Hillerman, Tony (13 page)

The last sign Cotton had seen that other humans shared this planet with him were the sheepherders who had ridden up when he had stopped to try his luck on San Antonio Creek. An old man and a boy, riding horses still frisky with the morning cold. Cotton grinned.

“Me llamo Cirilio Maestas,”
the old man had said,
“y este est mi nieto, Antonio Maestas.”
Cotton had thought—with instant disapproval—that the boy was about ten years old and should have been out of the mountains and into the classroom at least a month ago. And then Maestas had shown him the raw bearskin bundled on the pack horse, and told him that the boy had shot it, and looked at the boy with such pride and love that Cotton immediately retracted all considerations of truancy.

“I was after some strays and the boy was there at the camp when Señor Oso came down out of the timber after the sheep. And Tony here got the rifle out of the tent and when
el oso
charged him, the boy here, he shot him.”

The rifle was an old, worn, short-barreled .30-30 carbine—not the sort of weapon with which a prudent man would shoot a six-hundred-pound black bear. And certainly not a bear that was uphill from him.

“Antonio no es niño,”
Cotton had said.
“Es hombre. Muy hombre.”

At that Antonio had blushed, and Cirilio Maestas had unpacked his pot and made coffee while the boy rode back up the ridge to keep the sheep moving. They talked while the coffee brewed, the old man asking what had happened in the world since he had ridden in for groceries a month ago.

Nothing Cotton could think of seemed as significant as Antonio, thin and small, standing among the scattering sheep with that rusty carbine facing the downhill charge of the bear. But he told Cirilio Maestas of a new federal ruling on mutton and wool imports, and a plan to increase social security payments, and that he had read in the
New Mexican
that the Highway Department would complete paving the road from Tres Piedras to Taos. And then, when they had finished their coffee, the old man had done something that Cotton wished Leroy Hall could have seen. He had taken a can of Prince Albert from his jacket pocket, rolled a cigarette and laid it carefully on a rock beside their fire. Then he had rolled a second cigarette. Cirilio Maestas had then placed the cigarettes side by side on his palm and extended them to Cotton.

“Quiere usted un cigarillo?”
he had asked. It had taken Cotton a second to appreciate the nature of this courtesy—to realize that the old man had paid him the ineffable compliment of presuming Cotton was too polite to accept a cigarette if only one had been rolled. Cotton had accepted the cigarette and smoked it—although he had sworn a month ago never to smoke again and suffered hard weeks of withdrawal pains to keep the pledge.

Cotton smiled again, thinking of it and of what Hall would say.

There, perhaps, was the difference. Hall wouldn’t believe in Cirilio Maestas. “Cousin John,” he would say, “romance lives on in your mountains. You sure you didn’t meet Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?” Maybe that’s the difference. Leroy Hall sees the infinitely corruptible citizen, the Roman mob rejecting Brutus in favor of Mark Antony. John Cotton thinks there’s some Señor Maestas in everybody.

He was suddenly aware that something had moved. Upstream a weasel had come out onto a partly burned log which had fallen into the stream. It stared intently into the water, looking for an unwary trout. Cotton noticed its fur was turning white. In a month, when the summer fur was shed, it would be an ermine worth twenty dollars to a trapper. He sat motionless, thinking the animal would vanish if he moved. But then it looked directly at him, curious but not afraid. It occurred to Cotton that the weasel was undisputed lord of the rocky slope behind him and the small wilderness of marsh grass. It had never met anything it couldn’t whip. The same had been true of the badger he had seen downstream earlier. It had sat on the cliff above its hole and whistled at him while he fished—a derisive, disrespectful challenge.

Cotton pushed himself stiffly to his feet, and picked up his flyrod. Something had gradually gone out of this day. In two or three more hours long early shadows of autumn would move across this valley. He would take down his flyrod and walk the two or three miles downstream to his rented car and drive the thirty rocky miles back to the highway, and that would be the end of it. The snow was already overdue. Soon this stream would be buried under three feet of it, and the weasel would be pure ermine and he and the badger and snow birds would have these mountains to themselves. And where would he be? He would be where he had to be. This day had been stolen. He could not really enjoy it with an unfinished job heavy on his mind.

