Novel 1966 - The Broken Gun (v5.0) Page 6

  My toe found the ledge, tested it, and then balancing on the delicate edge, I moved one hand down a crack until the crack became narrow enough. Closing my fist to hold me there, I went down the face a little farther, finally swinging only by that closed fist. If I opened my hand, I would fall.

  The fingers of my right hand found a grip, and then my toes found a hold, and bit by bit I eased on down the rocky face, and dropped when only a few feet above the bottom.

  Here I was on a ledge of water-worn rock that was no more than twenty feet across and about that deep. Near the base of the cliff down which I had come there was a deep pool hollowed out by falling water, and the pool contained water now. There were a couple of feet of overhang near the pool, but no other shelter. There was no way they could come upon me except from the direction I had come, so now I went to the edge to look down. I drew back hurriedly.

  The cliff fell away sheer for at least a hundred feet, and on that face there were no handholds. Unless I could go back up again the way I had come down, there was no escape for me. I had trapped myself far better than they could have managed it, and it was probable that they knew it.

  There was water, of course, but there was no food; and as for the way I had come, in that direction were the men who hunted me.

  I made haste to get under the overhang, where I turned a rock on its side to get a comfortable flat surface, and sat down. From above I would be invisible.

  There was no need to worry about the sun, for it would shine into this narrow canyon for not over an hour a day. What troubled me, besides my own plight, was that there was nothing I could do to help Belle. Though she had gotten away into the hills, she might need help.

  Something moved on the rock above me, and I held myself back, careful to make no sound. Dust and a few pebbles fell over the lip.

  “Sheridan?” It was Colin’s voice. “You might as well answer. We know you’re down there.”

  They suspected, with evidence enough, but they did not know, and what they did not know could hurt them. I held my silence, and waited.

  Then suddenly, up there above me, I heard a hacking and pounding on the rock. Were they cutting footholds to come down? For a moment I was on the verge of looking out. The advantage was with me if anyone tried to come down that face, for while climbing down he would be helpless unless protected from above. Even in that case I might rush him as he reached the bottom and knock him over the edge. But even as I started to get up, I realized what they were doing.

  They were chipping away at the footholds I had used in getting down. And they had only to knock off one or two and I was a prisoner right here, and could be left to starve to death. There would be no marks of violence on my body, and this was vastly preferable to a bullet wound that must be explained away.

  “We aren’t going to worry about you anymore,” Colin said after a while. “And if there are any tapes of yours that are a danger to us, we will have them.”

  My secretary, a trusting girl, would be alone. She would protect my property if she could—but against Floyd Reese or Jimbo Wells?

  I could not wait. Somehow, some way, I had to get away from here.

  Then above me I heard the grate of boots on rock, retreating footsteps…and then I was alone.

  Chapter 6

  THE SUN WAS high, but it was cool within the walls of my prison. Above me was a narrow ribbon of blue, and straight before me the canyon, so narrow that in places one might almost have reached from side to side. Where I sat it was wider, but as it narrowed it took a slight bend, so that the curve of the wall closed off any glimpse of the outer world. That world, I knew, lay bright in the midday sun only a few hundred yards away.

  For a long time I sat perfectly still. When one has lived in the wilderness one acquires a quality of stillness, and one learns to listen.

  The sounds of the lonely places are subdued sounds. Once one becomes accustomed to those that prevail, such as the wind in the trees or in the grass, he soon begins to recognize those other, smaller sounds. He learns to know the sound of a bird rustling after food among the leaves, or the sounds made by small animals. He learns to distinguish between the sound of pebbles falling by some natural cause, and those disturbed by a step.

  There is never complete silence. The wilderness is quiet, but there is always a faint, low rustle or murmur. Listening is an art to be cultivated; and the symphonies of the desert or the forest demand a finer ear than do the symphonies of the composers.

  I knew that all that I possessed, all that I had tried to become, my very life, was at stake. This was no story I was writing, but reality itself, stark and terrible. Within the next few hours I must fight a battle to survive, a battle that would determine not only whether I would live or die, but also whether Belle would. And if we did die, an evil thing would remain in the world, destructive and unchecked.

  Man has within himself the most powerful weapon ever developed—the human brain. If I were to survive now, it would be because what strength I possessed would be directed by the mind.

  So I sat quietly, listening. The taint and turmoil of cities were gone from me. Minute by minute I had been reverting to the life of the mountains and the wilderness—back, if you will, to savagery. I was here in a savage land, and to survive I must be savage, even more so than they who hunted me.

  Again my thoughts returned to the Alvarez brothers. They were part Apache, and undoubtedly their forebears were somewhere about when the Toomeys drove their cattle into the valley of the Verde. Little could have happened at that time without their knowledge.

  I moved to the lip of the precipice and looked down. Even with rope and pitons descent would be next to impossible. And the way I had come was now even more impossible.

  Upon the ledge where I stood there was a little sand trapped by the unevenness of the rock, and I examined this. There are few places in the mountains that are not visited by wild animals, and often their tracks can lead a man to water, to shelter, or even, as in such a case as mine, to escape.

