something that ought to be the top but beyond it they would find a shallow dip and then more climb. The horizon was never more than a few hundred yards away. It was as if the demons were putting them to the ultimate test of patience and endurance.
“It’s getting hot.…”
“Keep going.”
They must have climbed at least a thousand feet, he thought. A wind soughed across the desert; dust rose into his teeth. Twice Jay spoke to him and went unheard. Finally Jay struggled around in front of him, flapping both arms in his consternation. “We’ve got to stop. We’ll broil.”
“All right. The top of that rise right there—we’ll stop there.”
“No farther,” Jay warned.
“No farther.” His unfeeling feet propelled him toward the top. Long steady climb: Jay scuttled behind him, hands on knees to thrust against the tilt of the earth, knees splaying every which way. Mackenzie switched the water bag from right hand to left hand. He could feel the skin frying on his back: his mind must have gone away for a while—he didn’t remember the past two hours. It had been dawn, sunrise, then abruptly it was midmorning. Jay was right. We ought to stop right here. We’ll kill ourselves.
But he walked. Just to the top there.…
Agonizing to walk. But the top was in sight—he homed on the tufted flagpole stalk of a century plant. That’s as far as we go. A hundred feet, seventy-five, fifty.
Beyond the top was a trough that ran crosswise to their course: it was half a mile across; beyond it another ridge rippled right to left.
But there was a gap through the ridge and he could see the long dry plains beyond. This was indeed the top.
And far out across that desert he saw an object crawling at steady speed. A tiny rectangle rolling eastward.
“Look.”
“What—where?”
Mackenzie’s arm lifted, trembling. He sighted along his extended finger. “That’s a truck.”
“The highway.”
They stared for the longest time. The truck disappeared behind a roll of ground. Something winked then—a flicker of painful light that appeared and disappeared along a westward trajectory. Sunlight against a car’s rear window. Then behind it another.
“Sam—”
“Forget it. We’ll dig in here.”
“But the highway.…”
“That’s twenty miles away.”
“But we’ll make it tonight, right?”
“Bet your ass we will.”
They gri
He tried to dig in the shade of a bush but the roots stopped him and he kept having to slope the pit farther out until the sun again cooked his back but he closed his mind against it and kept clawing earth out of the hole: sunburn could be treated.
“That’s got to be deep enough.”
“No. At least another six inches. You don’t want to die this close to the end.”
“I can’t even pick up this rock anymore.”
“Dig, damn you.”
Eventually the pits were done to his satisfaction and the bottoms were invitingly damp. They sat mostly in shade now; they portioned out meat and salt and finally a good deal of water. It left only a couple of quarts in the bag but that would do—they’d drop the bag somewhere along the downslope and cover the last few hours without water. They wouldn’t need to carry anything on the last lap.
He put a pebble on his tongue and smiled. Jay laughed aloud in response. The taste of joy overcame Mackenzie’s weariness: it ran sweet and strong through his veins.
“By damn.” It was an expression his father the silversmith had used. “By damn, Jay.”
“Shouldn’t we get some sleep?”
“Aeah. Go ahead, stretch out. I’ll just have one look down the backtrail.”
It was only an excuse: he was too nervy to remain still—he’d passed beyond fatigue into jittery alertness. He splashed a handful of water over the back of his neck and felt it run deliciously down his spine. Then he climbed out on doddering legs and limped back past the maguey stalk and crouched in a catclaw’s futile shade to look back the way they’d come and try to estimate the distance they’d covered.
They were on high ground here and he had a panorama before him: where the sky touched the earth it was perhaps as much as forty miles away. None of it looked familiar: they’d never looked at any of it from this angle. He saw going down the hill the ragged faint imprint of their foot tracks. The tan-gray slope ran down toward a bottom four or five miles away, tiered ridge below tiered ridge. Then the flats and the serrates of indigo mountains in random crumpled piles. The sky seemed very thin. He counted five vultures above a rock cairn out to the west eight or ten miles from him.
He was looking south toward the mountain clumps; he was thinking about Shirley. Just hold on—another twenty-four hours we’ll have you out. Hold on.
He’d won. He knew it with a sense of savage victory.
He got up to return to the dugouts. As he began to turn away he saw in the far southern distance a hint of risen dust.
He looked away, looked again and it was still there.
He gaped at it, squinting; shaded his eyes with his palm. Dust devil? Windstorm?
It was miles away. But it came straight toward him.
It was Duggai’s truck.
25
He scuttled back to the pits.
From a half sleep Jay roused himself irritably. “What?”
Mackenzie had only to point to the south. His voice broke: “Duggai.”
Jay boiled out of his pit and stood in the hard sun staring at the plume of advancing dust.
Jay’s eyes windowed his terror. “What can we do?”
“Not much.”
“We can hide.” Jay dived back into the pit. “Maybe he won’t see us. Maybe he’ll go right by.”
“He’s following our tracks, Jay. They lead right here. They stop here.”
“For God’s sake we’ve got to do something.”
Mackenzie’s toes curled inside his moccasins. Everything ran out of him: he felt exposed, vulnerable, weak of soul.
“Sam, we can’t just give up.”
“Ambush him,” Mackenzie muttered; he felt a scalp-tingling madness. “Ambush him.”
“With what?”
“Give me your knife.”
Armed with two knives he straightened up and looked down the slope. The truck was out of sight now behind a ridge near the bottom but the dust still hung in its wake.
“Stay here. Distract him when he comes. When he gets out of the truck I’ll jump him from behind.” He knew it wouldn’t work but you couldn’t always go by that: he had to try.
He backed away from the pits and with each step he swept his moccasin back and forth to smooth out the tracks. He made his way to the nearest object that gave enough shadow to conceal him: a creosote bush four feet high. It was ten yards from the dugouts.
Over his shoulder he looked through the notch in the ridge and saw a string of cars pass across the horizon.
That’s how close we got.