Dead Reckoning (24 page)

Sure enough, the Vermonter could feel his body pulling away from the face of the cliff, wanting to roll on the gravel. He raised his right hand slowly and put it on the rope, taking a wrap. But he couldn't imagine even sitting up right now, much less climbing twenty feet of line.

“Good,” May said, though she hardly sounded as if she approved. “Now, you've got to tie yourself on.”

Suddenly he felt himself slide and found an instant store of strength. His cold left hand swung to the rope and pain like a knife wound tore into his chest. He slid over the little ledge he was on, and May screamed like nothing he had ever heard. He hit the end of the rope, the wrap he had taken twisting hard around his right hand, clamping down on it like a vise.

Short of breath, Clarence kicked his feet, searching for a foothold, finding none. His strength was almost sapped, his chest racked in one great excruciating throb. He was going to have to pull himself up, hand over hand. He had done it before. Rope-climbing had been part of his exercise routine back home. But never while wearing twenty-five extra pounds of gold. Never while suffering an impact to the chest like a mule's kick.

“Pull yourself up, Clarence!” May was near hysteria. “Pull yourself back up to the ledge, damn it!”

He couldn't imagine her cussing like that. He pulled up with both arms, the rope feeling as if it would pinch his right hand in two. He didn't have the strength to raise himself more than an inch. He was going to have to do something quick. He was growing weaker by the breath, and breath was short.

It was the gold! Damn his father's gold! It had weighed on him his life long, and now it was killing him, literally, as it had slowly suffocated him since he was a boy.

It was time to shed the burden, if it wasn't too late. Clarence released his left hand, letting his whole weight hang from the right hand with the rope wrapped around it. May yodeled in terror, thinking he had lost his grip, and the pain from the rope twisting his right hand made a tear cloud Clarence's eye. Clumsily, fighting the searing agony in his chest, he flopped his left arm until the heavy sleeve slid off.

He paused, for the next move seemed impossible. He had to take the rope in his left hand, release his right, and let the death jacket fall. How could he hold on with his left hand, with the pain concentrated in the left side of his chest? Feeling weaker, he knew he must act. The pain of the rope crushing his right hand was unbearable, anyway. Death on the rocks below could not possibly be more painful.

A sore ache and a knife-edged pang collided in the Vermonter's chest as he took hold of the rope with his left hand. The twist snapped away from his right hand, and the rope burned his left palm as it plowed past all the grip he could muster.

“Clarence!” May screamed, her voice a demanding censure.

Quickly he let his right arm drop and felt the sleeve slip over his wrist. He looked down to see the oilskin jacket snag but a short distance below on a sharp rock that might have broken his back had he fallen on it. He saw the bullet hole near the left lapel, a singular glint of gold metal glowing from it.

With his right hand on the hemp again, Clarence achieved enough purchase to stop slipping down the rope. But now what? Dropping the gold had helped, but he couldn't hang here long. He still couldn't pull himself up, exhausted as he was, weakened by the blow to the chest.

Now something crept into the Vermonter's mind. He had learned a few basic mountaineering skills from a college friend who liked to scale rocky places in the White Mountains. There was a way to hang here almost effortlessly, and a way to move across the face of this cliff to safer ground.

He felt the rope against his left knee, ran it first between his legs, then under his left thigh. Taking the dangling end of the rope in his left hand, he ran it across his chest, lifted it over his head, and let it fall over his right shoulder. Now he took a firm grip with his left hand on the loose end of the rope hanging down his back.

Clarence felt the familiar bite of the rope under his thigh and over his shoulder.
Abseil.
That was the name of this maneuver. Used in descending steep grades. The friction of the rope running under his thigh and over his shoulder took a share of his weight, easing the task on his hands. His palms served only as brakes now, to keep the rope from slipping around his body.

“Good!” May was saying. “You're thinking now.”

He turned his eyes upward, feeling lighter, stronger, free of his father's weight, his father's intimidating success. He spoke something silently to himself that was stronger than a vow. He would be independent from here to death. He would rely on his own energies, his own abilities. His father's wealth could sink to the pits of hell for all he cared. Clarence Philbrick was his own man.

