Wind Song (24 page)

Let the rescue teams do their own jobs. But a nagging voice muttered back that the wagon tracks would be completely covered by the time a search party set out. The tracks were already faint as it was.

All at once, as she topped a rise, the Jeep slid on the slick snow and tilted precariously to the left, where the bank seemed to ease off into oblivion. She screamed and shut her eyes. Her hands held onto the steering wheel in a death grip. The Jeep lurched sideways and shuddered. A crunching noise rent the quiet of the canyon— and then there was silence again. Warily Abbie opened her eyes. The Jeep had come to a stop against the trunk of a medium-size pine that was now bowed dangerously, as if it were about to give.

Carefully Abbie pulled her feet up beneath her in the seat and, afraid even to take a breath, began to edge herself over the side of the door.

The pine started to vibrate at her merest movement, then held steady. She slid out over the side. The snow wisped beneath her shoes. She looked up the road that disappeared into white shadows faintly laced with the gray green of pine and cedar and juniper. No sign of Robert. She turned to look back down the road she had come along. It was a long way back on foot. And this time she couldn’t take her heels off.

She stood there shivering as the light wind playfully flipped her skirt and ran tickling fingers up her legs. Robert was no longer her problem. She was leaving Kaibeto. Rescue parties were good—better than she—at this sort of thing. With his Indian luck he had probably made it all the way to Navajo Mountain by now.

She stepped out onto the snow-packed road— and turned her steps north toward Navajo Mountain. Damn the little brat.

Her heels sank into the snow with each step she took. This was sheer folly. She wrapped her arms about her. Another two hours and the sun would be setting behind the mesas. It would be cold and dark. Would Becky think to tell anyone that she and Robert were gone? Probably not. The girl would blithely assume that she had found Robert. Had she not as much as told Becky that she knew where he was? And Dalah wouldn’t miss Robert from the dormitory until later that evening.

Her shoes were soaked, her feet frozen. Worse, it was getting difficult to follow the wagon tracks. Sometimes tens of yards went by before she picked up the trail again. The wind whistled down the canyons, sharp and hard. If only she had gloves. And earmuffs . . . and boots . . . and snowpants . . . and a Jeep . . . and . . . Damn, but it was cold. She should turn back now before it got any darker. Robert was probably sitting inside a warm hogan, toasting his feet before the firepit.

The tracks disappeared altogether. She kept walking. Maybe they would show up soon. Nothing. Maybe she had missed them. Maybe they had turned off down one of those narrow side canyons. She stopped and half turned, unsure what she should do. In that deep labyrinth of canyons, with the snow falling all about and silencing the world under its white blanket, she felt terribly alone—and more than a little scared. A person could freeze to death in a matter of hours out here.

She started walking north again, toward the mountain. She supposed that she should try to find some sort of shelter. Underbrush, a recess in the rocky walls. Hadn’t she read somewhere that if no shelter could be found one ought to dig a cave in the snow? She shivered just thinking about her fingers clawing through the ice. They were so numb that she probably wouldn’t feel a thing.

She halted. The tracks. She had picked them up again. They were deeper—and veered suddenly off to the edge. “No,” she whispered.

Her steps lagged, her legs unwilling to take her any nearer the precipice. Her hands clenched as she forced her faltering feet to the edge. She looked down. It wasn’t quite a sheer drop-off, more like a steep, rocky incline salted with scrubby trees. Even so, dizziness swept over her. She closed her eyes and slowly sank to her knees and safe ground. When she looked again, her feeling of vertigo wasn’t quite as bad. With the snow falling like a gauze curtain, it was difficult to distinguish any distinct forms. She was going to have to climb down the side of the bluff.

She closed her eyes again. She couldn’t do it. Maybe the tracks were old, from another wagon at another time. She knew she was stalling, losing precious time. “Robert!” she called.

A moment passed, and then she thought she heard his voice, muffled, remote. Then she distinctly heard him shout some Navajo word. Her sigh was a mixture of relief and dread. He was alive. But she was going to have to get him. She rocked back and forth on her knees. I can’t. I can’t climb down that bluff. They can’t expect that of me.

