The Cache (4 page)

Sixteen years of practice propelled the missile. It struck the rat on the side and bowled it over. Benoni shifted the rock in his right hand to his left and threw it. The rat rolled over a few turns from the second blow and kicked out its little life.

Suddenly, the coliseum was empty of all but the victim.

Benoni ran up to it, picked it up, and cut its throat with the chert he had sharpened an hour ago. He held the beast upside down, allowed its blood to drain into his throat. Some ran over his lips and down his chin and dripped onto his chest, but he was too hungry to pay any attention. Later, he would scour himself with sand.

When he finished drinking all the rodent had to offer, he skinned it. His rough tool of chert made the skinning a tough job, but he was not concerned with damage to the skin for he had no use for it. Then, he cut off the long heavily muscled legs, cut out the heart and kidneys and liver. And he chewed up the warm tough meat. This he did with some distaste; he did not like raw meat of any kind. But a man had to eat, and he had been doing just this for some years in preparation for this day and more to come. To light a fire was to invite a Navaho knife at his throat, or an arrow in his back; too high a price to pay for cooked meat.

Gingerly, Benoni cut open a barrel cactus, not without being stuck several times with the long spines, though he was careful. He gouged out several pieces of the pulp and sucked on them. It was not like drinking from a cup of water or a spring. In fact, the pulp held no more moisture than a piece of raw potato. But it was moisture, though in limited quantities and somewhat bitter.

Afterwards, he dug out a foxhole under a palo verde tree near the banks of a wash. Curling up in the hole, he composed himself for sleep. Sleep came swiftly.

But as swiftly, dawn with its whiteness and heat awakened him. Thirsty again, he crawled out of the hole, cut some more strips of barrel cactus. These he took back to the hole. Some he buried deep to use later during the day; the others, he sucked. He covered himself with sand to cut down on the moisture loss and went back to sleep. Several times during the day, he awoke and dug up the cactus pulp. Still, the water he got from the pieces was far from enough to replace that drawn from his body by the dry and burning air.

Fortunately, a sidewinder wiggled its crazy path near to his hole. All Benoni had to do was to reach out, seize the rattler by the tail, and crack it like a whip. Back broken, the sidewinder managed only to writhe as it tried, vainly, to sink its fangs into him. Benoni hacked its head off, then drank the blood and ate some of its back-meat. The rest he buried beneath the sand, for he did not want to attract any buzzards or hawks. Their circling might also bring some curious Navahos.

No birds came. But the ants did. For an hour, he scooped them up and crunched them between his teeth or swallowed them whole. Finally, they quit coming, and he settled back to sleep.

Dusk came. Benoni, itching all over from insect bites, crawled out of the hole. He took a sand bath, cut some more cactus pieces, and set off toward the northeast. The moon, diminished to a sliver, rose over the Superstition. It was huge and bloody. As it went higher in the cloudless sky, it became smaller and silvery. Benoni had the light he needed. He found a nest on a branch of cat’s-claw tree; two wrens slept in it. A leap upwards, ignoring the thorns sticking into his hand, and clutching the branch with one hand, he swooped downward upon the nest with the other hand. His hand closed upon the birds, squeezed them, cut off their sudden cries and their lives. Their blood went to quench his thirst; their meat stilled the rumblings of his stomach. He spat out the feathers and pin-feathers that had escaped his hasty plucking, and went on.

The rest of the night, Benoni walked swiftly toward his goal. Toward dawn, he found a dying palo verde and spent some time tearing a branch loose. When he had cut and twisted it off, he sliced off the bumps along its length and sharpened one end.

He had no trouble finding jackrabbit holes. Down the entrance of over twenty holes, he thrust the sharp end of the stick. Finally, the jabbing stick caught in the body of an animal. Quickly, he twirled the stick; it caught the loose fur of the rabbit and wound tightly around the stick. Benoni pulled the kicking animal out of the burrow and hit it in back of the head with the edge of his palm. He cut its throat and drank its blood. He took more time skinning the creature this time. After he had cut the animal up, he buried part of it deep in the sand and ate the rest.

