Necessary Evil

Chapter 20

Once again, Kier gave her a line to pass behind her shoulders to provide support for her back. Since she held on without much conscious effort, she soon fell into a stupor. After an indeterminate period of jostling, she prodded herself conscious and saw no snow falling. A hole in the clouds revealed more stars than she had ever seen and a bright moon against the black-velvet sky shone so clearly she could make out its surface texture. In its light, their shadows danced behind them on the satin shoulders of the mountain. Kier walked now at an ordinary pace.

"So tell me again that we're going to sleep in a cabin with a fire."

"In a cabin, by a fire. But it will be tomorrow."

"So I wasn't imagining things," she said with some hope that it was really true.

"The only other guy who knows about the cabin is in Montana. But it's up to us to get there."

"What do you mean?"

"I would like you to consider just trusting me and not having me explain it. How do you feel about that?"

"Why don't you wish to discuss it?"

"It's one of the reasons I am carrying you."

Confused, Jessie looked around. To her left stood a sheer granite wall. Instantly, she looked down to her right and sucked in a breath. It was a straight drop. In fact, she couldn't see what Kier was walking on.

"Is this a trail?"

"Of sorts," he said cryptically. "I need to concentrate on keeping my balance. Try not to move."

She noticed now that he was carrying his snowshoes.

Her gaze wandered over the outline of the tiny ledge that they traversed. For the first time she observed the long stick in his right hand that he held in front of them, feeling along the rock ledge. As she considered the danger of such tenuous and blind footing, she could feel her heart beginning to pound. Her cotton mouth made swallowing difficult. For a moment, she shut her eyes tightly, telling herself to relax. A few slow, regular breaths helped.

Again she looked. They were moving across a cliff on a narrow ledge. Below there was an almost vertical decline. Directly overhead occasional rock overhangs blocked out the clear night sky.

After a time, the rock wall to the left disappeared, and there was nothing but snow to both sides and below them. Ahead was another mountain, rising gently from the end of their ledge. Far below she could see where the landscape turned dark in the moon's glow-a forest. Kier snapped on a light. He was knee deep in snow on a razorback ridge. Now, on both sides, an abyss invited her mind to take leave of thought and embrace panic.

"Oh my God." She meant it as a prayer.

"I would like for you to carefully consider something."

"What?" She could barely speak.

''Loosen your grip around my neck just slightly, so as not to choke me."

''Oh. Sorry." She realized that she had pulled her wrists into his Adam's apple. "I don't mind telling you I'm frightened."

"I know what I'm doing."

She forced herself into a sort of calm. "I'm better now," she said after a time. "Can I help?"

"In a few minutes, I'm going to need to let you down."

Each of his deliberate steps followed much poking with the staff. The flat mountain surface ahead lay less than a stone's throw away. She longed to lie on it, touch it, kiss it. It was so massive, not nearly so steep as the ridge on which Kier now balanced. And it had trees, blessed trees. In front of them, she could just make out a tree near a large, dark area, like a cave. Actually, it appeared that the mountainside had an overhang. It was as if she were looking down the tube of a giant, curling wave. Ice and snow in the moonlight were the foam atop the breaker.

"There," he said, running his staff into a spot in the snow that seemed to have no bottom. "How would you feel about my loosening the rope and your getting down?"

"Not good. But I'll do it."

Slowly she slid from his back, letting her feet sink into the snow until she found a foothold on the rocky surface. Removing the pack, Kier pushed it down into the snow like a candle in a cake. He motioned for her to sit on it.

"Have you ever seen that?"

She knew exactly what he meant. On the horizon a planet shone jewellike. She threw her head back, staring. Bright stars and lesser stars occupied every tiny patch of black, and the Milky Way was a shimmering cloud of light. Her cold fear mixed with awe. She looked into eternity. And it was so quiet. There was not a sound.

"It sounds really corny, but I feel like I'm part of God," she said. "How could I ever describe this?"

"What are you feeling?"

