The Missing and the Dead: A Bragg Thriller (15 page)

That meant Hawkes and Fairbanks were far south of the crash site, and the helicopters probably would start their search way off base as well.

"Okay, Tuffy, stick this in your armpit and see how you can manage." I propped the crutch under his arm and tried to steady him as he moved slowly around the clearing. He hobbled a half dozen yards before his left knee buckled and he slipped out of my grasp and fell again.

"Geeez, guy, that isn't going to work," he said, rubbing at his sore knee.

"It looks that way. How much do you weigh, Tuffy?"

"About a hundred pounds when I empty my pockets." He cocked his head and looked up at me. "Why you asking?"

"It's beginning to look as if I'll have to carry you out of here."

"You're kidding."

"I'm afraid not. Besides, I'm the one who'll be doing all the work. What's your bellyache?"

"Nothing personal. You just don't look up to it." He rubbed one hand on his pants and looked away. "I think you should go on ahead. Get somebody up to my dad."

"We'll get somebody up to your dad. And let me worry about whether or not I'm up to it. You want to spend another night here with the bears?"

"No, sir."

"Then don't be so critical."

"I was just trying to help."

"Thanks."

"Which way you planning to go?"

"Well I'm sure not going to try lugging you back up the way we both came down. That would take us a month or two. We'll just have to keep on going until we come to a trail or a house or the Pacific Ocean, if it takes that."

He stared at me a moment then heaved a very adult sigh. I realized I wouldn't be able to carry much more than this hundred pounds of smart talk. I took the coil of rope out of my pack and looped it around my middle. I put the compass and some chocolate bars into one pocket, an extra box of shells for the
revolver into another and stuffed everything else back into the bag. I climbed a nearby tree to hang it out of the reach of bears and other curious creatures.

"Thirsty, Tuffy?"

"Nope. I been drinking out of the stream all night and most of the day. It gets boring just lying around."

The kid had spunk bordering on insolence. It took a while to get him up in piggyback position so that his ankle was comfortable, then I started down through the woods beside the stream until I came to a handy place to splash back across it.

"Hey, guy, how come you did that?"

"Did what?"

"Go through the water like that."

"Because the only highway I know about is over in this direction."

"I mean without taking off your boots and socks."

"They'll dry soon enough. It's warmer to keep them on my feet."

"My mom blistered me once for going through puddles on my way home from school. She said I could catch pneumonia that way."

"Mothers have been known to pass along a lot of punk information. Now shut up and let me save my breath."

TWELVE

W
e broke through into sweeping grassland that extended down for a half mile or more. Beyond that was more timber. I couldn't tell from above how thick it was and I didn't see anything that looked like a trail or a house or the Pacific Ocean.

"Don't joggle so much," Tuffy said about ten minutes later.

"I'm doing the best I can."

"When you joggle it hurts. I think you almost made me faint back there."

"Might be a good idea if you did."

"Funny."

We kept on going. The woods below the grassland weren't too thick, and the configuration of the land took a reversal of what we'd been through earlier. We dropped down a funnel of partially cleared slope bearing to the southwest, toward the Stannis River and the highway. It heartened me some. About every twenty minutes now I had to take a rest break. The kid was smart enough to leave me alone during the first couple of breaks, letting me catch my breath. But I didn't spend long. I was afraid I'd stiffen up so badly somebody else would have to come in and carry out the both of us.

At a later rest stop he started to complain about the ankle. I tried to repack the splints a little more snugly, but he continued to moan. I think he just wanted somebody to talk to. I wasn't in the mood. The day so far had been a hard one, and the rest of it didn't promise to be all that much better. I gave him a chocolate bar and told him to practice being stoic, like an Indian.

We went through another wooded area, this one thicker. It slowed us down and took more out of me. I was beginning to hurt in several places myself. We finally broke out into the clear again, into a flat meadow that made the going comparatively easy. I tried to put the aches and pains out of my mind and concentrated on covering distance. I hit a stride that grew comfortable and was moving nicely for a few minutes before I heard from my partner.

"You're joggling."

"We're making good time. Think about something else."

We were nearly across the meadow when he began to mark cadence to my steps in a small voice directly behind my right ear.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow..."

"Oh, for God's sake." I set him down against a tree stump and arched my back for a couple of minutes before settling down nearby.

"How far you think we've come?"

"I think I've come about a hundred miles since I started out this morning. I don't know how far I've lugged you. Three, four miles maybe."

He grunted and lapsed back into blessed silence. Briefly.

"Pete?"

I opened my eyes and stared across at him. It was the first time he'd called me something besides "guy" or "you." "What?"

He was staring over his shoulder, into the trees and brush bordering the meadow. "Ever had the feeling you were being watched?"

I sat up and took a look around. "I guess I have. There are all sorts of creatures in this kind of country. They're curious and wary when strangers come through."

"That's not what I meant. How much farther you figure we got to go?"

"I don't know. Maybe as far as we've come 'til now. Maybe more. Heading toward the coast doesn't seem to be the answer. I
think we have to find the Stannis River and a way to cross it, then just keep going until we find the road beyond."

He still was searching the country around us with a frown on his young face. "Let's get out of here. I won't complain anymore. I promise."

I hoisted him up and we started off. True to his word he kept his mouth shut. "You really were nervous back there, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"How come?"

"I don't know. I just was. One minute it was okay, and the next—I had this thing
growing
between my shoulder blades."

