Foxfire (42 page)

How is it that I'm here? So far from all I know—dislocated into a world where none of the emotions I have ever had return to give me guidance?

She looked at Dart, and thought for a second of leaping hope that he met her eyes in answer. But she wasn't sure, there was not enough light to see for sure. Still held in the dream-like suspension she might have spoken to him, she might have said, not in appeal but with grave confidence, “Do you remember—?” But Hugh shattered the weird silence.

“Jesus, what swill!” he cried, flinging his empty bean can far into the darkness where it clattered and cannonaded over the naked rocks. “Where do we go from here, dear Captain, or do we just sit here for eternity, moldering on the malapie?...That's good”—he said viciously—“moldering on the malapie. I like that.” He raised his flask and took a long gurgling pull.

“I trust there's water in that flask,” said Dart grimly.

“Well, you trust wrong, my lad.... Here, have a swig,” he said to Amanda, “it'll warm you up.” He thrust the flask at her.

She sniffed it and pushed it back. “Oh, Hugh, I can't drink straight alcohol, and I wish
you
wouldn't.”

Hugh shrugged and took another pull.

“Cut it out, Hugh,” said Dart. “We've got to get out of here soon as it's light, and I can't haul any drunks along.”

That they were in a situation of considerable danger tonight Dart knew very well, though he had not impressed it on the others. Everything depended on their finding the lost valley soon, and its water and game to supplement the provisions the burro carried. Prudence demanded that he ration these for,the trip back, at least as far as the lower country where they might hunt again, and where there was water. But they must get over this wilderness of dead lava. Already they had finished their canteens, and one could not count on rain, which never came when it was needed. The emergency can would not go far amongst three humans and an animal. And worse than that, the burro had gone lame today after his hind leg had slipped between two boulders. Fortunately, burros were the toughest little beasts in the world. They could exist on any kind of browse, but here on the malpais there was nothing. As if in affirmation Tonto that moment stuck his head around the rocks and brayed mournfully.

“Hee-haw!” said Hugh. “Hee-haw. That's what I think too. Now Dart, dear, I've been a very good boy on this jaunt, but there're limits. I don't like this God-blasted place we're in, an' I'm going to get drunk.” He had finished the flask, and forgetting concealment he began to fumble in his knapsack for the spare bottle.

He found his wrists held in a vise-like grip, and the knapsack was taken away from him. “I'm sorry,” said Dart. He extracted the bottle, pulled the cork, and the fumes of grain alcohol floated through the chill air.

It took a moment for Hugh to understand, then he stumbled to his feet and lunged across the lava hollow. “God damn you”—he whispered—“God damn you!” His wavering fist crashed past Dart's head in the darkness.

“Oh, sit down, Hugh,” said Dart impatiently, giving him a ^slight push. Hugh collapsed back on his bedroll breathing hard.

Amanda shrank away from him until she felt the harsh pitted lava pressing through her blankets against her back, but she watched Hugh unconsciously, still frightened by the ugly moment, and then she thought she saw his hand gleaming white against the darkness of his clothes, and moving slowly. She watched uncomprehending, and then gasped,

“Hugh! What are you doing?”

The white spot stopped moving.

“What is it, Andy?” asked Dart from across the hollow.

“Nothing, I guess,” she answered, trying to laugh. “This place is spooky. I'm seeing things.” Hugh was half drunk and full of the violent temper he often showed, but he was Dart's friend. It had been her own foolishness or a trick of the dim light that had given her the impression that his hand was creeping stealthily back towards his revolver. I'm nuts, she thought, but the two rough little words did not reassure her. This witches' sabbath of amorphous black rocks and echoing space had little to do with sanity.

“Dart,” she said very low, half hoping that he wouldn't hear, “I'm frightened. I thought I'd got over my fear of the mountains, but this...”

He did hear her, and across the darkness he said, “Don't be frightened, Andy. You've done magnificently, better than I ever thought possible.”

A warm pleasure suffused her. He had never praised her like that before, never treated her with the dignity of an equal.

