but the belt that had saved her life now held her fast and the pain in her gut threatened to overwhelm her.
She lay still wanting to cry but unable to focus even on self-pity. Giving up was seductive: a moment of fear, then an end to fighting. Fleetingly, she wondered if death were a narcotic, if inside her death and adrenaline waged a small-scale chemical war, fighting for her will.
Involuntarily her left foot twitched and several pieces of gravel were sent down the mountain. An instant of sound; an eternity of silence. Anna was not yet ready for the eternal silence.
Adrenaline won.
Twisting her injured arm, almost welcoming the clean ache of grating bone, she crawled her fingers along the stone until she had worked her hand underneath her belly. She could feel the smooth metal of her belt buckle. It was hung up on what felt like a post. Once free of it, she would have one chance to jerk her body the two feet to the crack. If she slipped or her strength failed or her clothing snagged, she would slide off the edge.
Two hundred feet.
A cold rush of fear froze her as surely as an arctic wind and for a moment Anna could neither see nor breathe. When it passed, it left her weakened.
Now or never, she thought. Bucking away from the stone, she pushed at the buckle with cramped fingers. For an instant it remained caught. Then with awful suddenness she was free and slipping. Strength born of desperation, she dragged the weight of her body across the limestone. When her face cleared the vertical lip, she saw an upright slab within, a powerful hand hold. Seizing it, she tumbled into the crack in the rock.
'Oh God, oh God, oh God,' she heard herself saying when she became cognizant and she laughed. 'Oh God for a chamber pot.' The inevitable adrenaline reaction was setting in.
Nausea was next, then trembling weakness. Then pain reasserted its dominion. Anna took stock of her situation. Looking out, back across the smooth limestone she could see the protrusion that had broken her slide: a knob of iron ore an inch and a half high. The natural ore, harder than limestone, remained like an upthrust thumb when the rock had eroded away. Anna's NPS belt had snagged on it.
Delicately, she unbuckled her belt and unzipped her hiking shorts. The iron had not broken the skin but a dark red welt ran up her abdomen. Where the iron had caught under the buckle her flesh was already turning dark purple. With torn fingers, she palpated her belly. There was pain but no rigidity. A good sign there was no internal bleeding. Training started to take over, Anna falling into the secondary survey pattern she'd been taught to use to assess for injury.
She stopped herself with a snort. No one would find her where she was, halfway down a mountain, hidden in a hole, her pack tumbled into the thickets a couple hundred feet below. Shouts would not carry up the cliff nor down to the canyon floor. What difference did it make if she were badly injured or not? Her belly hurt, her head hurt, her left shoulder was killing her and so what? She must climb.
Bracing one foot against each wall of the stone chimney, she began working her way up. Ten feet and she was singing 'Itsy bitsy spider' to blank the pain from her mind. Fifteen and her legs began to tremble. Fear of falling slowed her inching progress. Thirty feet up there was a narrow shelf she could brace her butt on and, the weight off her legs, she rested.
Afraid to stop too long lest her strained muscles begin to cramp, Anna pushed herself on before many minutes had passed. Blood was dripping down her neck on the left side but the drip was slow. She had no idea how much was blood and how much sweat. Salt burned deep into the scrapes on her chest.
'That which does not kill us, makes us strong,' she repeated. It was her mother-in-law's favorite aphorism, but she didn't believe it. 'That which does not kill us, does not kill us,' she amended and squeezed upward foothold by foothold, her body the wedge that kept her from falling back down.
Forty-five feet and the crevice began to narrow. For a little while the going was easier. Then the chimney was gone. The stone above, weakened from weathering in the cracked surface, had fallen away. A gigantic chip of limestone had broken off leaving ledges, like shelves, tapering away from the chimney's top. A shallow crack several inches wide was all that remained of the chimney. It ran the last three yards to the trail.
Anna braced herself and let her breathing slow. There was no advantage in going back down, even if she could have. Up then. Eight, maybe nine feet. Close enough she could call for help and be heard. But there was no help and Anna doubted she had the strength to stay braced for more than an hour at most.
This is probably it, she thought, I will probably die. 'I may die,' she said aloud to see how it sounded. Absurd but true. 'Don't think about it.'
She worked one foot up onto the tiny ledge then drove her hand into the narrow crevice and made a fist. The flesh jammed tight and she pulled herself up till she was standing one foot on the ledge to either side of the chimney.
Ignoring the pain in her injured shoulder, she drove her left hand into the crack above her right and made a fist, a wedge of finger bones. Pulling herself up, she scrabbled for footholds. The stone, broken here, less weathered, gave better purchase. Hand over hand, skin scraped away by the rock, Anna dragged herself up.
A snapping sound beneath her left shoulder shot fire up into her brain, but her right hand was on the bole of a small tree at the trail's edge and her feet were solidly placed. With an effort that dragged a grunting cry from her, Anna rolled onto the welcome cradling rocks of McKittrick Ridge Trail.
It was good to lie still, to hurt in peace, to be alive. Soon, though, the kindly rocks of the trail grew sharp, digging into her back. Flies swarmed around the oozing scrapes on her body. Thirst dragged her back from drifting dreams of rescue.
Anna shoved her useless arm into her shirt front and buttoned it there with the three remaining buttons. Step by step she stumbled down the familiar trail. Somewhere near the bottom, a round face under the shapeless cloth brim of a fishing hat swam into view. Beneath it, Anna was dimly aware of a woman with pure white curling hair wearing a lime-green T-shirt.
'Pardon me,' Anna said and was surprised at how human she still sounded, 'but could you do me a favor?'
Evidently she could. When next Anna opened her eyes it was Cheryl Light's face she saw.
'You're doing good,' Cheryl said, her square, seamed face as comforting as some generic mom's. 'We're taking you out. We'll be to the first water crossing in a minute. You're doing good.'
'Good,' Anna repeated. Tree branches flowed overhead. She was in the Stokes litter being trundled home. Anna was glad it was Cheryl Light. She hadn't anything against Cheryl. As consciousness drifted away again, Anna wondered what it was she had against everyone else.
13
WIDESPREAD but not deadly was how the doctor at the Carlsbad Hospital had described Anna's injuries. Her collarbone was cracked, her abdomen badly bruised, she had a slight concussion and severe contusions on her hands, legs, and torso.
Two days in the hospital for observation and she could go home. The first day she was called a 'lucky girl' and a 'brave girl' so often she was ready to punch somebody. When Rogelio appeared, a cold quart of Ballena and two flat loaves of Mexican sweet bread in a paper bag, Anna began to feel a little less vicious. When he kissed her and said: 'Jesus, but you're one hell of a strong woman,' she began to feel downright cheerful. At least till the tears came. But they were slow and healing. The kind she could laugh through and mean it. She was not utterly alone. Life no longer hung by a fingernail.
Rogelio pressed her bandaged palm to his lips. Beneath her fingertips she could feel the rough stubble on his cheek. 'All the perfume in Arabia couldn't sweeten this little hand,' he said and smiled. 'See. Not a complete illiterate.'
Anna laughed. 'Because, like Lady Macbeth's, it is drenched in blood?'
'Whatever,' he said. He dipped his finger in a tear caught in the corner of her mouth. Delicately, he dabbed it behind his ear and, though she would've liked to cry for another hour-another day-to flush the fear and helplessness from her soul, she found herself smiling.
Rogelio brought the Ballena and the bread to her table. They looked rustic, real in contrast to the formidable efficiency of the stainless-steel tray. Anna took some of the bread but shook her head when Rogelio passed her the
