Necessary Evil (23 page)

"They are the sky people or spirit people who affect things here on earth." Kier pointed at certain of the figures that appeared to hover over the landscape.

Below the sky people were the hunters—tiny red men holding spears and rocks, chasing deer or elk. Between the hunters and the sky people was the sun and, to the right, a smaller sphere—the moon. They hunted in the twilight.

"This fellow here, near the hunters, has the ceremonial headdress—that is good medicine." Kier outlined the barely discernible hat. Two imposing figures stood side by side with a radiant halo depicted over their heads. Between the haloed pair stood a smaller figure. "Maybe the small fellow is on a vision quest, and these two spirit figures are standing over him."

"Or maybe they are man and woman. The halo is their love, and the smaller person their child."

"We always thought it was about sacred dreams. Maybe love is your dream."

"I know part of it is about love," she said.

She took two shaky steps to the wall and plunked down in the dirt. Kier took off his pack and set his light on a ledge, directing its rays at the painting. Then he sat close beside her. When he touched her shoulder, guiding her back to recline against him, she did not resist. He knew his large body was much more inviting than the rock. After a moment, his arm went around her, allowing her head to rest against his chest.

"What does it make you think about?" she asked.

"You first."

"My mind feels like it's floating with fatigue, a little like being drunk."

''Where is your mind wandering?''

"You think I'm imagining things when I say those two people with haloes are about love. You think it's because I'm hung up on the subject."

"I never said that. I'm just listening."

She nodded. "I guess I'm just hoping I'm not one dimensional. When I was young I seemed to have so many sides. You know? I felt more than just desire, anger, and satisfaction.

There were really good people back then. Why don't I know any great people anymore? Did they change, or did I?

"You were like a fairy tale come true if my sister was to be believed. Grounded. Got a whole philosophy about life and nature. According to Claudie, you were gentle with everything. She said you had no guile, Kier. I thought maybe all that bigness I knew as a kid could come back when I watched you with the mare. Then you ignored my wishes, dragged me away from civilization, and tricked me, locking me in a wine cellar against my will. So much for the resurrection of my youthful idealism.''

Kier stayed quiet for a while, wanting to deal squarely with his need to reconcile things with her.

"Let's cut through the baloney," he said finally. "The wine cellar isn't the issue. What we're really talking about is this rock-hard inner self of mine that—yes, is stubborn—but more than that, can't consider a white woman as a mate. And we're talking about one more thing. A bigger thing I think."

"What's that?"

"Whatever happened to you, that has you so angry."

"You dragged me around in a blizzard instead of driving to a phone booth."

"But that's not it," he said.

"Are you a mind reader?"

"Is it the divorce?"

"No."

"So what is it?"

''You first. Why do you think I care what you think of white women? You're going to say that I'm somehow attracted to you and that this is some kind of issue with me."

"You're trying to say you're not?"

"Kier, all the problems in life don't revolve around you, for God's sake."

"My unwillingness to be with another white woman, in your mind, is just a rejection of the white man's civilization and ultimately of you. Same with the government. But the reason it bugs you so much—"

"Kier, please spare me. Why are you talking about my feelings? Talk about your feelings. Don't tell me about mine. That's my job."

Kier's anger exploded inside him. He quit talking and sat staring at the dreamers on the wall.

"Okay. Okay. I'll just listen. You talk," she said. "Let's not degenerate. You just talk."

"You're sure?"

"Definitely sure."

"Now I don't know what to talk about," he said.

"Stop stalling before I scream."

"It started with my mother. All my life I have felt my mother's love. Always I have wanted to please her. But more than that, bigger than that, I wanted to be like my grandfather and never betray my heritage. Indian people are being swallowed up. We haven't preserved what is Indian. Often we're not good at what is white. I have gotten along pretty well in both cultures. That's what I was raised to do. But I can't let myself disappear into the white man's world, get fat off peddling Indian mysticism. I almost did that once."

"So you're going to marry an expectation instead of loving a person. It makes poor Willow sound like a political statement. God. I thought I was cynical."

"Ah. So you know all about Willow."

"Well, Claudie told me. I'm a snoop at heart. That's why I'm a cop."

"So now you've decided I'm not in love with her when you don't know either of us."

"We got naked in the same hut. I know you."

"Well, let me explain my side of this."

"Go ahead."

"I guess," he said, sighing, "I don't quite look at my relationship with Willow the way you and Claudie do."

"Let's leave Claudie out of this."

"Okay, the way
you
do. You know the saying about 'stir-the-oatmeal kind of love'? It's not Hollywood, but it's caring." He watched her with eyes that pleaded for her understanding, even as he supposed it was something that she did not intend to give.

