“Hang on!” he yelled or tried to yell, pawing with his foot for the brake, but a scrunching shock sent him helplessly up in the air still clinging to the wheel, like a kid bounced off a seesaw and hanging on to the handle for dear life. Then, for a breath-stopping moment the entire van was airborne, coming down heavily on its rear wheels and careening on, slowed now but tilted wildly to the right, on two wheels; so much so that Gideon, flung like a bundle of laundry into the passenger seat corner, saw only sky through the driver’s window on the other side.
We’re tipping over, he thought. “Brace yourself!” he called. “We’re—”
And over they went, the van falling sluggishly onto its right side and then, slowly, surprisingly, continuing to roll, as if someone were pushing it down a hill. For an impossibly long moment it hung, balanced and seemingly struggling, before it tumbled onto its top with a terminal, metal-crumping
Gideon ended up on his back on the ceiling along with everything else that was loose, including Julie, who was sprawled beside him under a welter of seat cushions, clothes and other junk.
He reached instinctively for her with his hand. “Julie, are you okay?” Years of dirt and sand that had been tramped into the van fell onto their faces like dry rain.
“Ugh. Yes. Phooey.” She was spitting dust. “Nothing that a few weeks in traction won’t fix. What about you?”
“Yes, fine.”
Well, pretty much. The van had tipped slowly enough to let him prop himself against the roof and the back of the front seat before it had turned completely over, but the tire iron— he’d brought it up front with him—had gouged him in the thigh, which had hurt a little, and somewhere along the way he had bitten his cheek again in the same spot, which had hurt like hell but wasn’t anything serious. He realized abruptly that the engine was still running and quickly reached down— reached up, rather—to switch off the ignition, then cautiously peeked through a corner of the space where the windshield had been to check their bearings.
They were in a kind of nook or cul-de-sac, a mini-box canyon off the main box canyon. Apparently the van had swerved into it, then flipped when it rode up onto the sloping talus at the foot of the cliffs, rolling into the troughlike center of the little bay. A good thing too; only twenty or thirty feet ahead of them—all around them, in fact—were truck-sized boulders that had fallen from above, a collision with any one of which would surely have resulted in more to complain about than a bitten cheek.
There was another good thing: the hollow from which Forrest had been firing was out of sight around a spur of rock, and if they couldn’t see where he was, then he couldn’t see where they were either. That, Gideon assured himself, was what the laws of geometrical optics said, and who was he to question the laws of geometrical optics?
Not only that, but geography was cooperating too. They were on the same side that Forrest was on; behind him, so to speak. The perpendicular spur that thrust out from the cliff to create their little bay was a promontory of the same massive organ-pipe formation in one of whose upper hollows Forrest had been crouching to fire. But that was at the other end of it, and to get from there to here, to a place where he could see them again, Forrest would have to go the long way around,
The problem for Forrest would be that he had no way of knowing that the van had turned over, since he couldn’t see the bay. As far as he knew, it could come rattling back out at any moment, spewing nuts and bolts like a cartoon car and heading full-tilt for the entrance again. And if he was stuck behind the outcropping when it did, there would be nothing to stop their getting through. On the other hand, he could hardly keep his position at the canyon’s mouth because Gideon and Julie might already be scrambling up the bay’s back wall and out of his grasp.
In other words, Forrest Freeman had himself a predicament. And if Forrest Freeman’s past behavior was any indication, what he would do would be to worry for a while before doing anything else. That meant that they ought to have seven or eight minutes before he showed up above them with his rifle; five minutes while he dithered and another two or three while he worked his way around the promontory, if that was what he decided to do.
Gideon turned back to Julie. “Let’s get out of this thing. We’ll stand a lot better chance out there—there are caves and outcroppings all over the place—than we will waiting in here for him to come pick us off.”
“I won’t argue with that,” she said. “I think the front window’s the easiest way out. Go ahead, I’ll follow you.”
“Right.” He pulled himself through, glanced warily at the deserted cliff top, and reached back in to help her get out.
She was up on her right elbow with a puzzled look on her face, tugging awkwardly at the junk that lay over her extended left foot. “Ow. Damn.”
“Julie, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“No… I don’t think so. My ankle’s caught…
“I’ll give you a hand.” He clambered back in, hauling himself to her side on his elbows.
“No, it’s not going to work,” she said, straining at her foot. “Damn!”
A glance made the problem clear. When the van had flipped, two of the three passenger seat rows had come loose, and one of them had fallen over Julie’s leg and been wedged firmly into the buckled ceiling. The steel reinforcing bar that ran along its base had come down across her ankle, pinning her hiking-booted foot to the crushed roof.
He tried to maneuver her foot out of its steel-rimmed trap without success—there wasn’t enough room to move it— then tugged fruitlessly at the bar.
“You’re lucky you didn’t lose your foot,” he said.
“That’s me,” she said grimly, “lucky Julie.”
He made her lie back, then managed to get both aims around the seat, pulling from his cramped position and putting all the strength of his legs and back into it. It didn’t budge, didn’t feel as if anything short of a crane could get it to budge.
