The Darkness Rolling (24 page)

“And if we’re not lucky?”

I shrugged but didn’t let myself say
needle in a haystack.
I wanted everything I could get out of this man. Finally, I said, “Depends on how much gas we’ve got.”

“We’re full,” he said. “And Harry Goulding keeps aviation fuel on hand.”

Yeah, he would, for film companies. I hadn’t thought of that.

When we passed it, I said, “There’s our trading post. He could be anywhere west of here.”

“What do you say we fly loops?” Hughes said. “The kidnapper wouldn’t hide your grandfather right on the road.”

“Good idea.”

We flew westward in the kind of wide curves that a meandering river makes. Took more time, but it was more thorough. I had a feeling that whatever Hughes did, he did very well.

But well enough? To match this country? That might be another story. And, somewhere in this country was Grandpa. Hope was slim, but my grandfather wouldn’t give up hope. I wasn’t about to, either.

*   *   *

The rise slanted a little more upward, and Mose Goldman quickly discovered that his good left arm would not do the job. The top was too far. Such a long way. But he felt confident.

Maybe after a rest,
he told himself, knowing better.
Maybe, but maybe not.

Breaths in and out. Thoughts in and out. Fears in and out. Wondering where, exactly, the monster disguised as a man was now. Mose was not a religious man, but he prayed. He prayed for his daughter first, for Nizhoni, the center of his world. Also the center of that beast’s crazed revenge.

Then a good idea. A risky one. He said to himself,
I am the toughest man in this whole damned desert. Anyone to say different?
Quiet from all lizards, potsherds, and buzzards.

He needed that pep talk.

Adikai will rape and kill Nizhoni.

He didn’t let the details—exactly what Adikai had sworn to do—nibble at the edges of his mind.

He shoved himself forward to the edge of the seat of his chair. A deep breath. He pushed himself off onto the rock, knees first. Pain.

The chair started rolling backward.

He grabbed for the hand brake, felt his hand glance off it, then watched the chair careen back down the slope. Mose shouted all the cuss words his upbringing allowed.

After about thirty feet it hit a low boulder and flipped. It landed on one side, upper wheels spinning against the bottle-blue sky.

Mose rested. Then, inch by painful inch, he crawled downhill to his chair. His left knee supported him, but he had to lie on his side all the way down—weight on his right shoulder and hip, then slide his left knee up, and then do a kind of push-up to get his knee under him and gain another foot of ground.

After at least one thousand years he got back to his chair. Lying on his back, he managed to right it. He set the brake and used the oak frame of the arms to hoist himself onto his left knee. Then, with his left arm alone, he pushed himself high and got his left foot underneath him. He pivoted and plopped back into the chair.

He laughed and hollered and raised his good arm to the sky and garbled, “I am the toughest man in this whole damn desert.”

He’s going to rape and kill Nizhoni.

Then he thought of Iris. Believing Mose dead, and after killing Nizhoni, Adikai would snuff out the last witness, Iris.

Mose forced himself upward, inch by inch.

Short of where he’d been before, he stopped the chair, set the brake—
Remember this time, you fool!
—and scooted forward to the edge of the chair. He stood on his left leg.

Awkwardly, he scooted the chair around in front of him. Then, making a quick lurch forward on the right leg and getting the weight back onto the left one, he used the chair as a walker. And crept upward.

On every step forward, he sounded one word in his mind, an echoing, aching cry.
Nizhoni. Nizhoni.

*   *   *

Driving east to his grand, destined moment, Zopilote was surprised—the sound of an engine. He spotted a small airplane off to the north. Were they searching for the old Jew? A fat lot of good that would do them. When he thought about it, it was more likely that the Gouldings were flying tourists to Rainbow Bridge. Good money for the traders. Pack trips were probably old-fashioned now.

Onward to the inevitable confrontation, what I have dreamed about for years, face-to-face with my betrayer.

He didn’t care who else might be there. He still had the shotgun, the derringer, and his knife. No one could stop him.

*   *   *

Mose Goldman crested the rise. He could hardly believe it. It felt like a triumph beyond anything that he dreamed he could do.

