Moontrap - Don Berry (47 page)

But the moon in time touched the crest of the peak
above him and gently, softly, began to slide down out of his sight.
It was time, he thought. This was where he was supposed to be. He
faithfully dragged himself as long as the faintest sliver remained
above the hill, but when
it had gone, he
stopped.

He was finished with his journey now. He was alone
again. He looked around him. The opposite slope, the peak from which
he had come, was now in the silvery light. He was tired and he would
rest here.

He was almost surprised to find how high he had come,
following the moon. Now only one thing remained for him to do. Just a
few feet uphill, he saw a rubble heap of rock. That was it.

He dragged himself behind the heap. and at last put
his head on the ground. The rocks dug into his forehead comfortingly.
After a moment he lifted his head again. He would make a fort.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he thought he had twenty-four hours
to make a fort in. He didn't know where the idea had come fiom.
Things had happened so confusingly, ever since the blooming ofthe
miraculous smoke-flowers.

But time had become meaningless and it didn't matter
if there were twenty-four hours or twenty-four years. There was no
time, only movement, and all movement followed in the moon's track.
He was bitterly ashamed of himself. Dragging himself like a gut-shot
animal while the moon glided with her white perfection so easily and
smoothly across the sky. But there was nothing to do about it. It was
just the way things were. The moon was perfect, but he was only a
man; the way the world was.

He began to try to arrange the rubble into a sort of
wall that he could lie behind. He would have to lie on his right
side, though by now he could no longer distinguish one side from the
other with precision. The right one was pretty badly torn up too, he
thought, from all the dragging. He hoped it would be all right.

He did not seem to make too much progress with the
wall. The stones would slip from his hands, and sometimes he would
forget what he was doing, and find himself sitting numbly staring at
the rock he held. Then he would place it carefully with the rest, and
reach out to find another with his fingers. The moon having left him,
he did not see very well.

He put his head down and thought perhaps be would
rest a little before he did anything else. He couldn't remember ever
having been quite so tired. He was sorry the moon had left him, but
he realized it could not wait. It made him a little lonely.

He opened his eyes again. Suddenly he smiled,
blinking. The eastern sky, just above the horizon was faintly light.
He felt a joy that was stronger than the pain surge inside him. The
sun was coming. And smoothly as the moon in its perfection it would
glide upward in the sky It was perfect, and there were suddenly tears
in his eyes. He had never in all his years thought of anything so
beautiful as the slow and perfect course of sun and moon swinging
through the depth of sky, balancing each other, lighting the day and
night. It was a miracle.

He put his head down, no longer feeling lonely,
knowing the sun was coming. He loved the moon, but he loved the sun
more. He looked once more at the lightening patch of the horizon and
closed his eyes.

He loved it all.
 

Chapter Twenty-one

1

After the blast there was enormous agitation up and
down the line as men scampered back into the hill shelter of the
trees to reload.

"
We got him!" somebody called excitedly.
"We got him, honest to god!"

"
He just ducked behind that rock, you damn
idiot!" a voice answered.

Monday stood looking at the spot of sky next to the
rock where the silhouette of Webb had appeared. The sudden
apparition, a moment of utter stillness, and then it was gone again.
It was too sudden, like some sort of miracle.

"
I'm dead sure I hit him!"

"I got eyes too. He jumped back just before we
shot."

"He ain't fired back, has he? Has he? That means
we got 'im."

"Hell, he's just sittin' there waitin' for
somebody t' show," the skeptic answered.

"Monday!" the first man called. "What
d'you think? Did we hit him or not?"

Monday did not answer for a moment, the after-image
of the dark form strong somewhere inside his eyes. Finally he looked
down at his own rifle and gently lowered the hammer.

"Well," he said at last, "there's one
sure way t' find out. Go up an' look."

Someone laughed, a strained tight sound in the
reddish dusk. "Not me, friend."

Behind the trees Thurston came scrambling through the
brush to Monday's side. "Well?" he said.

Monday turned to look at him. "Well, what?"

"
What do we do now, mountain man?"

"It's gettin' dark," Monday said absently.

"
I can see that, thank you," Thurston said.
"What do we do now?"

Monday shrugged, looking down at the ground. He
frowned. "Take him now or wait for morning, " he said. He
shook his head confusedly, his mind not on his words. When he looked
back up at Thurston his eyes were full of puzzlement, as though he
had expected to see someone else.

"
What's wrong with you, Monday?"

"
Nothin'," Monday said slowly. "Nothin's
wrong with me."

"Your gun hasn't been fired," Thurston
said.

Monday looked distractedly down at the rifle.
"Misfire, I suppose."

"You suppose!"

Monday shrugged.

"Monday, pay attention, will you? Should we
follow up now, or wait until morning?"

Finally Monday brought his attention back, and his
eyes lost the glazed indifference that veiled them. He looked around,
at the rocky slope above, at the dim shapes of the men he could see
through the trees, finally faced Thurston.

"We best wait till morning," he said. "Ten
more minutes an' we'll be shootin' each other."

Thurston watched him carefully for a moment in total
silence. The debate was still going on along the line as to whether
or not the old man had been hit, but even those who were convinced of
it had no enthusiasm for going to check.

"All right," Thurston said finally. "Bill!"
he called. "Come over here a minute, will you?"

The carpenter came slowly through the brush, picking
his way methodically around the clumps.

"We'll camp for the night and take him in the
morning," Thurston said.

