The flashlight beam abruptly blinked out. Leaphorn eased himself silently upward. He heard the same voice talking quietly to the dog. And then a second voice: He must be up in that crack there, the man called Tull said. The dogs treed him.
The first voice said, I told you that dog would earn his keep.
Up to now he’s been a pain in the butt, Tull said. The son-of-a-bitch scares me.
No reason for that, the first voice said. Lynch trained him himself. He was the pride of Safety Systems. The man laughed. Or he was before I started slipping him food. Hell, Tull said. Look what I just stepped on. Its his gun! The dog took the bastards gun away from him.
There was a brief silence.
Its the right one all right. Its been fired, Tull said.
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 pinon 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