He spent several days near the spot where he had caught the jackrabbit. With the animal’s own fat and with his urine he tanned the fur, though it was stiffer than he liked, he was able to make a sun-hat for himself. He also caught two other rabbits with the same technique of the pointed stick, a trick known by the Navaho name of
haathdiz.
He made himself a loincloth and a belt, found another piece of chert. This he intended to use to make a spearpoint, but he fractured the chert with a blow that was not quite at the right angle.

At night he moved on. He ate chuckwalla and gecko lizards, pocket mice, ants, an armadillo, a diamond-back rattlesnake, and a ring-tail cat. Once he caught a desert turtle and drank water from the two little sacs it carried under its shell.

He went up the hills, began climbing up slowly, going up a tall hill or small mountain, then going down again before tackling the next. But he was at a higher level than the Valley even when he was going down, and on the evening of the fifth day he rose from his sleep to see his last sawaro. The fifty-foot cactus stood on the side of a hill and was outlined blackly against the setting sun.

Straight it stood, a pillar with one outstretched arm and one dropping downward. It looked like a man bidding him farewell.

Impulsively, Benoni waved good-bye at it. He could not help thinking that, perhaps, this might be good-bye forever, that he would never again see these stately and sometimes weird plants that grew only in the Valley of the Sun.

Then he continued climbing, came to the ancient trail leading around the sides of the mountains, and decided to follow it for a while. Certainly the chances of Navahos waiting here during the night time seemed remote. Even if they were, they would have a hard time seeing him. He was, he boasted to himself, a ghost. He drifted along in the darkness like a coyote, a lion. Besides, he had heard that the Navaho always stayed close to their camping site at night, that they feared demons and evil gods. On the other hand, his father had told him that was nonsense. The Navahos feared the dark no more than the Fiinishans. Proof was that they had often attacked outlying farms and lone travelers at night.

All that night, Benoni followed the trail. Now and then, he came to a broken piece of strange rocklike stuff, rotten, crumbling at the touch. This, he supposed, was the stuff the old ones had paved the Pechi Trail with. His father and others had described it and said what they thought it was. Of course, Benoni told himself, their saying so did not necessarily make it so. Whatever the truth, the trail was not a wide road now as it was supposed to have been. It was narrow, sometimes so narrow that he had to stand with his back against the cliff and edge along facing outwards. Other places, it was broad, though even here boulders had fallen down from above to the road, partially blocking it. The spring torrents had cut washes and grooves into it.

When dawn threatened, Benoni left the road, climbed up a steep cliff to the top, and found a place he could dig into under the shade of an ironwood. Here, he slept uneasily all day. In the dusk, after careful reconnoitering, he descended to the trail. He wondered if he was doing the right thing. Perhaps, he would be much safer if he ignored the easier path and cut across the mountains and valleys between them. His progress would be slower. But he would not meet any of the
Dine,
not likely.

He met no-one, heard nothing except the screek of a night-hawk, the scream of a bobcat, the whoopbark of a coyote. Several times he came across the big tracks of lions, but he did not worry overmuch about these. From childhood, he had seen hundreds of lion tracks in washes and other places and had yet to see a live lion.

At dawn, he came to the top of a big hill. And he saw, far below and away, the glitter of blue water.

This, he knew, must be the lake that lay a few miles outside of the really dangerous territory. Here, it was said, the old ones had once built a dam, oh, so big that Benoni’s head swam trying to imagine it from the descriptions. Once, this lake had been much larger than the one he now saw. Here the ancient whites sported, swam (something he could not do), sailed (something he had to strain his imagination to picture), and enjoyed all the benefits of a ruling and powerful race. Now, Navahos, or the threat of them, made the place deadly.

Yet, Benoni was determined to sneak down at night, to take a bath, and wash off the grime and stink of the desert, to drink cool water to the fill. And here he would find and fill a calabash with water to carry along. He was sick of blood and cactus pulp moisture; his throat was dry and aching.

Shortly after dusk, Benoni Rider was on the shore of the lake. He did not rush in, though every cell of his body craved water. He felt an unexpected sensation, one he had never imagined because of lack of experience. Fear of water.

This hollow between the mountains was deep, and he could not swim. If he went in very far, he might step off a ledge and sink into the black depths. The thought sent him into a near panic.