Bill shrugged. He looked at the ground for a moment,
then glanced up at Monday. "That what you say too?"

Monday nodded. "No fire," he said. "An'
you best scatter your bedrolls around in the brush. No use makin' it
too easy if he decides to do a little night-runnin'."

"
You think that's a possibility? " Thurston
said.

"
Possibility of anythin'," Monday said.
"I'm just sayin', is all."

"We'll set a few men to watch," Thurston
said.

"All right," Monday said. "I'll take a
watch."

Thurston looked at him. "No," he said. "No,
that won't be necessary You'll need all your energy tomorrow."

After a moment Monday snorted. "You just won't
get off my back a minute, will you?"

"
Why, Monday. l'm trying to look after your
condition. We're depending on you." Thurston smiled humorlessly
in the growing dark.

"
You're sure damn worried about my condition,"
Monday said.

"
Yes, my friend," Thurston said quietly. "I
am."

Four men were picked to make up the first watch. and
their alternates chosen at the same time. The night would be very
short with the summer full on them, and their altitude. By four
o'clock there would be enough light to begin. Grumbling, the men
began to distribute their bedrolls, and by the time they had finished
it was full dark.

"Where's your roll, Monday? " Thurston
asked him.

"Over here," Monday said, pointing to the
small fir with his pack and gun resting against the tree. "Why?"

Thurston shrugged negligently. "Just curious."

Monday tilted his head, but there didn't seem to be
anything to say He got out his blanket and began to settle down. just
as he had his legs raised stiffly to tuck the edges of the blanket
under, he saw Thurston's shadowy form bend over by the guard post
nearest Monday. He was there for only a moment, then moved past
Monday's bedroll toward his own.

"
Sleep well," he said as he passed.

Monday rolled over on his
side. "Y're a trusting bastard," he said quietly. "Y'are
now."

***

From where he stretched, wrapped tightly in the
cocoon of wool, Monday could just see between the tree trunks a tiny
patch of the rocky slope leading up to the little peak. The gigantic
full moon had hung on the eastern horizon just before the sun went
down, and rose into the darkening sky rapidly. It was as brilliant a
moon as he had ever seen, and he watched the bluish light flood over
the rubble and debris of the slope, casting sharply defined shadows.

He watched the shadows shift, picking a reference
point where a shadow just touched a stone. lt had soon changed,
pulling gradually away from the stone with the pace that was always
just too slow to see.

He counted the illuminated stones that he could see
in his rigidly blocked field of vision. A few minutes later he
counted again. It was always around the same number, as nearly as he
could tell. While some disappeared into shadow others slowly emerged.
It was just the way it was, without pattern. Some vanished into the
black nothingness of shadow and others came up to replace them in the
light. It was all measured in a slow rhythm of the world he could not
understand or hear.

He sighed and rolled over to his back. Through the
mat of branches above, the patches of sky he could see seemed very
light, and only a few of the brightest stars were visible. There was
too much moon, and it fit the whole sky, as well as the land below.

He watched the shapes of the dark limbs above
occasionally moving gently in the night breeze that seemed to flow up
the slope from the valley below. He started to count, and stopped
himself, disgusted. It was pointless, and it made him obscurely angry
that he should be forever counting tiny objects in small patches. The
trees that blocked his view of the slope were a frustration, and the
limbs that cut the night sky into a thousand bits and sections were a
frustration. He could not see, and he felt closed in, muffled.

Out in the clear it would be different. Up on the
peaks, looking down with the sky stretching out. He would have a
different view from up there. Webb would be having a different view
now.

Then the image he had so carefully avoided flooded
sharply before his eyes. The moment of stillness, the figure beside
the rock, seeming no more real than a cut-out paper man pasted
against the red sky. The roar of the rifles in his ears and the gouts
of white smoke that leaped out toward the sharp man-shadow.

He wondered how badly Webb had been hit. There had
been no mistaking the spasmodic jerk of the body before it
disappeared behind the rock. He had been hit, there was no question
of it in Monday's mind. The only question was how badly. The heavy
impact of a ball could spin a man around just by grazing him. It was
hard to tell, it was impossible to imagine.

He tried to think how it might be for Webb now, where
he was, what he was thinking. On the other peak there was a chimney
of sorts in the rock, out of sight of this peak. Monday had seen it
before, but it was no use. A man going up the chimney back braced
against one side and feet on the other, was just a mark. But—in the
night . . . Webb could make it down in the night. While the posse was
rummaging around on their bellies in the morning he could be moving
silently through the woods toward the horses. Then up to Astoria,
maybe.

From there a ship, down to San Francisco, or up the
Columbia. That would be it, upriver. Past the Willamette, up to the
narrow straits and the beginning of desert country. The high plateau
and the long dry days, and the final glorious relief of the Blue
Mountains. Across to the Snake, and Pierre's Hole, where the Tetons
reared up against the morning sky like the ramparts of Paradise, and
Jackson's Hole on the other side, and the Wind River beyond . . .

Monday looked up at the segmented, blocked sky above
him. After a long moment he sat up, untwisting the blanket from
around his legs. He fumbled in his pack for his powder horn and the
little leather possible sack. In the almost-blackness of the deep
woods he put the blanket silently aside, picked up his rifle and
started toward the perimeter of the guard circle.

"Who's that?" The man's voice was shaky,
and it was impossible to distinguish fear from anger in the tone.

"It's just me," Monday said quietly

"Jesus, you scared me. You shouldn't do
something like that."

"
Sorry," Monday said.