Foxfire (45 page)

Hugh ran forward, stumbling over one of the mummies. He kicked it savagely out of his way, and it disintegrated into bones and dust. Dart set his teeth and followed, staring as Amanda did at the face of the rock beyond the graves. From the floor to the low roof in a strip four feet wide the rock sparkled and glinted in the lights.

Dart picked his way carefully between the mummies, and Amanda followed shrinking, hypnotized. “Oh, don't,” she murmured, “don't—” but she did not know that she spoke. They passed beyond the places of burial and came up to Hugh. He was digging into the wall with his knife, picking with his fingernails, his breath came in sobbing gasps.

Dart stood rooted behind him, staring at the glittering rock. He put his hand on Hugh's shoulder. “That's pyrites, Hugh,” he said very quietly. “That isn't gold. You know that. You know enough about mining for that.”

Hugh swung around, he stared down at the flakes of brassy mineral in his hands. “But there's
got
to be gold—” he said in a hoarse, shaking voice, “they said there was gold....” “There is,” said Dart more quietly yet. “Here.” He moved his light again from the wall of glittering pyrites to a recess to the left. Here the light showed a rounded mass of white quartz streaked with the unmistakable dull richness of free gold stains and specks.

“Thank God—that's it!” cried Hugh, his voice breaking. “We've got it, then—”

Dart put the carbide lamp on a rock and by its light examined the quartz, while Hugh's breath rasped through the cavern.

“It's only a small pocket, Hugh,” said Dart at last. He swung his pick along the margins. “It's high grade all right, but there's mighty little of it, a few hundred dollars maybe, that's all.”

Hugh reached his hand forward, clutching the rough speckled quartz, and twisted his head over his shoulder. “You're crazy,” he whispered. “There's a mine here. This is a vein. It's bonanza....”

“No.” Dart shook his head. “I'm sorry, old boy, but you'll have to face it. I can tell by the country rock, by the formation, there's nothing here but what you see—a small pocket.”

“You lie, you bastard, you lie....” Hugh backed against the lump of quartz, throwing his arms out as though he protected it. “You lie”—he hissed again—“you want it all for yourself. I knew it. I knew this would happen—” The green eyes glaring up at Dart were like eyes under sea water, submerging, drowning.

“Hugh”—pleaded Dart on a long breath—“you know I'm not lying, it's...” He stopped, standing there tall and helpless in the bright light of Hugh's torch while Hugh with one clumsy, fumbling motion drew out his revolver and fired.

Amanda screamed, and in the echo of her scream a second shot detonated from the shadows in the back of the cave. Hugh gave a bubbling gasp and fell prone beside the glittering wall of pyrites.

In the confusion of blinding smoke and terror, Amanda ran to Dart, who had fallen to his knees, his head hanging forward on his chest. He was struggling to get up, and a stream of blood spurted from a hole in his leather jacket and ran down onto the ground.

“Darling—my darling,” she sobbed, kneeling beside him and holding him frantically against her breast as though to staunch that spurting blood with her own body. “Dart—my God—what happened——?”

“Hugh shot me—” murmured Dart in a vague dreaming voice. “But I didn't shoot him.... How could I—unarmed—?” He struggled once more to get up, the blood spurted again, and he slumped against her into her arms. “Be careful, Andy—” he whispered, and his eyes shut.

She did not understand him. She laid him down on the ground and wadded her sweater under his head, she pushed back his jacket and looked at the hole in the cotton shirt, high up, thank God, near his armpit. Tourniquet, she thought—no, too high. She took her bandanna and stuffed it over the hole, pressing down hard.

There was a soft thud of leaping footballs behind her in the darkness of the cave, she heard them but she was beyond all fear, concentrated on the pressure she was applying, and praying underneath steadily, “Dear God, don't let Dart die, don't ... don't...”

She saw a shadow approach from the darkness, the figure of a man who came and stood over them. She looked up and saw who it was, uncomprehending but without surprise. In this cave of nightmare and death there was no place for surprise. “John Whitman”—she cried on a low pleading note—“oh, thank God, you're here—Dart's hurt—help me.”