He made his cast squatting in the marsh grass well back from the stream. The distance was gauged carefully. About thirty-five feet. Since he couldn’t see the pool, see the sudden explosion on the surface that would signal the strike, he would have to feel it. And that meant the line and leader would have to extend straight and tight when the salmon egg hit the water. He aborted the first cast with a quick backward snap of his wrist before it touched the water. It would have been slightly downstream from the point he wanted. But the second cast was exactly right. The line disappeared over the grassy bank and snapped tight instantly. There was a flurry of splashing as the trout fought the hook and Cotton found himself simultaneously trying to rise from his squat, trying to keep the rod tip high, and trying to free the line from the grass. He lost his balance a second and in that second the trout was gone.

Cotton sat back in the high grass and reeled in his line. The trout had been bigger than he had expected—big enough to pull him off his precarious balance when it struck. But trying a second cast would be futile. The fish, stung by the hook, would be wary for an hour or more. And any other trout in that pool would have scuttled to the bottom rocks, thoroughly alarmed by the flurry of action. He might try this pool from this position again on the way back to the car after working further upstream. And as he thought about it he heard a sound.

A man wearing a red cap and a red jacket was walking slowly toward him across the stony slope beyond the meadow. He carried across his chest a long-barreled rifle with a telescopic sight. Cotton watched him through a screen of cattail reeds. Obviously, the man was looking for deer. And since he was looking here, along this stream in the early afternoon, he was probably inexperienced. Deer slept in the afternoon and they did their sleeping far back in the tangled woods on the slopes. Only a greenhorn would be hunting here—the sort of a hunter who might snap off a shot at anything that moved. Before he stood up he would yell at the hunter, Cotton decided. And he would make sure the hunter understood.

The walking man made no sound now. The noise had probably been caused by a dislodged stone. Cotton watched, conscious that there was something familiar about the man. In the next instant, Cotton knew who he was. The hunter was the man he had talked to on the plane to Albuquerque. Who was it? Adams? But Adams had said he was flying to Denver. What was he doing here? Suddenly Cotton found himself asking another question—a question he couldn’t answer. Where had this man boarded the plane? Had he followed him all the way from the capital airport? Cotton knew as he asked it, knew with stomach-knotting panic, why Adams was here. Adams probably had boarded late at the capital terminal door, and then had followed Cotton to the TWA gate at O’Hare. His choice of seats would have been no accident. He had picked the seat beside Cotton because he wanted to know Cotton’s plans. And with this realization another question answered itself.

He knew now the why of the cigar box which might have been a bomb, the photograph which might have been a bullet, the order to run. At the capital, the death of John Cotton would have been the third in a series of similar deaths—enough to make the authorities wonder if two accidents were really accidents. There John Cotton dead would have been too much coincidence. Here John Cotton dead probably wouldn’t be found until next summer. And, if he was found, he would be just another victim of the deer season. A dead stranger—connected to nothing. The telephone call had been a shrewd device to move him where he could be killed without embarrassment, a thousand miles from McDaniels and Whitey Robbins.

Cotton crouched lower in the grass, trying to think. The man was skirting the marsh—keeping his feet dry. On his present path, he would pass within fifty feet of where Cotton hid. He almost certainly couldn’t see him. But what would Adams do? Cotton remembered the conversation in the plane—Adams’s voice talking of hunting, with knowledgeable, experienced enthusiasm, talking of tracking bear, of flushing elk from heavy cover, of following the trace of javelina in the Big Bend country. He knew what Adams was doing. He was saving time, as he had saved time on the plane by having Cotton describe where he would fish. He had found Cotton’s car and followed Cotton’s tracks along the stream. Now he was simply skipping a little—taking the easy path. Above the marsh, he would check the stream again. He would find no tracks and he would know almost exactly where he could find his quarry. He would turn back downstream toward the marsh, and the rifle would be cocked.

