Dusk, then dawn; and Jay had not returned. He built up the fire to provide Jay a homing beacon.
Earle said, “It feels cooler this morning. Maybe the sun won’t be so bad today.”
“Sun hasn’t changed. You have-you’re in better shape today.”
“I thought I was supposed to die without salt.”
“We put a lot of saltbush in that soup last night. Maybe it was enough for the time being.”
“Those extra moccasins-”
“We’ll be moving out tonight. They wear out pretty fast.”
There was fresh rabbit meat from the night’s snares. They ate up the marrow of briefly cooked bones and the ashes of charred ones, drank the last of the blood from the clay bowl, drank plentifully of the still’s bounty of clear water. Mackenzie mucked out the still and carved segments of cholla into it, sealed the plastic coat down and squinted obliquely toward the rising sun: that was where Jay would appear but there was no sign of movement.
He went down into each of the trenches and dug out a few inches of soil from the bottom to expose a new underlayer of cool damp earth. Shirley was taking down the dried strings of jerky from the ocotillo racks and packing them into rabbit-hide folds. The sun began to drill into them and Mackenzie had another long look at the horizon. “He probably went too far during the night. Got caught short and dug a hole for himself.”
“Or Duggai stopped him,” Shirley said.
“We haven’t heard gunshots.”
It seemed to reassure her. They lowered Earle into the ground; he managed to smile. “Might not hurt if we all prayed for him.”
Shirley went a few strides away toward her bunker; she waited for Mackenzie and dropped her voice so that it carried no farther than his ears. “Duggai wouldn’t have needed to shoot him. Jay’s no match for him. All he’d have to do would be break his leg the way he broke Earle’s. Or hamstring him with a knife. Leave the inevitable to those horrible desert spirits of his.”
“Most likely Jay’s holed up somewhere to ride out the heat.”
“Is that what you really think?”
“Yes. If Duggai got close enough to ambush him then he’d see Jay wasn’t carrying enough water or food to make a run for help. As long as we stay in the area we’re no threat to Duggai-he’ll let us scramble.”
“I wish I knew whether you believed that.”
“It doesn’t much matter what I believe. We’ve got to search for him tonight.”
“Of course.”
“He knows enough not to expose himself to the sun. We’ll probably meet up with him an hour after dark.”
“Sam-what if Duggai’s crippled him?”
“Let’s try to face one thing at a time.”
“That’s evasive.”
“No. We’ve got to be practical. What’s the sense wasting time worrying about catastrophes that may not have happened?”
“All right.” She gave him a long level glance and Mackenzie saw irony creep into her eyes. It was directed inward. “Did you want to get laid last night?”
“No.”
“But the thought did cross your mind.”
“Yes.” Put it down to that ancient biological impetus to procreate in time of stress.
“It crossed my mind too,” she said, “but if we’d found out that Jay was out there dying while we were screwing.…”
“Never mind,” Mackenzie said.
She touched the back of his hand with her fingers: there was gentle gratitude and a good deal of warmth in the gesture. She went away then and Mackenzie looked around the horizon, confused by feelings he sensed but could not identify. Out there he saw no buzzards and no sign of Jay. When he turned back she was descending into the earth. He felt the heat of the early sun against the raw burnt flesh of his shoulders; he got into his own trench and hunkered to keep his body out of the light-and sat that way watching the hills until his muscles began to cramp. There was no further likelihood of Jay’s appearing; the sun was too high. Finally Mackenzie lay back, feeling the tremors of weakness when he lowered himself, resenting the residue of his fevered illness. He knew there was little remaining stamina. Throughout the night he’d tried to do everything with conservative torpor; nevertheless he felt rickety and drained. He wondered how far he could possibly carry Earle.
I doubt we’ll get far at all, he thought with dismal clarity.
To his surprise he slept most of the day through. A thin choking swirl of dust awakened him. The dust devil wheeled across the top of his trench; he closed his eyes and curled up protectively. Driven sand needled his flesh and there was a great stinging furor but it passed quickly as the pint-sized whirlwind moved on. He scraped grit out of his eyes and spat dryly and then shot bolt upright in alarm because it just occurred to him the twister was veering west and the solar still lay in its path. The dust devil could pick up the plastic raincoat and carry it miles away.
He saw the plastic begin to flap but the twister careened away on its drunken aimless course; it passed twenty yards below Earle’s bunker and dipped its tail in the empty pit that would have contained Jay. Carrying sand and twigs it veered toward the flats, a great spiraling funnel, obscuring the sun for a time.
He emptied the sand out of his moccasins and laced them up and went to inspect the still for damage. A good deal of dust floated on the water but the cup was nearly full. Withered bits of cactus surrounded it. He peeled the raincoat back and laid it out dry-side down and rubbed his hands on its beaded surface until they were dripping; he tried to wash some of the grit off his face.
The dust devil made its weird dancing way out along the plain, leaving a tan haze smeared across the sky. The six-o’clock sun threw its shadow across rocks and bits of brush. The air in his nostrils felt close and heavy; the temperature still hung well above the hundred mark but it would dissipate quickly now. Mackenzie used a clay pot to scoop a few mouthfuls of water out of the cup; he drank slowly and savored it. On his haunches by the rim of the ravine he squinted out along the hills and knew they would find Jay up that way; the question in his mind was what condition they’d find him in.
The jerky was safe because they’d wrapped it; there’d been no need for a buzzard watch on the meat but he was a bit surprised he hadn’t been awakened at least once during the day by the flap of wings as a bird swept down to inspect the motionless humans in their graves. It gave him bleak pause to wonder whether the buzzards might have found in Jay a more likely source of carrion nourishment. He saw no birds in the sky but that signified nothing.
He tightened the drawstring of his breechclout and shoved the two knives under the belt to free his hands. The dust devil was blowing itself out against a hillside. He studied the folds and creases of the land, trying to think as Duggai would think, trying to spot the most likely place from which Duggai might observe them. You couldn’t expect anything as obliging as a telltale wink of sunlight off his telescope; Duggai knew better than that. He wouldn’t show himself inadvertently.
Rule out anything in a line with the sun’s arc; it would have put the sun in Duggai’s eyes, either evening or morning. He’d be to the north or south of them.
The slope along which they’d scattered their trenches lay in a rough northeast-to-southwest line; it wasn’t very steep but it couldn’t be seen from the south or southeast because the crest was above them there. So Duggai was somewhere along the northerly horizon.
Mackenzie looked north; his eye measured an arc from left to right, about 120 degrees to its limits-logic had narrowed the search to one-third of the visible horizon.
To the northwest the flat extended quite a few miles to the foothills of crumpled mountains. Ten or twelve miles of plain. Duggai needed something substantial enough to conceal the pickup truck. Bearing that in mind, Mackenzie ruled out the flats. It fairly well confined Duggai to the range of hills a mile away to the north and northeast-the area where Jay had disappeared. So Jay had walked right toward Duggai: right by him-or right into him.