"You see there, you've just admitted it. This is some dogeared old affection that's like friendship. It's not really love."

''It's what I want. I'm not looking for anything else. Anything glamorous."

He heard her take in a deep, ragged breath. "So that's it. Okay. I can respect that. I suppose there're a lot of happy families out there stirring the oatmeal. Personally, I'd rather be passionately in love, howling at the moon, screwing my brains out till we knock the bed over."

Kier thought about that and realized that nothing good could come from continuing the debate.

"I judge from the long, Indian-like silence that we've exhausted that topic. Let's try another unfinished topic."

She leaned closer against him, placing her hand on his chest. He surmised that the rummy, frivolous feeling that accompanied exhaustion was relaxing her. He took hold of her shoulder and pulled her tight. She let her body meld to his.

"Back there on the cliff you were starting to tell me about your boyhood fears of the TV bear. I interrupted you."

"Well, it wasn't just the TV bear. To this day when bears come to a camp in the night and they wake me, my heart races for a few seconds. Like when I was a child."

"Kier afraid of a bear?"

"No. I'm afraid of things that I can't control. It just happened that the TV bear captured my imagination when I was young."

"How about love? You can't control that. Or the pain of it.”

"Never thought of it that way."

"Maybe it's time you did. I still remember certain very powerful emotions from my growing up. When I was a little girl, I always wanted my daddy's attention."

"Every little girl wants that."

"Yeah, but this was a big deal in my life. Really big. He wasn't the cuddling type. Never touched me. I'd sit for hours and daydream that I'd found a way to impress him. I have these memories of getting all excited about something, trying to tell him, and him not even looking up from the paper."

Kier held her close, but said nothing. She put her head on his chest.

"Is it something to do with your dad, that you're upset about?"

"No, it's not."

"Let me ask a question?"

"Okay."

"Why were you visiting your sister?"

"I'm not up to this yet."

"Can't talk about it?"

"Not now. Tell me about Willow."

"What's there to say? In a couple months we'll get engaged, get married, the whole thing."

"Did you ever tell Willow all this . . . this stir-the-oatmeal and native-loyalty stuff?"

He made no immediate reply. As he thought about her question, he was not searching for an answer, but searching for a reason. He could not think of one, except the anxiety that accompanied the thought.

"No."

"Well, I pray for the poor woman's sake that you do before you propose."

There is no single day when green fruit turns to summer sweetness.

—Tilok proverb

"
T
he view definitely takes your breath away."

They looked out over several hundred thousand acres of snow-covered rock and timber. Rock under snow and ice made blue-white mountains stretching to the horizon.

"It looks as good as a Bierstadt," she said.

"You can't feel the solitude in a painting."

"You don't freeze your ass off or die from exposure in a museum," she said. He caught himself frowning. "Oh, all right. But it would be a hell of a lot easier to appreciate it over a hot cup of coffee."

Man Jumps cave emerged far enough down the mountain to be below the sub-alpine forest and in the true fir belt. By the look of the trees, they stood at 5,500 feet, maybe slightly lower.

Below them grew the mixed conifer forest with its Douglas fir, white fir, ponderosa pine, sugar pine, and incense cedar.

"We're up in the true fir, aren't we?" Jessie said. Obviously she was beginning to discern the different species, which served as a primitive altimeter.

To reach the forest from the mouth of Man Jumps cave they had to go laterally along a narrow rock-strewn ledge that followed the face of the cliffs for about a thousand feet.

Kier knew she was trying to look unafraid, even calm, but her head nodded an involuntary "yes" when he asked if she'd like to ride on his back.

"I should walk on my own," she said.

"You don't look like you believe it."

"I'll walk."

"And
I'm
stubborn?"

A foot or two wide most of the way, the ledge was just sufficient for walking, but narrow enough to be painfully tenuous, bordered as it was by a breathtaking vertical drop. Fractured rock and a dusting of snow along the ledge added to its already treacherous texture.

They moved single file, roped together so that if Jessie fell, she would get a second chance, provided Kier was surefooted enough to hold her. If he fell, they were both dead. Brooding dark clouds hung in the mountains, their tentacles reaching into the valley, portending more bad weather to come. As they walked, he tried to keep her talking in order to keep her mind from the fear. To a degree it seemed to work. Either that or she was becoming more accustomed to heights.

"The cabin is close, just under some Douglas fir down on that ridge. The way the air is warming, I'd expect these next clouds to drop buckets of rain in the valley. Melt the snow. Make it impossible for them to follow us down the mountain."