"Peace, I guess. This is all so crazy. We're dead meat. There's no peace for us. I wonder if the men who hunt us could ever feel this. God, when I look at this… all this… I have never seen a sight to match it… But it is not just in the seeing… it's… " She didn't know what to say.

Kier tried. "It's the experience of a spirit-a very thirsty, parched spirit-that wants to touch another. Grandfather says that by knowing your own smallness you can find a way to the whole. Under these stars you are finding your smallness. You touch the whole."

They both fell silent. She let her gaze trail along the length of the Milky Way and pick among the stars.

"Grandfather brought me to this place."

"I must meet your grandfather."

''He was on the mountain today. Not half a mile from you."

"An old man, with a bag around his neck. A leather bag and a heavy green coat."

"That's him. Where did you see him?"

"I didn't, I dreamed him. When I was sick and passed out. I dreamed he came. He told me to crawl. Begged me, really. So I crawled to a stream and drank and drank and drank." Kier didn't stop her. "It was a dream, wasn't it?"

"There were no tracks near you. It was a dream. On my wall at the cabin I had a picture of him in that green coat. You would have seen it."

"And the bag?"

''No. It wasn't in the picture. A great-grandchild was holding the bag."

"I saw him with the bag."

"Your mind supplied the bag. It's something that used to be common for Indians."

"Do you realize you always have an explanation for everything? It sounds like you believe in nothing but molecules."

"I don't know what I believe. I just keep going."

"Since you went off to college, right? You always quote your grandfather. You don't state your own convictions."

"You felt what you felt. That's real." Kier pulled out two coiled lines, one of which he cut to make a third.

"I need to show you a knot."

"Why?"

"We're going to do some mountain climbing and you're going to need it."

She studied while he wrapped one line around the other. All the while her sense of foreboding grew. When she could do it, he nodded. Getting down on his hands and knees, with the guns still on his back, he felt around in the snow. After a while, he grunted what sounded like approval.

"Did you find something?"

"Oh, yes," he said, sounding relieved. "A piton."

She knew what that was. It wasn't good. It was a device used by people who climbed cliffs. It would be anchored to the rock and mountaineers would dangle from it.

"Do we need a piton?"

"Maybe I could offer a suggestion."

"A suggestion? Here we are in the middle of the night on a freezing precipice with one lousy piton? I just met God, and I'm still scared, and you think with a few words, you can just… " She hesitated. What was she trying to say? "Just get on with it. I'll be fine. Just fine."

It was night. Dangling at night was almost unthinkable. It seemed to Jessie that where they stood the ridge's top wasn't more than a couple feet wide. Covered with snow, it created the illusion of a knife's edge. To the left, the down slope appeared walkable, if dangerous, but to the right it fell away almost vertically for several stories. Kier reached down with the line and pulled it as if he were running it through the piton. Just next to him was a sheer drop created by a massive split in the granite right where the ridge joined the shoulder of the mountain in front of them. It was as if a giant had pulled lengthwise along the ridge neatly severing it from the mountain and leaving a straight-walled, U-shaped, vertical fracture.

"Perhaps you could go first, and I could help lower you down. What do you think?''

She was determined to show him no more of her fear, although she hadn't a clue as to how she would do what he asked. Kier wrapped the line around her thighs and waist, then passed it between her legs.

"Have you ever rappelled?"

"At the academy we did it a couple of times. But that was in broad daylight on an artificial rock wall. We had equipment. I had eaten. I hadn't been deathly sick. I had strength. I'll manage."

"Okay. Well, this will be very similar, only I will lower you. But if I slip or let go, this safety line, which you will pay out, will also be through the piton to stop your fall. You must hold the safety line and not let it slide through your fingers, except when you want to go down. Now lean back and I'll hold your weight."

She stood with her back to the sheer drop. Kier held the main line a foot from her chest. It went around his shoulder, across his back, down to the piton, then to her waistline.

"Go ahead and squat down."

Warily, she lowered on her haunches.

"Now lean back and let the rope take your weight."

She froze.

"Go ahead, just lean back."

