under the tarp and fed them and started him soaking his hand in a pot of steaming water, the Big Navajo had climbed back down the ladder. He had sat for a long time in the Land-Rover and when he returned he had news.
McKee rubbed his knuckles across his forehead, remembering exactly. The big man had been grinning when he walked up to where Eddie was sitting-grinning broadly.
'Girlie says maybe tomorrow afternoon will do it,' the Navajo had said. Eddie had looked pleased, but he had said something noncommittal. Something like Girlie's been wrong before. No. It was Girlie's been wrong three times, because the Indian had laughed then and said, 'Fourth time's the charm for us. It had occurred to McKee then that if these men were leaving tomorrow they would no longer need a letter written by him: Once they had finished what they had come to do and had left this canyon why would it matter if someone came looking for Canfield and Miss Leon and himself? It would only matter that no one be left alive to describe them. Thinking that, he had decided to throw the water pot at the Big Navajo and jump Eddie, trying for Eddie's pistol. He hadn't thought he would get the pistol, but there would be nothing to lose in trying. And then the Navajo had baffled him again.
'Dr. McKee,' he had said, 'I think we'd better try to get that knuckle of yours back into joint, and tie it up with a splint. I'm going to be busy tomorrow, but by tomorrow night I'll want to get that writing done.'
Thinking about it now, McKee was still puzzled. Eddie had carried a section of the ladder to the cliff ruin and they had climbed against the overhang to the top of this wall… and then down into the pitch darkness of this room. The Navajo had told him to sit on the floor and hold out his hand. He had argued with the Indian that the joint was broken, not just dislocated.
The Navajo had laughed. 'They feel like that when they're pulled out, but we can get it back in the socket.'
The big man had squatted beside him, with Eddie holding the flashlight from above, and had taken McKee's swollen right hand in both of his own, and suddenly there had been pain beyond endurance. When he had returned to awareness, Miss Leon was holding his head and his hand was tightly wrapped. He had been sick then, violently sick, and then they had talked.
'Where did they go?' McKee had asked. It was almost totally dark in the windowless room, with only a small spot of moonlight reflecting through the roof hole relieving the blackness.
'I heard them a little while ago,' Miss Leon had said. 'I think they were both out there where their sleeping rolls are. And then I heard what sounded like the ladder being moved.'
'I guess they climbed down,' McKee said.
There was a long silence. McKee felt her shoe against his leg. The touch seemed somehow personal, and intimate, and comforting.
'Dr. McKee.' Her voice was very small. 'I didn't hear all of what you and that Navajo said when we were at Dr. Canfield's camper. Dr. Canfield's body was in there, wasn't it? He killed Dr. Canfield?'
'Yes,' McKee said. There was no use trying to lie to her. 'I guess he did.'
'Then he'll kill us, too,' she said.
'No,' McKee said. 'We'll find a way out.' He could think of no possible way.
'There isn't any way out,' Miss Leon said. 'It would take a magician to get out of this.'
McKee was glad it was dark. Judging from the sound of her voice, she was on the ragged edge of tears.
'I didn't have a chance to tell you,' he said. 'We think maybe that electrical engineer you were looking for may be working somewhere way up the canyon.'
'Jim? Did you find him?'
'Some Indians saw a van truck driving up in here. Do you know if he was pulling a generator?'
'There was a little trailer behind his truck,' she said. 'Would that be a generator?'
'Probably,' McKee said. He searched his mind for some way to keep this conversation going, to keep her from thinking of sudden death.
'I noticed your ring, Miss Leon. Is this Dr. Hall-er, Jim-the one you're engaged to?' i
'Why don't you call me Ellen?' she said. There was a pause. 'Yes, I was going to marry him.'
McKee noticed the past tense instantly. And then it occurred to him why she used it. She thought she would soon be dead.
'What's he like?' McKee asked. 'Tell me about him.'
'He's tall,' she said. 'And rather slim. Blond hair, blue eyes. He's very handsome really. And he's-he's, well- sometimes moody. And sometimes very happy. And always very smart.'
The voice stopped. I match none of that, McKee thought, except the mood part.
'He graduated magna cum laude.' The voice paused, then continued, 'And our society doesn't have the proper respect for magna cum laude.'
'I guess not,' McKee said.
Ellen laughed. 'I was quoting Jim,' she said. 'Jim is-well, Jim is very ambitious. He wants things. He wants a lot of things, and he's very, very smart-and-and so he'll get them.'
'I don't know why,' McKee said. 'But I guess I never was very ambitious.' He wished instantly that he hadn't said it. It sounded self-pitying.
'What else about him?' McKee asked. He didn't enjoy hearing her talk about the man. But it was better for her to talk, better than having her sitting silent in the dark-dreading tomorrow. She talked rapidly now, sounding sometimes as if she had waited a long time for someone to listen, and sometimes as if she was talking only to herself, trying to understand the tale she was telling.