"I'm growing to hate this business of leaving footprints everywhere we go. I'd just love for the snow to melt. And food. I have this wishful vision of the cabin with plates full of spaghetti and meatballs. Does this cabin have a table and chairs? Can we get something to eat?"

"Table and chairs, it does have. Food, we will get any way we can."

"Why don't you people leave food?"

He found himself smiling. "If we left food, you might be sharing your bed with a bear. Besides, we like to keep it fresh and kicking."

"What is it that'll be kicking?" She set her foot beyond a large loose rock and reached to the wall for support.

"Beaver. Beaver tail is excellent, although I hate to kill them."

"Tail. Oh God."

"Well, there's also cattails. Use the rhizomes on the cattail for flour, young ones for something like asparagus, and the heart, which is hard to describe, maybe like a rich potato. And bulrushes. They're sweeter than the cattails. There's arrowhead there too. Like yam, sort of. Those are all things we can get quick. From the sound of it you'd like an early lunch."

"Well, at least it's food."

"The water there is the key. The creek is dammed up by the beaver, and the pond makes a lot of food for everything."

The ledge came to an end in a rushing stream that plummeted thirty feet down a chute seemingly too treacherous to walk. At the base of the near-vertical drop the stream hit a gentler slope that by the look of it could be traversed.

"I know you won't walk in the snow, so I won't remind you."

''Yes, that way we can pretend you don't think I'm an idiot."

Kier took a line, tied it around himself, then braced against a boulder. With considerable effort, she was able to keep her feet against the rock as she walked backward, going hand over hand down the rope.

Kier, in a hurry and having no good place to tie the line, opted for sliding down the rock variously on his feet and butt.

"You could have broken your leg," she said when he rose stiffly.

He shrugged and started down the watercourse. Still flowing in the middle of its bed, the water cleared the snow and made it possible to walk and leave no track. By following the stream, they could travel downhill to the cabin without leaving any sign. Their hunters might circle the entire mountain and never discover their path.

Tillman squatted alone in the gray light of early morning, studying Kier's footprints. The track led across the bottom of the chasm and disappeared into the head of the avalanche.

Having spotted the prints from the knife-edged ridge above, his men had concluded that they ought to bring in hounds to search the three-quarter-mile-long path of mountain rubble and snow in an attempt to find the bodies.

But before his men arrived, the mountain had told Tillman something was amiss. Scrutinizing the far wall of the chasm, he saw, in the blotchy pattern of white on greenish-gray rock, tiny points and ledges, some no wider than a postage stamp, that lacked the expected dusting of snow.

If Kier climbed the wall, what did he do with the woman? It was a certainty in Tillman's mind that Jessie Mayfield had not scaled the wall either before or after Kier. Not enough snow had been disturbed, even if he assumed that Kier climbed to the top and hoisted her up on a rope. Then he focused on the pine in front of the cave perhaps eighty feet over his head. It would be gutsy, but maybe Kier had strung a line and pulled her across. And if he did, they both went in the cave. Limestone mountains were notorious for caverns and the rock formation he now contemplated was geologically suitable. His research had indicated a network of caverns in this area.

If the cave above were an entrance to those caverns, the tracking would be greatly slowed. Tillman ground his teeth.

Putting men inside the cavern would only give Kier an incredible advantage. Tracking on the stone passageways would be useless. Kier probably had a map of sorts in his head, whereas neither Tillman nor his men would have a clue as to their whereabouts. The Indian would slaughter them.

Iron Mountain was a long ridge with a high spot rising as a summit. Other ridges intersected. Finding where Kier and Jessie might emerge would be time consuming. He would break the men into pairs and have them move fast, looking for any track. If Tillman were Kier, he would emerge from the caverns near a stream that could be followed downhill to avoid leaving sign in the snow. He would instruct his men accordingly.

He considered bringing Doyle up from the Donahue house, but he needed Doyle to lead the next group in. He would summon Doyle when he was closer to trapping Kier. Without further deliberation, Tillman knew to follow his instincts and halt any search of the avalanche. He radioed an alert to watch for tracks on the slopes of Iron Mountain. And he assigned no fewer than two men to search each creek.

Jessie celebrated seeing the cabin with her first smile in hours. They approached the place tentatively, as if it were too good to be true. It was small, she supposed twelve feet wide and perhaps twenty feet long. The peeled logs of its walls were caulked with a black substance in neat horizontal lines that emphasized the uniformity of the cabin's construction. The roof consisted of wooden shingles that still had the color of new straw. Through the roof at one end protruded a rock chimney shaped in a perfect rectangle.

