Robert Crews (19 page)

An instant of apprehension returned him to his knees. He turned and crawled against a solid wall. He had lost the entranceway! He frantically beat his hands on the cold stone and might have surrendered to panic had he not quickly imposed order by remembering the several ordeals he had survived by now: the plane crash, the storm, the bear. Then he found the inside aperture of the cave's mouth. It would be easy enough to lose again in the darkness unless he devised a means by which to keep its location fixed while his own was mobile. Working by touch in the darkness, he tied the end of one of his coils of fishline to the all-purpose tool and tossed the latter toward the outside air: presumably its weight would keep it in place while he payed out the coil.

He began to crawl again, following the right-hand wall now, so as to have another reference to his position in space, the darkness being much more disorienting than he had imagined. The surface beneath his knees was not the level floor of tourist caverns but rockily uneven, with sharp points and punishing edges. He stood up again, but this time rose only to some five feet before pressing his head against the ceiling, and as he slowly, gropingly proceeded, the height of the cave gradually diminished, bending him until his back was horizontal with the floor, which felt ever rougher underfoot.

He had reached the end of the fishline without reaching that of the cave, but after his experience in circling the lake, he allowed for the possibility that he had been following a curved rather than a straight wall. What was more important was his failure to encounter evidence that any person was or had been within, and surely by now he had produced enough noise to evoke a reaction from a man with a gun.

He traced the line back to the mouth of the cave, where he could not see the outside world but could hear the rush of the rain still falling there. At least he had found shelter. He scraped away the loose stones from an area large enough to lie on and curled up against the wall, near the entrance tunnel but not blocking it, lest a bear, out for a nighttime forage, came home. The cold, unyielding floor was an uncomfortable alternative to the luxury of his usual bed of boughs, but he soon found the most comfortable contortion of body, and after retrieving the tool and opening the knife blade, he placed it where he could find it in the dark and went to sleep.

Crews did not believe he was dreaming when he was awakened by a blow to his shoulder and heard an unpleasant voice address him abusively. He assumed rather that it was real enough but that time had been reversed, taking him back to his first marriage, for the voice was female and the unpleasantness in it was by intent, not nature.

But when he opened his eyes he was staring at a wall of rock, visible in the flare of light that must be coming by way of the constricted entranceway through which he had crawled the night before. So obviously he
had
been dreaming.

He rolled over to look. A human figure stood near enough to have kicked him. It held a blazing, smoking torch. In its other hand was his tool, with the extended knife blade.

“Who the hell are you?” The tone was harsh, but the voice was that of a woman. She brandished the blade. “I'm not afraid to use this.”

“God almighty,” Crews croaked, from a throat unaccustomed to speech. He was getting his hands and one knee under him. “You're—”

She pushed him forcefully with a foot, and he fell back. “I asked who
you
were.”

“I was in a plane crash,” he said angrily. “It went into the lake. I've been trying to keep alive ever since. Why are you threatening me? Why did you steal and wreck my raft? It took me days to make that, without any tools but the one you're holding. Why do you need my knife when you've got a gun?”

The flame was sputtering and getting smokier by the moment. The young woman, for such she was, held the torch as far from her body as she could. She had tousled long dark hair and regular features, so far as could be seen in the light that illuminated only part of her face and threw distorting shadows on the remainder.

“Are you telling the truth?” Her voice had lost some of its edge.

“Look at me,” Crews said. “Do I look like things are going my way?”

“All right,” she said, gesturing with the knife blade. “Get to your knees and start crawling out of the cave, and be quick about it: this torch is about ready to quit. Remember, I'm right behind you, with the knife. When you get to the outside, keep crawling away from the mouth of the cave, until I tell you to stand up.”

He did as ordered, but when he reached the outside, where daylight had come, he immediately sprang erect, bent down as she crawled out, wrested the tool from her hand, and, seizing her denim jacket at the scruff of its neck, pulled her to her feet. She was fairly tall, only a couple of inches shorter than he, and slender but very fit-looking. She tried to struggle with him, but he pushed her away.

