He knew logically that Duggai couldn’t see him. He was behind a thick bush; there was nothing above ground but his eyes and hairline; he was in shadow. But he understood the coppery dry fear Jay had expressed: Duggai was looking straight at him.
Duggai was only being sensible-keeping a check on his rear-but the terror couldn’t be denied. Suppose I left visible tracks last night?
It was mitigated by the fact that Duggai kept turning the glasses steadily, sweeping in slow arcs. But still it was like one of those paintings: wherever you stand in the room it stares you in the eye.
He must have seen Jay come into the hills. He didn’t see him leave. He knows Jay’s got to be around here somewhere.
He’s giving us rope, that’s all.
Then he thought: is it possible he didn’t see Jay the other night?
Had Duggai been asleep during that hour?
It would explain why Duggai hadn’t made any effort to come looking for him. It was the sort of coincidence that easily could have happened but Mackenzie was reluctant to credit it.
In any case they’d have to predicate their actions on the assumption that Duggai knew he had at least one of them behind him.
Duggai walked up to another vantage point, a fifty-yard hike to the west, and repeated his scan.
From the corner of his eye Mackenzie glanced at the plastic still. They’d heaped earth around the edges and it lay to the north of the catclaw fifteen feet from him but they had to put it out where the sun could hit it. To look at it Duggai would have to be able to see through the catclaw but the sky might make enough of a reflection on the plastic. With luck he might take it for mica or pyrites or quartz-the desert made a blinding glitter anyway.
Now Duggai put his right shoulder to Mackenzie and began to search the country to his west. It was then Mackenzie realized he’d nearly stopped breathing. He drew a long hot dry gust into his lungs.
Shortly thereafter Duggai walked back behind the ridge and Mackenzie didn’t see him again until late in the afternoon when Duggai repeated the ritual.
It was full dark before they ventured out of their cool graves. “How’s the foot?”
“A little tender, what the hell. I can walk. You name the program, I’ll follow it.” Jay regarded him eagerly but his face had a gray tired look and folds of trenchant weariness bracketed his mouth. He’d been remarkably agreeable ever since Mackenzie’s arrival-that was partly relief and gratitude but mostly it was the sense that Mackenzie had some sort of magic that was going to save his life. There was a toadying obeisance in the way Jay looked at him. Jay must have persuaded himself that he didn’t have to obey but that he would comply because if he argued or refused he’d be letting Mackenzie down.
It was a reversal of Jay’s earlier attitude and it could make matters easier for a while. Mackenzie played along: he took a tone of stern command.
“We wait until he makes his next sweep. After that we move out of here.”
“All right, fine. Whatever you say.”
They uncapped the still. Mackenzie folded the plastic with care and put it in the pouch with the remaining jerky. There was a quart of water in the plastic bag; they took a drink and Mackenzie bagged the rest of it inside the rabbit-skin sack. They made a slow hard-chewing meal of the dried meat and sat together on the lip of Jay’s trench under the big manzanita waiting for Duggai to appear.
Mackenzie said, “I was up there last night. If there’s a water hole you can’t see it from there. It’s got to be hidden down in a cutbank. Once we get that far we should be out of his view.”
“And between here and there?”
“We take a large chance.”
“On what?”
“Duggai. I’m counting on a supposition that he sleeps through the night in catnaps. Rouses himself every two or three hours to have a look around. I don’t think he sleeps in the daytime-he’d have to be worried about helicopters and planes. He knows they’re not going to fly search patterns at night so he’d feel safe sleeping then.”
“But how do we know when he’s asleep and when he’s taking a look?”
“What time did you come through the hills night before last?”
“I don’t know. Right on sunset I think.”
“He was probably asleep then. Sleep an hour or two, have a look around, sleep some more.”
“I don’t know how you can assume that but I don’t feel like arguing with you. Go on.”
“Another supposition-he’s not right on top of that peak.”
“Why?”
“Too windy. It gets cold up there at night. He’d be down in some sheltered spot where he can keep an eye on the campfire. That puts him on the opposite side of the hill from us. That’s why he comes out and makes those periodic surveillances in this direction. If he could see these flats from where he’s camped he wouldn’t have to walk the ridge.”
“You’ve got something there.”
“We’ve got to risk it. Otherwise he’s got us pinned down here.”
Last night Mackenzie had told him the outline of the plan to reach the highway. It occurred to him now that Jay hadn’t once asked about Shirley.
He watched the summits as the last of the twilight died. We probably could go now, he thought. But it wasn’t worth taking that much of a chance. He said, “Once we’re out of Duggai’s sight we can make ten, fifteen miles a night. We’ll hit badlands here and there, can’t be helped, and we’ll have to go the long way around some mountains. I’d guess five days to the highway with a little luck.”
“Be nice if we don’t shove an ankle down a gopher hole on the way.”
Duggai came with the moonrise. They watched him stalk the ridgeline. He seemed to pick random vantage points from which to survey the desert; he didn’t stop at the same places where he’d stopped during the day.
The moon wasn’t perceptibly stronger than it had been in the previous night’s sky. There was a scatter of light clouds against which Duggai’s silhouette disappeared two or three times as he walked the summit. Finally he went back toward his camp and when he was gone Mackenzie stood up. “Come on.”
22
The game run carried them briefly northward, turned past a low pile of rocks, lifted them over a swell of ground and dipped into an arroyo with steep banks and a wide desolate bed. Mackenzie thought they’d found the trails destination but then he saw where it emerged on the far side through a notch in the bank and continued out across the flats.
He picked up the rumor of movement-perhaps through his ears, perhaps through the soles of his feet. He touched Jay’s elbow and made a quick silent gesture: they dropped low and crab-walked off the game trail, fled along the wash, squatted against the cutbank wall. He heard the rapid shallow breathing of Jay’s fear.
The sound grew with approach: a crisp fast rataplan. Mackenzie loosened up. Small hoofs on short legs moving fast-several animals. His ears told him that much; his brain sorted possibilities and told him the rest: javelina. Peccaries-wild pigs. Couldn’t be anything else.
The leader came into the arroyo and looked suspiciously to both sides and ran on across; the others followed in convoy and Mackenzie counted seven animals in the pack. The miniature boars of the desert: they stood no higher than a man’s knee. He caught the faint glimmer of starlight on exposed tusks. They ran with little sonorous grunts.
It was a fast determined trot and they were gone quickly. Jay expelled an explosive breath. “Mean little bastards. What do they weigh?”
“Thirty, forty pounds.” You heard yarns about javelina ganging up on humans. Macho hunters laughed at greenhorns who tried to hunt peccaries with small-caliber rifles-in legend the pigs had armor-plate hide that deflected bullets. Mackenzie didn’t put much stock in tall tales: peccaries were grass eaters-leaves and succulents-their ferocity was no greater than it needed to be for protection against coyotes.