Kitt Peak (5 page)

Happiness...

Reluctantly, he left the flask in its pocket and reached into another one, in the back, drawing out Jellek's map. It was near here, Tahini was sure, that they wanted him to use his instruments. He studied the area closely, then walked, with a slightly unsteady step, to the surveying instruments already set up in alignment. He sighted through the scope, checked the map again.

Yes, this was it.

For the next twenty minutes, the whiskey bottle was forgotten while Tahini worked. But that did not mean part of his mind wasn't on it while he measured, and staked the ground, and measured again. By the end of the twenty minutes he was thirsty indeed, and finally, as he peered blurrily through the sextant, forgetting exactly what stretch of staked-out dirt he was supposed to be looking at, he jammed the map into his back pocket, reaching around to the front pocket to retrieve the whiskey flask. Still looking through the instrument, he uncapped the flask and brought it up

Something was blocking the front of the sextant.

Suddenly, the flat expanse of dirt, the painted stake, went away. A shadow passed before the instrument, and now Tahini saw only blackness. Immediately, he thought of the Sacred Mountain. He stumbled back away from the machine.
White man's foolishness,
he thought. Now he would pay for his sins. . . .

But there was no darkness surrounding Kitt Peak, no thunderous rage of gods ready to fall on him.

Someone had thrown a coat over the end of the sextant's telescope.

"Hey, Tahini!" a voice called, laughing. "Bill!" he answered, beginning to breathe again.

Bill Adams smiled at him from ear to ear, standing in front of the instrument. He plucked his coat off the sextant, threw it down, and sat on it. Already, he was uncapping his own bottle.

"Hope you're not mad at me, Tahini," Adams said amiably.

"Hell, no, Bill, you just gave me a turn is all."

Adams laughed. "Here, have a drink." "Don't mind if I do."

Tahini sat next to the white man on his coat and took the bottle. Adams was looking at him.

"Say, I did send you for a loop, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did." Tahini smiled, taking the bottle from Adams's outstretched hand.

"Never drink alone, and never drink your own, eh, Tahini?" Adams laughed.

"Say, Bill," Tahini said, frowning after he had taken a long drink.

Adams waited for him to continue.

Tahini suddenly turned to the white man, staring. "Say, Bill, you all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be all right, Tahini?"

"What you doing out here, Bill? You shouldn't be near Kitt Peak. I hear there's all kinds of weird things happening out here lately."

A frown crossed Adams's face; he looked as though he was trying to remember something. "Don't know. . . ."

"Bill, where you just come from?"

"Why . . ." Again a frown crossed Adams's face. He suddenly looked up at the Indian and smiled. "Can't quite remember that, Tahini. Talked to the Great Spirit, I think." He pointed up.

"Oh, boy."

"Say, Tahini," Adams said, looking up at the Indian questioningly. "You think I'm lying? I'm telling you, I just found out many interesting things." He frowned. "If only I could remember what they were."

Drunk as he was, Tahini knew that something was very much wrong. Rising unsteadily, he approached Bill Adams's mount, which stood patiently in the shade of a rock outcrop. Rifling through the saddlebags, he found the remains of Adams's provisions — a few days' worth of food, a blanket, a tobacco pouch.

"Bill," he called back, "where's your ammo, your rifle?"

There was no answer.

"Say, Bill — "

When he looked back, the white man was slumped over on his side of the coat, unmoving.

"Oh, Jesus spirit," Tahini said.

When he reached Adams, there was a faint pulse in the neck. Turing the white man over, he cradled Adams's head in his lap.

"Bill . . ."

Adams's eyes fluttered open. He stared straight through Tahini, and there was a sudden look of horror on his face. He clutched the Indian's collar, tried to raise himself.

"Settle down there, Bill," Tahini said gently.

"You tell me
what!"
Adams said, his eyes wide. "This isn't true! None of it is true!" "Say, Bill — "

Adams ignored him. "I'll get the Army! I'll get Sherlock Holmes himself after you!"

Adams let go of Tahini and fell back. He seemed to be listening. Then, suddenly, he screamed, and his eyes opened impossibly wide, and he began to thrash in Tahini's grip.

"No! No!" Adams cried, trying to cover his face.

"Bill!"

"Get Thomas Mullin — " Adams went suddenly limp, collapsing in Tahini's arms. Tahini once again checked for a pulse. There was none.

"Jesus spirit ..."

He lay Adams's body back on the ground. The man's neck was rigid, his head thrown back, his mouth locked open in a scream he would never make. His eyes were nearly bulging out of his head.

Hands shaking, Tahini grabbed for Adams's bottle, which had rolled away, half-spilled on the ground. He brought it to his lips, closed his eyes, and drank until warm numbness spread through him.

Jesus,
he thought,
they'll blame you for sure now. They already had you once and let you go; this time they'll stick you in that cell and close the door forever. Or hang you by your neck.

Lowering the bottle, seeing that it was empty, he stood, and looked down at Bill Adams's body.

Sorry, old friend, but I've got to do this. Got to do it for me.

Retrieving the shovel from his own pack, he found a place off under the rocks, and began to dig.

Two hours later, as the sun was starting to fall toward the west, Tahini was done. The grave was Indian style, shallow, covered with rocks. Then he shielded the front of the rock overhang with larger rocks, blending it into the scenery. He would tell Jellek this spot was no good for the road they wanted, steer him to one of the alternates. Tomorrow he would survey an appropriate spot and head back to camp. With any luck, they would never find Bill Adams.

