The flashlight went on again. Leaphorns reaching hand was exploring an opening between the boulders. He pulled himself further into the slot, stood cautiously and looked downward. He could see a circle of yellow light on the sandy canyon bottom and the legs of two men. Then the light flashed upward, its beam moving over the rocks and brush below him. He ducked back. The beam flashed past, lighting the space in which he stood with its reflection. To the left of where he was crouching, and above him, an immense slab had split away from the face of the cliff. Behind it there would be better cover and the faint possibility of a route to climb upward.
The first voice was shouting up toward him.
You might as well come on down, the voice said. Well hold the dog.
Leaphorn stood silent.
Come on, the voice said. You cant get out of there and if you don’t come down were going to get sore about it.
We just want to talk to you, the Tull voice said. Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?
The voices paused, waiting for an answer. The words echoed up and down the canyon, then died away.
Its a police-issued pistol, the first voice said. Thirty-eight revolver. There’s just one shot fired. The one we heard.
A cop?
Yeah, Id guess so. Maybe the one that came nosing around the old mans hogan.
He’s not going to come down, Tull said. I don’t think he’s coming down.
No, First Voice said.
You want me to go up and get him?
Hell, no. He’d brain you with a rock. He’s above you and you couldn’t see it coming in the dark.
Yeah, Tull said. So we wait for morning?
No. Were going to be busy in the morning, First Voice said. There was silence then. The flashlight beam moved up the crevasse, back and forth, to Leaphorns hiding place, and then above it Leaphorn turned and looked up. Far above his head the yellow light reflected from sections of unbroken cliff. But the cleft, he saw, went all the way to the top.
Four cautious steps into the opening and the flash caught him. He scrambled desperately, blinded by the beam, toward the crevasse behind the slab. There was a sudden explosion of gunshots, deafening in the closed space, and the sound of bullets whining off the stones around him. Then he was behind the slab, panting, the flashlight beam reflecting off the cliff.
What do you think? Tull asked.
Damn. I think we missed him.
He’s sure not going to come down now, Tull said.
Hey, buddy, First Voice said. You’re stuck in a box. If you don’t come down, were going to set this brush on fire here at the bottom and burn you out. Hear that?
Leaphorn said nothing. He was considering alternatives. He was sure that if he came out they would kill him. Would they build the fire? Maybe. Could he survive it? This slot would give him some protection from the flame, but the fire would roar up the crevasse much like a chimney, exhausting the oxygen. If the heat didn’t kill him, suffocation would.
Go ahead and start it, First Voice said. I told you he’s not coming down.
Well, hell, Tull said. Don’t a fire draw a crowd out here?
Voice One laughed. The only light that’ll get out of this canyon will reflect straight up, he said. There’s nobody in forty miles to see it, and by morning the smoke will be all gone.
Here’s some dry grass, Tull said. Once it gets going, the damp stuff will catch. Its not that wet.
Leaphorn had made his decision without consciously doing so. He would not climb down to be shot. The men below him started the blaze in a mat of brush and canyon-bottom driftwood caught at the crevasse opening. In moments, the smell of burning creosote bush and piñon resin reached Leaphorns nostrils. The fire below would be interfering with the men’s vision. He looked down at them. The dog stood behind them, backed nervously away from the blaze, but still looking up its pointed ears erect and its eyes reflecting yellow in the firelight. To its left stood a large man in jeans and a denim jacket. He was holding a military-model automatic rifle cradled over his arm and using the other hand to shield his face from the heat. The face looked lopsided, somehow distorted, and the one eye Leaphorn could see stared upward toward him curiously. Tull. The second man was smaller. He wore a long-sleeved shirt and no jacket, his hair was black and cut fairly short, and the firelight glittered off gold-rimmed glasses. And behind the glasses Leaphorn saw a bland Navajo face. The light was weak and flickering, the glimpse was momentary, and the gold-rimmed glasses might have tricked the imagination. But Leaphorn found himself facing the fact that the man trying to kill him looked like Father Benjamin Tso of the Order of Friars Minor.
» 15 «
The problem would be flame, heat and lack of oxygen. Behind this slab, the flames would not reach him unless they were drawn in by some freakish draft. That left heat, which could kill him just as surely. And suffocation. The light from the fire below grew, flickering at first and then steady. Leaphorn worked his way further behind the slab, away from the light. His boot sole suddenly splashed into water. The slab had formed a catch basin which had trapped the days rain water as it poured down the cliff face. Behind him now the flames were making a steady roar as brush higher up the crevasse heated and exploded into fire. He pulled himself into the water. It was cool. He soaked his shirt, his pants, his boots. Through the slot behind him now he could see only fire. A gust of heat struck him, a searing torch on his cheek. He ducked his face into the water, held it there until his lungs cried for air. When he raised his face, he drew in a breath slowly and cautiously. The air was hot now, and his ears were filled with the roar of the fire. As he looked through slitted eyes, weeds in the lip of the slot wilted suddenly, then exploded into bright yellow flame. His denims were steaming. He splashed more water on them. The heat was intense, but his lungs told him it would be suffocation that would kill him unless he could find some source of oxygen. He climbed frantically between the cliff face and the inner surface of slab, working his way away from the fire. The first breath he took seared his lungs. But there was a draft now, sucking past his face. It came not from the flames but from somewhere, below, pulled through the slot by the heat-caused vacuum.
Leaphorn forced himself into the increasingly narrow gap-away from the furnace and toward this source of blessed air. Finally he could go no farther. His head was jammed in a vise of stone. The heat varied, now unbearably intense, now merely scalding. He could feel steam from his soaked pants legs hot on his inner thighs. The fire was making its own wind, sucking air extremely hot air past his face. If the draft changed, it would pull fire up this slot and char him like a moth. Or when his clothing dried and. ignited, this draft of oxygen would turn him into a torch. Leaphorn shut this thought out of his mind and concentrated on another thought. If he stayed alive, he would get his rifle, and he would kill the dog and the man with the lopsided face and, most of all, he would kill Goldrims. He would kill Goldrims. He would kill Goldrims. And thus Joe Leaphorn endured.
The time came when the roar of fire diminished, and the draft of air around his face faded, and the heat rose to a furnace intensity. Leaphorn thought, then, that he would not survive. Consciousness slipped away. When it returned, the noise of burning was nothing more than a crackling, and he could hear voices. Sometimes they sounded faint and far away, and sometimes Leaphorn could understand the words. And finally the voices stopped, and time passed, and it was dark again. Leaphorn decided he would try to move, and found that he could, and inched his head out of the crevasse. His nostrils were filled with the smell of heat and ashes. But there was little fire. Most of the light here came from a log which had tumbled into the crack from above. It burned fitfully a hundred yards overhead. Leaphorn eased himself downward, toward the pool of water. It was warm now, almost hot, and much of it had evaporated. Leaphorn put his face into what remained and drank greedily. It tasted of charcoal. Hot as the fire had been it had not been enough to substantially raise the temperature of the massive living stone of the cliff which was still cool and made the temperature here bearable. In the flickering light, Leaphorn sat and inspected himself. He would have blisters, especially on one ankle where the skin had been exposed, and perhaps on his wrists and neck and face. His chest felt uncomfortable but there was no real pain. He had survived. The problem now was just as it had been how to escape this trap.