flashlight on it, aimed it at the place where Tull had been, and flicked it on. He ducked three long steps to his right and then looked over the top. The flashlight beam shone through a blue haze of gunpowder smoke into a gray-white emptiness. Where Tull had been, there was nothing now. Leaphorn slipped back to the flashlight, flicked it off, aimed it at the place the hostages had been kept, and snapped it on again. The beam fell directly on the body of Father Benjamin Tso and illuminated Theodora Adams, kneeling inside the cage. She covered her eyes against the glare. Leaphorn turned off the flash, and felt his way through the blackness to the cage. He unlocked the padlock with the key he had taken from Jackie’s pocket.
Get the lantern off Jackie’s body, he said. Get everybody away from this place. Find a place to hide until I call for you. He didn’t wait to answer any questions.
The speed with which Leaphorn followed John Tull toward the caves mouth was reduced by a healthy respect for Tull. He skirted far to the left of the direct route, carrying the shotgun at ready. When he finally reached the area where light from the entrance turned the blackness into mere dimness, he found droplets of blood on the gray-white calcite floor. At another point, a smear of reddish brown discolored a limestone outcrop.
Leaphorn guessed it was where Tull had put a bloody hand against the stone. Leaphorn hadn’t missed. The shotgun blast had hit Tull, and hit him hard.
Leaphorn paused and digested this. In a sense, time was now on his side. A shotgun would make a multiple wound, hard to stop bleeding and Tull seemed to be bleeding freely. As time passed, he would weaken. But was the crucial measurement of time here being made by Tull’s pumping heart or by a clockwork mechanism attached to about twenty sticks of dynamite still unaccounted for? Leaphorn decided he couldn’t wait.
Somewhere in the darkness around him, Leaphorn was sure that missing timer and perhaps other timers he had never seen was counting away the seconds.
He found Tull where he thought he would find him at the radio. The man had moved the butane lantern some fifty feet back into the cave from the place where Leaphorn had first seen him and Goldrims, and he’d turned on a battery lantern and adjusted its beam toward part of the cavern. The range of light thus extended substantially beyond the effective range of the shotgun. Leaphorn circled, trying to find an approach that offered some close-in cover. There wasn’t one. The floor here was as dead level as a ballroom.
From it ragged rows of stalagmites rose like a patchwork of volcanic islands from the surface of a still, white sea. Tull had moved the radio behind one such island and the lantern was beside it giving Tull the advantage of deep shadow. From there, he could have a clear shot at anyone trying to get out of the cave mouth via the water. The lake protected one flank and the cave wall another. Approaching him meant walking into the lantern light and into the barrel of his pistol.
Leaphorn glanced at his watch, and considered. His hip now throbbed with a steady pain.
Hey, Tull, he shouted. Lets talk.
Perhaps five seconds passed.
Fine, Tull said. Talk.
He’s not coming back, you know, Leaphorn said. Hell take the money and run. You get stuck.
No, Tull said. But I tell you what. You throw that shotgun out there where I can see it, and well just make you one more hostage. When we cut out of here, you’re a free man.
Otherwise, when my friend gets back, he’s going to be behind you, and I’m going to move in from the front, and were going to kill you.
And that was about the way it would work, if Goldrims did come back, Leaphorn thought.
He would be fairly easy to handle by two men even with the shotgun. But he didn’t think Goldrims would be coming back.
Lets quit kidding each other, Leaphorn said. Your friend is taking the ransom and running.
And you’re supposed to wait around for some more broadcasts, and then you’ll run. And when you run, you’re blowing this place up.
Tull said nothing.
How bad did I hit you?
You missed, Tull said.
You’re lying. I hit you and you’ve been losing blood. And that’s another reason you’re not going to get out of here unless we make a deal. I can keep you in here, and you can keep me in here. Its a Mexican standoff, and we cant afford a standoff because your boss has a bomb set to go. Leaphorn paused, thinking about where he had found the bomb and the circumstances. He didn’t tell you about the bomb, did he?
Screw you, Tull said.
No, Leaphorn thought, he didn’t tell you about the radio setup and the bomb in the room with the sacred paintings. Tull’s tracks hadn’t shown up there, and six sticks of dynamite had been missing when Leaphorn had first found the cache. Probably that bomb had been set up separately. This was a Buffalo Society operation, but part of it, Leaphorn was increasingly certain, might be a very private affair of Goldrims himself.
I’m going to play a tape recording for you, Leaphorn said. He took the recorder from under his shirt and adjusted it. Haven’t heard it myself yet, so we can listen to it together.
It was fastened to a Hallicrafters radio transceiver way back in a side room. There was this radio, with a timer set to turn it on to broadcasting, and let it warm up and then turn on this tape recorder. And after the tape ran, the timer was set to detonate some dynamite in a sack there. You ready for it?
There was silence. Seconds ticked away.
Okay, Tull said. Lets hear it. If it exists.
Leaphorn pushed the on button. Goldrims’s voice boomed out again.
. . . have seen policemen in the territory you agreed would be kept clear of police. You have broken your promise. The Buffalo Society never breaks a promise. Remember this in the future. Remember and learn. We promised that if police came into this corner of the Navajo Nation, the hostages would die. They will now die, and we warriors of the Buffalo Society will die with them. You will find our bodies in our sacred cavern, the mouth of which opens into the San Juan River arm of Lake Powell less than a mile below the present lake-level mouth of the