“Do something!” May shouted. “You can't just hang there!” She didn't see how he had managed this much. Hadn't a bullet bowled him off this ledge?

She was right, Clarence thought. Now, before his last stores of energy failed him. He looked to both sides, found a place to the left and below him where he could stand. From there, his eyes found a series of crags and ledges that would give him toeholds, handholds, all the way up to the brink where May and the others could pull him to safety.

He hadn't done it in a few years, but the method reeled from his trained muscles like second nature. He let himself slip cautiously downward, the rope smarting where it cut under his thigh and over the opposite shoulder. Now he remembered the drawback of the abseil method. It hurt! Here the cliff face sloped outward, and he managed to get his feet situated squarely on it. His legs pressing against the rock took still more weight, and the grip required of his hands lessened.

Still, he had to remember. His grip was the only thing that kept him from falling hundreds of feet. The wind was cool around him in this strange place, so high and wild. Sweat braced his brow. He looked below, saw the jacket just ten feet under him, his own rope lying over it. He disregarded it. It was the last thing he needed.

“What are you doing?” May said, for he had slipped beyond her sight over the ledges.

Good question, he thought. Why put it off longer? He took a few steps to his left along the cliff face, then swung like a pendulum back to center and beyond. He repeated the maneuver, each time swinging farther, until he was able to drop onto the flat ledge he had spotted from above.

The relief was instant. Pain ebbed from his palms, his shoulder, the underpart of his thigh. Only the left side of his chest still smarted, and even that had loosened up with the exercise.

Tying the rope around his waist as a safety line, Clarence began climbing up the series of handgrips and footholds he had located before. May scrambled along the cliff face to meet him, Mary Whitepath and Elder Hopewell close behind her.

When he got near the ledge, they reached down to grab his shirt and raised him up. They dragged him onto the rock, and May fell on him crying, searching him for wounds, finding only a little blood caused by the fall.

“It's a miracle,” Hopewell said. “The shot hit him in the chest. I saw his left shoulder jerk back when Hassard fired.” With his long fingers, he probed the area where the bullet should have hit.

May was sobbing on top of him now, feeling warm. “It's a miracle, all right,” Clarence managed to say, though every word hurt.

*   *   *

Clarence was on his feet when the two strangers came down from the divide. One was a tall man in a dusty black suit. He wore a revolver that had seen much service, and a visage of utter fatigue and failure mixed on his face.

The boy was sad and quiet and looked as if his faculties were not all with him. He looked like Clarence felt, and Clarence wanted to know what had happened.

“Let's get down to the timber first,” Moncrief said, “and make a camp for you folks before dark. Then we'll sort this out.”

They built a fire in the timber, divvied a meager supply of jerked venison. Elder Hopewell began, telling Moncrief about the Church of the Weeping Virgin, from the first days.

“What now?” the reverend asked, after he had heard the fantastic story.

Hopewell shook his head and looked sadly into the fire, drained, exhausted. “Its over for me. Something went wrong, and I don't even know when or where. We're not a church anymore. We're lost. I knew that when I saw the Snowy Cross. That cross has been there thousands of years, I guess. It will last. The Church of the Weeping Virgin won't.”

The boy's story was the hardest to get clear. He seemed dazed, unwilling to speak. But Mary Whitepath was Comanche, and knew Spanish better than she knew English. At length, she got the boy started, and it became a glory for Ramon to recount his journey with Sister Petra.

May noticed a peculiar look on Clarence's face when the boy mentioned the village of Guajolote and the Ojo de los Brazos land grant that Sister Petra had sought to save. The more she watched him, the more astounded he seemed, and she hoped the fall hadn't rattled something in his head.

“He says they came into this valley south of here,” Mary Whitepath interpreted, “and they found a big red mule with hobbles on, so they camped there.”

Moncrief's interest peaked. He squinted his eyes and turned one ear to May. “Didn't Hassard claim a big red mule threw him somewhere up the trail?”