For a long time, he crouched by the shore and watched the lake lap at the rocks on the edge. Then, calling himself a coward, unfit to be a man, he walked into the water. Slowly, he slid his foot ahead and tested the pebbly bottom to make sure there was not a break in its continuity. When he was knee deep, he decided he had gone far enough. Now, forgetting his terror, and sighing with ecstasy, he sat down. He scrubbed himself with his hands and with sand he brought up from the bottom. He made sure that the dirt and sweat was gone from his body and from the hair on top of his head. Afterwards, reluctantly, he left. His calabash filled with water and hanging from a strip of rabbithide around his waist, he followed the trail. An hour before dawn, he caught a gecko lizard and ate it raw, crunching the delicate bones between his teeth.

He was looking for a place far enough off the path to be safe for sleep when he heard a horse snort.

He hit the ground, lay still a moment, then snaked into the scanty vegetation. Since the snort had come from above, and since he had heard no other noise, he was fairly confident he had not been seen. However, he was slow and cautious in getting to the little mesa above the path. He went around the side, first cutting down a wash, then starting to climb up. The slope on this side was even steeper than the side along the trail, so he knew that the horse and rider must have come up a much gentler climb on the side opposite the one he was ascending.

After crawling up between two large rocks on the edge of the mesa, he peered through them. He saw more than he had expected.

Four horses and a pack-mule, all hobbled and grazing on the sparse grass. Under the green branches of a palo verde tree were four sleeping men. Navahos. No. Three Navahos. One was lighter in color and was naked. Big.

The white man turned over, and Benoni saw that he was Joel Vahndert.

Joel’s hands were tied behind him; his ankles were roped together.

There was a fourth Navaho, a squat man who sat on a rock about forty yards from the others. His back was to Benoni, and he was obviously supposed to be watching the trail from his position. Why he had not seen Benoni, Benoni did not know. Perhaps the Navaho had fallen asleep for the few minutes Benoni needed to escape detection. Whatever the reason for his lapse, it was going to be fatal if Benoni had anything to do with it.

Benoni put the chert knife in his teeth, picked out two stones, placed one in each palm, and began crawling toward the sentinel. The Navaho never looked his way until Benoni was within twenty feet. Then, the Indian stood up and stretched. Benoni leaped to his feet and threw the first stone. It caught the Navaho in the back of the head with a loud crack.

The Indian pitched forward and fell down on the face of the slope with a clatter of loosened rocks. Benoni whirled towards the others, expecting them to be awakened. But they did not stir, and the horses and mule only continued to eat.

For a minute, Benoni hesitated between two choices of action. Take the scalp of the man he had just killed and return with honor to Fiiniks. Or cut Vahndert loose and, with him, attack the other Navahos.

The first choice was the easier. To cut and run would not be to lower himself in the eyes of his people—even if they found out. Joel Vahndert was his enemy. Joel wanted to marry Debra Awvrez, and he had proved himself an inept warrior by being captured. If Benoni cut Joel’s throat before he left, he would be within his rights. Anything an un-blood did on his warpath was permissible, anything at all. He had no one to account to but himself.

That was the trouble. Discretion and logic told Benoni that the best thing he could do for his own interests was to scalp the Navaho and take to the hills. There, the Navahos could not easily track him.

But Benoni could not see himself doing this. He could not leave a fellow Fiinishan to be tortured to death. Besides, the more scalps he brought back home, the more honor to himself. And when the story of Joel’s rescue was told, Joel would be in disgrace.

Weighing of the factors took only a few seconds. He was scarcely aware of them as fully expressed and considered thoughts. They came up from the unconscious like flashes, the barely visible peaks of thrusts from the deep below. He picked up the knife fallen from the Navaho’s hand—it was about nine inches long and of good and sharp steel—and walked towards Joel. He did not run because he did not want to startle the beasts.

By the time Benoni had reached Joel, Joel’s eyes were opened. He was pale, his mouth hung open as if he did not believe what he was seeing. Benoni did not bother to make a sign cautioning him to keep silence. Joel would not be stupid enough to make a noise. If he were, he deserved to die.