He caught me solidly across the back of the skull and the patchwork quilt on the bed dazzled into kaleidoscopic fragments in my glazing eyes as I went down.
Chapter Ten
When I woke up it was pretty clear that I wasn’t intended to be a hostage, but a corpse.
The cabin was full of smoke, and small flames rose in a long uneven swathe across the floor. I couldn’t remember anything at first. Looked at the scene muzzily, half sitting up, my head dizzy and splitting with pain. The Clives, I thought. They’d emptied the whole tub of pep out into a straggling line, and set it alight. Sawdust and diesel oil burning slowly and billowing out unbreathable gases.
They’d laid me against the stove so that it would seem as if I’d fallen and hit my head on it. The empty pep tin rolled away from my foot as I tried to get up, and my hand brushed against a cigarette and a book of matches.
Most deaths in fires weren’t caused by burns but by asphyxia. The cabin wouldn’t burn down from fire on the floorboards: fire never burnt downwards, only up. The Clives were staging my exit for no better motive than revenge. And as an accident it was one of their poorer efforts.
Having staggered its way through those useless random thoughts, my brain cleared enough for me to decide it was high time to move if I was going to do anything about living. And I supposed I would have to.
I stumbled on to my feet, pulled the quilt off one of the beds, tottered into the bathroom with it and soaked it under the taps in the bath. Smoke was well down in my lungs, thick and choking. It’s bloody stupid, I thought groggily, it’s damn bloody stupid that boy-and-girl keep trying to shove me where I want to go, and I keep trying not to let them. Ridiculous. Ridiculous...
I found myself on my knees, half unconscious. The bath water still running. Pulled myself up a little, hauled out the dripping quilt, flung it over the worst of the fire. Silly, I thought. Much better to go out of the door. Tried that. Damn thing was stuck.
Window, then. Stuck.
Wrapped my hand in the curtain and pushed it through one of the panes of glass. Some air came in. The insect screen stopped more.
Down on my knees again. Terribly dizzy. A black hell in my head. Smelt the quilt burning, lifted it off one lot of fire, and on to the next. Damped it all out into a smelly black faintly smouldering path and felt old and weak from too much scrambling up and down mountains and deeply ill from the crash on the brain and too much smoke.
Opened the front of the fat black stove. Shapleigh, it said. Gradually the smoke began to clear away up its stackpipe while I lay in a poor state beside the cabin door and breathed the fresh air trickling in underneath.
Several eras later I stopped feeling like morgue material and the hammer in my head died to a brutal aching throb. I began to wonder how long it would be before Matt and Yola returned to make their horrified discovery of my death, and wearily decided it was time for action.
I stood up slowly and leaned against the door. They’d fastened it somehow from the outside, in spite of there being no lock: and it was simple enough to see when one’s eyes weren’t filled with smoke. The screen door opened outwards, the wooden door inwards. A small hook leading in through the latch was holding the two together. I pushed it up, and it slid away as the inner door opened.
My wallet lay on the table, not in my pocket. They’d been looking. Nothing for them to find, except their own photograph. They’d taken that. But they hadn’t searched very far: the Luger was still in its holster at my back, under my outhanging shirt. I checked the magazine — still loaded — and put it back in place.
The only other thing I really wanted to take with me was my radio. I squashed down its extended antenna aerial and shoved it into my old suitcase on top of the things I’d packed before breakfast. Then, picking it up and fighting down the whirling chaos which resulted, I opened the screen door. Behind me the cabin lay in a singed shambles. Ahead, the comparatively short walk to the car seemed a marathon.
I might have made it in one if I hadn’t felt any worse: but at the end of the woodland track, when all that was left to go was the open expanse of the car park, a wave of clammy sweating faintness seethed through me and I dropped the suitcase and leaned against a tree, waiting weakly for it to pass.
Yola came out of the kitchen door and saw me. Her mouth fell open, then she turned on her heel and dived back into the ranch house. For the rifle. Or for Matt. My hand closed on the pistol at my back, but I was very loath to use it. Too many explanations to authority would be involved, and I preferred to avoid them at this stage.
‘Hello,’ said a cheerful voice behind me. ‘We thought you’d gone ages ago.’
I turned my wonky head and let my hand fall away from the gun. Mickey and Samantha were coming down the track from the branch which led to the Wilkersons’ cabin.
‘And I thought,’ I said, ‘that you’d gone riding.’
‘The wranglers haven’t brought in enough horses,’ Mickey explained sadly.
‘Are you sick or something?’ asked his sister, coming to a halt and staring up into my face.
‘A bit,’ I admitted. ‘I’d be awfully glad if you’d carry my suitcase for me, across to that black car.’
‘Sure,’ said Mickey importantly, and Samantha took my hand in motherly solicitude. With one child at each side I completed the trip.
It was the rifle Yola fetched. She stood with it stiffly in her hands and watched the children put the suitcase in the car and stand close to my window while I started the engine. An accidental drowning, an accidental smothering she could manage: but three public murders by shooting were outside her range. Just as well. If she’d lifted that rifle towards the children, I would have shot her.
‘Bye,’ they said, waving. Nice kids.
‘Bye.’
I released the brakes and rolled away down the drive in a plume of dust, accelerating fast as soon as I hit the metalled road, and taking the main branch down to Jackson. If Yola thought of following in the pick-up, she didn’t do it fast enough. Repeated inspection in the mirror showed no Clives chasing on my tail. The only things constantly before my eyes were bright dancing spots.
Through Jackson I turned north and west on the winding road to Idaho Falls. Along there the Snake River and the Pallisades Reservoir, sparkling blue against the dark pines, were stunningly beautiful. But my several stops weren’t for appreciation: the cold sweating waves of dizziness kept recurring, like twenty-two over seven. I drove slowly, close to the side, never overtaking, ready to pull up. If I hadn’t wanted to put a hundred miles or so between me and the Clives, I wouldn’t have started from Jackson. Most of the time I wished I hadn‘t.
Walt was pacing the motel lobby like a frenetic film producer when I finally showed up at five-thirty in the afternoon.
‘You are four-and-a-half hours late,’ he began accusingly. ‘You said...’
‘I know,’ I interrupted. ‘Book us some rooms. We’re staying here.’
He opened his mouth and shut it tight.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, softening it, ‘but I feel ill.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Concussion.’
Walt gave me a searching look, booked the rooms, and even went so far as to carry my suitcase. I lay straight down on the bed, and he sat in an easy chair in my room and rubbed his fingers.
‘Do you need a doctor?’ he said.
‘I don’t think so. It’s not getting any worse.’
‘Well... what happened?’
‘I’ll give you some free advice,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever let Matt Clive come within bashing distance of your head.’
The dizziness wasn’t so bad lying down.