If animals were beating this track every night or two it meant a potently seductive attraction at the far end. He concluded there must be ground salt and fresh water quite close together.
If that was the case and Duggai knew about it then a lot of possibilities fell into place. Duggai might have picked the spot deliberately if he knew he’d have ample water for himself-all he had to do was make sure his victims never found the water hole. If Jay had headed out that way last night then naturally Duggai would have been keeping an intermittent eye on his water supply; he’d have spotted Jay; he’d have had to prevent Jay from returning to the others with the news.
How much darkness left? Half an hour? An hour?
He was several hundred yards away from the protection of the foothills. The desert plain receded away from him in all directions, its undulation so gentle there hardly seemed anywhere Jay could be hiding.
Mackenzie stopped and measured the hills behind him-trying to determine how much farther he could proceed before he walked into Duggai’s line of sight.
It was sheer guesswork because he wouldn’t see the peak until he was out where Duggai simultaneously would see him. But the contours of the slopes at either end gave him a hint to the altitude of the summit and he felt strongly that he was quite close to the limit of safety here. It might be fifty yards and it might be a hundred and fifty but certainly it was no more than that.
And if Duggai spotted him on this trail that would end it right here. Bullets in both kneecaps would do the job handily.
His feet were bruised and raw. The moccasins were beginning to shred but he resisted the thought of changing to fresh ones because of the fifty or eighty miles he’d have to cross to reach the highway-assuming he could get beyond range of Duggai’s eye.
He was having trouble walking: his breath came in short gasps and the muscles at calf and ankle felt spongy and his knees had developed a wobble. When he thought of the highway and the miles that lay between he didn’t think he’d have the strength for it.
He ate a string of jerky because it might perk him up; and moved on, scanning the brush to either side of the game run, searching the flats, looking back with each step to see whether Duggai’s summit had climbed in sight, ticking off the array of imponderables and obstacles that loomed before him, seeing not much hope at all.
A voice rocked him back in terror:
“Mackenzie.…”
21
Jay had dug himself a pit on the north side of a manzanita twice Mackenzie’s height. The hole was invisible under its deep shadow. Mackenzie homed on his voice and didn’t see him until he was within arm’s length.
Only head and shoulders; Jay was down in the pit.
“Are you all right?”
“More or less. I stepped on a fucking cactus. Better keep your voice down. He’s right up there.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Several times. He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m still alive, right?”
Mackenzie opened the water bag. “Here.”
“God. Thank you.”
“Don’t guzzle it.”
He watched Jay critically. The Adam’s apple lunged up and down but Jay reluctantly lowered the bag after three swallows. “I pulped a cactus but it’s not the same thing. Right over there-that’s a juicy barrel cactus but it’s right out in the open-I didn’t dare demolish it. He’d spot it right away.”
“I saw the one you cut open back up the trail.”
“He can’t see that one from up there.”
“How bad’s the foot?”
“Not too bad. I got all the splinters out. Spines. It swelled up some and I couldn’t walk on it last night. I’ve experimented-it still hurts but think another twelve hours should do it.” His voice was rusty, tired. “I let you down.”
“Forget it.”
“No. I wasn’t looking where I stepped. It’s entirely my fault. I’m responsible-you can’t pass it off as an accident.”
Mackenzie wondered if Jay had spent the past twenty-four hours flagellating himself with self-humiliation.
Jay said, “This is as far as I got but you look at these tracks, you know there’s got to be something out there.”
“Water hole and salt lick, I imagine. You did a good job finding this trail.”
“Sure-sure.” Jay’s breath ran out of him. “When you were a kid did the other kids ever take you on a snipe hunt? That’s what I’ve been feeling like since last night. All I need’s a burlap sack and a flashlight to complete the picture.” Jay humped himself up onto the lip of the excavation. His face came into stronger light and Mackenzie saw unhealthy blisters under his eyes.
Jay had to wait to get his breath before he spoke again: “I started out with the best intentions but I’m a stinking amateur. It’s a wonder I’m still alive. Lying here all day in this grave-I couldn’t get to sleep. All that resolute ambition drained right out of me. Then I heard you coming-thought it was Duggai. I made myself as small as I could. I didn’t recognize you until you’d gone right by. Thank God you came. I’m not sure I could make it back alone.”
“We’re not going back,” Mackenzie said.
“Once in a while he takes a turn along the top of the ridge up there. He’s got field glasses. He searches the whole area. Takes his time. Two or three times I could have sworn he was looking right at me.”
“Any pattern to it? Does he show up at regular intervals?”
“Not that I could tell. Twice yesterday-maybe more than that but I saw him twice. Once tonight since sundown. For a while he had a campfire up there. I couldn’t see the fire but I saw the flicker on the hillside. It’s gone out now, or gone down.”
“He’s got to sleep sometime,” Mackenzie said.
“I wonder about that. With him anything’s possible.”
Mackenzie was thinking: if he’s using hand-held binoculars then they’re not stronger than eight-power. It was useful knowledge.
“What are we going to do, Sam?”
“Find that water hole after dark.”
“He’ll see us if we go out there.”
“Maybe. Right now I’ve got digging to do.”
“I’ll give you a hand.”
They picked a spot behind a greasewood clump. Mackenzie scraped a pit for himself while Jay dug a still.
By the time Mackenzie had gone thirty inches down it was dawn and he was worn out. He kept his attention on the hilltops waiting for Duggai to appear. They stretched the half-square of plastic across the still and weighted it with a stone. Mackenzie divided his ration of meat with Jay. “Get as much sleep as you can.”
“Hard to sleep not knowing when he may take a notion to wander down this way.”
“If he does there’s not much we can do about it.”
By noon his eyes felt sticky and the hovering glare had given him a headache. He had slept a few hours and been too keyed up to sleep any more after that. His tired lids took longer to blink as he watched the summits through the lacework of creosote branches.
Concern for Shirley and Earle rubbed against him. He hadn’t wanted to leave them behind; he’d had to face the necessity; but bitterness made him irritable. If we get out of this and they don’t.… It was something he doubted he’d be able to live with.
The inimical desert was leaching him of strength; it was a steady deterioration that no amount of primitive ingenuity could halt and what worried him was the knowledge that he was the strongest of them: if he couldn’t resist it then what chance did Shirley and Earle have? Even if he managed to drag himself and Jay beyond Duggai’s range they would still have endless miles to crawl and by the time they reached the destination it might be too late for the others.
Something moved on the summit.
The distance was perhaps a thousand yards and Duggai’s figure was tiny against the sky but the silhouette was etched in crystal-sharp outline and Mackenzie saw it when Duggai lifted the binoculars to his eyes and began to search the flats. There was no sky reflection off the lenses and that meant there were rubber antiglare hoods around them. Duggai was wearing a wide cowboy hat and his shirt and trousers were pale and loose: Mackenzie could see the shirttail flap in the breeze.