God, dear God, she prayed. Her heart pounded and her hands shook. She felt humiliated. She was not a weak person and what was being asked of her was not extremely difficult.

She continued trembling. It was getting worse. By now a minute had passed. Kier squatted down close to her. His light illuminated their faces.

"Let's rest a minute. Just sit." He pulled her back from the cliff to sit on the pack. "I remember when I was a kid, I saw this movie on TV about Cheyenne Bodine, a man who was sent to a forest to hunt a creature that was killing people in the night. These guys would sit around the campfire and something-before it attacked-would throw dirt out of the bushes. It scared me bad… had me shaking under the covers. Turned out it was a bear."

"I'm trying-" she said.

"There's time," he continued firmly. "I'd lie in my bed, scared out of my mind. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's in your head that I was just a kid, that you're an FBI agent, and this story is demeaning because-"

"The story is about normal childhood fears,'' she interjected sharply. "This is about two adults on a mountain. If you'll shut up, somehow I'm gonna do this."

Gritting her teeth, she stood, went to the ledge, and held the rope in her left hand.

"Well, pull on the rope, give me some resistance."

He pulled firmly. She clamped her jaw, willing herself to lean back, trusting him to hold her. She took one baby step down the rock face. He played out a few inches of line, and she took another. The first few feet were not as frightening as she had expected. She was near him, and she could see. As she descended, though, the shadows deepened, and Kier became a monolith in the soft glow of the penlight that he held in his mouth. It was like descending into a well. By thinking about the smooth rock and occasional bush she passed, she did not dwell upon what might be coming.

After she'd taken perhaps fifteen downward steps, Kier stopped, and she felt the pain of the line cutting into her thighs.

"What's going on?"

His light shone over the edge.

"Look behind you." A few feet away on the other side of the chasm a snow-covered tree-some kind of needled evergreen-grew from the opposite wall. It looked gnarly, old, stunted, the base emerging from a crack in the vertical rock wall. The thick trunk made an L so that the top grew straight up, parallel to the cliff. Behind the top of the tree Kier's light shone upon the lower lip of a cave mouth in the cliff face.

"You'll need to throw your end of this line around the tree; then I'll show you how to use it to swing across."

Her heart sank as Kier dropped another line. Throwing the lariat to catch the treetop would be tough. The notion of somehow swinging her body through space, across the chasm, was terrifying. She couldn't even imagine climbing from the tree into the cave.

"I've got the end of the line. You need to get that loop at your end of the line around the top of the tree. From up here I'll work it down past one or two of the larger branches."

"Why did you get me down here and then tell me this?" Kier was silent. "Never mind, I know."

Only a vigorous throw would catch the broken top of the main trunk in the loop of the lariat. Turning sideways, she studied the tree. Maybe twelve feet away horizontally, the stubby treetop waited to be noosed some two feet above her height. From the top of the tree to its gnarled base was about twenty-five feet. The floor of the cave stood at eye level.

Jessie's first toss hit the tree's broken top. But when she tried to pull it tight, it slipped off. Three more throws were equally useless.

"I can't," she called.

"When you throw again, think only of the tree."

As he said it, she realized that she had been thinking of the rope, not the tree. With nothing to lose and a sense of wild abandon she threw the loop as hard as she could. To her amazement, it fell neatly over the treetop.

"Very impressive," Kier said. "In a minute we'll have a bridge line."

She felt a surge of satisfaction.

From his higher angle, Kier shimmied and shook the line down past the first stubby branch and pulled it tight, catching the main trunk.

"Grab this," Kier said as he dangled another length of line until she had it firmly in her grasp. "This is the swing line. Pull the bridge line taut and tie this swing line to it the way I showed you. Tie it as close to the tree as you can."

She tried it three times before convincing herself that she was doing it right. Then Kier took the belly out of the bridge line, pulling it taut to the piton, forming a single line bridge across the chasm on a steep angle from the cliff top down to the treetop.

