Fear in a Handful of Dust

“I can’t. I just can’t any more.” Her eyes came up; her mouth worked—she was screaming soundlessly. Arms dangling, she cut a shabby hunched figure.

“Do it. Stay alive. Keep them alive until I get back.”

“It’s no use.”

“Do it.” He walked away from her.

He found his way to the dugout where Earle had interred himself. Earle had hiked himself up by his hands and sat on the rim of the pit with his bad leg outstretched along the ground. Somehow he lived. The fair skin was mottled with open sores; the small mouth was cracked away from the teeth; loose flesh hung without resilience from throat and belly and arms; yet he looked upon Mackenzie with recognition.

“Want you to stay alive, Earle.”

“It’s God’s will, I believe.”

“That’s right—that’s right. Maybe you can help Shirley build a fire.”

“Fire. Yes.”

“Wait for me,” Mackenzie said. “I’ll come back.” Then he shuffled out of the camp with his eyes fixed on the summit where Duggai lived.

28

He went toward the hills straight up: Duggai would know anyway. Duggai would see him coming no matter which way he came. Duggai saw everything. There was no point trying to fool him. You couldn’t fool the mountain; you could only climb it.

Purpose drove him. His feet plodded uphill and down. This first leg had to be crossed gently in order to conserve fuel for the climb. He knew quite precisely how much fuel was left in the machinery. He knew it was enough.

He struck the hills and began to climb. He would come to a steep canyon and he would put a foot up on a rock and place both hands on the knee and thrust himself upright. Then the other foot onto a higher foothold and another boost up. Occasionally he had to descend before he could climb again.

The shadows were tricky but the moon helped. Once he heard the rustle of something that might have been a rattlesnake. He diverted around the sound and proceeded, forgetting it instantly.

Behind him he saw the twinkle of a tiny fire in the camp. Perhaps it would hold Duggai’s attention or some part of it. In any case it hardly mattered. He’d wanted the fire mainly for his own purposes: while it burned it meant they were alive down there. It justified his progress up the mountain.

Now he needed to summon what cleverness he had left. It wouldn’t do to stumble straight into Duggai’s lair. Duggai would only wire him up and drive him back down to the desert and leave him there again. He knew that now. Duggai wouldn’t shoot him unless he left Duggai no alternative. The game had to be played all the way to the end by the rules that Duggai’s demons had prescribed. It was obvious that the singleminded obsession had cleared everything else from Duggai’s consideration.

My purpose and his are almost the same. But then that was almost always true of mortal enemies.

This is what I should have done in the first place.

But up to now it hadn’t made sense. Duggai was a soldier trained to kill. Mackenzie was not a fighting man.

But he was a hunter. The silversmith had trained a hunter.

As he climbed higher in the range the terrain became more rocky. He began to slip. He had to discard the footpads. Now he climbed with bare feet and his soles soon began to bleed again.

Everything wasted but his will, Mackenzie made a few yards’ progress and had to stop, then a few more yards and another halt. The night wore on. But the top wasn’t far now—two hundred yards, perhaps less. He was on the instep of the mountainous foot, going up the open gentle slope of it. He went from boulder to boulder, trying to keep abutments between him and the top, trying to stay in shadow.

Impulse and caution chased each other elusively through the remains of his rattled mind. There was the raging urge to go in straight up: challenge the monster in the open, fight it out, answer Duggai’s vast strength with a greater strength of his own—the strength of his fury.

But he would lose that way. Beyond doubt. It required strategy: stealth.

Now Duggai knows I’m up here batting around someplace. He must have seen me come into the hills.

And he knows I can’t move very fast and I’m not very strong.

He’s expecting me. He’s too smart to come down looking for me because he won’t leave the truck unguarded. Even if he leaves it locked I might get it open. I might know how to wire up the starter and drive it without the key. So he’s got to stay with the truck to keep me from stealing it.

He’ll hang around the truck and when I don’t turn up by daylight he’ll wonder whether I passed out in the rocks or whether I’m creeping up to drop a boulder on his head. He’ll worry a little. Finally he’ll figure out the best way to handle it. What he’ll do, he’ll get in the truck and drive down the back of the range out through the desert, out to the water hole and he’ll spend the rest of the day out there taking a bath and keeping himself cool. Sure. Let me fry up here in these rocks.

But right now he’s still up there with one eye on the truck and the other eye on the rocks around him. Maybe he’s even sitting inside the truck.

Only the one way to handle it, for sure. I hope I’ve got the fuel for it. It’s a God damn long walk.

The yucca plant had broad leaves like those of a giant artichoke. Each leaf was the size of a man’s forearm. The edges were serrated with spines.

He broke off eight big leaves and rubbed their edges against the coarse surface of a boulder until he had removed the spines. Again he made lashings of tensile bark. Again he had shoes: yucca-leaf soles layered four leaves thick. They lasted, amazingly, clear to the bottom of the range before they shredded away. Then he made footpads from creosote as he had done before—the yucca did not grow down here—and he continued. One foot before the other: one measured advancement after the last: goal and purpose fixed precisely in the dwindling bright core of his consciousness.

Nearly dawn and he had to hurry. He’d intercepted the game trail a while ago; he’d followed it past the point where he’d found Jay in the pit. The holes were still there. The game trail took him a pace at a time through the ravine where they’d first seen the javelina pack.

When the footpads wore away this time he went on barefoot.

He kept listening for the sound of the truck. If it came now he was lost.

When he dug the pit he broke off a half-dead catclaw bush near the ground—it was brittle enough to give way. He climbed down into the pit and placed the bush above him across the opening to conceal it.

The light grew and he watched the sky through the interlaced branches. He licked fresh water—from the water hole—off his shriveled lips and let his eyes drift shut. Suspended in unthinking existence he listened to the wind. The cold damp earth enveloped him. Possibly he would not be able to rise from it. He was beyond worrying about that. He would do what he could; no one could ask more than that of him.

But he thought, I have not yet failed.

There was lucidity enough in his mind for thoughts that ranged far beyond his body and the hole in which he lay buried. Without willing it he speculated that there might be a future. He rated the chances at about one in a hundred but the possibility was there and he had nothing else to think about and he couldn’t afford to sleep because he had to listen for Duggai.

Thoughts jazzed like butterflies and he couldn’t hold onto them. He wondered if he would return to the mountain station and find the dog waiting. He pictured the fire tower and the table of solitaire cards. If I have a chance, if I live, will I go back to that?

He’d go back, if only to find out about the dog, but would he stay?

The sensible thing to do would be to settle in the middle of the biggest city he could find and surrender to the comforts of civilization. A tap that provided water whenever you wanted it. A refrigerator with an automatic device that made ice cubes endlessly. Air conditioning. Bedsheets on a king-size mattress. Butter-soft steaks from a butcher’s frigid meat-storage room. An air-conditioned car with a thermos of water kept freshly filled at all times. A woman to ease his nights and make inconsequential talk: someone with whom he’d never again have to pry straight through to the rock bottom of existence. The freedom to be trivial, the luxury to take comfort for granted.