“Dart,” she said softly, “do you think we'll find it soon, the lost valley? It seems further away here than it did in Lodestone.”

“Well, I hope it isn't,” said Dart laughing a little.

“It's queer,” she went on, emboldened by the greater ease between them, “I don't seem to care about it the way I did in Lodestone. I can't seem to remember the gold. I don't mean I want to turn back, of course——”

Hugh stirred suddenly, and his voice, harsh and thickened, exploded between them. “You've got to remember the gold! It's the only thing. The only thing. Viola knew that, didn't you, darling!”

The two Dartlands started and turned. Amanda's heart began to pound. That sudden coarse voice exploding the silence frightened her nearly as much as the motion she thought she had seen.

“He's just pie-eyed,” said Dart quietly. “God knows how much straight alcohol he's had. Better come over here, Andy.”

Amanda obeyed thankfully, picking up her blankets and settling near Dart away from that lumpish, heavy-breathing figure. It went on muttering, and then the voice broke out again on a shriller key. “The Russian Empress wants her gold. Waiting at the St. Regis for her gold. Hughie'll bring the gold, darling—this time he'll bring it and you'll be stretching out your white arms and smiling like the night we—we——”

The voice trailed off into incoherence.

Amanda drew nearer to Dart. “How horrible,” she whispered, appalled by that shrill, unfamiliar voice. “What can he be talking about, or is he—he completely off?”

For a time Dart did not answer, then he broke through his first instinct of reticence. “I think he's talking about his wife, poor guy.”

“His wife—” she repeated in astonishment, but she did not question Dart as she once would have; neither feminine curiosity nor the old annoyance that Dart told her so little seemed important here in the lost primeval world of rocks and silence.

The muttering figure across the lava pit subsided after a while and they all slept a little until the shadows beneath the cliffs turned gray, and a blood-red glow tipped the wall of granite peaks ahead of them.

D
ART
left their encampment in the lava pit as soon as there was light enough for him to pick his way amongst the pitted jumble of rocks. He told Amanda not to worry if he were delayed in returning. It was imperative that he find some clue to their proper direction before starting out with a partially crippled burro. Not to speak of Hugh, who was still snoring, huddled in his blankets.

“If he comes to, try to get some water down him,” added Dart grimly, “but for God's sake don't waste any.”

She nodded, too dispirited at his leaving her alone, for speech. She watched his tall form merge into the dead volcanic grayness. She sipped a little water from her canteen, ate a dry, crumbling piece of pilot biscuit, lit a cigarette and settled down to wait.

Dart climbed steadily, skirting glazed crevasses and fireblackened ridges where the lava had buckled and cooled eons ago. He headed for the granite barrier to the east. Here from this close view the peaks could no longer be seen as separated, they reared up, one unbroken and apparently impenetrable stone expanse, into the sky. And yet somewhere along this expanse he hoped to find the crevice or portal which led into the lost valley.

After an hour of scrambling he reached the edge of the lava flow and was relieved to see a fringe of grama grass struggling up from a seam between the black glass-like obsidian and the sharp granite wall. Here at least would be browse for the burro, but Dart could see no sign of water.

A tumbled mass of pinkish diorite jutted out from the rest of the granite, and Dart clambered to the top of it. On this vantage point he shaded his eyes with his hand and took a quiet, concentrated survey. Far off to the northeast there jutted up an abrupt purple shelf rising a thousand feet above the tops of the pines in the plain below. That was the Mogollon Rim. To the west, perhaps only twenty miles by air, though three times that on foot, he caught thin blue glimpses of the Verde's convolutions as it meandered southward to merge eventually with the chain of man-made lakes on the Salt River.

He turned and scanned the granite wall behind as far as his eye could reach. Then he laid his compass and the official contour map and the Mimbreño's copper disk on the sliced surface of the diorite rock beside him and squinted at each in turn, checking his calculations. There was no doubt as to their general location, and if indeed the valley existed at all, it must be in there behind the granite. But where? In which direction? The rough cliffs stretched for many miles. He gazed again at the Mimbreño's map, at the arrow which pointed towards the tilted peaks which were no longer visible, at the jumbled crosshatchings which he had assumed to represent the malpais. There were other faint symbols scratched apparently at random on the copper; wavy lines and dots and a tiny round object with outstretched legs like a beetle, and for these he had no interpretation at all.

