Mr. Kanavel must've been shocked at the genuine joy with which his rambling grievance was met. The joy was shortlived. If Craig's vehicle was there, then Craig was lost or injured in the Patterson Hills. That meant Craig Eastern was dead. They had failed him.
Anna consoled herself with the thought that he was undoubtedly dead before they'd even known he was missing.
Paul put in a call to the El Paso Police Department and Betsy McLeod was dispatched back to Guadalupe. Paul gave the phone to Christina to provide the police with exact directions to Frank Kanavel's ranch. The rangers would meet her at the missing man's vehicle.
As they left the Administration building, Anna marveled at how language altered subtly as tragedy closed in. Words grew longer, more impersonal, forming a wall around the mind, holding out the less tolerable images. Craig's Volvo had become "the missing man's vehicle."
While Anna put their Search and Rescue packs in the back of the truck, Paul radioed Harland for horse backup.
Kanavel met them at the gate to his ranch. He'd been filled in on the particulars and his growling complaints had been replaced with genuine concern. In the deserts of Texas, to survive, one saved one's fellow man, then questioned him and hanged him later if the answers were wrong.
Craig's car was parked along the boundary fence. Looking at the Pattersons a couple of miles distant, it was easy to guess the direction he had probably taken.
Across the flats, to where the desert began to wrinkle back on itself, mesquite and ocatillo etched the arid soil with dusty green. Low cacti, invisible at that distance, replaced the greenery as the hills folded into sharp ridges and ravines. The Pattersons were scattered in a pattern clear only to geologists and the gods. To anyone else they formed a hell of a maze.
One wash cut deep enough to erode a valley into the flank of a tall hill. Eastern would've walked up that wash, Anna guessed.
Paul radioed the base station. "Seven-two-five," Christina's voice replied. A moment's checking discovered Betsy and Nosy less than half an hour from Kanavel's.
They waited.
The policewoman and Harland with the horses arrived at the same time.
Betsy chose to walk. Paul climbed on Pesky, Anna on Gideon. Harland rode Jack, one of the mules. Jack was the strongest, smartest animal in the park but he was a treacherous mount. Under Harland's hand he was the soul of decorum. Jill, the smaller mule, followed on a lead.
Nosy never hesitated. So great was her dedication, even in canvas booties, her tongue and ears flopping, she didn't appear ridiculous. Betsy followed behind the dog. Six or seven yards back, so they wouldn't interfere, rode Anna and the two men.
The golden retriever led them across the flatlands toward the wash. Under Betsy's direction, the dog was made to stop and drink every five or ten minutes.
The sun was merciless. Anna half believed she could see the life of the desert floating upward like the ghost from a slain body, but she knew it was only distortions in the air caused by the heat. Despite hat and sunblock, she could feel her flesh burn. At thirty-nine she had age spots at her temples and on the backs of her hands.
The horses plodded on with the fatalism of all slave races.
The dry wash provided no relief: no breeze, no shade, only the hard light of the sun reflected back from three sides. Anna drank constantly. So much moisture was sucked up by heat and wind that it was almost impossible to keep hydrated. In the Pattersons there were days a human could not carry enough water to survive, regardless of personal strength.
The policewoman, though game, was unused to the rigors of backcountry desert travel. Paul was the first to notice she was flagging. Under flushed cheekbones, her skin was slightly pale. In her concern for the dog, she wasn't drinking enough or pacing herself.
At the District Ranger's insistence, she climbed onto Jill's back and directed Nosy from there.
A mile and a half in, the canyon petered out. A hill of cactus and scree rose up at a forty-five- or fifty-degree angle above them. They dismounted and hobbled the stock. Betsy leashed Nosy so she wouldn't go over the crest and out of sight. Fanning out, they each found their way up as best they could. Anna wished she'd had the sense to bring her leather work gloves. The only way to make the ascent was on hands and feet. Rocks were hot to the touch and small barrel cacti poked their round heads up where they were least expected.
Topping the hill first, Anna stood catching her breath, sucking the air in through her nostrils in the hope they still had some power to moisten it.
The hill was round on top and sloped steeply away on all sides like the hump of a camel. Opposite from where she stood, about a quarter of the way down, a web of desert joined this hump to the next hump over. The bridge of land flattened out along the spine, then dropped off on either side into deep ravines.
Anna hoped Craig had hiked across that land bridge. Scrambling up these hills would get old very quickly.
Paul puffed up beside her, stood a moment, then looked back down. Watching out for other people seemed second nature to him. Anna followed his example. Betsy McLeod and Nosy were about three-quarters of the way up. Harland was with them. Betsy was drinking from his canteen. In the excitement of the chase she'd forgotten or lost hers. Harland waved and smiled. Betsy looked beat; a good candidate for heat exhaustion.
Anna turned back to her fruitless study of the terrain.
"There," Paul said.
Anna's eyes followed his finger where it pointed to the crown of the little hill on which they stood. She saw nothing. "Where?"
"There," he said again.
Feeling a fool, Anna stared. Into the nothing a shape began to form. A mottled sand- and gray-colored canvas tarp was stretched tightly between two poles and pegged down close to the ground on both sides. Hidden in its shade was a two-man tent with a top of open mosquito netting. "Desert camo works," she remarked.
"At least we know for sure he was here," Paul said. From the camp they would follow scent trails out. At the end of one of them Nosy would find a corpse.
"Craig!" Paul called. Neither of them expected an answer.
The District Ranger started toward the tent and Anna followed. Craig's pack materialized. He'd covered it with sand-colored burlap. Ever the minimum impact camper, Anna thought. She made a mental note to buy all fluorescent orange gear. If she were injured in the Pattersons, she wanted to be found. Being dead had its attractions. Dying did not.
"Craig!" Paul called again, but Anna suspected he was just cheering himself, making a noise because he was alive. At Craig's pack he stopped and folded back the burlap carefully. Anna was reminded this, like all deaths-assuming it was a death-that did not take place under a physician's care, was considered a potential crime scene.
Alert for anything that was not as it should be, she walked over to the tent and reached for the zipper on the flap. As her thumb and finger pinched the hot metal of the pull, she heard the tiniest of sounds; a mere whispered rustling. It froze her in her tracks.
"What?" Paul demanded.
Afraid even to shake her head, Anna listened.
"What is it?" he asked again and, when she didn't answer, he too fell into a listening attitude. Gravel crunched: Betsy and Harland topping the hill. The desert creaked faintly in the heat. Nosy's tongue slopped over her paw. Then Anna heard it again; a faint rattling almost at her feet. Fear older than the Bible caught at her stomach.
Seeing a rattlesnake was one thing. Hearing one and not knowing where it was, was another altogether.