Relentless (19 page)

Baraclough had wound coat-hanger wire around Mrs. Lansford's wrists and twisted the ends together with a pair of pliers. Not tight enough to cut the skin but too tight to be slipped. The nylon rope ran from Walker's bridle through Mrs. Lansford's wrist bindings to the bridle of her horse. She could get down and walk but she couldn't get free of the rope.

The wind was against his left shoulder and the horse wanted to turn; Walker had to fight it with the reins. The white horse's coat had a curious pigmentation that he had seen on a few horses before: when it was wet the white hair turned pale blue—some kind of secretion in the hide underneath. It came up dappled, like drops of blue ink on a white background; that was why this sort of white horse was called a blue roan.

He scrubbed his ears and tied the scarf up around his nose and mouth. An arm of cold wind got into him and shot dry agony through the tooth cavity in his upper jaw.

There was no reckoning the passage of time. The sun was gone, light was draining out of the day. The only way to tell direction was by compass and the Major had the only one of those. Walker closed his eyes up to slits and blinked back the tears of icy wind. They were climbing steadily along the side of a steep slope that seemed endless, doing switchbacks now and then when the Major decided it was time. Walker could feel the shifts by the changes in wind direction. Probably the Major was tacking—so many steps right, so many steps left, trying to keep a balanced compass course somewhere between. But the wind hit the exposed face of this south slope with wicked fury and Walker wondered when they would get behind something that would help break its force.

A swift blast of gale swayed him to one side and he grabbed the saddle horn wildly and when he righted himself he could only just see the whipping tail of Mrs. Lansford's sorrel four or five feet ahead. The mottled pointillism of whipping snow enfolded him that quickly: now he could only see the blue's ears, he couldn't even see the ground, and he bent forward low over the withers in a useless try at evading the hard clout of the blow. Disoriented, he couldn't tell if they were still climbing or if they were descending. He clung to the saddle and closed his eyes and tried to hide his head between his shoulders.

3

He blinked sluggishly and jerked himself upright. No good going to sleep. No good. His legs felt rubbery and he was having trouble keeping his knee-grip on the saddle. He tested the knot with which he had tied the reins to his right wrist. He couldn't see it until he brought it up within a few inches of his face.

He lifted his right leg over and slid to the ground. Almost fell; kept his grip on the saddle, straightened, felt his way along the reins to the bit and found the nylon rope. Took a grip on that and staggered ahead.

He kept his eyes closed because there was no point in trying to see anything. His nose and lungs burned with the in-and-out rasp of frigid air. All the layers of clothing didn't seem to help: the wind came up inside his cuffs, inside the sleeves of his coat, under the coat skirt, down the back of the neck.

His feet burned and tingled when he stamped them on the ground. He would put a foot out and test his footing and then stomp down hard and bring up the other foot. It got to be like that: you thought about each step and you took time executing it. It meant the others were going just as slowly. But that made sense: the Major had to find the way, had to keep from blundering into trees, keep from falling over precipices.

The earth seemed to change its tilt underfoot but it was impossible to tell which way it had shifted until he detected an almost imperceptible drop in the force of the wind. They must be on the backside of a slope now. Going down, or at least going around something. He kept walking into the rump of Mrs. Lansford's horse and in a dulled way he began to worry that he might do it once too often and get kicked in the belly by the horse.

He kept the reins wrapped around his glove and whacked his hands together with energetic sweeps of his arms.

He stumbled over something and went down. The horse made a vague sound that was whipped past and away on the wind; he felt a jerk of reins against his hand and scrambled for footing, got one leg under him and tumbled forward, dragged by the reins. Terror hit him: the rest of them were going on regardless, they couldn't see him or hear him, he'd get dragged to death. His feet spun and scrabbled and finally he got upright after a fashion and lurched forward: found the saddle, hooked his arm around the horn and let the horse carry him along a little way while he sawed icy air in and out of his laboring lungs and fought down panic.

The wind tumbled and howled, beating at him like fists. He walked alongside the horse's head with his grip on the reins choked up tight: if he fell again he would be able to pull himself up.

