She hoped Karl hadn't read that far.
The muscles in her arms and legs were quivering by the time she pulled herself over the top. There wasn't any way she could do it safely or discreetly but merely hauled herself over the lip of stone and sprawled gasping on a natural landing fifteen or twenty feet wide.
Her shoulder throbbed. Cracks took nearly as long to heal as breaks. Climbing fifty feet probably wasn't included under the prescription of "taking it easy." Breath and caution recovered, she sat up.
The climb had landed her at the mouth of a small hanging valley not more than half a mile deep and about that wide. Met by an unyielding horseshoe-shaped escarpment of hard stone, the rains had carved, instead of the usual steep-sided ravine, a shallow flat-bottomed canyon. Soil, washed down the many tiny runoffs from the high country, had filled the little valley with rich fertile earth.
Hidden from above by steep tree-covered slopes and from below by the ragged ravine-cut land dropping into Big Canyon, the valley had a mysterious quality. Like all magical lands, it was protected by a cloak of invisibility.
Anna got to her feet and walked quietly across the stone landing and stepped into the trees. Delicate music reached her and she paused mid-step. Whistling, faint and clear: "Never Never Land." Karl was in the valley. Anna hadn't doubted that; the whistling reassured her that he believed himself alone. Unless she had severely underestimated him and it was part of a well-laid trap.
A path formed beneath her feet. More than just a narrow animal track, this trail had been trod by heavy boots many times. She guessed Karl approached his little kingdom from a number of different routes to avoid leaving a trail others might be tempted to follow. Here he felt safe enough to take the easiest way.
Karl's whistle kept him placed in Anna's ear as she moved quickly up the trail. With the sweet scent of pine, the towering walls, soft dirt instead of unforgiving stone underfoot, it was hard to retain the adrenaline level that had given her strength on the forced march Karl had led.
A tearing sound in the trees to her left brought her back to nervous reality. Two does tore placidly at the dry grass less than fifteen feet from the trail. Both looked at her with mild interest then went back to their lunch. One of them had an eight-inch scar on the left side of her neck. The other was missing her right rear hoof. The leg ended just below the ankle. Both showed a complete lack of fear.
Curiouser and curiouser, Anna thought.
The whistling stopped and she proceeded with more caution. Twenty feet beyond the grazing animals, she came to a small clearing. What looked at first glance to be a child's fort was built against a venerable old ponderosa growing between two boulders.
The shack was at most eight feet square and not quite that high. Walls and roof were made of sticks and small branches held together with nails, twine, and baling wire. Tar paper served as weather-proofing. A blackened length of stovepipe held up by wire affixed to the pine tree poked up from the roof. A faded horse blanket curtained off the doorway.
Keeping to the cover of the trees, Anna skirted the clearing till she stood under the pine next to the stick and paper hut. There she listened until she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Nothing moved within. From up the valley came again the notes of a whistled song.
She slipped around the cabin and pulled the horse blanket aside. The room was uninhabited. Stepping inside she then steadied the blanket lest its movement give her away.
After the glare of the afternoon it took her eyes a minute to adjust to the gloom. Light trickled in from gaps around the stovepipe and tears in the tar paper. Karl's red backpack lay on the earthen floor as if he'd thought better of leaning its considerable weight against the walls. A stove, fashioned from half of a fifty-gallon drum, took up most of one wall. Evidently unused in summer, the stove was all but hidden by eight five-gallon plastic cubitainers the park used to haul and store water. Six were full. There were no shelves. Rude benches crafted of stones and branches lined two of the walls. Both were littered with bottles and cans, boxes and tools.
A short search disclosed several lengths of rope, some chain, two scalpels, surgical tape, syringes, needles, a bottle of chloroform, cotton wool, a ten-pound bag of Purina Dog Chow, and a bottle of ketimine partially empty.
Sunlight flashed as the blanket covering the door was jerked aside.
19
NAILS cried from the wood and the blanket was torn free of the tacks holding it in place. Karl and Anna screamed at the same time. Standing in the sun, the horse blanket trailing from one great fist, a shovel held like a toy in the other, he looked the giant he was. Anna felt like a small furry animal cornered in its den.
"Anna!" he said, and for an instant she thought he looked pleased to see her. The moment passed. His heavy features settled into stony disapproval. "You can't be telling about this," he said deliberately, seeming to use his words to carve out his thoughts. "You can't be telling." The blanket fell to the ground and Anna saw his left hand tense up on the shovel's handle.
Feeling oddly melodramatic, she pulled her revolver and leveled it at him. It was the first time she had ever drawn it outside a firing range. The sensation of pointing it at another living creature was disquieting. As was the sudden knowledge that she would not hesitate to use it.
Karl raised the shovel an inch or two. Though his eyes were locked on hers, Anna found his face as unreadable as she always had.
"Put the shovel down, Karl," she said gently. "Just let it fall there beside you."
"You can't be telling," he said stubbornly and his thick fingers rippled on the wooden handle as if he assured himself of his grip.
Shifting her weight, Anna eased back from the square of sunlight shining in through the doorway. In the shadows her movements, her plans would be less easily read. "Let it go, Karl. It'll be easy. Nobody will be hurt."
To her surprise, tears, big and bright as crystals, rolled down either side of his bulbous nose. "Everybody depends on me," he said.
The sense of unreality she had felt since entering the valley deepened. "Who depends on you?"
He waved the shovel vaguely and every muscle in Anna's body quivered. She was strung tight. Consciously, she relaxed, letting the air pull deeper into her lungs. "Everybody," Karl said again.
"Karl," Anna said, careful to keep her voice even, non-threatening. "I want you to do something for me. I want you to set down your shovel. You holding it like that is frightening me. You're kind of a scary man with that shovel. After I stop being scared for a while, maybe I can put away this gun and we can talk better. Will you do that for me? Will you put down that shovel?"
Karl put the shovel down. His big shoulders sagged. It was almost as if he were shrinking before her eyes. She lowered the pistol but kept it ready at her side.
"Will you show me who everybody is?" A fleeting image out of the horror movies she'd seen as a teenager sickened her: bodies strung up with baling wire and twine presided over by a psychotic killer.
Without protest, Karl turned and walked toward the trees up the valley from the hut. Keeping a good fifteen feet between them, her side arm still unholstered, Anna followed.
Things were clarified in Anna's eye to the point of appearing almost surreal. Each movement of Karl's shoulders, every shift of his weight as he plodded heavily along in front of her was noted, judged, rated non-aggressive and dismissed. All in a second, in a footfall. The world surrounding that thick back and shoulders receded from vision. Consequently it took her a moment to refocus when he stopped.
To his left was a natural overhang in the stone that formed the narrow valley's walls. A grotto fifteen or twenty feet deep and fifty feet long had been formed over the centuries as the tiny seeps in the stone had melted away the soft lime. At its mouth the grotto was half again as tall as Karl. Within this shelter were several cages made from sticks and wire and a pen about ten feet square.