She wouldn’t. Robert had done this to himself. It was
his
fault. Her job didn’t include cliff- rappeling and search and rescue. She didn’t even have to work at Kaibeto anymore. No one would blame her if she couldn’t get to him. She had done her best, hadn’t she?

She took off her heels. She had to be half an idiot.

She thought about all the times when she had disdained the careless clothing styles of the other teachers, and wished now that she had on something half as serviceable. Oh, for one pants suit.

Or a dirty pair of sneakers. She was learning a lot . . . but perhaps too late.

Feet first, she edged over the side. With the icy stones serving as footholds, she inched her way downward. She kept her eyes tightly shut. At some points she found she could half stand where the incline jutted out, and then it was back to her knees. Once her foot lost its toehold and the rock gashed its way up her shinbone. All she could think about was the torn skirt . . . until she slipped the next time.

“Robert!” she screamed as her hands grabbed wildly for anything to hold on to.

She started tumbling. Something—her fingers clawed about the rock. Her feet thrashed futilely for a toehold. Nothing. She looked down. Through the trees—past the oddly tilted wagon— she could see, far below, a small stream, its line of blue glistening against the blanket of snow that looked gray with the approaching darkness.

A wave of dizziness swept over her. She closed her eyes again. For a moment she wasn’t even certain which way was up, and the disorientation caused her fingers to weaken their hold. Oh, God, help. Help me, she prayed.

Tears squeezed from her eyes. Her breath came in staccato bursts. Her hands were gradually losing their grip. Her nails—most  were torn away. How much longer could she hold on?

She saw a scruffy sapling three or four feet to her left and another couple of feet below her. She held little hope that it would bear her weight. If it didn’t . . . She risked a dizzy glance downward. If it didn’t, the fall would be a long one, with only the trees to break her plunge. But if the sapling held, larger rocks and trees zigzagged a path down the slight plateau where the wagon lay tilted against the pine.

Despite the frigid temperature, perspiration broke out on her temples and upper lip. She really had no alternative. She had to leap those few feet quickly before the last of her strength ebbed. /
can’t!
Tears of frustration and helplessness trickled down her cheeks to mix with the snowflakes.

Slowly she began to draw from a reservoir of unrealized, untapped strength. Forcing her mind to go as numb as her toes and fingers, she started swaying her feet and legs, like someone gathering speed on a swing to climb higher. One hand slipped. She lunged then. Her hands desperately and blindly flailed the air for that insignificant sapling. The rough, cylindrical trunk skimmed her palms. Her fingers locked around it. The trunk dipped and bowed—and she held her breath and prayed again.

The pine’s swaying subsided. Stretching her legs and toes, Abbie could feel the solid ledge of stone just below her. If she released her grip on the pine, could she keep her balance on the ledge? There was no choice, was there?

Her heart thudding like a cottonwood drum, she loosened her hold and dropped. Her numb feet, shocked by the jarring, gave way and she fell to her knees. Afraid to move for fear of toppling backward, she hugged the rocky wall. When she saw the tiny crimson trickling down the limestone wall, she realized that she must have scraped her forehead in the drop.

No time to worry about that. The worst of the descent was over. Cautiously she worked her way down, using the tree trunks and outcroppings of rocks like rungs on a ladder. Finally she made it to the plateau. Twenty yards from the wagon she sank to her knees, weakened more by her fear than the effort. When she looked up, Robert was scooting toward her, dragging one leg behind him, as if it were broken.

She was so relieved to see him that she snapped out, “If you dare spit at me, Robert Tsinnijinnie, I swear I’ll break your other leg.”

Sitting, they faced each other. Robert’s eyes were like coals against the backdrop of snow. “I suppose it’s a truce?” she asked when he made no belligerent motion.

No reply.

She looked around them, assessing their situation. “The burros? Where are they?”

He pointed to the chasm below. A brown lump stood out against the snow. She started shaking all over again. That could have been her. She couldn’t go to pieces now.

