Tibetan Cross Read online

  A horseshoe clicked stone. A horse and rider appeared around a curve in the rock wall. Mort was leaning out slightly in the saddle, pistol in hand, following Cohen's tracks. He dismounted, dropped the reins forward, and knelt beside the tracks. He fingered a bit of snow and flicked it away, raised his eyes to the canyon. He moved nearer, watching the walls.

  The horse sighed. Mort moved under the juniper out of sight. Cohen poised to jump. A boot grated on a boulder.

  Mort was walking upstream toward the horse. It nickered, pointing its ears toward Cohen. Mort shifted gun hands, patted the horse's neck, tossed the reins over the pommel, and mounted. Cohen tensed for his passage underneath, but Mort tugged the reins aside and rode back upstream.

  Cohen was flooded with new fear. Why did he stop? Did he see me? Then why not shoot? Is he riding upstream for Claire? A fist-sized rock bounced over the canyon wall and splashed into the creek. Snow trickled after it, hissing in the water.

  He's circling above the canyon. It'll take him an hour to reach the lower end. Then he'll see there are no tracks, put two and two together and hunt back upstream. This ledge won't shield me from his view coming upstream.

  Again avoiding needles and snow, he climbed lower and jumped into the shocking water. Oh to hobble upstream after Claire, shelter with her until dawn, hope for another place to trap Mort in the daylight. That's chickenshit. He leaped a boulder and shuffled downstream, watching the dark, high walls. He fell, the current banging him from boulder to boulder.

  Near the canyon's lower end a fault forked up its western wall. A chunk of rock had broken loose and half-blocked the creek. Its indentation would hide him from a downstream approach. But here the creek bank was too wide to step across. Downstream beyond the canyon the lower slope fanned wide and gentle, studded with dark pencil lines of aspen.

  He scanned the broken wall. A fingernail crevice zigzagged up it. He stepped onto a single bare-topped boulder, pinned his frozen fingertips into the crevice and swung up it. Ten feet above the ground he twisted into the indentation left by the chunk of rock and waited. His shivering grew as the creek water froze in his hair and clothes. He clenched his teeth. Claire'll be half way to the ridge top by now. Soon out of danger.

  Moonlight was fading up the opposite canyon wall. Come, you fat bastard, come. Don't go after her. He held his arms around his shivering torso, over the torn and frozen shirt. Not dressed for this kind of shit. Really am not.

  HOOVES CLUNKED on stone. The horse's head was six feet away. It sniffed him, pulled back. Reins snapped on its flank. It shifted, hooves tinkling ice on the creek edge.

  The horse saw Cohen as he leaped from the wall. Bellowing it dove sideways smashing its rider against the far canyon wall. Cohen stumbled after it as it kicked and dragged its rider by one stirrup downstream through pools, thudding over boulders and falls.

  He could not see Mort. He clambered from the creek and staggered after the horse, watching the wet lump dragging from one stirrup. They reached the flat, Cohen staying out of pistol range. The lump cleared a dark line through the snow.

  The horse quieted in an oakbrush clearing. The rider hung unmoving by one leg, on the far side of the horse. The horse nuzzled the snow, its saddle tilted crazily. He whistled to the horse. It raised its head, bridle jingling.

  He whistled again, slapped his good thigh. The horse watched, took a step. Squinting at it, he called softly. The horse moved toward him. He slipped into the aspens. The horse passed in front of him. Its rider dragged along behind, face down, arms extended.

  The horse snorted and moved a few feet away, still dragging its motionless bundle. Cohen's leg gave out and he sat weakly on a down aspen. The horse nuzzled its shoulder with a snuffling sound, raised its head and nickered into the darkness. “Why?” Cohen asked, but the body gave no answer. He leaned back against a trunk, weeping, for Alex, for Clay's fatherless daughter. One by one the slain stepped past and peered into his eyes: Kim, Goteen, Phu Dorje and his wife and son and daughter, Maria lying cold and faceless on Sainte-Victoire.

  And you, Paul – if we'd bagged it in Paris you'd be alive now. Mort's dead, and a few other bastards – is the world any better? But you're dead, Paul, you're dead, and the world's infinitely worse.

  He wiped his cheeks and stared up through the branches. A star winked in the leaves. He saw himself from the outside: a man slumped in darkness among spring growth. His perception rose and he saw clearly the slumped man and the corpse near him, then also the patient horse, its ears forward, its saddle skewed.

  “Look!” a voice said. “Listen!”

