Fear in a Handful of Dust

at all. Not as if you was really trying to hide or anything.”

“I wasn’t.”

“It don’t matter much.” Duggai picked up the khakis where Mackenzie had left them draped across the table. Mackenzie watched him go methodically through the pockets, one-handed. Duggai emptied everything out and then tossed the trousers on the bed. He made the same search through the pockets of the tunic. Then he threw all the clothes on the bed and stepped back toward the candle, staying to one side so that his shadow didn’t fall across Mackenzie.

“Put them on.”

“You want help, Calvin? Is that why you came to me?”

Duggai pushed the muzzle of the.44 Magnum toward Mackenzie’s face. It mesmerized Mackenzie.

“Put your clothes on, Captain.”

When he was dressed he waited for the next instruction. Duggai saw the way his eyes wandered toward the candle. “Don’t think about it.”

The dog was sitting up watching. She hadn’t moved from the spot-doubtless the tones of the two men’s voices had warned her. She was a very old dog and she had learned to stay out of trouble. It was one of the things Mackenzie had discovered about her in the months since she had wandered up to the cabin and adopted him.

It was occurring sluggishly to Mackenzie that Duggai didn’t have it in mind to kill him right away. Otherwise why have him get dressed?

“What do you want, Calvin?”

“Be daylight in a little while. We go then.”

“Go where?”

“A place.”

“How long will we be gone?”

“Long enough to settle things.” Duggai looked at him, open-mouthed.

Mackenzie said, “I asked because of the dog. The dog’s got to be fed.”

“The dog gets hungry, he can wander on down to the campground. Somebody’ll feed him down there.”

“Or shoot her.”

“Captain, shut up your mouth a minute.”

Mackenzie tried to judge Duggai’s intentions but he had no inkling. One of his many failures was that he’d never been able to get inside that mind.

The dog moved tentatively, shifting her hindquarters, finally getting to her feet. When that failed to alarm the newcomer she waddled slowly toward the bed where Mackenzie sat. She thumped her rump down to the floor and put a forepaw on his knee. Mackenzie scratched her throat. Anger of all sorts ricocheted through him but the most acute anger was on the dog’s behalf. He said a silent so-long to her and wished her luck.

The candle was down to a stub, guttering in the bottleneck. But gray light came in through the window.

“We wait till the sun’s up,” Duggai said. “They’d have noticed us on the road at night. Down by the campground. They’d have wondered.”

“Calvin, what do you want?”

Duggai’s eyes seemed to mirror disgust and impatience. “What the hell do you think, beligano? ”

Beligano. White man. The Navajo word rattled around his skull with all its associations. But none of them connected with anything that told him what Duggai might have in mind.

“Calvin …”

“Shut up your mouth.”

The light grew. Duggai blew the candle out. For a little while the dead-candle stink filled the room. Duggai opened the rickety wardrobe cabinet and took a wire coathanger out. He stepped on the hook and pulled the wire out straight and tossed it on the blanket beside Mackenzie.

“Twist one end around your right wrist. Fasten it good and tight.”

“Why?”

“Do it, Captain. Just do it.” Duggai’s voice trembled with rage.

Duggai watched him wrap the stiff wire around his right wrist. He twisted the end around the stem and held his arm up to show Duggai it was secure. The long piece of wire dangled stiffly from his wrist.

“Lie down belly flat now. Turn your face to the wall. Put both hands behind your ass.”

“Calvin, I don’t think this is going to …”

“Shut up,” Duggai roared. In his fist the Magnum trembled.

He felt his wrists being slammed together and wired tight. Then Duggai rolled him over on his back. Mackenzie looked up at him, past the massive revolver. “What now?”

“Now we go.”

The dog walked a little way with them until Duggai got angry about it. Mackenzie said, “Stay,” and the dog watched them go. From the bottom of the road Mackenzie saw her trot over to the foot of the tower to dig up yesterday’s Milk Bone.

About a quarter mile down past the fork Duggai turned him off the road into the trees. They walked forty or fifty feet and a brown camper-body pickup truck came in sight parked back in the woods. To get this far off the road it had to be four-wheel drive. Mackenzie saw that it had Nevada license plates. Duggai must have pinched the plates somewhere. Clever enough. He couldn’t see through the camper windows because red-and-white checkerboard curtains were down across them inside.

Mackenzie stopped, not sure what was expected of him; the muzzle of the Magnum dug into his back. “Keep going.”

“Where?”

“Back of the truck.”

The chill in the thin early air came through his tunic and made him shiver involuntarily. Duggai mistook the meaning of it. “You going to be a lot more scared after a while, Captain.”

Mackenzie wanted it to be over with, whatever it was Duggai had in store for him. But Duggai was right: he was afraid. I’m damn well terrified, he admitted to himself.

He watched the big Navajo dig keys out of his pocket and run through three of them until he found the one that unlocked the back door of the camper. Duggai swung it open and gestured.

With his hands wired behind him he had to make three tries before he was able to get up into the camper without losing his balance and falling back. He stepped up on the pickup’s rear bumper and stooped to go inside.

“Sit down there on the bunk.”

It was a bare mattress in a frame against the aluminum sidewall. On the opposite wall were a compact bottled-gas stove and a tiny flap-table hinged down flat against the wall; there were booth seats on either side of the lowered table. The seats doubled as storage compartments. Camping gear was lashed down on top of them: blankets, a Coleman lantern, five-gallon water drums, canvas sacks that probably contained provisions. Overhead were narrow lockers. A long weapon case was suspended from cleats in the ceiling; probably a hunting rifle with a scope, hung up there out of the way so that it wouldn’t bang against anything that would knock the sights off center. Forward in the cramped space above the cab a child-size bunk lay crosswise near the ceiling; this too was piled with lashed-down objects and sacks. There was a water tank in the back corner to which a shower head could be screwed by way of a fitting outside the truck. The windows were small-one on each side, one in the back door- and he saw that the curtains had been tied securely across them.

Duggai had a short piece of heavy rope coiled into a noose. Mackenzie hadn’t seen him pick it up. “Raise your feet off the floor.”

He lifted his feet and Duggai flipped the noose under them, adjusting it and gesturing. Mackenzie dropped his feet back to the floor inside the noose. Duggai pulled it up tight, forcing him to cross his ankles; then Duggai swiftly ran the rope back under the cot and threaded it through something Mackenzie couldn’t see-a cleat under the seat or a metal cot leg. Duggai pulled the knot up tight. Then he took the cased rifle down off the ceiling. In the opening behind him birds flitted among the sunlit treetops.

“I don’t guess you’ll get loose right away.”

“Is there a point to all this?”