“Both of the burros?”

His brown finger aimed like an arrow to the north, where the plateau narrowed to little more than a ledge again. The other burro had apparently escaped. So much for hope of a burro ride back. With Robert hurt there was no way the two of them could climb back up that bluff. And she wasn’t certain that she had the courage to do it again, anyway. It almost seemed easier to let the blessing of the freezing cold hush them into painless, permanent sleep than to attempt that nightmare ascent.

However . . . For the first time she smiled. If the burro had escaped by way of that narrow path, perhaps they could, too. She turned to Robert. “Look, Robert, the snow will soon cover our tracks.” Did he understand her? She doubted it, but it helped her retain her sanity to talk. “If we can make it back to the road, there’s hope that the school will send out a search party.”

A futile hope, since they probably wouldn’t realize that she and Robert were missing until later that night. And how many canyons would have to be searched before they were found? They could freeze to death by then. But she couldn’t—she
wouldn’t
—sit there and wait for death’s wings to flap over the two of them.

She pushed herself erect and staggered. Had her feet fallen off? A quick glance reassured her that they were still there. She started giggling and broke off sharply. “Let’s go, Robert.” She bent and slipped an arm under his shoulders. If he balked now, she would cry. He didn’t. He balanced on one leg and wrapped an arm about her waist.

His questioning glance prompted her into movement, movement that sent jabs of needlelike pain into the soles of her feet. Leaning into each other, the two of them hobbled along the narrowing ledge. With a grim smile Abbie thought that they looked like contestants in a potato sack race.

For a while she was galvanized by the hope of making it back to the top. Robert’s weight, her numb feet and hands, were forgotten in the struggle to put yard after yard behind them. But her hopes were shattered when they edged around a bend of the wall to find that the path had narrowed to a mere goat trail. There was little room to do more than place one foot in front of the other. It was an impossibility for Robert, with his injured leg.

And for her? Her feet had no feeling in them. Even if she could manage to crawl, her sense of balance was decimated by fatigue. Her teeth were chattering, and she couldn’t stop shivering violently. With the certainty that comes hand in hand with desperation, she knew that she would never make it to the top, but would join the carcass of the unfortunate burro below.

“And we were so close to reaching the top,” she murmured, too tired even to cry. She sank down with Robert and laid her head against the wall of rock. She wouldn’t look into the yawning abyss, but she did slide a glance at the boy beside her. His swarthy face had a pallor beneath it. His dark eyes were dull, his bowlike mouth pinched with the pain in his leg, but no fear etched his face; it held only a complacent acceptance of the situation.

She slipped an arm around him and pulled his head into the crook of her shoulder. “You’re one hell of a kid, Robert Tsinnijinnie.”

Watching the snow swirl about them, she thought of her own boys. How she loved them; how she missed those years of their childhood . . . and recalled again, with a faint smile, those precious moments of bedtime prayers. The thought of bedtime reminded her of just how sleepy she was. She knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep, that the two of them should keep active, keep moving. But where? Retrace those tortured steps back down to the plateau? She shook her head and closed her eyes. It wasn’t worth it.

Thoughts of Cody, and the child she carried, invaded her comfortable lethargy. She would never hold the child to her breast. And Cody . . . she knew now that she loved him beyond all else . . . beyond herself. Yet if she had given their love a chance, would that desperate need to discover herself have resurfaced one day to smother that love? She would never know now, would she? She really couldn’t think clearly with the drowsy lassitude that was settling over her like the snow.

* * * * *

Her head bobbled. Cement sacks bounced inside, just like the morning after she had drunk so much at Cody’s house.

“You little idiot. You stupid fool. Damn you to hell.”

Like an infant that preferred the womb to the cold, howling world without, Abbie closed her eyes all the more tightly. She was reluctant to face whatever it was that was intruding on her warm cocoon. But the stabbing ache in her feet and hands, the jarring of her head, were becoming more acute by the second. Her lids opened slightly. She was peering, head first, into the greedy mouth of the gorge far below.