The Apache stiffened, behind his unwavering black eyes there flickered a strange expression. He rested the stock of his gun on the ground, staring down at Dart's white face, ignoring the woman.

Dart opened his eyes, and looked at his boyhood friend. “So it
was
you—” The words drifted from his mouth like dry leaves on the wind.

“Eheu—Ishkinazi—” answered the Indian in Apache, bowing his head. “You have betrayed. I've followed many days, and watched. The secret of this valley was known to me also and better than to you. Did you in your white arrogance not think of that?”

Beneath the pressure of her hands on the wound Amanda felt Dart's big body strain and gather itself together, the muscles tensing. She cried out in protest, but he stumbled to his feet and stood swaying leaning on her a little. The Indian's hand tightened on his gun barrel, but he made no move.

“I'm weak as a child,” said Dart. “I cannot fight you. You will shoot if you like. Finish what the other started, but I beg you by all the friendship we once had, by the same blood that flows in both our veins—do not hurt
her.”

The Indian was silent. He turned his head and looked at the shattered mummy. He glided to the pyrite wall and he kicked Hugh's body over with his foot. “This pig is dead,” he said. “I killed him to avenge the desecrated spirit of our ancestors. Let him lie by the shining wall he slobbered over with such greed.”

He picked up his gun, cradling it in his arm. He glanced at Amanda and saw horrified comprehension dawning in her face. He spat on the floor and continued in English. “As for you, Ishkinazi, and your woman——” His narrowed eyes glinted. “You bleed fast, it may be that your wound will kill you. I do not know. But I leave you to the Mountain Spirits whose hiding place you betrayed. I leave you to Usen, who is the Giver of Life and Death.”

And he was gone, sliding swift as a panther between the graves and out of the cave.

Dart's body slumped, falling against Amanda so hard that she staggered. “No,” he said through his teeth, straightening himself painfully, “we've got to get out of here.” He put his good arm around her shoulders.

He felt his wound. “Is there blood in back too—?”

“Yes...” she whispered, “not so much.”

“I think the bullet went right through, missed the lung. Bleeding's the main—press here, Andy.” He guided her fingers to the hollow of his neck. The spurts lessened and thinned to an ooze.

They staggered slowly forward together, she supporting half his weight on her shoulders and pressing on the artery. They stumbled out of the burial cave and up through the kiva and the dozen deserted rooms in the silent city they had traversed with Hugh an hour ago.

When they stood again on the terraced ledge by the brink of the great cavern, she cried, “Darling—lie down here, don't try to go further. I'll get food and water up here from the camp.”

His lips were gray, and cold sweat dripped down his forehead, but he said, “No. Not here. We've disturbed them enough.”

They made their slow agonizing way together down the trail, and back across the creek to their little camp. Then he collapsed on his blankets beneath the brush shelter. Under weighted lids his gray eyes were full of light, and he smiled faintly.

“My poor Andy—” he said, as she bent lower to hear, “I'm in your hands—I'm not going to be much use to you for a while ... no good at all. This isn't the way it was supposed to turn out, is it—?” His lids fluttered and fell.

A
MANDA
knelt beside her wounded unconscious husband. Flickering light filtered through the leafy roof of the brush shelter. There was no sound but Dart's quick, shallow breathing and the gurgling of the little creek. She was alone in the lost valley, face to face with the fear she had glimpsed and desperately warded off with anger and self-pity on the night she lost the baby.

No one at all to turn to now. No one to help you but yourself. And not only yourself in need of help this time. Relentless implacability that sneeringly demands a wisdom and a strength that is not there, that waits in ambush, laughing at your destruction.

Dart shuddered, and his body shook again with chills, though already he was wrapped in all their blankets. Her own heart shuddered and seemed to stop. She crept under the blankets with him, trying to warm him with her own body. On her breast through the cotton shirt she felt the sticky thickness of his blood. He muttered something and turned towards her a little, as though to pull her closer, but his arm slipped back. He sighed, and she felt with terror the faintness of the hurried tapping in his chest.

My love, my love—she whispered. Her words filled the shelter. They filled the valley. Nothing beyond the valley, nothing in the valley but love and death.

