Such, at least, was Seldom S. Smith’s theory.
He unsaddled his mount, brushed its sweaty back with juniper twigs, crushed a blood-fat horsefly sucking on the horse’s neck and started up the slope toward the base of the cliff. He carried a pair of saddlebags filled with such delicacies as bourbon whisky and tinned baby clams over one shoulder, his coiled calf rope over the other. The big one-gallon canteen he left behind in the shade of the saddle tipped on its horn. No need to carry water on this hike; there was a small but permanent spring, as Seldom knew, deep within the cave.
At the crest of the talus he came to a wall of bare, smooth sandstone ten feet high, sheer and overhanging, unscalable. Smith removed two pitons with snap links and loops attached, from their hiding place beneath a juniper log, advanced to a certain point on the wall, felt about, and placed the pitons, one above and to the left of the first, deep in a pair of holes drilled into the stone. The holes were invisible from below. Aided by these devices, he ascended easily to the narrow bench above, pulled out the pitons from above, and went on, following an unmarked route. Traversing back and forth, climbing from ledge to ledge with the aid of the pitons, taking his good old time, he reached the big cave in about half an hour.
Robber’s roost:
Standing in the sunshine, on the level dusty rock-strewn floor of the cave, Smith could make out nothing of the interior: the glaring contrast between light and shade was too profound for the human eye to span. He looked down, saw his horse far below, standing in the shade of the cottonwood, nosing at the ricegrass. With his eyes he followed the shining little watercourse, its pools and pale sand, on a meandering journey under the canyon walls, around the next bend and out of sight, toward the junction with Radium Canyon miles beyond. Nobody down there. Nobody human.
He looked into the cave, shading his eyes, listening. He could see very little, heard nothing. A board leaned on a stone, the words “BEWARE SARPINT” burned in its surface. Smith smiled and limped on high-heeled boots into the darkness, out of the glare, shut his eyes for a minute, opened them.
The outlaw’s den:
A narrow tattered mattress on the ground, folded tarp, tightly rolled sleeping bag. Wooden crates containing a few fire-blackened pots and pans, tin plate, skillet, G.I. canteen cup, knife, fork, wooden spoon. Canned goods. Canteens and waterjugs. A half-dozen greasy paperback books. A stack of topographic maps. A few crushed beercans lying in the dirt. A pint bottle of Wild Turkey, empty. Nearby was a fireplace with iron grill, black as soot, and a stack of dead juniper and scrub oak. Two Desert brand alkali-stained waterbags of Scottish flax hung from pegs in the wall of the cave; both were dry, contents evaporated.
Smith noted the dry waterbags. He felt the ashes of the fireplace: cold. Thirsty from the strenuous climb in the noon sun, he stepped farther into the interior, under the smoke-blackened stone, deep into the cool dark recesses of the cave where the ceiling curved down to meet the floor. A small side of beef hung on baling wire from a piton driven into the rock: slow elk, range maggot, some cow’s calf that had failed to clear out of the territory in time. Served the little bastard right, trespassing on our public land — but he felt, nevertheless, the twinge of culture shock, the horror of lese majesty, the violation of a deep taboo, that came to anyone born and raised in the American West. A hanging offense, worse than murder.
Holy cow, thought Seldom, that boy he done poached another of Love’s little beeves — just hain’t got no proper fear of nothin’. Instinctively, with a shudder of dread, Smith glanced back over his shoulder, half expecting to see, huge against the light and sky at the cave’s mouth, the black silhouette of an irate, outraged and all-powerful cattleman. With rope. Or cattleperson, as he understood they were called these days, in deference to the growing feminist element among ranch owners.
Smith thought of Ol’ Waylon:
Let’s all help cowpersons
Sing the blues
And of Willie & Waylon:
Mamas don’t let your babies
Grow up to be stockpersons
Or if a waitress is now a waitron then a cowboy should be a cowtron? Or if a chairman is only a chair then a cowboy is only a cow?
Smith was troubled by these subtle distinctions.
But not much. And not often.
