Robert Crews (20 page)

She stared down across the forest and said nothing. He had looked at her for an hour now without seeing that what he had believed a sooty smudge from her left cheekbone to the chin was rather one great area of discoloration, a bruise that occupied more than a quarter of her face.

“Maybe
you
should stay here,” Crews said. “If he did try to come up, there's no way but the one we took. You could see him coming from a long way off, and roll those boulders down on him. There's no place in that ravine to maneuver. You'll be okay here. I'll go down and catch some fish and bring them up, and some water too. We'll eat, and then
I'll
go after that bastard.”

She shook her head violently, though she continued to avoid meeting his eyes. “No.”

He tried not to be exasperated. “If you just want to try to get out of here, remember that we're almost certain to run into him anyway. There's probably just one main trail, and if he can't find you before, he's likely to wait there.”

The woman said slowly, in almost a moan, “He shot me.” She lifted the torn side of her jacket. She wore nothing under it. There was an ugly purplish wound in the soft tissue between her ribs and the waist, not a hole as such but a kind of slash. It looked as if the bullet had gone across, tearing skin and flesh, but not into her body.

Crews winced. “I've got some antiseptic down at my camp. I don't think he stole that. Let me go get it. I should be back in an hour or less.”

“No, no,” she said. “You mustn't.” She clutched at her jacket. “You'll get killed.”

“No, I won't!” he cried. “He's not going to kill either one of us.” Then, so as to make a case even he could find credible, he went on. “You see, I've got a charmed life. There has to be a reason why I of all people was spared from dying in that crash. I was the least worthwhile person on board. I'm being given the opportunity to prove I'm worth a damn.” She dropped her hands. He could not tell whether what he said had had any effect on her. “I don't like the way that wound looks. It might be infected. It should be cleaned and treated. I wish you had mentioned it before now. You must be in pain.”

“I don't feel anything,” she said. “But I don't want to stay here alone.”

“All right,” said Crews, and turned to lead the way down. It was then, making one last sweep of the land below, that he saw the thin wisp of gray smoke coming up from the dark forest on the other side of the lake. “Look. Over there.” He turned back to her. “That's a couple of miles away. We're one up on him at the moment. We know where he is, but he doesn't know where we are. Let's go.” He did not wait for her reaction.

They made good time in reaching his camp. He found the little spray can and gave it to her. But when he saw the difficulty she would have in reaching the far end of the elongated wound, he reclaimed it.

“Just keep your shirt lifted. This will feel cold at first, but the local anesthetic in it will take over in a second.” The gash, though ugly, did not seem to be infected. Washing off the encrusted blood with water from the pond would have been too painful at this point, in his opinion. She recoiled slightly when the spray first touched her, as he expected. He welcomed the reaction as evidence that she had not fallen into a state of semiconsciousness.

He took the tool from his pocket and squatted in the dirt. He began to scratch out a crude map with the screwdriver blade. “Here's the lake, and here's where we are.” This was an oval and an X. “Here's the stream, the pond, my hut. Here's where I was on the raft, on the lake, when I heard the shots.” He touched the blade to the earth. “Think your camp might have been about here?” She was still standing. Crews was impatient. “I need your help with this.” But when he saw her woeful expression, he rose. “We can do that later. Let me put some stuff together, and we'll get going.”

“There was a clearing,” she said. “It was less than fifty yards to the beach. He didn't want to be closer to the water, he said, because the tent would be too exposed if a storm came. He knew about things like that.”

Crews squatted again and x'd the dirt map. “Does this look about right?…” He glanced up at her. “I know this is painful, but can you remember any details at all? Where the sun rose or set? Any landmarks? One of those cliffs, for example?”

“I didn't know about anything,” she said. “Mostly, I didn't know about him.”

Crews put the tool into his pocket along with the can of disinfectant. From the hut he got the thermos, which, after filling it at the pond, he tethered to his belt with a loop of fishline that would allow it to dispense water without being unhitched. In the duffel bag he found one of his knitted shirts. During his raft-building days he had taken time to do some laundry in the lake, and the shirt was as clean as soapless cold water could make it. He took it out to her.

“Here. Put this on under the jacket. It'll help at night.” He considerately turned his back. “I've only got one other pair of pants, and I didn't get around to washing them after the raft was finished, and they're full of mud.” When he turned back she had the shirt on. It was even looser on her than he had anticipated. She had trouble getting back into the smaller denim jacket.

He took a last look at the house he had built. He was proud of what he had done and wished that he could have shown it to her under different circumstances.

“We'll stay back from the lakeshore. We won't make as good time through the woods, but he won't be able to see us as easily, if he's looking. I'll lead the way. Anytime I'm going too fast or you don't feel good and want to stop, just tell me. And please stay close. I can't keep looking back to check.”

Nevertheless, he did keep looking back, every few paces, on their way along the bank of the stream, for the route was much more demanding than it had been when he used it alone. There were places where he had simply waded in an undergrowth that then had seemed sparse, but mysteriously had since grown burrs and thorns, too cruel to lead her through. There were fallen trees which, alone, he had easily climbed over but now considered too formidable for her. Because of his detours they made much poorer time than he had anticipated and sometimes encountered even worse terrain than that they were avoiding, which required still further evasive action.

But at last he could say, “Right down there is where the woods end and the marsh begins. That's where I built the raft. It's an exposed position: we
could
be seen from the opposite shore. So we'll turn right here and keep in the trees.”

Despite the pains with which he had led her around the worst thickets, a little twig end had caught and broken off in the abundant fall of rich brown hair that swung across her left ear. He thought about removing the twiglet, but doctoring was one thing and grooming another. Also, it was not unattractive, a kind of wilderness jewelry.