His boots were sliding a little; feathery soft snow on slippery pine needles made a treacherous footing. The wind was a vast pounding thunder in his ears; it flayed at him willfully. He knew what it was like to be a blind man now. Tingling pinpricks of sensation burned in his feet and hands. His ears hurt him with a sharp agony; he took a long clumsy time untying the scarf and snugging it down over the top of his hat, tying it under his chin, tucking the ends into his coat and wrapping the collar around.

4

It was madness. Every animal had the sense to get shelter and hide out a blizzard.

No way to judge the passage of time but his extremities were almost without sensation and fatigue had set in; he could hardly lift his knees. And then the tilt of the ground changed again, for the fiftieth time, and the wind almost knocked him off his feet. The noise was earsplitting. He had a handkerchief wadded in his mouth and he was breathing through it but it was beginning to clog with ice. He kept one hand clutched over his nose. He couldn't feel his fingers.

He walked into the sorrel's rump again and stopped, waiting for it to go on, but it didn't move away. The line had stopped. Something wrong. The Major—had he fallen down? Not Hargit; nothing knocked Hargit down.

Something tugging the nylon rope. He turned, afraid, puzzled. Something banged into him and he recoiled; a hand gripped him and Baraclough's voice rasped an inch from his ear.

“We're here. Follow the rope inside. There's room for the horses.”

And Baraclough was gone, finding his way back along the rope toward Burt.

The rope stirred again; the sorrel was moving. He took the blue by its headstall and felt his way forward. Bruised his fingers against a wall, felt around and found the doorway. And led the blue inside out of the wind.

5

He didn't hear the door slam but the thunder of the wind dropped away abruptly and the cold air became still. A voice—the Major's, but hoarse: “Everybody hold still.”

After a moment Walker heard the distinctive click of Baraclough's Zippo lighter and saw it explode into flame like a little bonfire.

They were crowded into a dirt-floored shed. Burt, near the shelves tacked to the far wall, reached up and got down a long cardboard box. “Candles.”

The flame was transferred from the Zippo to half a dozen candles which Baraclough and Burt placed on the two-by-four crossspieces between the exposed joists.

“See if you can get that stove going, Steve.”

It was an old potbelly stove on claw legs with a black pipe chimney that went up the wall. Behind the stove the corner of the room was stacked with short-cut chunks of firewood.

Walker hooked his arm over the saddle and sagged against the horse.
Oh Jesus God
.

6

“Watch those candles. We don't want to burn the place down.”

Burt started moving around, obeying. The woman was just standing there with her head down, raking fingers through her hair to get the ice out of it. Hanratty and Baraclough had got the stove going and sat down beside it. The wind banged and screamed around the place. Icicles hung from the horses' flanks and fetlocks and their coats were frosted white; snowballs had formed on their tails where they had dragged through soft whirling drifts.

Things were starting to get thawed out and the room was beginning to smell rancid. The breath no longer poured from the horses' nostrils like steam. Walker stripped off his gloves and held his palms toward the stove. He watched the Major make his way between horses to the foot of the ladder that went up the side wall to a trap door in the ceiling. This had to be the ranger station and the ladder had to go on up to the fire-lookout tower.

The Major said, “Steve.”

“All right. I'll check it out.” Baraclough hadn't removed any clothes yet. He got up and climbed the ladder and pushed at the trap door. The wind got a finger inside and blew out all the candles and Baraclough said mildly, “All right, all right. I'll close it in a minute.”

The wind got louder and began to blow around inside the room: that meant the trap door was wide open. Then it slammed shut again. Walker thought Baraclough had climbed up through it and so it surprised him to hear Baraclough's voice: “Forget it. If there's a ranger up there he's not coming down that ladder before this lets up.”

“Good enough,” the Major said.

Burt went around lighting the candles. The Major went to the stove and began to shoulder out of his coat. “Get out of your boots and put them by the stove. Hanratty, put together something for us to eat. We may as well eat our fill and get some sleep. Sergeant, you'll take the first watch. Be ready to pack up quickly and move out of here the instant the wind drops.”