He knelt at the spring. Water dripped from the ceiling and walls of the cave, which were streaked with alkali and other salts, but the water was sweet enough to be potable. In fact, after that half-mile four-hundred-foot climb over bare rock, at an angle mostly of sixty degrees or steeper, the water here always tasted pretty doggone good, in Seldom’s opinion. He was not a connoisseur of arid-land springs, seeps, tinajas, potholes, waterpockets, log troughs, bogholes, frog ponds, stocktanks, irrigation ditches, mining flumes, hoofholes in a mudslide and such, like his old buddy the wilderness avenger, but he had tasted some H20 here and there, form time to time, when the absence of same would have meant uncomfortable death by leisurely degrees, and thought he knew the essential difference between drinking water and that peculiar solution of chlorine, nitrates, industrial solvents, herbicides and reprocessed sewage effluent that came when summoned from the taps and faucets of Tucson Arizona, Salt Lake City Utah, Denver Colorado, and similar apogees of high techno-civ. He’d been there, several times; once was enough.
The walls were sweating with moisture. The moisture leaked and dripped and oozed from hairline seams in the stone, converged in minute rivulets over beds of pale algae (here where the sun never shone) and pooled a foot deep behind a tiny dam which human hands had fashioned, from mud and rocks, across the bottom ledge. An old tin dipper, its blue enamel flaking off, rested on the dam. Smith dipped the dipper into the little reservoir, lifted up the cool clear water, and drank. Simplest of ceremonies, sweetest of rites, in the land of stone and sun.
Thirst slaked, he got up and wandered about the cave, not meaning to snoop, but lured irresistibly by the fascination of poking around in another man’s private quarters, seeing his secret life exposed and vulnerable. Not that there was much to see or anything revealing a hidden side. He found a string of beef jerky drying on a line, a small footlocker in which his friend probably kept a medical kit, spare clothes and an ammo supply, a pair of K mart’s Taiwan sandals in the dust, a ragged pair of denim shorts, a packbag heavy with coiled rope and mountaineering hardware, two folding camp chairs, nothing much else. Nothing that could possibly be seen from the canyon below. Or even from an airplane flying low; everything was cached, stashed, set up or laid down back from the cave’s opening, deep in the shadows.
He walked across the width of the cave, a hundred fifty feet or so, from the secret camp to an ancient granary of stone mortared with mud, four feet high, in which some Anasazi farmer had stored his corn, his beans, his squash, seven or eight hundred years ago. The only opening was in the roof. He set aside a blocking stone and looked down inside. Darkness, black as sin and dense as pitch, greeted his eyes. What’s my boy got in there, I wonder? Don’t think I wanta know.
Smith returned to the cave’s living quarters, satisfied with his explorations, ready to sit a spell and build a drink, wait for the caveman’s return. He reached for one of the folding camp chairs leaning against an apple-box, started to pick it up. At once he felt a thrill of vibration, like an electric current, and heard the warning whir of rattles. He dropped the chair. Staring at it, he saw a fine nylon string, like fishing line, leading from a leg of the chair over the stone floor and into the dust behind the crates. Unable to resist temptation, Smith tugged on the line and a fat diamondback, five feet long, came gliding into view, black tongue out, tail up and twitching.
Smith dropped the line. The snake stopped, watching him, recoiling itself in defensive position. Well, sheet, thought Seldom, who but him would keep a goldarn buzzworm around for a watchdog. Smith picked up the chair again and dragged the snake — tied by the neck tethered to the chair, furious with indignation — about fifty feet away, what he judged to be a comfortable
distance. He returned to the living quarters and unfolded the second chair, muttering to himself:
Picket that there ol’ rattler. Never did much like em’ around myself, particular at night when a man needs a little shut-eye. Like my daddy always said, if them other snakes can get along without poison why can’t a rattler? Stands to reason.
Hobble them snakes. Or stamp your brand on their hip and turn ‘em loose but why keep ‘em around camp at night? No sense in it. Man gets up in the dark to take a leak, unlimbers the wrong snake, then what? Dangerous critters. Kind of cute to look at, maybe, but no comfort a-tall when they get chilly and crawl inside your bedroll at two o’clock in the morning. Gets awful crowded awful quick.
The rattlesnake grew quiet. Smith opened his saddlebags, took out the quart of bourbon, unsealed the cap, had a sip. Out of habit he nearly threw the cap away but thought better of that. Never drank alone here before. Should never drink alone anywhere. He recapped the bottle, went to the spring with a waterbag, filled it, returned to the chair and mixed himself a decent highball, half and half, in the Government Issue canteen cup. Hain’t my fault he ain’t here; maybe I will drink the whole damn quart my loneself.