He had forgotten that before long the woods gave way to the meadow where the wildflowers grew. He halted at its edge. The alternative was to go the long way around, keeping to the trees a quarter mile behind.

“We'll go on across. He's probably still way back in the woods over there. He may even be farther away.” The smoke had never been seen again once they had come down from their observation post on the cliff, but Crews had decided that that was a matter of relative perspectives and not necessarily evidence that the man had put out his campfire and gone back to the hunt.

They started into the field in single file, wading through grasses that were usually no more than knee-deep, from which rose the occasional plant only slightly taller, not enough for cover. The wildflowers, somewhat disappointing on his earlier trip, were more profuse now. At a distance those of the same hue seemed to be massed into floating islands of gold, orange-red, or purple, but when approached separated first into confetti and finally became distinct blossoms, some a foot or more from any other. But there were also kaleidoscopic areas shared by many colors.

At one such place, without breaking his regular stride, Crews broke off a little flower of dusty blue. An irritated bee chased his hand for six or eight inches before turning back to more serious work. The sun was warm on his back. The woman was behind him, walking in his swath. He often glanced back at her, should she forget or neglect to signal him. Her eyes were always down. The twig was gone from her hair now. He would have liked to replace it with the blue flower.

On the other side of the meadow they entered wooded, rising ground. Once they were well within the trees, on the gentle slope, he halted, took the cap from the thermos on his belt, and swinging the container on its loop of fishline, poured some water. He offered the cup to the woman. She gulped greedily at it.

“You must be hungry, too. When we come to a likely spot, I'll do some fishing.” He refilled the cup. “I've been thinking. We need a contingency plan. If we run into this guy, I'll keep his attention on me as long as I can. You take off and head for cover. His attention will be diverted. He'll have to deal with me. You should get a few seconds anyway.” She did nothing to indicate she had heard what he was saying.

He took the lead again. In silence they gained the crest of the hill, where he paused to look down onto a valley that was familiar to him, as was the cliff behind it.

“Down there, over on the lake side, is where he took my raft. I had previously seen him up
there.”
He pointed at the cliff, higher than where they were, and on their right. “I yelled and waved, then I climbed up. But he was long gone. He must have come down somewhere else, circled around, and grabbed the raft. It was coming apart, but I guess it held together awhile.” He was still in effect speaking to himself. “You were hiding someplace? I only wish I had known it then.” He stepped so as to face her. Her eyes fell. “If we don't encounter any rougher going than we've had so far, it should only be a couple more hours. I went by raft, so I don't know the ground between here and there. But you do. Can you remember any obstacles?”

She shook her head.

He took the can from his pocket. “Let's have a look at that wound again.” She lifted the jacket and the hem of his shirt, which she wore tails out. It was hard to say whether the scab had claimed more of the raw flesh. He sprayed the area and then lowered the shirttail himself, to determine whether it cleared the wound. “It's knitting up,” he told her. “Lucky his aim wasn't better.” Her eyes rose, full of anguish. “Forgive me,” he said. “Dumb thing to say. I was just trying to make conversation…. Let's get going. We've got lots to do before dark, and you can never tell what problems will suddenly come up. I've never yet found one thing in nature that I could have predicted.”

A sudden burst of sound came from the trees just ahead of them on the downward slope, and instinctively he recoiled. A small deer, a doe or not fully grown fawn, unantlered, was sprinting uphill, at an angle to them. Each instant less of it could be discerned through the intervening trees, and in a moment it had vanished altogether.

The hike to the end of the lake probably took more than the two hours he anticipated, even though the route was without serious topographical barriers, the terrain being mostly level, not densely forested, and marked by only one narrow stream, shallow enough to wade across. But just where the lake's “end” could be identifiably located was another matter. He had been so disoriented on his previous trip of exploration that he had encircled the shore while believing he was traveling in a straight line.

He tried again to speak with the woman. “This is really important. Can you take your mind back to before your husband was shot?” They were now among the pines just behind the beach. “Do you remember anything we might look for? Any kind of landmark? So much of the shore is the same in one place as it is in another. You did come out to the water?” He squinted at the sun. “I'd say it's late afternoon, and we've been going north, more or less, all day. While the light's still good, maybe we should go out to the lake and have you take a look. Maybe you'll recognize something.”

She stared through the trees at the sparkling water. “I took a swim. I was hot and dirty after the hike in from the river, where the current was too strong to safely swim in, or anyway that's what Michael said, I wonder why now, because it didn't look like it. So I hadn't had a bath since leaving Fort Judson. He wasn't that good a swimmer himself to help me, he said, if I got in trouble. I was actually touched by his saying that. He wasn't usually so protective—anything but, in fact. Once—” She stopped herself.

“River?” Crews asked. “You came by the river, on a boat of some kind?”

She was still abstracted. “Godforsaken place. You get there by a little plane. Nothing much is at Fort Judson but this outfitter who rents the canoes.”

“Where did you leave the canoe?” Crews asked. “How far away is this Fort Judson? How far from your camp was the river?” That there was a human settlement of any kind that could eventually be reached from this wilderness, which to him had grown to seem infinite, was exhilarating.

“I hated it all,” she said. “I don't mean that: it was beautiful. I just hated my being there.” Tears came to her eyes, and she turned away.

“If we can get to the river and find the canoe—you must have left it someplace there for the return trip? … But it's getting late in the day. I'd better make camp. Otherwise it'll get dark before you know it, which always happens quicker when you're lost, I couldn't say why, except all the normal things have to be looked at in a different way. Everything's new. That's really hard to get accustomed to at first. It's like being a child again, only not so comfortably.” He was still addressing her back. “I'm going to build a lean-to. Can you give me some help? Collect a lot of pine boughs?”