“Yes, but if that's true, what would the mule be doing wearing hobbles?”

Mary Whitepath broke in: “The boy says an old man came to get the mule, and this old man told him and the sister where to find the cross on the mountain. Then the old man took the mule away.”

“Ask him what the old man's name was,” Moncrief ordered.

“He does not know the name, but he says it was the old man the people talked about in Buena Vista. The one who got lost and found the cross so high on the mountain.”

“Sounds like the same old prospector we saw down at Tigiwon,” Clarence added. “Didn't get his name. Hassard was the only one who talked to him.”

“Did he have a mule with him then?” Moncrief said.

“No,” the Vermonter said. “He carried a pack on his back.”

Carrol grinned at the ground. It sounded for all the world as if old Jules Billings had come to take Hassard's big red mule away. Jules was in the ground on the banks of the Blue River, but it was a happy thought, however impossible. No telling how many played-out prospectors there were tramping around in these hills, looking for another 'forty-nine.

Ramon tugged Mary Whitepath's sleeve, for he wasn't through. “We did everything we were supposed to do,” he told her. “We found the cross. We even found the money to save the village. And then that man came and shot Sister Petra and took the money away from us.” He covered his face with a hand. “I couldn't do anything. The man had a gun, and it happened before I could do anything.”

They sat in silence after Mary Whitepath translated for them.

“Tell him to keep the faith,” Clarence said suddenly to the translator. Then he looked right at the boy. “Your Sister Petra would want you to keep the faith, boy. If you do, I guarantee you'll get the money you need to carry out what she wanted.”

“I wouldn't make promises I can't keep,” Moncrief warned. “Even if I manage to catch up to Hassard, all the money he's got belongs to other people.”

Clarence shot a sure glance at him. “I can keep my promises, Reverend. Sister Mary, tell that boy he'll have the money he needs.”

The parson's brow wrinkled, but he didn't have time for argument. “I'm goin' back down to the big camp,” he said, rising. “Maybe there's a chance that old miner you all ran into took Hassard's red mule up the valley.” He chuckled. “The Lord works in ways like that sometimes. You never know. Maybe I can catch up to him.”

“You can take my horse when you get to Tigiwon,” Clarence said.

Carrol dipped his hat brim. “Obliged. Walk with me a little ways down the trail,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

Clarence rose and followed the big reverend out of camp.

“Tell that Mexican boy to stay with the pilgrims,” Moncrief ordered. “After I get Hassard, I'll come back for him and take him to his village in New Mexico.”

Clarence nodded.

Moncrief reached into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out the certificate Edgar Dreyer had given him in Frisco. “You'll take this in payment for your horse. Don't argue with me, because I don't even know that it's worth the paper it's printed on.”

“What is it?” Clarence asked, unfolding the certificate.

“Mining claim over near Frisco. I got it in payment for a funeral I preached there. I've got no use for it. I ain't no miner.”

Clarence nodded and tucked the claim into his pants pocket.

“One other thing,” Moncrief said. “I ought to know better than to stick my nose into another man's business, but if you don't marry that girl over there, you're a blasted idiot. God intended some couples to pair off, and if they can't see it, well, somebody ought to have sense enough to tell 'em. I'm duly vested by the Territory of Colorado to perform the rites of matrimony, and if Dee Hassard doesn't sneak a bullet through my skull, I'd consider it an honor to conduct the ceremony myself.”

Clarence bristled a little at first, for he was his own man, but he saw Carrol Moncrief's intentions for good ones and nodded with a smile on his face. “Good luck,” he said, shaking the big man's hand.

*   *   *

It was like a dream that May would remember at odd moments as long as she lived, and it would move her more each time she thought of it.

She woke in the night when she sensed some movement in camp and found Clarence adding wood to the fire. He smiled at her to let her know everything was all right. Later she woke again; the fire was flickering nicely, but Clarence was gone. She slept quite a while before waking a third time, and found him kneeling at the fire again, probing it with a stick. She was curious now, so she sat up, but he cautioned her with his open palm and held a finger to his lips, glancing at the boy, Ramon, who slept nearby.