Nestled as it was under the trees and close to a sheer drop, the cabin remained invisible from any direction unless one were within a hundred feet—except perhaps to someone with powerful binoculars on a faraway mountain. Directly in front of the cabin's covered porch, within a stone's throw, a waterfall cascaded into a small pool. Down fifty paces, the stream disappeared over another bluff. The setting was idyllic, and on a sunny, clear day, the view from the front porch would be inspiring to the point of rapture.

Suddenly it struck her that this was not an Indian design. There was nothing Indian about it.

"It's beautiful, but isn't this a white man's design?"

Kier's look told her that he was pleased with the observation. "Yes, that's right. But it's built only of natural materials found on this mountain. Except the windows . . . they were a real compromise. We do use other people's ideas."

Kier did not even try to open the door. Instead, he crawled under the cabin, which sat on a stone foundation. After he disappeared for a moment, she heard a clunking sound, as if he were pounding with a rock on wood. Shortly there was a clattering, as if something had been knocked loose.

"Door is fastened at the bottom, so it can't be opened unless you first release a catch."

The door was made of several layers of criss-crossed, rough-hewn boards and once released, it would not open without a hefty push. In lieu of hinges, the door was fastened to the wall by leather, which she took to be rawhide of some sort.

"My friend's bride is half Cherokee, but grew up in suburbia,'' he said as he walked in. ''She wanted a miniature English cottage. This was a toughly negotiated compromise. My friend and I wanted a miniature Chumash longhouse. But she's an architect, and she designed the cabin."

Something about this revelation made Jessie smile broadly. Kier suddenly seemed more accommodating, a man among men, not an Indian among white people. And for some reason, at this particular moment, he looked unusually desirable. It hit her hard, like a wave that gathers force as it breaks on a steep beach. Overcome with her sudden attraction to him, she consciously stifled the feeling.

"So they're going to live here for the summer?"

"Well, a month, anyway. Then they're flying to Hawaii for a couple of weeks."

Sitting on the wooden bed platform, Jessie began to muse. She didn't know why, exactly, but after a moment she laughed. When she glanced at Kier, he seemed utterly puzzled.

"It's just so . . . so very American. I mean, two weeks in Hawaii, an architect, a cute little dollhouse, a cabin that you two slaved to build. It's so . . . sweet."

She then realized he was studying her. "Well?" She wondered what was going on behind those dark eyes.

"You seem to like the idea," he replied.

To give herself time to think, she turned around and studied the room. Nearest her was a built-in double bed without a mattress, and next to it a simple table with two chairs that reminded her of Amish tastes and methods. Some containers for water that looked to be made of skins hung from the overhead beams. A lovely, rustic-looking cabinet stood against the wall. Its open face had been made from a slice off a log, complete with the bark. A couple of lanterns hung from the rafters, and two fat, wax-bearded yellow candles sat in the middle of the table. A small chest of drawers had been hauled in, and various pegs protruded from the wall for hanging clothes.

When the reality of their situation came rushing back, she felt foolish for allowing herself to be occupied with such trivial distractions. "I can't believe we're discussing this when we could easily be dead in thirty minutes. Where's the food?"

"Just a short way down the creek is the beaver pond."

"Let's go get it."

''Would you like to stay here?''

"No," she shot back, determined to do her share.

"You can help carry the food back."

''Whatever you do, I do." She said it before she could ponder what she was getting herself into.

On his way out, Kier snatched some leather squares from a peg. There was something vaguely familiar about them, but she couldn't place it.

The short walk turned out to be a brisk, fifteen-minute hike down a steep path made slick by the misty rain. The clouds had come down all around them cloaking the land, making a hazy gray of every vista. Kier announced that when they returned, they would be able to build a fire because the smoke would be invisible. For that she was grateful. If not for the gut-wrenching hunger, she would have chosen fire and sleep immediately.

At the beaver pond, Kier moved to a tree and, to her surprise, began stripping off his clothes. From his large pack she saw him pull the leather squares she had seen earlier. It was a loincloth. He hadn't worn one before and she didn't know why he would bother now. At a distance of twenty feet, she watched unabashedly while he prepared himself. She loved the hard, lean contours of his body, and she hadn't grown weary of observing him.

When he was finished, he walked toward her in nothing but the leather piece fastened with rawhide about his waist. He carried a wire snare and a pistol.

"Here." He held out the other loincloth and waited. She blinked her eyes, but otherwise stood unmoving. "After a half hour or so I'll get cold. If you're going to help, I suggest you get going."

"In that?"