There were two things I was willing to concede kids were good for. One was their power of observation. They haven't put in enough years to muddle up their memory, so what they do observe and experience is etched pretty sharply on their minds. A deputy sheriff who patrolled an island out in Puget Sound had told me about that years ago, and I'd put it to good use on several occasions since.

The other was what Tuffy had just displayed, or might have. It's something bordering on the extrasensory, a sensitivity beyond what most of us can muster when we get older. I'd had something like it myself when I was a youngster. Maybe as with the power of observation it was just a marshaling of concentration you're capable of before life's distractions and dirty tricks set in. Whatever it was, I'd lost it over the years, but it had been real enough then so that I couldn't bring myself to dismiss it out of hand when somebody Tuffy's age professed to feel something I couldn't. Thinking about it made me pause at the edge of the meadow and take a slow turn and look around the countryside.

"You feel it too?"

"No, pal, the only thing growing between my shoulder blades is you. I'm just trying to get my bearings."

Besides the woods on both sides, there was high country stretching both north and south of us. Somebody could have been watching us, through a scope maybe, far enough away so a shout wouldn't carry. Maybe they wouldn't even realize we needed help. Maybe they saw guys stalking through the meadow lugging young people on their backs every day of the year. I eased Tuffy down and stepped a few paces away, unholstered the revolver and fired three times into the air. I waited until the ringing in my ears subsided and scanned the high country on both sides, but saw nothing, heard nothing. I wished I had my binoculars.

Tuffy didn't say anything. He just watched gravely, then pulled himself back up onto me when I hunched down nearby, and we set off once more. One thing the look around did for me was to find a game trail meandering through the meadow grass about twenty yards off and parallel to our own course. I followed it the rest of the way out of the meadow, through a grove of trees and down a thatchy area bearing to our left. There was a steady throb in the lower part of my back now. It would take a couple of days for that to go away when we were finished with all this. I plodded on, my passenger thankfully mute.

A half hour later I heard what had to be the Stannis River. The game trail led us right to it. I helped Tuffy down near the water's edge, then stretched out flat, wishing the aches would go away. A couple of minutes later I rolled over and splashed my face with river water, then split another chocolate bar with Tuffy. He munched with serious eyes.

"What's the matter? You still spooked about something?"

He avoided my eyes and didn't say anything. If something did still bother him, he wasn't going to admit it.

"I'm going to have to leave you for a while now, sport. I have to find a place where we can cross the river."

The boy stared dubiously at the swift, white water.

"I know, I know. The men I was with earlier said it might be a tough job. But over there is where the highway is. Over there
is where we can find somebody to get help to your dad. So over there, damn it, is where we're going. Okay?"

"I guess."

He finished the candy and wiped his hands on his pants. I bet myself he was a little dear to have around the house. I got up and started off down river.

"Pete?" he called. "Couldn't we stick together?"

I went back to where he sat. "I haven't got that much stuff left inside me, Tuffy. You still a little frightened?" He didn't answer. "I mean, it's okay to be spooked, pal. God knows it's happened to me enough times. And you've had a rough couple of days. Rougher, I'll bet, than any of the guys you pal around with back home ever had. Are you still feeling the way you did just before we left the meadow back there?"

He shook his head, more in frustration than denial, I felt. "Something's just funny."

I squatted down beside him and took the revolver out of the holster again. "Ever fired a handgun, Tuffy?"

His eyes grew some and the day took on a whole new dimension for him. "No, sir, I never have."

"Well, you are about to. I'm going to leave it with you. Sometimes it makes you feel a little better when you're in strange territory. But first you've got to learn a couple things."

I gave him a little lecture about how the weapon operated and some dos and don'ts, then helped him get his good knee tucked up to use as a platform. I showed him a sturdy, two-hand grip and told him to cock the hammer so the cylinder would revolve before he fired.

"You could just pull the trigger, and the cylinder would turn during the backstroke of the hammer," I told him. "But if you cock it first and get that mechanical work out of the way it gives you a better chance of hitting what you aim at. Now see if you can put a slug into that tree over there."

He fired. The gun bucked back in his hands, the bullet went singing through overhead branches and he showed his keen disappointment and surprise.

"That wasn't where I was aiming."

"And that's what recoil is all about," I told him, reloading the weapon. "The explosive force moves in both directions, pushing the slug down the barrel and at the same time jamming the gun back into the palm of your hand. So you either hold the gun firmly, keeping your wrists locked, or you compensate by aiming lower than you want to hit, or you do both. Now try it again."

He fired twice more and the second slug went into the tree trunk waist high. "You're a marksman already," I told him. "Now don't play around with it. Just keep it there beside you and don't worry about things. I'll be back here in a half hour or so."

I left him with his thoughts and thrashed on down river. About 200 yards below where I'd left the boy I found a place I figured might work. The river narrowed to rush with a torrent through granite formations on either side. It was about a dozen paces across. Beyond the granite the water plunged eight or ten feet downward then appeared to widen again on its swift flow to the sea. I waded in and managed to get myself across, but it wasn't all that encouraging. Footing wasn't so good, and in places the channel dipped, so that I had water between my knees and my hips. I couldn't have done it if I'd had the boy on my back. I tried to get some idea of what the river looked like beyond the brief falls, but couldn't do it. There were sturdy-enough-looking elm trees on both banks, behind the granite outcroppings, so I could rig a safety line with the rope coiled around my middle, but it still would be risky. On the other hand, I couldn't spend the rest of the afternoon looking for a better crossing. There was more ground to cover, and there still was the boy's father, injured, on the ridgeline somewhere above us. And also, there was Jerry Lind, someplace.