McKee stared down at the body, thinking of what the blond man had told him. The Big Navajo was from Los Angeles. Probably, McKee thought, a 'Relocation Navajo'-a child of one of those unfortunate families moved off the drought-stricken Reservation to urban centers during the 1930's. It had been one of the most disastrous experiments of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, turning hungry sheepherders into hungry city alcoholics. If George had been raised in Los Angeles, it would explain his weak command of the Navajo gutturals, and why what he knew of witches came from books. And maybe it would explain an Indian with the underworld connections which Eddie had seemed to imply. But it didn't explain why George and Eddie had been assigned to scare sheepherders out of this canyon country. Or why it was so important that no one learned they had been here.
The metal of Eddie's pistol reflected the early-morning sun. With that, McKee thought, he could simply wait for the Big Navajo to return, shoot him, carry Ellen down the ladder and take her to the hospital in the Land-Rover. But the pistol was beyond recovery. No way down into the crevasse and no way up if he got down.
He thought about it. Without the pistol he could probably keep the Big Navajo off the cliff. There were food and water at the camp. He could wait the big man out. But Ellen would be dying.
McKee chewed on his lip, trying desperately to think of the best solution. It was then he remembered the truck. Old Woman Gray Rocks had said it was parked in Hard Goods Canyon, nine miles up from the mouth of Many Ruins. That must be close-within two miles at the most. He made his decision.
It took him only a few minutes to hide Ellen Leon where the Big Navajo might not be able to find her. He carried her on the sleeping bag back into the ruins under the cuff. He put her in a room, with food and water beside her, and readjusted the bandage on her face. He saw then that her eyes were open.
'Bergen.' She held out her hand and he took it-conscious of how small and fragile it felt.
'Lie very still,' he said. 'I'm going to climb out and get help.'
'Bergen,' she said again. 'Be careful.'
He ran back to the fissure in the cliff. He would climb out and find the truck. Somehow he would find the truck. If he didn't it would take a day and a night to walk to Shoemaker's. Eighteen or twenty hours, he guessed, which was about twelve more than he could spare.
He pushed past the pinon tree into the dark fissure, swallowing his dread of the climb. She had said Hall was smart-brilliant. If he could find Jim Hall, maybe Hall would be smart enough to save the girl he was engaged to marry.
Chapter 17
The sun was almost directly overhead when McKee found the wires. He squatted in the thin shade of a juniper and examined them-a cable about the diameter of his finger paralleled by a lighter wire. Both were heavily insulated with gray rubber, almost invisible on the rocky ground. The heavier one, McKee thought, would carry electrical current. The lighter one might be anything, maybe even a telephone wire. They must be part of the data-collection system for Dr. Hall's sound experiments, McKee knew, and they gave him the second hope he had felt since emerging from the chimney three hours earlier.
The first had come an hour ago when he had seen the boy on the horse. He had stopped to catch his breath and make sure of his directions on the plateau. He had glanced behind him, and the boy had been there-not two hundred yards away-silently staring at him. A boy wearing what looked like a red cap. But, when McKee had waved and shouted, the horse and rider had simply disappeared. They had vanished so suddenly that McKee almost doubted his eyes.
'He knows he's in witch country,' McKee thought, 'and he's spooky.' Trying to follow him would be a foredoomed waste of time.
Following the wires, on the other hand, would be simple. At one end there would be some sort of gadget of the sort which concern electrical engineers. At the other end-with any luck at all-he would find the engineer. And Hall would have a truck and maybe a radio transmitter. The cable ran southeast across the plateau toward the Kam Bimghi Valley and northwest back toward the branch canyon McKee had been skirting. It was an easy choice. McKee trotted toward the canyon, following the cable.
At the rim, the cable looped downward, disappearing under brush and reappearing where it was strung across rocky outcrops. McKee paused at the rim, staring up the canyon after the cable.
This branch canyon was much shallower than Many Ruins and its broken walls offered several fairly easy ways down. From the canyon floor, McKee heard an echoing ping, ping, ping-the sound of metal striking metal. A flood of elation erased his weariness. Hall's truck must be there, and Hall with it. And it wasn't more than a quarter of a mile away.
The pain came with absolutely no warning, just as he took a step down off the rimrock. Behind the pain, perhaps a second, he was conscious of the flat snap of a rifle fired a long way off. Then he was conscious only that he was falling and of suffocation-or a terrible need to draw a breath into lungs that wouldn't work. He was on his back now, on a pile of talus just under the rim. The sky in front of his eyes was dark blue. He could breathe again, although inhaling hurt. And he could think again. He put his hand where the pain was, on his right chest. It came away hot and red. Someone had shot him. Who? The boy on the horse? That made no sense. The Big Navajo. Yes, of course.
McKee pushed himself into a sitting position against the rimrock and gingerly examined the damage. He could feel the bullet hole on his back-a small burning spot. It had come out left of his left nipple, tearing a hole through which blood now welled. Broken ribs, he thought, but the lung must have been missed. It still inflated.
McKee coughed and flinched at the knife in his ribs. He tried to think. The Big Navajo must have returned to the cliff, and had found Ellen. No use thinking about it.
From up canyon he heard the dim, puttering sound of a two-cycle engine. Probably a generator motor. And probably down in the canyon bottom Hall hadn't heard the shot. Or if he had heard it would have no reason to be warned by it. He had to reach Hall in time to tell him.
McKee pulled himself to his feet, took three steps along the talus and stopped, gasping, supporting himself by hanging on to the rubber-clad cable strung across the rocks. It would take him half an hour at this rate to reach the truck. And he didn't think he had that much time.
Over the rim he could see nothing at first. An expanse of plateau, sparse clumps of buffalo grass, a scattering of drought-dwarfed pinon, juniper, and creosote bush, a stony surface on which nothing moved. Then he saw, to his left, the figure of a man. The man walked slowly, a rifle with a telescopic sight held across his chest. He moved unhurriedly, relentlessly, inexorably toward the point of rimrock from which McKee had fallen. Five hundred yards away, walking almost casually toward him under a broad-brimmed black hat, was certain death.
