Through the suppurating day he lay half awake in the pit. The pit had become the familiar chamber of his environment: it was as if he had always lived in it-a troglodyte in the exclusiveness of his castaway cave of pain.
Degraded to cave-floor essentials his body did nothing more than absorb oxygen and send halfhearted signals of agonies along the nerves. The mind, reduced to its underpinnings, groped toward occasional contact with existence and cognition.
Now and then lucidity welled up in him like a seismic bubble in a sulfur pool. It stretched its skin and burst; he waited then for the next one. In such moments he had bemused visions of himself. He pictured himself as something with primitive claws and no eyes-scrabbling blindly at the hot stone walls that confined it. In a fantasy he felt himself adrift: the floor of the pit became a raft on which he floated gently across calm water until it was drawn into the tubular eye of a whirlpool-then it fell and he continued to lie on it and above him the sky dwindled to a dot of pleasantly pale blue light. Another time he saw himself as a half-crushed dung beetle with half its legs crippled dragging an immense burden across an endless barnyard.
In a moment of sanity he reflected on the passage of images through his mind and it occurred to him that in all these fantasies there was a common aspect: in each of them he had pictured himself as life.
Rickety with weakness he climbed from the pit into starlight with no recollection of the passage of evening. It was not yet late: the moon hadn’t risen.
There was a heavy breeze. It whipped sand against him, stinging the sunburned flesh. He repaired his creosote shoes. Somewhere inside the rigid cloture of his mind a purpose had been provoked: he knew what it was with such intimate completeness that it didn’t need articulation and never lifted to the surface of his consciousness. It was simply the engine that drove him and it was not to be questioned.
In the sound of the wind he didn’t hear Shirley’s approach and he was startled when she said, “Sam?”
The wind batted the tufted remains of hair around her forehead. She kept pushing it back with her hand. He could almost see the bones of her fingers and wrist.
She said, “You’re alive.”
“I am.”
“Can you have a look at Jay? I’m worried about him.”
He crossed the slope with her. Jay lay in his hole and it was too dark down there to see anything. Mackenzie climbed down and lifted Jay by the shoulders.
Jay’s head rocked back loosely. He stared at the sky, his eyes comatose.
“Is he-?”
“He’s breathing.”
He did not have the strength to lift Jay bodily out of the foxhole. He left him propped there sitting against its interior. He climbed out and went off a few paces. Shirley followed him until he put out a detaining hand. Then he turned and spoke: he kept his voice right down. “Keep them alive.”
“How?”
“Build a fire. Cut cactus. Do what needs to be done.”
“What for?” she wailed.
“Do it. Look at me when I’m talking to you.” It was a savage whisper.
“I can’t. I just can’t any more.” Her eyes came up; her mouth worked-she was screaming soundlessly. Arms dangling, she cut a shabby hunched figure.
“Do it. Stay alive. Keep them alive until I get back.”
“It’s no use.”
“Do it.” He walked away from her.
He found his way to the dugout where Earle had interred himself. Earle had hiked himself up by his hands and sat on the rim of the pit with his bad leg outstretched along the ground. Somehow he lived. The fair skin was mottled with open sores; the small mouth was cracked away from the teeth; loose flesh hung without resilience from throat and belly and arms; yet he looked upon Mackenzie with recognition.
“Want you to stay alive, Earle.”
“It’s God’s will, I believe.”
“That’s right-that’s right. Maybe you can help Shirley build a fire.”
“Fire. Yes.”
“Wait for me,” Mackenzie said. “I’ll come back.” Then he shuffled out of the camp with his eyes fixed on the summit where Duggai lived.
28
He went toward the hills straight up: Duggai would know anyway. Duggai would see him coming no matter which way he came. Duggai saw everything. There was no point trying to fool him. You couldn’t fool the mountain; you could only climb it.
Purpose drove him. His feet plodded uphill and down. This first leg had to be crossed gently in order to conserve fuel for the climb. He knew quite precisely how much fuel was left in the machinery. He knew it was enough.
He struck the hills and began to climb. He would come to a steep canyon and he would put a foot up on a rock and place both hands on the knee and thrust himself upright. Then the other foot onto a higher foothold and another boost up. Occasionally he had to descend before he could climb again.
The shadows were tricky but the moon helped. Once he heard the rustle of something that might have been a rattlesnake. He diverted around the sound and proceeded, forgetting it instantly.
Behind him he saw the twinkle of a tiny fire in the camp. Perhaps it would hold Duggai’s attention or some part of it. In any case it hardly mattered. He’d wanted the fire mainly for his own purposes: while it burned it meant they were alive down there. It justified his progress up the mountain.
Now he needed to summon what cleverness he had left. It wouldn’t do to stumble straight into Duggai’s lair. Duggai would only wire him up and drive him back down to the desert and leave him there again. He knew that now. Duggai wouldn’t shoot him unless he left Duggai no alternative. The game had to be played all the way to the end by the rules that Duggai’s demons had prescribed. It was obvious that the singleminded obsession had cleared everything else from Duggai’s consideration.
My purpose and his are almost the same. But then that was almost always true of mortal enemies.
This is what I should have done in the first place.
But up to now it hadn’t made sense. Duggai was a soldier trained to kill. Mackenzie was not a fighting man.
But he was a hunter. The silversmith had trained a hunter.
As he climbed higher in the range the terrain became more rocky. He began to slip. He had to discard the footpads. Now he climbed with bare feet and his soles soon began to bleed again.
Everything wasted but his will, Mackenzie made a few yards’ progress and had to stop, then a few more yards and another halt. The night wore on. But the top wasn’t far now-two hundred yards, perhaps less. He was on the instep of the mountainous foot, going up the open gentle slope of it. He went from boulder to boulder, trying to keep abutments between him and the top, trying to stay in shadow.
Impulse and caution chased each other elusively through the remains of his rattled mind. There was the raging urge to go in straight up: challenge the monster in the open, fight it out, answer Duggai’s vast strength with a greater strength of his own-the strength of his fury.
But he would lose that way. Beyond doubt. It required strategy: stealth.
Now Duggai knows I’m up here batting around someplace. He must have seen me come into the hills.
And he knows I can’t move very fast and I’m not very strong.
He’s expecting me. He’s too smart to come down looking for me because he won’t leave the truck unguarded. Even if he leaves it locked I might get it open. I might know how to wire up the starter and drive it without the key. So he’s got to stay with the truck to keep me from stealing it.
He’ll hang around the truck and when I don’t turn up by daylight he’ll wonder whether I passed out in the rocks or whether I’m creeping up to drop a boulder on his head. He’ll worry a little. Finally he’ll figure out the best way to handle it. What he’ll do, he’ll get in the truck and drive down the back of the range out through the desert, out to the water hole and he’ll spend the rest of the day out there taking a bath and keeping himself cool. Sure. Let me fry up here in these rocks.