genes from his old man.”
The day was sunny and warm, and the air was heavy with moisture that still lingered from the storm two days earlier. They went in the long way, hiking five miles on the trail off the county road. There was only one car parked at the trailhead, and they both recognized the silver Karmann Ghia that Bigby had been driving since he got it as a present on his sixteenth birthday. They double-timed it along the trail, where Cork saw boot prints that had been left not long before. They arrived at Trickster’s Point to find Bigby already halfway up the formation, working without the aid of ropes or pitons, in the full light of the sun, which had climbed nearly straight overhead. They had to shade their eyes against the glare when they looked up at him and hollered his name.
Bigby secured his position with both feet and the firm grip of his right hand, then hung out a bit from the rock and looked down at them with a shit-eating grin.
“What do you know? It’s Chip and Dale. Looking for acorns?”
“Looking for you, you son of a bitch,” Cork spit out.
Bigby shrugged. “Found me. Now what?”
“Now you come down, and we talk about Winona.”
“Winona? The squaw girl? Why talk about her?”
“You know why,” Cork said. “Come on down. Or is it just girls you like to beat on?”
“Whoa, O’Connor. How about you come up here and we talk.”
“All right.”
Cork started for the rock, but Jubal held him back.
“You ever climb before?” he asked Cork.
“No.”
“Then I’m going up.”
“Do you know how to climb?”
“No. But I’m better at it than you.”
Which was probably true. Jubal was better at everything. Still, it stung.
“You stay here,” Jubal said.
“And do what?”
“If I chase him down off there, I don’t want him running away.” He looked up, as if contemplating the difficulty of the task ahead. “And if I fall, you think he’s going to go get help? I need you down here.”
Without waiting to confer further, Jubal stepped up to the rugged face of Trickster’s Point and began to climb after Donner Bigby.
CHAPTER 12
J ubal was a spider, nimble on the rock. He climbed with a swiftness that astonished Cork, and Bigby was clearly alarmed. The big kid turned back to his own task and continued up the face of Trickster’s Point, heading for the top, which was still a good seventy feet above him. Jubal relentlessly closed the gap between them, and by the time Bigby had topped the monolith, fifteen minutes later, Jubal was only a dozen feet below him. Bigby stood and caught the full light of the sun, and bright yellow flickered all over his body as if he were electric or on fire. He bent over the edge of the rock and called down to Jubal, “Gee, Little, it’d be a shame if you lost your grip and fell.”
“You let him come up there,” Cork hollered.
Bigby laughed. “Or what?”
Cork shielded his eyes against the midday sun and watched helplessly as Jubal approached the top with Bigby towering above him, showing his teeth in a kind of hungry grin. Cork was truly afraid that when Jubal’s hands made their final reach, Bigby would stomp on them and send Jubal plummeting. He was furious with himself for not going up along with his best friend or going up in his stead. He felt twisted and helpless watching from the ground as the drama played out a hundred and fifty feet above him.
Bigby finally stepped back and disappeared from Cork’s view. Jubal crawled onto the flat crown of Trickster’s Point unimpeded, and he, too, was lost from sight. Cork became aware again of the oppressive humidity of the day. Each breath felt heavy in his lungs, and his nostrils seemed clogged with the dank smell of wet earth. He realized that a deep stillness had fallen over the area. There wasn’t a whisper of wind or the call of a single bird, and above him came no sound from the two kids facing off atop the great pillar.
“Jubal! Bigs! What’s going on?”
The minutes passed, and Cork’s concern grew. He remembered advice Sam Winter Moon had given him about hunting. “The most important skill of all, and the most difficult to master, is patience.” Why hadn’t they been patient? They could simply have waited on the ground, because Donner Bigby would have had to come down sometime. Cork knew the answer. Anger. It had clouded all their thinking. He looked up, unable to swallow and barely able to breathe.
That’s when he heard the sound, one that made his blood turn to ice. From the top of Trickster’s Point, but from the far side, came a brief, terrible scream. It hit the stillness like a rock might hit a big lake, with only a moment’s impression, then it was gone and what was left was simply the vast stillness.
“Jubal?” Cork cried toward the sky. “Jubal?”
He received no answer. He thought for a second of climbing Trickster’s Point but had no idea what good that would do. Instead, he ran around the base of the formation, toward the side from which the scream had come.
The body lay on its back, bent at an abnormally acute angle across a rock slab that had, ages ago, splintered from the flank of the pillar and toppled to the earth. The sight stopped Cork instantly. His legs, for a moment, refused to move him forward, and his brain refused to believe the image his eyes delivered to it. Slowly he lifted his gaze and saw, high above, a head and shoulders, silhouetted against the sun as they bent over the edge of the pillar’s crown to face the scene on the ground below.
Cork finally willed himself forward.
Donner Bigby’s eyes were wide open and his mouth, too, as if he was looking up at something that absolutely astonished him. Cork stared at the body, searching for any movement of those eyes, for any faint rise and fall of the massive chest, for any sign, no matter how feeble, that there might still be life in Donner Bigby. He knew he should touch Bigby, check for a pulse, speak to him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do any of those things.
He glanced back up and saw that Jubal was easing his way over the lip at the top of Trickster’s Point. Jubal moved more slowly, more carefully than he had when ascending. Cork figured that might have been because coming down was harder, but he also thought the reason could simply have been that Jubal was in no hurry to face what awaited him at the bottom. Knowing it would be quite a while before Jubal joined him, Cork finally forced himself to do what duty demanded.
He leaned close, and his shadow fell over the kid’s face. “Donner? Can you hear me?” He gingerly touched Bigby’s neck with his fingertips, feeling for even a ghost of a pulse. He laid his ear against Bigby’s chest. Nothing came to him, except the smell of Bigby’s emptied bowels. Cork stood and moved far enough away that he couldn’t smell the stench of death.
The full weight of the situation fell on him, and his legs would no longer hold him up. He dropped into a sitting position on the wet ground and went, for a little while, into a kind of daze.
“Cork?” It was Jubal’s voice cutting through the haze.
Cork snapped back to the terrible reality of the moment.
“You okay?” Jubal asked.
“He’s dead.”
Jubal’s face was ghost white, and he sat down heavily beside Cork. “I know.”
“What happened?”
Jubal was quiet a long time, and the voice that finally spoke was smaller than Cork had ever heard from his friend. “He stumbled. He just stumbled and fell.”
Cork tried to look into Jubal’s eyes, to find some clue there about the truth of that explanation, but Jubal averted his face.
“I want to know everything,” Cork said.
“There’s nothing to know,” Jubal insisted, almost desperately. “I accused him of what happened to Winona.