  But I was not to be so lucky. Nowhere on the ledge could I find any tracks, or any droppings that would indicate an animal had been here.

  There was a little driftwood, which I gathered. It was enough, if used with care, for a small fire for one or perhaps two nights, and I knew these mountains well enough to know that when darkness came it would be cold. The place where I was caught was about a mile above sea level, and when the sun goes down it is not warm in that altitude, even in the middle of summer. I would build my fire near the rock, which would act as a reflector.

  All this time there had been no shots. I had kept my thoughts away from Belle Dawson, who had gotten off at a dead run. She knew this country, and I told myself she must have found a hiding place. She had grown up here, and children often know the odd corners and hiding places better than adults do. There would be places where she had gone to be alone, places she had found when following animals, places she had come upon quite by chance. One of these places might be a hiding place for her. Yet even as I told myself this, I worried.

  And then I thought of something else. Floyd Reese would not rest, simply knowing I was trapped. I had hurt him, hurt him physically and in his ego, and he would not be one to forgive. He had taken a beating from me, and he would want to inflict pain on me, to see me suffer, to gloat. He was that sort of man.

  Floyd Reese would be coming here.

  Shadows gathered in the canyon below, while gold rimmed the ridges above me. Carefully I put my fire together, and was about to sit down beside it when I had a new thought. It was impossible to go down, impossible to go back up, but what about going out?

  I got up from the ground quickly. In three steps I was at the rim of the cliff and looking at the smooth walls that stretched away before me.

  The idea of working along those cliffs that walled the canyon on both sides had not occurred to me before. Now as I looked I could see nothing to give me hope—no crevice, no place where I could grasp a hold with hands or
feet. Yet I would not accept the idea that I was finished. There had to be a way; if there was not, I would make one.

  If I could find a way to work along the face of the rock, out from the ledge on which I stood, I might in time find some way either up or down.

  Nobody needed to tell me how foolish it was to try such a thing alone. From time to time I had done a bit of rock climbing and knew the way of it, but here I had neither helpers nor equipment. I stood there until darkness came to the cleft in the rock, trying with every bit of my mind and memory to work out a way to do it.

  It didn’t matter that it was impossible—there was no other way. I might have tried to wait until a search party came, but I knew my hunch about Reese was right. He would leave me here, all right, but with a bullet in me—not one to kill, just one to cripple or injure.

  There would be a search party. I knew that, which Colin could not know. During the past ten years I had been too much in the public eye, I had too many friends. I knew they would come looking, and that Colin would have no choice but to let them come. They would scour the country with helicopters in the air and search parties on the ground, and some of them, some of my old climbing friends, would be experts. They would know where to look.

  And a lot of good it would do me, for if I stayed here I would be dead.

  Under the overhang I struck a match, shielded it from the rising wind, and had a fire going. There was fuel enough, and more than enough, now that I proposed to make the attempt to escape. And after a while, with a gnarled old cedar root to hold the fire, I slept.

  It was a cold, shivering dawn that awakened me—not quite dawn, but a paling sky. I drank water and teased the fire into a blaze. There was still a bright star hanging low in the sky. It would be gone in a moment, behind the cliffs along which I meant to climb.

  There was no hopeful thought in me as I waited, for I knew that no man but a fool, or one in such a desperate plight as my own, would make such an attempt. There seemed not even a chance to begin it. A sheer face is never easy, even with ropes and pitons and help, and the way I must try was courting suicide. Suicide it would be, for I could not say I was ignorant of what I was attempting. And there was the uncomfortable realization that Reese might choose just that moment to return. With me out on the face of the cliff, and Reese with a rifle in his hands, he would have things just the way he wanted them, and it would be a pleasurable time for him.

  I waited there, cursing myself for having been such a fool as to get into such a box. All the pleasures; everything good in life was behind me now. The books I wanted to write and had not written, the things I wanted to do…I’d bought myself a package of trouble because of a few fading sheets of paper found in the barrel of an old pistol.

  Dawn found its way along the high cliffs, and a gnarled and dwarfed cedar held up its limbs in agonized gesture before the awakening light. Standing up, I put out the last of my fire—not that there was anything for it to reach out for, but the ways of habit are strong. The fire out, I stretched and stretched, loosening the muscles against the time for moving out, if there was a chance for that.

  Here and there I seemed to see just a thread of passage along the rock face. On the right the rock bellied out, leaving an awkward hollow beneath it. My first move would be to get off the ledge itself and onto the face, and looking at it I felt the cold of fear begin to creep up my spine.

  It was like glass—smooth and sheer. There might be an occasional meager handhold, but I’d be swinging free and clear, hundreds of feet above the rocks below, and it was a prospect I had no taste for.

  On the edge of the ledge I stood looking out, studying the cliff. Going down would be impossible. If I could make it at all from out there it would have to be up.

  My eyes went to the left. There was the sheer drop to the rocks, but about six feet out was a cedar, a small tree with many stiff branches, some old, some young. Beyond the cedar, and several feet higher up, I could see what might be considered a narrow ledge. It was not even two inches wide, and looked to be about six feet long.

