'I'll bet you don't.'
The man's face twisted in anger, and the leader intervened. 'Lionel, Cowboy, cool it, both of you!' he said, then read the sign aloud himself. When he'd finished, he grunted. 'It's like the ranger said when he talked to Seppanen yesterday: You could get lost and die down there.'
Eyes hooded by blued lids, the woman looked down the trail. 'And they went down anyway?'
'Looks like it.' He turned to Cowboy, who was examining the ground.
Cowboy nodded. 'Fresh tracks. One set is small.'
The leader looked where Cowboy was pointing. All he could see was that the ground was scuffed. 'You ready to go down there now?'
The man shrugged. 'Why not?'
They went back to their van, where Cowboy opened the luggage compartment and belted on his canteen and heavy Colt .44 revolver. Then he took his rifle out, an old .257 Sako with scope and a silencer—a high-velocity, flat trajectory sport rifle with a clip of soft-point bullets. Finally he saluted the leader. 'See you later, Jamaal.' He looked at the others. 'Harley, Naylene. Lionel. Quite a while later, unless they change their minds and don't go all the way down. That may be what they'll do.'
He slung the rifle across his back, and the others followed him back to the trailhead. He started down, and they watched till the canyon wall curved and Cowboy passed out of sight. Then they returned to their van again. It was still chilly on the rim, and they sat inside to stay warm.
'How come,' said Lionel, 'that Cowboy talk like he does? He don' sound like no brothuh.'
Jamaal looked him over before answering. Not many blacks talked like Lionel anymore. It was out of style, though he tended to slip into it himself a bit when talking with Lionel. 'Cowboy's from Wyoming,' Jamaal said. 'He's a cowboy. He didn't grow up around brothers, except his family. Everyone else was white around there.'
Lionel already knew Cowboy's origins. Simply, his considerations of race didn't allow for such anomalies—for any anomalies. He couldn't handle them; forgot them, or failing that, ignored them. Now he dismissed Cowboy from his mind. 'We should have killed 'em last night. Found out what room they in, snuck up there and killed 'em then.'
'We're supposed to kill them where no one will know,' Jamaal said patiently. 'If we can. That's why Terence hired Cowboy. Seppanen's a shark, you know that. Works for Prudential, and Terence doesn't need Prudential on our ass. That's why, when I heard Seppanen and that ranger, I decided we'd do it down there.' He gestured toward the canyon. 'Down there, if Cowboy does his job right, nobody'll find the bodies. And the rangers won't know they never came out. Likely Prudential won't even know they were here, unless Seppanen called and told them. And why would he do that? He's on vacation.'
Jamaal was as much reviewing things for himself as talking to Lionel. Terence would like the way he was handling it, he told himself. There'd likely be a bonus for him when they got back.
Meanwhile Lionel sulked. 'That's roach shit, bein' scared of Prudential.'
'When you tell Terence he's roach shit,' Jamaal said dryly, 'do it when I'm not there. You'll be lucky if the worse he does is whup your ass. He's not bein' roach shit; he's bein' smart. He's avoidin' hassles with no profit in them.'
Lionel subsided, scowling, then looked toward Harley, who was smoking a cigarette in the driver's seat. 'Hey, gook eyes,' Lionel said, 'what you thinkin' about?'
Harley didn't even turn around. 'You don't want to know.'
Lionel bridled at that. 'What you mean, I don't want to know? I asked you, didn't I?
'Lionel!' Jamaal snapped, 'shut your mouth.' Jamaal wished he'd argued when Terence had assigned the man to him. Lionel had tried repeatedly to pick a fight with Harley. Without his own repeated intervention, they'd have fought by now, and one of them might be dead.
Cowboy was worth ten Lionels. Jamaal had no doubt that Cowboy would kill the Seppanens that day, and leave them where they'd never be found.
* * *
With the ravens gone, Tuuli and Martti set out again. The trail dropped down off the crest along a tilted unconformity, a ledge widened by Barney's pick and shovel till it reached a slope less precipitous. Then it wound down into a broad cove that fanned into a set of descending draws divided by low broken ridges. Martti and Tuuli were far below the rim now, and the morning was no longer chill. In places the ground was clothed with brush, and there were piles of boulders. Once they startled a small bevy of mule deer, and once a family of desert bighorns that clattered noisily away across a scree slope. Lizards scooted out of their way. Twice they found their path dead-ending: They'd gone astray onto a game trail—deer or bighorn or wild burro—and had to backtrack.
Finally they came to a sandy canyon bottom, nearly level among towering rocks, and as narrow as an alley. After a little, it opened onto a low dune, with the Colorado River surging past, wide and powerful, a violent, booming rapids not far upstream. They stood on the dune, watching, holding hands again. After a minute, Martti looked at Tuuli.
'Shall we eat lunch?'
She nodded, smiling. Lunch might not have been the best word for it—her watch said 10:14—but they'd started at daybreak. When they'd eaten, they lay down to rest before beginning the steep hike back. Then she grinned, run her fingers along his thigh and kissed him, and instead of napping, they made love on a poncho, the sun warm on their limbs and bodies.
Afterward they lay there for a bit, Martti looking at her covertly. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted and smiling. She'd definitely changed. When she'd first come back from Long Valley, he'd thought it wouldn't last, but it had. She didn't get mad as easily; he wasn't sure she got mad at all anymore. And he—somehow he didn't put his foot in his mouth as much as he used to. It was as if her new patience, her new tolerance, had rubbed off on him.
Except it wasn't patience or tolerance; not with her. It was more basic than that, he told himself. It was as if —as if she had a new viewpoint. That almost whatever he did was fine with her. Like his flareup at the ranger, the day before. She laughed more these days, too, a lot more. She was more demonstrative, and more admiring in a