Adams was passing abreast of him now—making no sound that Cotton could hear over the murmur of the stream. And then he was past, walking slowly, placing his feet carefully. Cotton looked downstream, toward his car. The marsh grass would give him crawling cover for maybe seventy-five yards. After that it was open. Adams would only have to glance back to see him. And, once he was seen, shooting him would require no more than two or three seconds. He might run, but then Adams would hear him instantly. And running in his hip-high waders would be slow and clumsy. He looked across the stream. He could reach it easily through the grass, and cross it behind the outcrop which formed the pool, without being seen. And then he could climb the opposite bank into the clutter of fallen logs left by the old forest burn. No more than fifty yards up the slope regrowth started. Young fir and spruce were already crowding the aspen thickets. If he could reach that cover, he could work his way through the trees without being visible. He had left his car parked in a wide expanse of hillside grass, but, if his memory was accurate, he would have covered most of the way there and to within a quarter of a mile of the automobile.

He waited until Adams had time to be at least two hundred yards upstream before he eased himself over the bank and into the water. The current was surprisingly swift here, sweeping his foot off the rocky bottom, knocking him off balance and sending icy water gushing into his boot. The numbing cold drove the air from his lungs. He leaned against the granite outcrop, cursing, trying to catch his breath, and wondering, frantically, if Adams had heard the splash. Through the willow branches, he could see nothing moving. The hunter must be well above the upper end of the marsh now, checking the banks upstream.

Cotton climbed the bank and ran up the slope. He ran clumsily, dodging the fallen timber where he could, and climbing over the rotting trunks which couldn’t be avoided. He ran as if in a nightmare, his eyes now on the obstacles in his path, now on the forest up the slope which promised him life, his mind’s eye seeing the face of Adams—Adams’s brown cheek pressed against the rifle stock, one eye hidden behind the telescopic sight. The crosshairs centering on his back. Cotton fought a desperate impulse to drop behind a fallen trunk, to burrow under it, to hide as he had seen panicked rabbits try to hide from a hunting dog. He fought the impulse and won, running desperately up the steep slope toward the trees that seemed to get no closer. It was a staggering, uneven run, his left leg burdened by a boot half-filled with numbing, icy water, his lungs gasping for breath. And then he was at the trees and among them.

Cotton fell then, only half voluntarily, behind a cluster of young fir. He lay face down, his forehead across his forearm, trying to control his shuddering breath, trying to think. He crawled around the trees, through the soft bed of fir needles and aspen leaves, and stared down the slope. Nothing moved. If Adams had been near the stream when he made the dash up the slope, the sound of the stream would have covered the sound of his running. If that was true, he had a little time. He sat up, unsnapped the wader from his belt, pulled it off, poured out the water, and wrung out his sock. And then he cut the tops off both waders, sawing with his fish knife through the soft rubber at the knee. That would eliminate most of the weight. As he did, destroying boots he had paid nineteen dollars for the evening before, it occurred to him that perhaps Adams meant him no harm. He had told the man he would be fishing this stream. Adams had been interested in the hunting. Maybe something had delayed his trip home, kept him in New Mexico. And he had taken the day off to hunt. Cotton refastened the straps which fastened the cutoff waders at his knee. But why would Adams take his rifle and his hunting gear on a business trip? There might be an explanation for that.

Instead of pursuing the thought, Cotton remembered the voice on the telephone. “. . . think how easy it will be to kill you. Think of the ways we can do it. You’ll think of eight or ten, but there are dozens you won’t think of. . . .” Here was one of the ways he hadn’t thought of. His impulse to discount Adams as a threat died. He would, he decided, work his way down the ridge, try to reach his car before Adams realized he was running. He stood up. As he did so, Adams appeared from behind a cluster of upstream trees. The man was walking slowly, watching the heavy growth of marsh reeds, his rifle held at the ready. Cotton noticed Adams had snapped the telescopic sight off the rifle. That meant he was no longer counting on an easy long shot at an unsuspecting target. He had guessed Cotton was hiding—that it would be a quicker, close-range shot, that open sights would be better. His hope of reaching his car vanished. There was too much open country to cross.

Cotton watched, fascinated. He felt no panic now. Instead, for the first time in his life, he knew the complete measure of fear. The trick with the cigar box had startled him and the voice on the telephone call had caused him to run. But then he had simply faced a choice between danger and escape—an intellectual problem logically solved. Now there was no choice. Sometime this afternoon, perhaps within a very few minutes, he would be shot and he would die. He would be shot rather carefully and only once. Adams would want to leave no question that it had been simply a hunting accident. And, if Adams was a competent hunter, there would be no reason for a second shot.