Relentless

4

The storm was ugly and black and they were driving straight toward it. The cruiser was convoyed by the mining company jeep, Cunningham driving; their speed was limited by the jeep’s but even so the tires snickered on the sharp bends. Watchman’s arms felt constricted by the bulk of the borrowed sheepskin-lined mackinaw. When he judged the spot right he pulled over on the shoulder of the highway. “End of the line. We swap here.”

A truck snored by, heavy laden. The jeep waited behind the cruiser, its engine idling roughly. Cunningham stepped out, letting the canvas door flap behind him, and stood with a bland incurious expression on his freckled cheeks.

Vickers took charge. “Constable, you’ll stay here in the Highway Patrol car with one hand on the car radio and the other hand on your walkie-talkie. You’re going to be my only contact with the rest of this search so I’ll want you on your toes. You can handle it.”

Watchman looked on with the amusement compressed inside him. Vickers must have read somewhere in a Bureau manual that it was a good idea to compliment local officers and persuade them to give utmost cooperation: but it didn’t come naturally to him, he had a heavy hand with the butter-knife and old Jace wasn’t fooled; he just stood there with his glance fixed on Vickers as if he was waiting for Vickers to serve a subpoena on him.

It unsettled Vickers; finally he said in a different voice, “You know how to work these radios, don’t you?”

“I reckon.”

“Fine-fine. Well, then, let’s get on.”

They got into the jeep, Stevens in back with the knapsack and the walkie-talkies. Watchman handed the folded map to Vickers. “You’ll have to navigate. Watch the compass.”

It hung in a black plastic shell from the windshield divider, below the mirror. Watchman put the floor stick in low gear and went grinding up over the hump of ground beside the highway shoulder; turned north, away from the highway, and went up through the gears fast, bumping across the brush-studded hardpan at a speed that made everything rattle.

“You don’t need to shake us to pieces, Trooper.”

“Maybe you’d rather get there after we run out of daylight.”

Vickers cleared his throat.

The dust lifted high and the jeep’s passage exploded gray wrens out of the bushes. After a little while Vickers said, “I think you want to head a few more points to the left-more over that way.” He pointed and Watchman adjusted the course, weaving among brush clumps and a spindle tracery of cactus and catclaw. In the half light the mountains were vague and hazy out ahead. Vickers kept his finger on the map in his lap and watched the compass; his finger moved a fraction forward every now and then, marking what he thought was their present position. “It shows a ranch back here in the foothills. What’s that supposed to be?”

“Monument Rock Ranch. It’s a tourist outfit-they run horseback pack trips and hunting safaris back into the mountains.”

“Safaris?”

“Mountain elk, antelope, mountain lions.”

“I gather you don’t approve.”

“Hunting a near-extinct animal with a telescope-sighted high-power rifle isn’t what I call a sport.”

“I see. What do you call it?”

Watchman flicked him a glance. “I guess you like to hunt, don’t you.”

“I’ve hunted deer a few times. In New Jersey.”

“That where you come from?”

“Leonia, New Jersey. You’d be surprised the deer population back there. If it wasn’t for the hunting season the damn deer would eat up every farm crop in the state.”

There was no point in starting an argument and Watchman thought he had let the subject die, but Vickers revived it: “I like venison, you see.”

“That’s more than you can say for most of the customers they get up here.”

“I get you. The type that wants a head of antlers to hang over the fireplace,”

“I don’t even think most of them care about that. They just like to shoot at something that moves.”

“Well that’s a primitive instinct in all of us, isn’t it,” Vickers said. “Most people work behind a desk all year and don’t get much chance to act like natural men. I guess that’s a pet theory of mine-man is a hunter-killer by nature, the paleontologists have proved that.”

Watchman tried to make his voice sound friendly. “Out here we get plenty of anthropologists full of theories about the nature of primitive man.”

“I didn’t mean to step on any sore corns.”

“Forget it.”

“A little bit to the right now. Try guiding on that sawtooth peak.” Vickers buried himself in the map. The jeep rattled and bounced; Watchman squinted, peering through the bad light for gopher holes and sudden cutbanks.

There was an X penciled on the map and Vickers’ fingertip was inching closer to it. Westward, over Watchman’s left shoulder, the storm obscured almost half the sky and great arms of cloud shot forward from its crest. The wind bucketed the canvas sides and top of the jeep. Vickers reached back for one of the walkie-talkies and got it going by his ear. “Cunningham? Can you read me?”

Watchman heard it squawk faintly and Vickers said, “Fine, I’m just testing it. Any word?”

There was more squawking and Vickers made a face. When he handed the instrument back to Stevens he said, “They’ve recalled the search planes on account of the storm. No sign of the fugitives.”

“Not likely there would be. If they’re on foot they’d hear an airplane coming-plenty of time to hide.”

“I thought they might be able to see tracks from the air. Footprints.”

“In this hardpan?”

“Well you know the country better than I do.” Vickers said it in a conciliatory voice but it was evident he felt stung by the mild reproof.