  If I could get into that cedar and stand up, hoping it would not break, and then get my fingers on that ledge, I might inch along it, my body hanging against the rock…but where from that point?

  I saw that there was a crack in the rock just beyond, a crack not over four or five inches wide at most…or so it appeared from where I stood. If I could reach that, I might use a lie-back—my feet against the far side of the crack, my hands pulling hard against the near side, and so holding myself up and climbing by opposing the one strength against the other, I might be able to climb.

  But that twenty feet…I felt the cold sweat on my forehead and my hands were clammy. There would be no rope to hold me…a moment’s weakness and I was finished. And always there would be the threat of Reese, who might suddenly arrive on the scene.

  Above that twenty feet out there, was a ledge. It looked to be a foot wide, which was like a highway compared to what lay between where I stood and it. Beyond that ledge I could not see. I might get there and find myself helpless to go on—and once there I could not even die in comfort. It would be merely a matter of hanging on until I weakened and fell.

  The cedar was craggy and old. Gray, jagged ends of ancient limbs thrust out through the green, and they could open a man wide if he fell against them. But there was no other way for it, and I had waited long enough.

  I took off my coat and dropped it on the ledge, where it could be seen if searchers came looking. Then, swinging my arms, I jumped.

  For an instant I seemed to hang in the air, and then some of the cedar’s branches were splintering under me, but the tree itself had kept its strength and it was sturdy. Some old limbs broke, but the tree held, and gingerly I eased my feet onto the thickest of the short branches.

  Carefully I stood up, balancing myself. The tiny ledge was above me. Stretching my arms out, I was still a few inches short of reaching it. There was nothing else for it…a quick hop…my fingers caught, clung.

  I swung against the face, then hung there still. Ever so gently, sweat streaming down my face, I worked my fingers along, my whole weight hanging from them.

  Inch by inch, my mouth dry as dust, my breath coming hoarsely, I moved along the ledge. Once I thought I heard a sound…was Reese coming? Horror filled me. I did not want to die…I wanted, desperately, to live!

  Halfway. Another inch…the strain on my fingers was almost intolerable.

  The crack up which I must go was before me, and that meant an even greater strain. Suddenly my fingers encountered a small rock and some dust. For an instant I held myself still. If my fingers slipped on that dust…I moved them and the rock fell past my face, dust falling against my cheeks.

  The crack opened beside me and I got a boot into it. My body was wet with sweat, as much from fear as from exertion.

  One hand moved, turned, and the fingers hooked against the rock. Then I shifted my weight, getting the other foot against the far side of the rock. I dared not hold still; there was no place to rest, or even to catch a breath.

  Using the lie-back, my weight hanging against my fingers while I pushed against the rock with my feet, I began to climb. Slowly…up…up…up.

  All at once I knew I was going to make it. I was going to reach that ledge.

  I grasped at the edge of it, and it crumbled under my fingers. Reaching out, I tested a further place, and got hold of it, then pulling against the rock I hauled myself up and got a knee on the ledge. Slowly, with infinite care, my palms reached up along the wall…up, up higher. Using the strength of one leg, I pulled up the other, then slowly stood up.

  For a long moment I rested there, trembling like an aspen.

  Behind me was the gulf of the canyon, before me sheer wall. Turning my head carefully, I looked along the ledge. It went out of sight under a bulging overhang where I must kneel down to pass.

  Just then somewhere back of me I heard a rock roll, as if under a boot. Breathing hoarsely, I carefully worked a
long the ledge, eased myself to one knee, and edged under the overhang.

  Behind me a voice called. “Sheridan?”

  It was Reese, and he had not seen me yet. Under the bulge, where there was shadow, I remained immovable.

  “Sheridan!” he called again. “That coat doesn’t fool me. Not even a fly could go down that wall. I’ve stood at the base of it, and I know.”

  There was a long moment of stillness. I wanted to move—I wanted to get around the slight curve in the rock. But I dared not move, for to move was almost surely to be seen.

  “Sheridan?” The voice was a little less sure now. “Come on, Sheridan. I’ve come to get you out of there.” He was lying, for I could see the pistol in his hand, ready for a shot.

  “It was all a mistake,” he went on. “The boss wants to make it up to you. Come on out and I’ll toss you a rope.”

  An inch…if I moved just an inch…I crawled my fingers forward along the ledge, held still, then lifted my knee ever so slightly and pushed it forward a little.

  All was quiet behind me. I dearly wanted to look, but dared not.

  He was walking around now; soon his eyes would go along the cliff. I did not think he could make me out, in the shadow as I was…but he might.

  I eased my fingers along, and leaning my weight on my palm I hunched forward a little. Almost instantly there was a shot. A bullet struck the rock above me and ricocheted off down the canyon. Reese shouted some incomprehensible words at me, and fired again.

  But the moment had given me time to move. The corner wasn’t much, but I was around it, with a swell of the rock behind me.

  But there was no time for elation. Glancing quickly around, I saw the ledge on which I stood ran only a few feet farther, but beyond it was a chimney, a cleft in the rock that appeared to be several feet deep, and from three feet wide opposite where I stood, to five or six feet wide at the bottom, a good hundred and fifty feet down.