Now an easy roll downhill to the road, with some tricky steering around boulders, then lots of ups and downs along the Rainbow Trail toward home. Maybe a truck would come along.

Nizhoni.

Home.

Nizhoni.

Home.

He pushed the chair a foot or two forward, and something …
Oh, hell
. He hadn’t imagined he would take off so …

The speed banged his front left wheel off a knee-high rock and turned him around.

Now he swerved madly backward downhill, blinded. He crashed into something and catapulted head over heels. He crash-landed and skidded to a stop somewhere below, sprawled facedown.

He took inventory. Clothes shredded. Skin torn, lots of it. Some blood. But conscious and—he made the struggle—able to get to one knee.

Mose cut loose with his version of a hee-haw and started crawling back up.

Nizhoni.

Home.

He crawled back to the chair, and finally hefted himself into the seat. Maybe a combination. Braking, rolling slowly, braking …

He was happy. And damn glad to be alive. A flat-out miracle, that’s what it was. Maybe it had been that prayer. He didn’t know or care.

Nizhoni.

Home.

Nizhoni.

*   *   *

Zopilote saw Jake Charlie at the front door of the trading post, lever-action rifle in one hand, keeping guard. They’d gotten the word out. Who else was here?

Jake Charlie would know this pickup, stolen from the neighbor to the east.

Zopilote let his stolen truck roll to a stop in front of the trading post, got out on the driver’s side, away from Jake Charlie’s sight, and knelt down beside the left front wheel.

Jake Charlie came around the front bumper, rifle dangling.

Head down, then rising, in one motion Zopilote sat up and rammed his knife deep under Jake Charlie’s ribs. The sheepherder died without a sound.

Zopilote bundled the body into the truck, across the seat, and onto the floor on the passenger side. He was about to abandon this hearse.

Time to reconnoiter.

He drove back west a hundred yards, pulled the truck well off the road, got his binoculars, and kept a low profile as he walked up to his hiding place behind the well.

Twenty-one

“Movement,” said Hughes. He pointed off to the right. “Look. Over on that slickrock.”

He put the small plane into a gentle turn in that direction.

I saw something but couldn’t make it out. I trained the binoculars that way and then needed a moment to bring the object into focus.

“My God!” I said. “Holy shit!”

“Tell me, man!”

“A human being tumbling…”

I couldn’t believe what I saw. A person was rolling down the rock, sometimes spinning like a log in a river, sometimes toppling end over end in cartwheels.

I stammered a few of those words out to Hughes, who began to circle.

The figure slammed into a big rock, knees first, flung the length of its body onto and over the boulder, and splattered on the slickrock like a paper doll.

I got an idea, raised the binoculars a hundred yards up the slope, and saw the wheelchair upside down, wheels in the air.

“It’s my grandfather,” I said in a squeezed voice.

“Amazing,” said Hughes. We each took a huge breath. “I can’t land, though. No straight place.”

“Fly over as low as you can,” I begged.

He did.

No sign of life.

“Again!”

He did a 360, passed over even lower, and tilted my side of the plane down to give me the best view.

A forearm rose.

“He’s alive!” I screamed.

Hughes jerked his headset off. Maybe I’d just deafened the man.

Another circle and another low pass.

Grandpa was up on an elbow now.

I waved madly. Hughes waggled the wings.

Grandpa dropped back and wigwagged his left arm at us.

I was sure he was grinning. A very crooked grin. God, how I loved Mose Goldman.

Hughes lifted my headset off, set it in my lap, and put his own back on.

“Goulding’s, come in. Goulding’s, come in, please.”

“This is Mike Goulding.”

“Mose Goldman located alive.”

“Roger, located alive.”

“Injured, helpless. No place to land. Send a truck to Oljato.”

“Vehicle coming ASAP.”

Hughes flew directly over Grandpa and read out the numbers of where we were, exactly, in degrees, minutes, and seconds.

“Also call for an ambulance.”

“Roger that, ambulance.”

I told him, “I’ll ride in the Gouldings’ truck. First aid.”