She had no ritual to guide her, no certainty of faith, and yet her soul obeyed the ultimate eternal instinct it hears when all else has failed. Her mind, her body, and her spirit rushed together like surging water, channeled into a formless, desperate prayer.

It seemed there was no answer. Dart's shuddering continued, the shallow, sighing breaths became more rapid.

Amanda's agony of tension snapped into a sudden deep exhaustion. She dozed for a few seconds. Behind her lids the reflection of the checkered light and shadow in the shelter dissolved into blackness. The blackness faded and became a crystal mist. The mist was cool and passionless as though it floated from behind the stars. Woven through it, floating in a nimbus of cool light like a white flower, she saw a woman's face looking down at her with an expression of tenderness and comfort. The dark, tender eyes were like those of Calise, yet the light and the peace that flowed around and through them was infinitely greater than Calise, for the crystal mist was but a thin and gauzy veil across the shining land beyond.

Dart stirred and murmured, “Water....”

She awoke at once, completely alert. The dream vanished, leaving no memory behind. She felt only refreshment and a keen competence of mind.

She slid carefully out from the blankets. Her brain, released from paralyzing fear, took command. It presented her with concrete remembrance and a plan of action through the practical medium of a first-aid course she had taken at camp when she was sixteen.

She added a little salt to the water she brought Dart, and holding his head and murmuring encouragement, she coaxed him to drink many cups. She made a fire, and put round stones in it to heat, and she put on the coffeepot.

Very gently, so that he did not waken, she cut the stiff, bloodsodden shirt from around his wounds, both back and front, under his left collarbone. She debated, to the best of her knowledge, the dangers of starting up the bleeding again by removing the fragments of shirt which had coagulated into the wound, as against the dangers of infection. She decided to compromise. She opened Hugh's medical kit. She stared at the label pasted inside the lid. “Dr. Hugh Slater, Lodestone, Arizona.” The words swam before her eyes. A spasm of realization translated into actual nausea, her stomach heaved. She controlled herself, forcefully turning her mind back to the contents of the kit. She took out the bottle of mercurochrome, set her jaw and poured it over the wounds and the embedded pieces of cotton shirt.

Dart gasped.

“It's all right, darling, she said, kissing his forehead. “Lie still.” Her voice was soothing and firm.

He looked up at her and tried to smile, then his lids fell again.

She took sterile compresses from the kit and placed them over the wounds, fastened them with adhesive tape, tightly so as to exert some pressure. She brought warmed stones from the fire, and wrapping them in Dart's and Hugh's and her own extra sweaters she put them at Dart's feet and alongside his body. And she gave him a cupful of strong hot coffee. His shivering stopped.

When she went back to the fire he was breathing more deeply, his pulse was stronger. She sat down on the grass by the turkey he had shot that morning and began to pluck it, wrenching out great handfuls of feathers, and allowing them to float down the canyon on the freshening twilight breeze.

Her mind continued to function with clear precision. She could take it up like a reading glass and stand apart with it to view their situation with as much objectivity as though she were examining a photograph.

John Whitman was gone. He had left the valley, his mission ended. He had left them to fate, to the mercy of the mountain spirits he believed in. Had he also killed or taken the burro? This, now that Dart was as comfortable as she could make him, was her next practical consideration. The little beast was nowhere in sight.

She finished plucking the turkey, and went to the shelter for Dart's hunting knife. She cut off the turkey's feet and head, slit and disemboweled it, as she had seen butchers do. She cut and peeled an aspen branch, thrust it through the turkey, and suspended it above the fire on two piles of flat stones. Then she went up and down the creek looking for the burro, but she could not find him, and she did not dare to leave Dart alone for long.

It will be bad if Tontos gone, she thought calmly, we'll have to carry extra water ourselves to cross the malpais. But when and how were they to leave this valley? She did not know, she ceased to think of it.

The only thing that matters is Dart, to make him well and strong again.

The turkey fat and juices fell hissing into the flames, while she turned the bird from side to side watching the skin brown and crackle. How many unknown skills attention and necessity called forth.