“Stop it, goddammit! This is my property.” He folded the blade back into the handle and dropped the tool into his side pocket. “Now suppose you tell me what
you
are doing here.” He could not resist adding bitterly, “Aside from stealing stuff from people who are fighting for their life.”

Her blue eyes continued to show residual fury for a moment or two. In full daylight her features were in fact very fine, but her face was smudged with dirt. She wore filthy jeans. Her denim jacket was torn on its left side. She snarled, “Touch me again, and I'll kill you.”

He had forgotten the gun, but if she had been carrying it, she would surely have drawn it by now. And if she had had a firearm, why would she have brandished the knife?

“I'm not impressed by your bluster,” he said. “I won't have any reason to touch you if you aren't carrying any weapons. Empty your pockets. Turn them out.”

She hesitated for a moment and then complied. Her front pockets were empty.

“Turn around.”

“The hell I will.” She was fierce again.

“I just want to see your back pockets. Come on.” She had no weapons or anything else. She could do him no serious harm. “I was telling the truth about the crash. I don't want to fight with you. Just tell me how to get out of these woods. I've been traveling in circles.”

She blinked briefly, but raised her eyes in some lingering defiance. “Why'd you come into the cave?”

“To get out of the rain,” Crews said. “Why are you so pugnacious?” She met his stare, and he broke before she did, because all he wanted now was her help. “All right, forget about the raft and the stuff from my hut—”

“You keep mentioning that.
I don't know what you're talking about.”
She looked away. “If you're lost, so am I. I don't have any idea where I am. I've been running for my life.” When she turned back to him, there were tears in her eyes.

“Running for your life? Then you're not the one who has the gun? Who's chasing you?”

She shook her tousled head but stayed silent.

Given the situation, he was annoyed. “I told you about me. If I could submit references, I wouldn't be here, would I? I know I must look awful. I haven't been able to shave, and it's hard to get clean without soap. You just have to think why someone in my shoes would lie.” He lifted one of his bare feet.

“No, I don't,” she cried bitterly, still weeping.

Her trouble seemed genuine. “Okay,” he said, “don't tell me. But can't we work together on getting out of here?”

She grimaced, impatiently, and wiped her eyes with the back of a dirty hand. “I certainly don't have a gun. The man who's after me does have one. He might do harm to you too if we link up.”

“If he's coming this way,” said Crews, “we'd better find some cover. But not in the cave again. Too easy to be trapped there.”

“He tried to kill me.” She seemed to be telling this primarily to herself and with a certain disbelief.

“He's not superhuman, is he?” Crews asked. “I've held my own out here for weeks. And look, you got away from him, didn't you?”

She stayed grim. “He killed my husband. We were camping, and he just came out of the woods with this gun and shot Michael.”

“I heard those shots.”

“Then he tied me up.” Her voice had lost all identifiable emotion. “I hate camping. I was just trying to be a good guy. That was important to Michael.”

“Who was this man?” Crews asked. “A complete stranger?” Suddenly she was too weak to stand erect. He pointed to a nearby boulder. “Why don't you sit there?” She finally did so. The ground, though stony, was still too damp from yesterday's downpour. Crews remained standing. “This criminal, do you have any idea who he might be?”

“He's some kind of woodsman,” she said, almost contemplatively, looking at the rocks between her feet. “I think he probably lives around here. A hunter or trapper or something. He's got a beard.”

“Like mine?”

She kept her eyes down. “Big and bushy. He's filthy dirty.”

“You're sure your husband is dead?”

“I don't see how he could have survived. It was at close range.”

“I'm no authority,” Crews said, “but I've heard about people who have survived worse.”

“That was two days ago.”