“Mike,” he said, “in a couple of minutes I’ll land at your place. “Yazzie Goldman will join your driver there. He’s trained in first aid. Then I’ll fly west along the Rainbow Bridge Trail and lead your driver straight to the spot.”

“Roger that.”

“Tell her to call Mom,” I said softly.

Hughes said, “Last. Radio Mrs. Goldman and tell her we’ve found her father alive.”

“You betcha,” said Mike. Mike was one hell of a woman.

*   *   *

Mr. John had sent Janey, the location’s nurse, to drive the pickup to the spot where my grandfather was, and I asked her to press that gas pedal down hard. Why couldn’t a damn pickup go a couple of hundred miles an hour, like a plane? It was driving me crazy, and I’d have bet Hughes was getting damn tired of circling around and around to be slow enough for us.

As we drove by our trading post, I didn’t see Jake Charlie at the front door, but a figure was standing guard south of the post and above it for a good view, where I’d suggested. From the short, thick shape, I figured it was Colin. Maybe Jake Charlie was inside taking care of something or on the radio or in the outhouse.

I hoped Janey was up to doctoring whatever injuries Grandpa had. Hell, I would do whatever was needed, period.

Save Grandpa!

*   *   *

Zopilote took his time studying the situation. It looked like he was luckier than he thought. But to decide that too quickly might be very unlucky.

After about half an hour, he was sure. Only one guard left.
Fools, all of them.

He circled around, well to the south. Step by soft step, from cedar to cedar and boulder to boulder, he worked his way down the slope toward the red-haired young man. The fellow packed a .38 police special. It would do him no good in its holster.

Every several minutes the guard looked at his watch and slowly, very slowly, turned in a circle with sure, balanced steps. He stopped at the west, south, then east, taking about thirty seconds facing in each direction to end up with a 360-degree survey. He must have been trained to do that. It was dumb.

Zopilote slipped gently downward. When the guard faced the post, the Buzzard moved toward him fast. For the thirty seconds the guard was turned south, where Zopilote was, he laid flat behind a cedar.

He got within about twenty steps. The guard turned to the trading post, away from Buzzard.

Zopilote took his last steps in silence. When he got close, he kicked a stone to make a noise.

The guard whirled, jaw dropping.

Zopilote seized the man’s lower jaw and teeth in front and skull in back, and gave a single quick, hard twist.

He heard the satisfying crack. The eyes glazed, and Buzzard smiled.

In prison you learned to survive. He had killed half a dozen enemies the same way.

He took the .38 special. Six more talons to use in his attack.

*   *   *

When we got within hearing distance, Grandpa yelled something and shook his fist.

The chair was obviously wrecked, useless.

When we got close, I saw that in the middle of the shin his strong leg turned like a hockey stick. I hated to think about the bones sticking out in his pant leg, but Janey checked it. “Not much blood, so no arterial bleeding,” she said.

I bent over him, and she helped me lift him into a fireman’s carry. Right then, I was glad that he’d lost weight in the last five months. Grandpa kept yelling one word I couldn’t make out, sounded like “ah.” Or sometimes he’d yell another word, sounded like “dick.”

He seemed mad as hell at the two people saving his life, and I had no idea what he was saying.

We got him into the front seat of the truck, in the middle.

“Ah!

“Dick!

“Ah!

“Dick!”

He wouldn’t quit.

I clicked the ignition and started home.

Finally Grandpa reached across Janey and tried to open the glove box with his left hand.

She did it for him.

He grabbed a wrinkled, raggedy piece of paper, laid it in his lap, and made a writing motion.

“You want to write something?” she said.

He nodded vigorously.

She rummaged in the glove box and found a two-inch pencil without a point. I gave her my penknife to sharpen it, and she handed the pencil to Grandpa.

Laboriously, he wrote,
YR DAD
→
KILL MOM!!!

Fear squeezed my spine like a constricting snake.

“What? I don’t … What?”

My mind whirled like a squirrel-cage wheel.

“My father?”

Grandpa thumped my chest with two fingers, hard.

“Mine?”

Grandpa nodded
big.

A low whisper came out. “You sure!?”