He closed his eyes for a moment against the blazing white light of the sun. Then, with a deep sigh, he began again. There, two feet ahead, was a crushed clump of grass. He took one step and looked beyond it. There, maybe four feet ahead, was an overturned stone, showing a little sand on its bottom. He scanned a semicircle with his eyes. And there was the impression of the side of a hoof in a tiny patch of sand.
It was bloody tedious, to tell the truth. He occupied himself with the thought that, by now, Carson and de Vaca had no doubt drunk all their water. Their horses were probably half-crazed with thirst.
Here, at last, was a clear stretch of tracks, leading ahead for at least twenty feet. Nye straightened up and walked alongside them, grateful for the temporary respite. Maybe they’d grown tired of making their trail so difficult. He knew he bloody well had.
There was a sudden movement in the corner of his eye, and simultaneously Muerto reared, jerking Nye backward into the horse’s flailing hooves. There was a stunning blow to his head, followed by a strange noise that quickly died away, and an infinity of time passed. Then he found himself looking up at an endless field of blue. He sat up, feeling a wave of nausea. Muerto was twenty feet away, grazing peacefully. Automatically, his hand reached for his head. Blood. He looked at his watch, realized he’d only been unconscious for a minute or two.
He turned suddenly. Off to one side, a boy sat on a small rock, grinning, his knees sticking up under his chin. Wearing shorts, knee socks, and a battered blue blazer, the breast-pocket emblem of the St. Pancras’ School for Boys half-obscured by dirt. His longish hair was matted, as if it had been wet for a very long time, and it stuck out from the sides of his head.
“You,” Nye breathed.
“Rattler-snake,” the boy replied, nodding toward a clump of yucca.
That was the voice: supersaturated with the Cockney drawl that, Nye knew firsthand, years of English public school in Surrey or Kent could never fully exorcise. Hearing it from the mouth of this small figure, Nye was instantly transported from the fiery emptiness of the Southwestern desert to the narrow gray-brick streets of Haling, pavements slick with rain and the smell of coal hanging heavy in the air.
With an effort, he willed himself back to the present. He glanced in the direction the boy had pointed. There was the snake, still coiled in striking position, perhaps ten feet away.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nye said.
The boy laughed. “Didn’t see it, old man. Didn’t hear it, neither.”
The snake was silent. Its tail, sticking up at the end of its coil, was blurry with vibration, yet it was making no noise. Sometimes rattlers did break off all their rattles, but it was very rare. Nye could feel a prickle of secondary fear course through him. He had to be more careful.
Nye stood up, fighting to control the wave of nausea that washed over him as he rose. He went over to his horse and slid the rifle out of its scabbard.
“Hang on a minute,” the boy said, still grinning. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Nye slid the rifle back. It was true. Carson might hear the shot. That would give him information he didn’t need to know.
On a hunch, Nye scanned the ground in a wide arc around the snake. There it was: a green mesquite stick, recently whittled, forked at one end. And, lying beside it, a similar stick.
The boy stood up and stretched, smoothing down his unruly hair. “Looks like you were set up, bang to rights. Nasty bit of work. Almost did you, that one.”
Nye swore under his breath. He’d underestimated Carson at every turn. The snake had been agitated, and had struck too early. If it hadn’t... He felt a momentary dizziness.
He looked again at the boy. The last time he had seen him, Nye had been younger, not older, than the grubby little fellow that now stood before him. “What really happened, that day down in Littlehampton?” he asked. “Mum wouldn’t tell me.”
The boy’s lower lip stuck out in an exaggerated pout. “That dirty great wave got me, didn’t it? Pulled me right under.”
“So how did you swim back out?”
The pout deepened. “I didn’t.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Nye asked.
The boy picked up a pebble and threw it. “The same might be asked of yourself.”
Nye nodded. True enough. He supposed all this should seem strange to him. Yet each time he thought about it, it seemed more normal. Soon, he knew, he would stop thinking about it at all.
He collected the reins of the horse and gave the snake a wide berth, searching again for sign about thirty yards to the north.
“Hotter than a bleedin’ pan of bubble and squeak out here,” the boy said.
Nye ignored him. He had found
“Here, I’ve got an idea,” the boy said. “Let’s head him off at the pass.”
Through a fog of pain, Nye remembered his maps. He wasn’t as familiar with the northern end of the Jornada desert as he was with the southern. It seemed unlikely, but he supposed it was possible there might be a way to head Carson off somewhere.
Certainly he still had the advantage. Eight gallons of water left, and his horse was going strong. It was time he stopped merely reacting to Carson’s stratagems, and began calling the shots himself.
Locating a flat area in the lava, Nye unrolled his maps, weighing down the corners with stones. Perhaps Carson had headed north for reasons other than simply throwing everyone off the scent. The personnel file stated that Carson had worked ranches in New Mexico. Maybe he was heading toward country he knew.
The maps showed large, complicated lava flows in the northern section of the Jornada. Since the topographical engineers hadn’t bothered to actually survey the flows, large sections of the maps were stippled indiscriminately with dots indicating lava. There was no section or range data. The maps were no doubt highly inaccurate, the data having been gathered from aerial photographs with no field checking.
At the northern end of the Jornada, Nye noticed a series of cinder cones marked “Chain of Craters” that ran in an irregular line across the desert. A lava mesa, the Mesa del Contadero, backed up against one side of the flow, and the tail end of the Fra Cristobals blocked the flows at the other. It wasn’t a pass, exactly, but there was definitely a narrow gap in the Malpais near the northern end of the Fra Cristobals. From the map, it looked as if this gap was the only way to get out of the Jornada without crossing endless stretches of Malpais.
The boy was leaning over Nye’s shoulder. “Cor! What’d I tell you, then, guv? Head him off at the pass.”
Twenty miles beyond the gap was the symbol for a windmill—a triangle topped with an X—and a black dot indicating a cattle tank. Next to them was a tiny black square, with the words “Lava Camp.” Nye could tell this was a line camp for a ranch headquartered another twenty miles north, marked “Diamond Bar” on the map.
That’s where Carson was going. The son of a bitch had probably worked on the ranch as a kid. Still, it was over a hundred miles from Mount Dragon to Lava Camp, and eighty miles to the narrow gap alone. That meant Carson still had almost sixty miles to go before hitting the windmill and water. No horse could go that distance without watering at least once. They were still doomed.
Nevertheless, the longer he looked at the map, the more certain Nye felt that Carson would be heading for that gap. He would stay on the lava only long enough to shake Nye, and then make a beeline for the gap, and for Lava Camp that lay beyond—where there would be water, food, and probably people, if not a cellular phone.
Nye returned the maps to their canisters and looked around. The lava seemed to stretch endlessly from horizon to horizon, but he knew now the western edge of the lava was only three-quarters of a mile away.
The plan that took shape in his mind was very simple. He would get off the lava immediately and ride ahead to that gap in the Malpais. Once there, he’d wait. Carson couldn’t know that he had these maps. Sneak that he was, he probably knew Nye was unfamiliar with the northern Jornada. He would not expect to be cut off. And, in any case, he’d be too damn thirsty to worry about anything but finding water. Nye would have to ride in a long arc to ensure that Carson wouldn’t pick up his track, but with plenty of water and a strong horse he knew he could reach the gap long before Carson.
And that gap was where Carson and the bitch would meet their end in the crosshairs of his Holland &. Holland Express.