Out of curiosity he looked at the books in the wooden crate. The Blaster’s Handbook from Du Pont, the Holy Bible, Dr. Fishbein’s Complete Home Medical Guide, Welcome to Australia! by the British Ministry of Prisons, Complete Poems of Robert Service, Welcome to Leavenworth! — An Inmate’s Guide, The Cadillac Owner’s Complete Shop Manual, Oriental Despotism by Wittfogel and Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler. And yes, a cheap paperback copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang, tattered, greasy, dog-eared, heavily annotated with scornful exclamation points, mocking question marks, sneering and searing commentary. Smith had inspected all of these books before, several times; nothing new had been added for years.
He poured himself a second drink, listening to the profound stillness of the cave, the canyon below, the sky above and beyond. Profound but not absolute: he heard a wren’s clear rippling song, the distant drone of a light airplane. Could get the hell outa here before he comes back, Seldom reflected, save myself some grief later. ‘Course he’ll know I was here, bootprints all over the floor, smell of Wild Turkey in his cup, fresh horseshit below. But if I don’t see him, don’t talk to him, I don’t make any promises, right? And no promises, no misery. I got a good idea what that boy has in mind anyhow and I don’t think I need that kind of trouble.
Smith noted the position of sunlight and shadow on the cave’s floor near the mouth. Give him one more hour. Then I skedaddle. Nobody can’t say that ain’t fair. He want to talk to me so bad let him come visit at Green River. Or Cedar City. Or Hotrocks. He knows where I live. (So does Oral and Love and them secret police men from Washington, D.C. Well, that hain’t my fault neither.)
Holy Moses but it’s lonesome here. Wonder how he can do it. No wonder he ain’t here but now and then. Him and that Lone Ranger. Wonder where that old screwball stays? Probly too stiff and creaky to climb up here. Probly has his own cave anyhow, somewhere close by, two three miles away. Them types like their privacy. Would sure kill me but I guess they like it. If you could keep a nice woman here might not be too bad. Maybe two of ‘em — one for each end. Of the cave I mean. And one more down in the canyon, build her a cabin, spade up a garden for her, run a ditch in, plant melons, keep her barefoot and pregnant, be just like old times.
Only women don’t care for that kinda life anymore. And never did, probly.
Can’t say I blame ‘em one bit.
The shadow of the overhanging wall had advanced to the granary at the far corner. Smith downed his third drink, unloaded the presents he had brought — the tinned clams, a sack of pistachio nuts, a loaf of Susan’s homemade bread, two pounds of real longhorn cheese, pipe tobacco and a new corncob pipe, most of the bottle of bourbon —slung his rope and empty saddlebags over his shoulder and left the cave.
Through sunlight and shadow he descended the scary spooky dizzy canyon wall, following no trail, for there was no trail, no marks blazes cairns, no clue to the one only possible route except his memory, climbing down from ledge to ledge by rope (cowboy style), traversing the narrow benches in between, sometimes making a mistake and being forced to seek again, feeling the tremors of fatigue in his knee joints, thighs, hams, until finally he reached the safety and ease of the talus slope at the foot of the wall. He rehid the pitons in their place — surreptitiously in case he was, despite appearances, under hostile observation — and angled down to the canyon floor, taking care to leave no tracks. (Hard to hide anything on the open tabula rasa of the desert.)
He found his horse, undid the hobbles, led her back to the saddle, saddled up. Still no sight sound nor smell of the man in the leather sombrero. By Gawd, he thought, smiling inwardly with relief. By Gawd … He put his foot in the stirrup and mounted up. Never really wanted to come here anyhow. Whole trip some kind of funny mistake. Ducking his head, he rode from beneath the big cottonwood and headed up-canyon at a smooth-gaited trot, following the dim path beside the stream that led to Pucker Pass, Joint Trail, the secret shortcut over Whale’s Back and down through the Whale’s Eye to Slickrock Towers, The Silent City, Goblin Valley, Red Knob, Hoodoo Arch and the open sand dune country beyond — from there an easy day’s ride to Hotrocks or to Kathy’s ranch, if you knew the route and if you knew where to look for water and if your horse was in good condition. No sir, Smith said to himself, nobody can’t say I didn’t try. Not my fault you can’t never find that boy when you’re a-lookin’ for him. Smiling, heart at ease and riding easy, he watched the evening shadows stretch before him, the rich amber light that glowed on rock and sand, juniper and cottonwood, the purple bloom of sage. Yessir, should be home for breakfast. …
A horse and rider stepped from behind a boulder, blocking his path. A big horse, an armed rider, a big grin flashing in the shadow of a wide-brimmed smoke-colored salt-rimed old and ridiculous leather hat.