“Even so, I think we should find the campsite. He might still be hanging on, you can't tell. I've got a general idea of where it might be, because I can remember where I was when I heard the shots, more or less. Who was it I saw on the cliff? Was that you or him? I yelled and waved my arms. I was sure whoever it was saw me.”

“It wasn't me. I didn't see anybody after I got away. He went off somewhere for a while. He left me tied up, but it was easier getting out of the ropes than I thought. I didn't know where I was running. I only know we're a couple of days from anywhere. That was what Michael wanted. To leave it all behind.” She put her hands on her face.

Crews was reminded of his failure to retrieve the bodies from the submerged airplane. Perhaps he could earn some extenuation. “If there's any chance your husband might still be living, we ought to try and find him. I'd spare you the ordeal and go myself, but I don't want to leave you alone.”

“I'm scared. There's nothing you can do against a gun.”

“There are two of us,” Crews said. “And we know he's out there. We're not going to be jumped without warning, like you and your husband were. One of us will stay on guard at all times. The gun is not necessarily a deciding factor. There are other weapons available to us.” Much of this was bravado, but the need to gain her respect gave him more faith in himself than he otherwise would have known. “But we've got to get organized. Do you have any idea where this gunman might be? If it wasn't you who stole the stuff from my camp, then he did it. But I don't know when. I thought he might have come this way, but if he did, the rain washed away any footprints. The first move we should make is climb up there and see what we can.” He nodded at the heights above the cave. “Do you want to go first?”

She seemed not quite to have lost her distrust of him. He took the knife-bearing tool from his pocket. “Hold it, if you want. It's the only thing I own that could be called a weapon.”

She waved it off. “Don't mind me.” She was shivering.

He took off the seersucker jacket. “Here. I'm sorry it's so dirty.”

“I'm not cold that way.” She began quietly to weep again.

Crews put his jacket on. “We should get going.”

She stared at him. “It was completely by surprise. There was nothing I could do.”

“I saved myself in the crash,” Crews said, “and even brought along some gear. I did nothing for the others. I tried, but then I passed out. Maybe I could have saved some or all of my friends, but I didn't. The difference with you is that you could not have done anything about what happened. But you're alive, and I'm not going to let any more harm come to you. You can count on it! Now let's find a way to get up there.”

It was she who located the best route to the top of the cliff above them, a ravine to start to climb which took more initial effort than the one he first chose, but his presented an un-climbable impasse a third of the way up, and he had to come down and follow her lead. She waited for him on the level summit.

This was the highest point from which he had yet surveyed the territory in which he had been lost for—however long it was. One end of the lake could be seen, but the other was hidden by the forest, as were the pond, the area of fallen trees, and his hut, along with the stream except for its immediate length just below them. The killer could be anywhere.

“Did you and your husband have a lot of camping equipment?” She gazed blankly at him. “This guy stole the only stuff from my hut that was worth anything. He's tracking down the only witness to his crime and yet he takes the trouble to steal my fishing stuff. Maybe sooner or later he'll go back to your campsite to get whatever possessions you left there.”

She nodded in what might have seemed indifference had her anguish not been known. She could surrender her vigilance, now that he had come forward. It was an expression of trust, perhaps as much as he could expect from her.

“Here's my idea,” he went on. “If all we do is keep trying to evade him, we won't have a moment's peace of mind, and we might lose in the end if we think of ourselves as his prey. We don't know where we are, and we are unarmed and amateurs at this. Whereas he's presumably a native of the area and has a gun.” She was listening, but her face was so expressionless he could not believe she heard him. He would, however, have said as much to himself. “The conclusion I therefore have arrived at might sound crazy. I say
we
stalk
him.”
He gave her a moment to protest, while counting on her to stay remote while he worked out what he really meant. She made no response. “There are two of us, you see. In effect, he'll always have his back to one or the other. That is, we should see that's the case. We can make weapons of our own, spears, clubs, and so on, or just rocks. But our most effective weapon will be surprise. The last thing he'll expect is to become the pursued.”