No pocket automatic was going to hit anything at that range but it must have been close enough to unnerve the rifleman; the moving shadow started to zigzag and became lower and thicker because the man was running bent-over now. Watchman saw him disappear over the horizon of the hill, crouched very low against the skyline.
He sprinted to the Rambler. “Angelina?”
“Are you all right?”
“Are you?”
“I’m fine.”
He heard her giggle, probably at the inanity of the words. Watchman returned his eyes to the hillside while he refilled the magazine and thrust it into the pistol grip. “Nothing on the other side of that hill except the road, is there? No houses or anything?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
The hills weren’t altogether barren but it was mainly a studding of piñon and scrub oak and dry brush. The hardpan wouldn’t hold footprints, not the kind you could trace in the dark. Still there wasn’t much to hide behind.…
He got up on one knee and froze. Nothing. Stood up, stood bolt still for the instant it might take a rifleman to take aim, then ran dodging to the base of the hill.
His move drew no fire. He called over his shoulder: “Stay on the floor. I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?”
The note was plaintive but he didn’t answer her; he went up the hill fast with his boots scraping and slithering dislodging loose clots and pebbles; careless of the noise he swarmed all the way to the crest and stopped to get his breath while he eased up the last few feet until he could see across to the far side.
The moon was rising, a thin rind not yet in its first quarter. It didn’t throw much light and some of the stars in the eastern hemisphere were obscured by clouds left behind by the day’s rain squalls. Past the farther hills he caught the glow of lights from Whiteriver. The intervening distance was a wavy rolling of low hills with the narrow highway two-laning across it at an oblique angle. He swept it in a square search-pattern, trying to pick up movement in the edges of his vision. If the man was lying up there’d be no way to spot him in this minimal light but if he was moving there was a chance.
Watchman gave it a full ten minutes but nothing stirred and in the end he carried his pistol back down to the car and said, “We may as well go inside.”
10.
At the door he stopped and listened and then asked Angelina for the key. She shook her head and pointed to the latch.
He thumbed it and pushed the door open but he didn’t go in; he stood beside the door with the girl behind him. If anybody was waiting inside the silence would shake them up; they’d begin to wonder whether the first thing they’d see would be a human figure or a tear-gas grenade.
It was probably an unnecessary precaution but you stayed alive by avoiding unnecessary risks. After the silence had ticked by for a time Watchman eeled inside and flattened his shoulder blades against the wall to one side of the doorway.
Nothing stirred. He felt along the wall for a light switch, found one where he expected to and flipped it.
The house was a free-standing efficiency apartment with kitchen appliances along the far wall and a bathroom built into one corner. The only living thing he spotted was a house spider.
“Okay,” he said. Angelina came in and he shut the door behind her.
There was a narrow bed and not much other furniture: a bedside table with a lamp, a rickety wooden kitchen table with two chairs, a wardrobe that was half closet and half chest-of-drawers. On the walls she had taped up posters from the All-Indian Powwow and the White Mountain Rodeo and Yellow Submarine and a center-creased poster that had come inside a Janis Joplin LP album.
“Sorry it’s such a mess,” she said. She sat down quickly on the bed as if she had to get off her feet before she fell. “Dear God.”
He put his gun away and crossed behind her to draw the burlap drapes.
She turned and lay across the bed in an abandoned sprawl, plucking at the drawer of the nightstand. She took out a couple of joints and offered him one.
“Not now,” he said, and went to the other window.
“Well I need one. God my nerves.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t you,” she said dully.
“It’d be a good time to keep a clear head.”
“Even if it’s going to get shot off anyway?”
“He won’t shoot your head off. At that range he’d have had you cold. He missed because he wanted to—it was a warning.”
“What kind of warning?”
He didn’t answer; he thought it out. There was one way it made sense and once he had it sorted out he was pretty sure of it.
She said, “I’ve got a bedroll. I’ll camp on the floor if you want.”
“Find out if anything’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“Just have a look in the cupboards, all right?”
She rolled off the bed and swayed when she was on her feet but she shook off his tentative hand. “I’ll be all right. A little dizzy.” She crossed to the kitchenette cabinets and opened the bottom one. “The stereo’s still here.”
It was a cabinet made for cleansers and pails but she had a portable stereo in it and a stack of albums. She closed it and looked in the shelves above the sink. “Wait a minute.”
He was watching over her shoulder. She was the kind of girl who’d have at least half a dozen cans of spaghetti and soup and roast-beef hash around because she’d have those days when cooking for herself was a drag. But he didn’t see any cans at all.
“He took all the nonperishables, didn’t he.”
“How did you know that?”
“Think about it a minute and you’ll figure it out for yourself.”
She turned quickly; surprise and anger and speculation chased one another across her face.
“He stole your things because he knew you wouldn’t report it,” Watchman said. “At least you know he’s not starving to death. Look around, see if he left a message.”
“That wasn’t Joe,” she protested. “Joe wouldn’t shoot at me. If you think he’d do that you’ve got a pretty wild imagination.”
“I’ll look for it myself if you’d rather.”
“I’ll look,” she said angrily.
He stood in the middle of the room and watched her explore. She went into the refrigerator and all the drawers. He said, “The shooting was for your own protection.”
“I haven’t needed protecting since I was thirteen.” It was flip and automatic and she trailed off at the last word; she stopped and pulled her face around toward him. “What do you mean?”
“He couldn’t have known I’d be coming behind you. He was waiting up there to impress you, not me.”
“Impress me?”
“He probably figures it’s the best way to scare you into getting out of here.”
“Well he’s right,” she said, “but I don’t really believe you.”
“Of course the whole theory blows up if it happens your brother’s a lousy shot.”
She went into the bathroom and he heard the squeak of a medicine-cabinet door. She reappeared empty-handed and looked at him. “He grew up hunting. He’s a good shot.”
“I know he is.” He spread his hands, palms out, finger-tips down.
“I suppose you could be right.”
“Did you look under the phone?”
“Not yet.” She went to the instrument and lifted it but there wasn’t anything under it. She put it down and smiled a him. It was a bit vindictive. “Thank God. I was starting to think you were always right.”
“Maybe he figured the rifle shot would be enough of a message. He didn’t want you to think he was the one shooting at you. He wanted you to think it was somebody else, somebody really trying to kill you. That would scare you off.”
“It would,” she agreed, not without irony.