7

Walker came awake and the first thing that drew his attention was the aching stiffness in all his joints. He was saddlesore, his feet hurt, he felt as if he had arthritis in his knees and charleyhorses in the tendons of his ankles and calves. And he was still cold. Not frozen numb as he had been before, but chattering painful cold.

He was lying on his back wrapped in two blankets with his sock feet toward the stove. The shack was thick with a steamy moisture that came off the drying hides of the horses and smelled foul.

Probably there were a lot of things to think about but his mind wasn't tracking well. He lay on his back and rolled his head slowly from side to side to look around and see how things looked. The inside walls looked flimsy and there was no insulation but the wind wasn't getting inside; it was probably a split-log cabin, well chinked on the outside. He could hear occasional brittle cracks outside against the steady drumming of the wind—icicles breaking off. Well there probably wasn't any ranger up in the tower. From what he had seen of forest watchtowers they weren't anything but six-foot-square platforms surrounded by plate glass. They had probably recalled the ranger when they knew there was a big blow coming.

The potbelly stove had a flat top with a handle sticking out of it. That was where the ranger did his cooking. One narrow bunk built against a wall—the Major was asleep on it now, his face poking out of the blankets. A sheet-metal enclosure in one corner beyond the stove flue—that would be the plumbing, one of those portable shower-toilet-sink arrangements, probably brought in by helicopter. There would be a water tank outside. They didn't equip these places for winter use; firewatching was a summer-fall job.

There was one comfortable reading chair, lightweight but well cushioned. Eddie Burt was in it, fast asleep, his chin down on his chest.

Half a dozen shelves above the stove with tins of food. A little office-size refrigerator behind Burt's chair. Probably a diesel generator outside somewhere: there were electric light fixtures hanging from the rafters but the current wasn't on now. The windows were boarded up from the outside: possibly the ranger had closed up for the winter.

On the floor just inside the front door lay a broken padlock and that explained how the Major had got in.

Someone—Baraclough—had run the nylon rope around two of the upright roof-supports and anchored them to windowsill coat hooks to make an enclosure that kept the horses in their area. Their area took up three quarters of the floor space. There was left only the L-shaped sector from the stove to the lavatory to the bunk. Hanratty lay on the floor at the foot of the bunk, snoring with his mouth open. Baraclough sat on the floor with a rifle across his knees, smoking. Mrs. Lansford was sitting with her back against the lavatory wall, arms wrapped around her knees, brooding toward the stove.

Walker rolled his head, still not getting up, and looked at the horses. The cinches had been loosened but they had been left saddled. There was nothing to feed them. They were docile, asleep on their feet; probably thankful to be in out of the wind, too exhausted to feel their hunger.

He looked over at Mrs. Lansford and then at Baraclough. Baraclough had turned his head: he was staring at the woman, eyes hooded and erotic and amorally detached—amused, yet reflecting vicious thoughts. That cold stare of Baraclough's could mesmerize you.

If Mrs. Lansford was aware of Baraclough's stare she gave no sign of it. She sat with her forehead against her drawn-up knees. Her hair hung damp and heavy against her cheeks, hiding her face.

Baraclough flicked a cigarette against the back of his hand; yawned and patted his lips.

The blizzard made a great battering racket against the cabin. It muffled the occasional stirrings of the horses. Walker kept his eyes slitted and pretended to be asleep; he had Baraclough and the woman in the narrowed range of his vision and now his brain began to work.

There were hunters and there were killers. Sometimes one man could be both but the qualities were separate and Baraclough was a killer: he took pleasure in it, it gave him something like a sexual relief. Walker had seen it when Baraclough had come out of the ranch house and left the cop dead inside.

This whole thing had gone sour. Walker's tongue sucked his sore tooth and he saw the way Baraclough's hands rested on the rifle in his lap, and it was obvious that when the time came to murder Mrs. Lansford it would be Baraclough who would do it.