Out the window, rock formations lined the walls like shelved books. We passed a few million years of history and a couple of branching side canyons, and when we’d plunged still deeper into the geological record and come to the gray and orange banded dolomites of the Bonanza King formation, I stopped the car.
We got out. Wicked hot but the canyon walls threw shade and my bones were no longer rattling. I felt, suddenly, giddy. “Hey pardner,” I said, “you fixin to rustle up a piece of that geology?” Walter chuckled. As he opened the field kit and laid out his tools, he broke into song: “In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine…” I joined in. “Lived a miner, forty-niner, and his daughter Clementine.”
He knew all the verses. We filled our specimen dishes, exhausting Clementine.
A coyote screamed.
I was casting about for a coyote tune — and the thought was forming that it’s too hot and too early for coyotes — when Walter said, “Someone’s in trouble.”
We went rigid, listening.
It came again, unmistakable this time. Help.
The thought was forming that it’s Roy Jardine up there somewhere — stewing in his vat of radionuclides and hearing us — but the cry was high-pitched and he surely wasn’t looking to be found.
Help, again, urgent.
The sound came from above. Over the rim into the next side canyon? Sound in a canyon is a tricky thing.
“Which way?” Walter said.
“I don’t know. I don’t like it.” I got my cell and dialed Soliano. Roaming. Nothing. In a cavern in a canyon, got no service for my phone. The cry came again. Walter tried his phone, which proved as useless as mine.
Help. A scream.
Walter yelled back, then started downcanyon.
I stopped him. “What are you doing?”
“Let’s try that side canyon.”
“Okay, let’s drive.”
“We can’t drive up that side canyon, Cassie.”
“I don’t like it.”
He said, “What if it’s snakebite?”
Lord. Snakebite. Walter’s only real fear. The canyon floor was sparsely haired with sage. Do sidewinders hole up in sage? I got the first aid pouch from our field kit, grabbed a water bottle, and we started downcanyon.
I recalled two side canyons, one branching off in each direction. We rounded a bend and came to the fork. We yelled, and waited for the cry that could not be pinpointed. Silence, now. Walter plunged into the north canyon. I followed. The canyon was narrow, sage climbing its slopes, and as we gained elevation it steepened and twisted. We yelled, rounding every twist. All I heard in reply was blood pounding in my ears.
Walter stumbled. I caught his arm. “Slow down.”
He didn’t, but it didn’t much matter because within a few minutes the canyon dead-ended in a wall of trilobite-speckled shale. Walter’s face was beet red. Mine felt on fire. I drank then passed the water bottle to him. His hands shook. I thought, there’s things worse than snakebite. There’s the mini-strokes, which have hit Walter twice these past two years, numbing his legs and slurring his speech, making him ask silly questions. He said, now, “Shall we go?” which was not in the least a silly question.
We retraced our route in silence.
In the main canyon, Walter glanced at the south-branching fork.
“We’re going back,” I said, “and turning the car around and when we get onto the fan we’ll try the cell again, and if it doesn’t have service we’ll drive all the way into Furnace Creek and find a ranger.”
“All right.” His voice was dry as sandpaper.
We trudged upcanyon, my worry deepening. Snakes, strokes, surprises.
I thought, there’s hundreds of old mines in Death Valley so what’s the chance the first canyon on our list is the right one? Tiny, minuscule. Point oh five percent.
We rounded the bend and I saw that I was wrong.
16
The hood was up on the Blazer and the doors were open. It looked like the car had come into the canyon for a tuneup. But the mechanic was a vandal.
Our things littered the ground. Field kit, packs, cell phones, maps, my purse. Stomped, smashed, dumped, ripped. Our gallon-jugs of water were knifed open. The soil was still wet.
Walter bent over the exposed engine. “Wires are cut.” Voice drier than sandpaper.
There came a sound, somewhere downcanyon, of an engine.
I hissed “she carries a shotgun” and we tumbled into the Blazer. I turned the ignition key. Nothing. We flattened ourselves onto the hot vinyl seats.
“She?” Walter whispered.
At last, it became too hot to breathe.
Seventeen minutes gone, by my watch. “Shall we?” I said.
Walter nodded.
We sat up. Nothing moved outside. We opened the doors, and that movement did not draw gunfire. We got out, wobbly. We stumbled to the wedge of shade cast by the canyon wall and collapsed on the baking ground.
I offered water.
Walter shook his head. The quart bottle was half-empty.
I said, “Does us no good in the bottle.” Don’t argue, old man. It’s water in the body that’ll keep us alive.
In the end, we drank.
Ten more minutes gone. I thought about moving.
Walter whispered, “Why do you think it was her?”
“Purse.” My voice, like his, was sandpaper.
We studied the purse, lying beside the front tire. Walter gave it to me last Christmas — a creamy leather backpack purse, feminine and practical. Now it was gutted from flap to bottom, contents dumped.
Walter said, “Could have been Jardine.”
“Look at my compact.”
Shattered, the pressed powder cratered. My face prickled, where she’d run her wet finger. Ever wear makeup? It hadn’t got that personal, with Jardine. Had it?
Walter said, “The compact could simply have broken.”
“Shit,” I said. “Shit.”
The back seat was empty. I went cold in the overheated air. The perp had taken the ice chest, which meant the perp knew what our business was. And the only people who knew what was in the ice chest were the people at the talc mine. Nearly everyone at the mine knew because we’d spouted off about fender soils and maps and following the trail of Jardine’s offroader.
“He has what he wants,” Walter said. “He’ll leave us alone now.”
“He?”
“Or she. Take your pick.”
“She,” I said. For now.
I made an inventory. We had less than a third of a quart of water. We had a granola bar that had dropped under the seat, the first-aid kit, stuff from the violated field kit — scalpels and tweezers seeming the most useful. I was thankful that we’d left the valuable equipment, the spectrometers and the scopes, in Scotty’s van.
Walter picked through the kit. “My knife’s gone.” He stared at the sliced water jugs, and then the exposed engine where the wires were cut. With his knife.
We returned to the shade and slumped against the wall.
Minutes passed, then Walter spoke. “We’re vulnerable here.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Take another side canyon,” he said. “Find a place to hide.”
“How long?”
“Until we can walk out under cover of darkness.” He wetted his cracked lips. “Until it’s not so damnably hot.”