After three o’clock they dug their pits to survive the coming day. Mackenzie placed them some distance north of the cliff where they wouldn’t be affected by its reflections of heat. He selected positions where they were screened by the cliff from Duggai; but by crawling a few feet Mackenzie would be able to peer through the base of a catclaw bush and keep a periodic eye on Duggai’s summit.
He saw no need to dig a still and cover it with the plastic-not with a source of fresh water at arm’s length. He left the plastic folded inside the food pouch. They strung the pork on cactus spines and then with the first predawn hint of color they went to examine the tanque.
It lay in a forty-foot bowl of streaked black-red rock. The sloping walls had been smoothed to a mottled gloss. Animal hoofs over an incalculable span of time had worn a grooved trail that curved back on itself twice in sharp switchbacks on its way to the bottom and he was glad they hadn’t attempted it at night.
The little pool at the bottom was obsidian-black, an indication of depth-probably it had never gone dry: artesian pressures far underground kept it forever at a level.
The worn hoof trail circled the narrow pool and went down to the water along the shallowest gradient. Along the slope was a wide fault in the rock where mud and brown clay had flowed down like a paste from the desert floor above, after every rainfall; the mud slope was crosshatched with white scratches that had been left by animals in search of ground salt. The tongues of generations had worn the salt lick down until it had assumed the shape of a trough.
Above it the cliff was a dramatic monument of crags-from this perspective it loomed alarmingly although it was of no real size-and Mackenzie saw how if you came at it from the north you’d spot it from quite a distance.
Likely that was how Duggai had found the water hole in the first place. The brass-scavenging expedition in California that had led to Duggai’s arrest hadn’t been his first such adventure. He’d explored most of the gunnery ranges by then. Certainly he knew this one; that had been apparent all along-Duggai wouldn’t have dragged his prisoners out here if he hadn’t known where he was going.
The water was startlingly cold. Its minerals had stained the rocks around the edge of the hole; the taste was faintly metallic. Mackenzie drank his fill out of cupped hands. When he looked up there was a small scorpion in the crevice above him, tail-stinger curled over its back. He made a sudden motion and the scorpion fled back into the crevice.
Mackenzie said, “These rocks will be full of those. Keep an eye open-don’t step on a scorpion, you could die from it.”
“Listen, Sam-”
But Jay didn’t resume immediately; his eyes wandered in bashful irresolution. Then finally: “I’m not such a shit, you know. I’m really not such a total loss.”
“No.”
“Listen, I was the best student in my class and the most maladroit oaf you ever saw. Stereotyped bookworm. You get older, you learn how to camouflage insecurities-you compensate for the inferiority complex, you learn how things work, you grow up to be a mediocre psychiatrist and you think you know all your own weaknesses. Well at least I think I know some of mine. But knowing how emotional aberrations work isn’t necessarily a cure for them. I know I’m unreasonable about things. I even know why. But a lot of the time I can’t seem to do much about it except just live with myself. I’m talking about Shirley now. Maybe it’s all a long way in the past-unreasoning jealousy. I can’t help it. It’s the way I am. I’m trying to be honest with you.”
Mackenzie went up to the salt lick and began to dig with the knife. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“I’m not asking you to do anything. Just try to see my side of it, that’s all.” Jay followed him up, started digging, searched his face with inquiring intensity. “Maybe I’m asking you a favor, come to think of it. You’re so much stronger than I am. I used to hate you because you were always so sure of yourself.”
“Did you really think I was?”
“Come off it, Sam, I’ve never seen a hint of self-doubt in you. You exude self-confidence like musk. You’ve got the composure of a sphinx. All right, for all I know maybe it’s compensation for all kinds of turmoil inside-but that’s not the image you project.”
He felt uncomfortable under the glass of Jay’s scrutiny. “What’s the favor you want?”
“You know what it is.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t.”
“Leave me room with Shirley, Sam.”
They ate the dirty salt, bagged a chunk of it, went back to the pool and drank deep. Jay dipped water with his cupped hands and splashed it down his face. With his eyes shut, dripping, he looked like a tearful supplicant. “You could take her away from me without half trying. If you did I might even try to kill you for it-I might be capable of that-but I’d probably decide against it. Because it wouldn’t get her back to me.”
In sudden embarrassment Jay started to wash himself busily, scrubbing his face and chest and arms.
It was an extraordinary performance. It didn’t astonish Mackenzie but he had to walk away to keep his contempt from showing. He stood at the base of the switchback trail and watched light pour into the sky; he rolled the taste of salt around his tongue.
Mackenzie thought: it’s the first time he’s mentioned her and all he can say about her is that he owns her and he doesn’t want me to steal his possession. He still wants to keep her but he can’t even remember why. And he talks as if we’re in San Francisco unaffected by any of this.
And then reluctantly he granted the alternative: maybe Jay didn’t talk to me about her but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been thinking about her, worrying. I’d be the last one he’d confide in, about her.
“Sam.”
He turned. Jay was waiting for his answer.
Mackenzie came back down to the pool. “You’re a chronic worrier. We’re not out of this alive yet.”
“You’ll get us out. Look how far we’ve come already.”
“The sun’s come up. Eat some more salt-we’re starved for it. Then we’d better get underground.”
“You don’t care about her the way I do,” Jay insisted. “It just wouldn’t be fair.”
“Stop obsessing yourself with it, Jay. We don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
It shocked Jay into silence. Mackenzie took satisfaction from that-and the satisfaction displeased him: it was petty. Disliking himself, he went up the trail on fingers and toes.
He slept in snatches. Now and then he had to throw rocks at buzzards around the hanging salt pork: it worried him because the circling scavengers were bound to draw Duggai’s attention to this spot but a great many animals used the water hole and Duggai would have to assume there was an injured or dead one on the ground. But that was a risk too: suppose Duggai was running low on meat?
He could still taste the acrid filthy salt in his mouth; it was as if he could feel his grateful organs soaking it in.
Some time before noon he posted a watch at the base of the catclaw and in time he was rewarded by the distant movement of Duggai’s patrol along the summit line. It reassured Mackenzie to know Duggai hadn’t come down off the mountain. The man’s malevolent patience amazed him. Duggai seemed prepared to spend the rest of his own life on that rock if that was what it would take to extinguish his victims.
How much simpler it would have been for Duggai to have murdered them all with his rifle and left them for the buzzards. But to Duggai that would have been pointless and too merciful.
Heat drove him back to the dugout.
Clouds heavier than usual built up during the late afternoon along the western skyline. When it was cool enough to climb out of the pit Mackenzie gathered the pigskin sack which they had left to dry in the shade. It had stiffened so much that he wasn’t sure they’d be able to draw it shut with the hide laces they’d prepared. It wasn’t crucially important except to the extent that evaporation would be minimized if the bag could be sealed.