Inappropriately, Tahini found himself crying. Adams's own bottle had long since been emptied, and he had the remains of his own, sitting cross-legged on the ground, facing the sun. Closing his eyes, he said all the prayers he knew, Christian and otherwise, praying for forgiveness and guidance. He ended by asking the Great Spirit to guide his steps.

Rising unsteadily, as the sun lipped the far horizon, he approached Bill Adams's mount, untied it from its spot under a rock overhang, and slapped it across the flanks to make it run.

"Gallop far, my friend," he said, bringing the bottle back up to his lips again.

Above him, on the rock overhang, he heard a sound. A few pebbles clattered down, falling nearby.

Tahini looked up.

"Great Spirit. . ." he mumbled. Then, his eyes widening, "No . . ."

Something tall and wide spread its wings above him.

"Oh, no," Tahini said.

As the thing dropped down upon him in a flutter of feathers, he held the empty bottle out futilely in defense and supplication.

Lincoln Reeves felt more than a sense of annoyance.

I should have known,
he thought.
I should have known the old man would take off without me.

Adjusting himself on the saddle, Lincoln thought about just how long it had been since he had ridden a horse like this. Five years. In the past year, since he had taken over the sharecropper's farm, the only horses he had dealt with had been tied to a wagon or a plow. It made him feel inadequate, settled, and strangely old.

Old, at twenty-eight.

He laughed.

Sore butt tonight.

He had been lucky to find Marshal Murphy waiting for him at the station. If Murphy hadn't been there, he might have gone to Gates at the hotel, and from what Murphy had diplomatically told him that would have been a bad move. But Murphy had seemed like a decent sort, and the very fact that Lieutenant Mullin had trusted the lawman to meet
him and tell him where Thomas was headed was enough for Reeves. He tried to be madder at Thomas Mullin but found himself incapable of more than annoyance.

The old man could have waited for me.

Thinking on that, he knew how foolish it was. Thomas would have wanted to get moving right away, not hang around in Tucson, pretty as it was. Reeves promised himself he would see the sights before he left, after this business was over.

Momentarily, guilt assaulted him, thinking of his wife and child. He hadn't even sent the telegram he'd promised when he got in, just picked up the saddled and provisioned mount Thomas provided for him, and headed out.

I'll have to send that telegram as soon as I can.

Once again, he was torn between home and here. It was a hard thing to admit to himself that he missed this life. In a way, he even missed the Army. If Lieutenant Mullin had stayed in the Army, he knew he might very well have stayed with him, despite Matty's wishes. But that was something, thank heaven, that he didn't have to agonize over, since the
Army eased Thomas out as soon as Grierson
retired. Though they'd done it gently enough, and made it look grand, it had been obvious to everyone that Captain Seavers, now back in Washington after his disastrous tenure at Fort Davis, had used all his power — or at least all the power that his own marriage to a general's daughter had given him — to eject Thomas as quickly and ignominiously as possible. It had all left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, since, if there had been any justice in the world, Thomas would have had a command instead of an honorable discharge. . . .

Ride, Lincoln, don't think.

But thinking was part of what he missed. In the time he had been with Lieutenant Mullin, he had learned how to read, and how to think. Thomas's was the sharpest mind he had ever met, and the man was a marvel. He looked at the world under a microscope, and saw things no one else did.

Which reminded Reeves that Lieutenant Mullin had ridden out without him.

Couldn't wait an extra day for me.

Laughing, feeling already at home in the saddle despite his sore butt muscle, Reeves kicked the mount forward to find his old friend.

But by nightfall, he hadn't done that. He had found the markers on the map Thomas left with Murphy easily enough, but there was no sign of the old man there. He had expected a camp, but found only saguaro cactus and
smooth desert plain. The Baboquivari mountains lay in the distance, rising shadows out of the coming night, and Lincoln felt suddenly alone. His annoyance with Thomas threatened to turn to anger, a feeling easier to deal with than the growing apprehension he felt, a black man in a strange area alone. . . .

Think, Lincoln. Think.

He could almost hear the old man speaking to him. Thomas might have been impulsive, but he wasn't foolhardy or unkind. Even if he had been here and gone, he would have left signs.

Think.

Lincoln dismounted at the spot indicated between two low hills, hugging the one on the right. There was a ring of cactus nearby, just as on the map, a virtual planter's field of saguaro marching up the shallow hillside. He was sure he was in the right place.

Think.

He tethered the horse to a nearby cactus and stood examining the landscape in the failing light. At worst, he would stay here the night and go on in the morning. But go on to where? Thomas
had
to have left a sign.

After a frustrating half hour of scouring the patch of land, by the end crawling on his hands and knees, Reeves was ready to give up and settle in for the night. Only a sliver of sun
lay above the horizon, and soon that would be gone.

Lincoln kicked at the ground in frustration.

Suddenly, the line Thomas was always quoting, from Sherlock Holmes, rose into Lincoln's mind.

After you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

"Ah,"
Lincoln said, to no one in particular, feeling foolish even as he said it.

But what was impossible?

Plenty.

Already growing frustrated, as he did every time he tried to think like Thomas Mullin, Lincoln again kicked the ground.

After you have eliminated the impossible .. .

Well, it was impossible that Thomas would have left him out here on his own, wasn't it? Unless there was a damned good reason. What would that reason be?

He had found Adams.

But still, he would have left a clue as to his whereabouts. Unless he had found Adams at this exact spot, and was already heading back to Tucson to celebrate.

No...

Again Lincoln kicked the ground. His head hurt.

The sun was almost gone.