“Now he’s threatening us,” Pryde said.
“You can call it whatever you want,” Manring said.
Pryde shrugged. “I was thinking you wouldn’t want to go up there with us. A man could fall and kill himself.”
“Ike,” Manring said, “I can fix it for you right now.”
“You’re going, Earl,” Bowen said easily. “We might not need your help, but we sure as hell need you in plain sight.”
As Manring predicted, the “brush cutters”-the convicts who cleared the pinyon and scrub brush-were working their way up the slope by midafternoon of the next day. On the morning of the day after that, the crews that followed, including the scraper, had reached the beginning of the trail and could go no farther-not until dynamite widened the narrow, uneven horse trail. But the dynamite had not yet arrived.
By noon, two thirds of the convicts were idle-until Renda devised something for them to do. He was reluctant to put more men up on the slope. That would increase the rate of construction, shorten the job time and consequently decrease his daily profit. Still, the convicts had to be kept busy. So he put them to work clearing the canyon area beyond the point at which the road would begin ascending the west slope.
“Cleaning out the brush is for your own good,” Renda told the convicts. “Then later on when we’re working high up and somebody falls off, we’ll be able to find the body for a decent burial.”
There were three bonfires to consume the brush as it was hacked down and cleared away. Bowen was given the job of tending to one of them. Shirtless in the close, almost unbearable heat, he would throw the dry brush into the flames. Then, waiting for more to be dragged over to him, his gaze would rise to the jagged, climbing trace of the horse trail that became visible, foot by foot, as the pinyon was toppled into the canyon.
Now it was a matter of patience, of waiting and using the time to think it out clearly, to think of every possibility. No, there was not that much time-not time to think of everything-so you eliminated some of the things right away. The things you had thought of already and had seen no hope in. Like Karla…and the lawyer…and walking out with a pardon or a parole or an acquittal or whatever you wanted to call it.
It was nice to think about that. It was nice to think about her. But it didn’t do you any good. And now you think about only the things that’ll do you some good. And it’s the bad things that do you good. Do you realize that? You get good from bad. That isn’t possible, but that’s what you’re getting. From Lizann. And from Earl.
A gun from Lizann and an idea from Earl.
Bowen had hidden the gun in the stable. In the stall where Renda’s chestnut mare was kept, he had pried loose one of the boards against the back wall and slipped the gun behind it. There, because the barracks offered no safe place to hide it. Getting it again, when the time came, would be another problem.
But there were a lot of problems and one more didn’t make much difference. Shooting Willis Falvey, though, was not one of the problems.
Lizann’s plan, when he realized it, was very simple. It was not a question of running away. That had no part in it. If her husband were killed, there would be an investigation. Someone would come down from Prescott-if not for a formal investigation, at least to take over Willis’s duties. When he did, Lizann would leave, and Renda would be able to do nothing about it. It was that simple. A convict, trying to escape, had killed Willis. The convict either got away or was recaptured. That was the convict’s problem.
But it won’t be your problem, Bowen thought. And it won’t be anybody else’s problem, unless she had more than one gun.
He imagined that she would be confident, patiently waiting for it to happen, rehearsing what she would say to the man from Prescott-perhaps even taunting Renda with hints that she would be leaving soon.
Lizann had a surprise coming.
So you are left with Earl. Earl and the dynamite. And you have to be careful how you mix them if you expect to get out of this alive.
On the morning of the second day of tending the brush fire, Bowen saw Karla Demery ride down the canyon. The convicts on the slope stopped working to watch her go by; and those below, on the floor of the canyon, turned and followed her with their eyes as she crossed to Renda sitting in a shaded section of the east wall.
She spoke to Renda for only a moment, then reined her horse in a tight circle. As she did, her gaze found Bowen. She nudged her horse toward the fire, toward the motionless naked-to-the-waist figure who stood in front of the swirling, wind-caught rise of smoke. Renda called to her and she drew in the reins. Bowen watched. She was not more than fifty feet away, still looking toward him. She wanted to tell him something, he could see that by her expression. Then it was too late. Renda, mounted now, came up next to her and they rode off together toward the nearest team of horses.
A few minutes later they passed Bowen again, heading up the canyon. Behind them came a wagon carrying three convicts, one of them Manring. A guard followed, bringing up the rear.
She wanted to tell you something, Bowen thought. But it could’ve been bad news as easily as good, so don’t think about it. You’ve got enough to figure out already. But through the rest of the day his thoughts would go to Karla Demery. She was not that easily put from his mind.
That evening the convicts were in the barracks when the wagon returned. Six men were called out to help unload it and they did not return for over a half hour. When they did, Manring was with them.
The lean, bearded man came over to Bowen’s mat. He sat down at the foot of it and rolled a cigarette. “Let me have a match.”
Bowen handed him a box of matches and watched silently.
Manring struck the match. As he held it to his cigarette he said, “Boy, we just unloaded it in the stable. Enough to blow everybody clean to hell.”
“Wait a minute,” Renda called. “This is far enough!” He brought up his shotgun as the four men on the climbing trail ahead of him stopped.
Brazil, leading the file, called back, “He says you got to start at the top.”
“You believe everything he tells you?” Renda’s face, flushed from the climb, showed sudden anger.
To Bowen who was second in line, carrying two coils of fuse over his shoulder and a box of detonators in his hand, Brazil said, “The old man can’t take it, so he’s got to yell at somebody.”
Bowen turned and looked past Pryde and Manring who followed him to Renda. “You want to stand here with fifty pounds of dynamite and talk about it?”
Renda edged along the inside of the trail close to the wall, past Manring and Pryde. As he reached Bowen, Pryde lowered the case of dynamite from his shoulder, placed it against the wall and sat down on it.
Manring, carrying a shovel, a hand axe and a sapling pole, looked at him uncertainly. “You better be careful.”
As Manring spoke, Renda turned quickly. “What are you doing!”
“I’m resting,” Pryde said, “while you talk it out.”
“You can’t sit on dynamite!”
“And I can’t stand with it a hunnert feet above nowhere while you get over your nervous state.”
Bowen said to Renda, “I explained it once. You got to start at the top.”
“He don’t take to high places,” Pryde said. “Or marching behind fifty pounds of charge.”
Renda turned on him angrily. “Pick it up!”
Pryde remained seated, leaning back against the wall. “There’s more chance of dropping it than my hind-end heat setting it off.”
“I said pick it up!” The tight-muscled, open-eyed expression of Renda’s face was dark with anger. He was aware of the four men watching him, and wanting to show neither anger nor fear he said to Bowen, more calmly, “All right. We’ll talk about it upstairs.”