Smith stopped. He looked up. Another rider watched him from the rocks above; he too was armed. Naturally.
Silence.
“Lookin’ for somebody?”
“No sir, not me. Horse got lost. Give this beast her head she always goes the wrong way.”
“You’re fuckin’ late.”
“Not me.”
“Yeah you. Late.”
“Late for what?”
“We’ll talk about it. You got some time?”
“Reckon I might or might not. How much time?”
“Oh fuck, I don’t know, all night maybe and a bottle of whisky, that should do it. What do you say, pardner?”
What do I say? he thought. Goldang it all anyhow, what can I say? Goodbye Susan, goodbye Kathy, goodbye Sheila, goodbye peace and quiet, goodbye world, here we go again. …
23
The Baron’s Attack
The Baron taxied the little Cessna to the end of the dirt strip and stopped beside his truck. Working fast and efficiently, he removed the door on the passenger’s side of the plane, then the passenger’s seat. Quickly he loaded this enlarged cargo space with one-gallon plastic containers, the cheap lightweight kind used for the retailing of cow’s milk. Each jug was bulging, filled to capacity with black latex all-weather paint, caps taped on for security. The jugs, taped together through the handles in sets of ten, totaled one hundred gallons or eight hundred pounds. Such a load exceeded the safe carrying capacity of the aircraft, but the pilot had calculated that if he over-ran the south end of the airstrip and dropped into the Grand Canyon beyond he could probably gain enough momentum to become airborne. If not he would simply crash-land on the river, preferably above or below the whitewater rapids at Badger Creek; his chances of survival should be excellent. If he didn’t forget to fasten his lifejacket. As for the plane, no problem, it wasn’t his.
All was ready. He lowered the goggles on his leather helmet, fastened the chin strap. Revving the single engine to maximum rpm’s, the Baron released the brakes and lunged dow
n the runway toward the gaping abyss of the canyon one-half mile away. The brush, slabs of sunburnt rock, scattered horses, flashed by on his left and right. A cow and calf stared stupidly at him from the end of the strip. Gaining speed. Should be in the air by the time he got that far. Faster, faster; he adjusted the wing tabs, as he had seen it done before, pulled the throttle out farther, drew back on the wheel. Nothing happened; heavy as a truck, the Cessna sped forward but did not leave the ground.
So. Committed. He pulled the throttle to full speed and kept going, racing onward at seventy, eighty mph. The cow and her calf, hesitating, gaping at the metal bird roaring toward them, scampered aside within inches of destruction. The plane burst through the warning lights at the runway’s end, charged over blackbrush and prickly pear, bounced over some rocks and cleared the canyon rim a hundred yards beyond.
Now, quite suddenly, he had plenty of air.
The river wound like a thread of silver far below; the opposite canyon wall loomed above his nose, approaching rapidly as he dove toward it. Elevation: 3800 feet above sea level, 700 feet above the river. Airspeed: 122 and accelerating. The Baron banked the plane to the right, heading upriver and directly toward the foaming tumult of Badger Creek Rapids. He could see a flotilla of rubber rafts forming a line in the pool above the rapids; a teeming mass of pale faces, staring up at him, came closer and closer at a brisk velocity.
The Baron checked his lifejacket. Christ! he’d forgotten to fasten the damned thing. Too late now. He needed both hands simply to control the mad dive of the aircraft. He stepped on the footbrakes: useless gesture. He pulled back on the wheel; slowly, steadily, the plane began to level off. He roared above the cringing humans in the rafts, clearing their heads by a safe and sane three feet, and continued upriver, fully airborne at last, more or less, though having difficulty gaining altitude.