“Could be never,” Earle said, “but I’ll take whatever God dishes out.”
Mackenzie stood up. He put his arm around Shirley’s shoulders. “I’ll walk you to the ravine.”
Her hip brushed against him as they walked. At the lip of the ravine he turned her in the circle of his arm and held her roughly.
She looked up at him. He said: “That’s for Duggai’s benefit. Climb down here with me.”
He took her hand and jumped into the ravine. Lifted her down. Took her in his arms and lowered her to the ground.
“We’re out of his sight now. Stay here a while before you show yourself again. He’ll think I’ve gone to sleep.”
“Post-coital exhaustion,” she said dryly. But she smiled with gentle warmth. “I wish we were really-”
“No you don’t. Do you.”
“If it weren’t for Jay.”
“If my aunt had whiskers she’d be my uncle.”
“All right, Sam, whatever you say. I suppose I should wish you good luck or something. It seems awfully lame.”
He left her, going up the ravine doubled over; he picked his way around the distillery pit and climbed toward the low summit. Just before he turned the bend he looked back. She was sitting crosslegged, watching him. He climbed away.
19
When he got near the crest he saw there was an open stretch he’d have to cross. It lay twenty yards long in plain sight of the hills across the valley. That was no good; Duggai might be looking this way. Mackenzie slid back down the ravine to consider his options.
On the eastward horizon a thin first-sliver of moon stood low and pale. It did nothing to brighten the desert; it would be four or five days before there’d be sufficient moonlight to make a difference. The stars made enough illumination to pick out the silvery span of the desert, the darker clumps of growth, the shadow outlines of hills and mountains. You wouldn’t see a man out there unless he moved but you’d see movement quickly enough.
The air had cooled down rapidly since sundown; it was comfortable against his skin now. Another four hours and he’d be chilly.
He rubbed his stubble-bearded chin against the skin of his shoulder and searched the slope to either side. Nothing looked useful by way of concealment.
You never see an animal out here unless it moves, he thought, and it became clear there was only one way to do it. He fought down his impatience and made his start.
He emerged very slowly from the ravine and lay flat against the earth. The back of his hand before him was hardly visible-the starlight failed to distinguish among colors and the shade of his skin blended well with that of the earth. His head of dark hair would be visible as a dot against the earth-visible perhaps; but noticeable only if it were seen to move.
He went up the slope an inch at a time, crawling with toes and fingers and caterpillar humps of belly and chest musculature. It was distressingly time-consuming but it was the only answer: he was out in plain sight and his only invisibility was his motionlessness. From a mile away his movement was no faster than that of the moon: imperceptible but deliberate.
He was thinking about Duggai’s possible arsenal of equipment. It was remotely possible Duggai had a heat-seeking infrared scope but Mackenzie found it highly doubtful. Duggai would have had to raid a military armory for that. All the equipment Mackenzie had seen in the camper appeared to be the sort of things you could steal from a private dwelling. The rifle-he hadn’t taken too close a look but he was sure it hadn’t been a military weapon. It was some sort of big-game rifle, a civilian arm, scope-sighted and expensive.
Assume Duggai had a five- or six-power scope on the rifle. Assume-for safety-that he had binoculars as well. Ten-power? Certainly not more than twelve magnifications. The nearer of the two possible lookout positions stood a mile away by Mackenzie’s rough naked-eye measurement. A twelve-power glass would bring that down to about 150 yards-but a twelve-power glass had to be tripod-mounted or rested because no human hand could hold it steady enough for practical use. Even so: how much could Duggai see, given a twelve-power lens with good night-resolution, at an effective distance of 150 yards?
Mackenzie looked to his left, turning his head with infinite slowness. He picked out a maguey that he judged to be 150 yards from him.
If a man was lying beside that century plant would I see him?
He decided he could not.
Heartened, he continued his crawl.
When he was over the top he slid down the back of the ridge and had a look around. Nothing he saw surprised him. A flat pan of earth stretched away to the south and west; mountains stood around in small ranges and there seemed to be a fairly high sierra along the far southern horizon but that might be clouds. From this bit of elevation he probably was surveying distances of thirty miles or more; there was not a single light.
The air was so dry that the stars did not twinkle they were steady incandescent chips. Mackenzie set off along the back of the ridge and followed its curve around toward the north keeping an eye on the horizon because he didn’t want to blunder out in plain sight of Duggai.
His passage disturbed a few lizards and exploded an owl out of a bush. There was a patch of broken country-cut-bank gullies and sand washes: he had to do a bit of scrambling and he abraded one knee climbing out of an arroyo. It was impossible to move swiftly because the ground was dotted with pincushions of miniature cactus and you didn’t see them until you’d nearly trod on them. He moved as fast as he could but it was a stroller’s pace. In the hours of darkness that remained he might be able to cover six or seven miles at this rate but that calculation was immaterial because soon he would have to start doubling in order to stay out of Duggai’s range of vision.
The ridge petered out toward the flats and he went right down to its bottom. Soon he was bent double and then there was no cover at all.
He crouched behind a greasewood bush. To his left he could make out winking reflections of Shirley’s fire against bits of growth on the slope.
It was going to use up time but he saw no alternative to a long sweeping circuit that would bring him around the flats and up into the main range of hills south of the higher peaks. It meant he’d be going behind Duggai’s position but that was all right: his chances were better there-Duggai wouldn’t be looking for anything behind him.
He had to retrace a hundred yards; then he struck out along a shallow arroyo that meandered into the plain. Half-dead brush lined its banks-it had been a long time since the last rain. The slow rise to his immediate left was enough to block out any view of the hills beyond; he moved quickly up the arroyo-if he couldn’t see the peaks then Duggai couldn’t see him.
Sun had cracked the hardpan arroyo floor and pulverized it into fine soft dust but there were rocks hidden in it and he had to set his feet with care: the jackrabbit moccasins were too thin.
The arroyo made a wide bend and cut its way south. He climbed out and went along the flats with high ground to his left obscuring view of the peaks. He’d gone a mile out of his way but it kept him out of Duggai’s purview.
Then there was a dip in the ground on his left and he found himself facing fifty yards of exposed plain.
He sculled along the floor of a ravine and this took him half the distance but then the ravine doubled back on itself and there was nothing to do but cross the open. He did it as he’d done it before-an inch at a time on his elbows.
He had a clear view of the silhouette of the boulder-strewn peak. The peak was hardly half a mile away and at that distance Duggai might spot him even if he wasn’t moving. But the alternatives were to quit or to waste the rest of the night making a far circle across the boundary of the plain. If he did that he’d get caught in the open by daylight. This was a risk but it would put him safely into the hills with at least three hours’ darkness left in which to search for Jay. Mackenzie banked on the fact that Duggai had no reason to look in this direction.