The swing line was attached to the bridge line at about the middle of the chasm and was now well above Jessie's head. She would have to push off the rock wall and, in a pendulumlike motion, reach the tree.

"Okay. There should be a ledge there. Stand on it."

She did as he said, clinging to the rock wall.

''I'm going to loosen the line that holds you so I can let it out as you swing yourself across. If you don't make it, you've got to turn feet first to this side so you can push off again."

There was silence. If the tree on the opposite side gave way when Jessie swung, she would slam back against the rock face, dangling from her safety rope.

Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the swing line.

"Ready?"

She hesitated. Could she make herself do it one more time? The black of the abyss below engulfed her.

"Look at the stars."

She did and drank them in. Something in that vast beyond made the chasm less important, her own mortality more acceptable. She pushed off into the jaws of her terror, leaving her spirit in the arms of the universe.

Swinging easily she covered the eight feet to a branch.

"Pull yourself in."

She grabbed the branch like a cat over water, hauling herself to the tree. For a moment, she laid her cheek against the trunk of the pine, concentrating on the rough texture of the reddish brown bark, its sharp scent.

Her eyes cast about for a way to get to the cave. Using her light, she could see that the rock surface was indented with small but numerous hand- and footholds. A large branch just above her looked to be the best bet. Then she saw another branch, less stout but closer, that would take her nearer to firm footing. She tested it and it seemed to hold her weight. With one step on the branch and a hop she could make it to a man-size, two-foot-deep pockmark in the rock wall, then climb to the cave. Feeling confined in the rope harness, she decided to remove it. After a brief straggle she was free of the lines.

She placed her foot on the branch and reached for the rock. The snap was so abrupt she had no time to react. She dropped as if through a trapdoor. Her gloved hand caught a branch as she went. The spindly wood slowed her, then strained downward. As it broke, she got an arm over the bend in the tree where the trunk made its L-turn at the cleft in the rock. Twisting wildly, she eventually wrapped both arms around the base of the trunk and hung there.

She heard the sounds of a child crying, then realized it was she who was crying in ragged breaths. Air sucked into her lungs in great gulps. Her head spun. Something was terribly wrong.

"Don't breathe so hard!"

Kier was shouting at the top of his lungs. Why was he doing that? She took a deep, slow breath.

"Get your feet on the rock."

She felt with her left toes and found a small ledge. It seemed too narrow to support her weight.

The tree is solid, the trunk thick and strong, she told herself. She could count on it. It was her muscles and mind that were jelly. She would use her legs, the strongest part of her. She searched around with her right foot. In seconds, she found a secure shelf. After her right toe was well placed, she lifted her body with both arms and the strength of her right leg.

Gripping branches in her hands like the rungs of a ladder, she worked her way above the base of the trunk and climbed up the tree, regaining the dozen or so feet that she had fallen.

The cave beckoned, only a couple body lengths higher than her head. "Have you no suggestions?" she called out.

"Love the mountain. Remember the stars and the feeling you had."

Was he out of his mind? She would never love this cold son-of-a-bitch rock.

"This mountain is killing us. It's freezing. It has cliffs. It hates all civilized people." She risked letting go with one hand to lift her middle finger and aim it at Kier. ''I suppose I could be more one with the sucker if I let go and went splat."

She hung her head, too tired to shout anymore, and regarded the dim outline of the rock. Okay, you solid son of a bitch. She crouched down on a stout branch. Crawling forward, she reached out a hand and touched the rock. She concentrated on the granite, putting her other hand out.

Now her knees were on the branch and her hands firmly clinging to the mountain. She would need to drop a foot and find a ledge on which to park her toe. As she reached out, she glanced down. Cold blackness greeted her. To put a foot down into the unknown, to teeter on that branch, seemed a thing too hard to do. Yet if she could do this one last thing, she could rest. In a cave. On a flat spot.

"I love you, you solid son of a bitch," she whispered.

Her boot shot down in a smooth motion and found a foothold. In less than two minutes, she clambered up into the cave, where she knelt and kissed the rock. Grateful.