Doubt came to him then, and a wash of black discouragement. What rational basis had he after all for belief in this fantastic project? Nothing but Indian legends, Spanish legends, and an emotional desire for escape as immature in essence as the motives he had once derided in Hugh and Amanda.

He looked back across the malpais in the direction of the lava pit where he had left them waiting, and he shook his head. He scrambled down from the diorite and retraced his steps around the crevasses and ridges, shouting out as he drew nearer until Amanda's clear answering hail guided him to the hollow. It was now full morning, and the lava waste had grown blazing hot.

“I'm so
glad
you're back,” Amanda cried, running to meet him. “I was getting worried.—Dart, did you find anything?”

He shook his head. “I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything to find.” He looked at Hugh who sat hunched over, his head in his hands, and had not moved as Dart approached. He looked at the lame burro which was leaning against a rock, its ears drooping. “I think we'd better try to turn back,” Dart said, smiling a little.

Amanda swallowed, staring at him with round unbelieving eyes. “Dart! You can't mean that! Not when we're so near. We couldn't turn back now.”

She stood there on the edge of the hollow; slender and valiant in her frayed levis and her dirty cotton shirt, with her little head held high, her ruffled curls glinting in the pitiless sunlight. The unconscious gallantry of her carriage and the limpid honesty of her sea-blue eyes reminded him of that moment on the boat when he had first really seen her.

“It would be wiser to turn back, Andy,” he said slowly. “I don't want to risk—risk serious trouble for you—and Hugh. Not for a mirage.”

“It isn't a mirage,” she cried. “I know it, I feel it. We're very near. It isn't like you to give up.”

Dart bent his head, looking deep into her eyes. “You still believe I can get you there, to this place you want so much?”

“Oh, yes!” she cried, surprised that he should ask this or feel doubt of her trust in him regardless of what other doubts she might have.

“For Christ's sake you two—why don't you get moving?” snarled Hugh, raising his head from his hands. “You haven't even loaded the donkey yet!” He opened his medical kit with shaking fingers, and pouring three white pills from a vial, he swallowed them with water from the canteen.

“Okay,” said Dart suddenly. “We'll go on. Only, the burro can't carry his usual load, and no matter
how
you feel you'll have to do some toting yourself. And you're not going to like what's ahead, either of you.”

The moment of reluctance and indecision had passed. He was in fact ashamed of it, especially as he did not quite understand it. The reluctance had been partly born of disbelief in their mission, of course, partly of genuine concern for the safety of his charges, but there was another ingredient which he did not wish to examine.

After they finally got going across the malpais again there were hours of sweating and straining, each one of them carrying some of the provisions to lighten the pack on the disabled burro, and even so they had had to leave a pile of heavy cans behind in the lava pit. Hugh stumbled and fell often, and the sweat poured from his body, until the effects of the alcohol passed off, but he endured grimly, and when they reached the granite barrier and the strip of grama grass he flung himself headlong, and closed his eyes.

The little burro brayed with excitement when he saw the grama, and began to crop it voraciously, but it was fairly dry browse, and soon even a burro would need water. The canteens were still full but the emergency can contained scarcely a gallon. Dart searched the sky anxiously—there were thunderheads far to the north near the Mogollon Rim, but above their heads only a cloudless greenish sky fading into dusk. Except for the burro's forage they were no better off than they had been the night before. There was still nothing with which to make a fire. He opened a can of tomatoes for himself and Amanda, and they sucked the semi-liquid fruit down thirstily. Hugh would not stir.

Amanda, needing privacy, wandered off a little way from the two men. Suddenly Dart heard her voice calling out in wild excitement. “Dart! Come here! Dart!”

He grabbed his gun and ran around the rocks towards her.