  Now the slumped man and patient horse were hidden by a canopy of moonlit aspen tops, the slit of the Clear Fork dark within them, a ripple in the flanks of looming Huntsman Ridge. Higher went his vision until he searched for the Clear Fork, found it briefly in the ocean of mountains below him. Dots of light glimmered to the north and east: Glenwood Springs and Aspen. He looked back but the Clear Fork was lost and the pallor of Denver arose on the east.

  The continent was edged in silver, the line of the globe itself soon visible, flanked by black. Mars glowered on its nearby traverse. The sun was perfectly round, perfectly white. He lost the earth, still finding Mars by its red gleam. The sun was larger than the other stars, but fell into the Great Bear; the Bear rose and lumbered away. Lastly Orion diminished below him, rolled on one side, and swam into night.

  In a silenced world of galaxies and blackness he floated. Terror took him; he began to fall. Gradually he saw there was nowhere to fall, spread his arms and swam among the points of light like a porpoise in a midnight sea.

  The ghostlike columns of the aspen closed in. He took a deep breath and limped through the snow to the patient horse and fallen rider. The body offered no resistance as he turned it over. Walt's raw and empty face stared up at him.

  Cohen crouched, touched the face. Terror ran up his back.

  “Been a long haul, hasn't it, Sam?”

  Cohen stood slowly and turned toward the hated booming voice. Mort stood ten feet away, the blued glint of a saddle carbine in his hands. “Should have been sure Walt was dead,” he chuckled. “It's a hard thing to choke a man to death. As it was, he came round. When he did he was pretty mad…”

  “You win,” Cohen said. “I give up.”

  “Where's Paul?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “I'm not going to wait any longer. It's over. I just want you to know I respect you. You're the toughest man I've ever faced.”

  “I still don't understand…”

  “I don't either. Probably the ways of nations are inscrutable.” Mort moved a step closer. “Is she dead?”

  “You hit her with your first shot.” Cohen pointed toward camp. “She's up there, somewhere, under the snow.”

  “It doesn't matter. She doesn't know enough to cause much trouble. If she's alive we'll kill her when she surfaces.”

  He tried not to shiver. He kept his eyes on Mort, praying, Dear God help her get away. My last thought – a prayer for her.

  Behind Mort, on the aspen slope, a figure edged between the trees. “Your reinforcements…” Cohen said.

  “They're hours away. It's just you and me. And I can't let you live any longer. You're too dangerous.”

  “Let me join your…company.” Cohen tried to smile. The figure was slipping toward them.

  “I'd never trust you.” Mort raised the carbine.

  “You'd have my word.”

  “Like about the fallback? Perhaps for a while I could. Then one day, when I'd stopped doubting, you'd put a bullet in me, wouldn't you?”

  Cohen nodded. “You'll never get Paul.”

  “I believe he's dead. In any case, you'd never lead us to him. You're too brave for that. I'm sorry to have to kill you.”

  The figure was still a hundred feet away. “Before I die, please tell me about the bomb.”

  “I don't originate policy, just expedite it. I know little more than you. In any case, the exerc
ise failed. All evidence of it has vanished. It's not part of history anymore.”

  The figure was directly uphill behind Mort. It hesitated by a long blowdown, moved to one side around it.

  “What's the matter, Sam?”

  “Please, when you find Claire, bury her here, in the forest. With me?” Cohen tried to keep his eyes off the figure limping softly up behind Mort.

  “Agreed,” Mort answered.

  “She's up the canyon,” Cohen pointed, drawing Mort's eye from the hill. She dove onto his back, the Buck knife glinting in her hand as she drove it above Mort's bulky coat into the side of his neck. He fell, choking, his red bloated cheeks twisted with pain and rage as he tried to raise the carbine to fire behind him but Cohen was on him, pinning him down while she sawed his massive bulbous neck with the knife.

  She knelt to one side and wiped her hands on the snow. Mort's blood spread in a great dark disk. Cohen crunched to where Walt's body lay already growing cold and stiff by his quiet horse. He twisted Walt's boot free of the stirrup. The horse sidestepped skittishly. “Easy,” he whispered. “It's all over now.” Holding the reins, he led the horse to Claire. “Where'd you come from?”

  She stood carefully. “I went upstream a little ways, but then I got mad at you for telling me what to do. So I hid in some bushes until Mort came down to the creek. He started down it but then came back up. He rode above it and I followed him, hoping to be able to stab him. Then Walt appeared, from above. I'd thought you'd killed him! He almost saw me.” She shuddered. “I was so scared. Walt rode up the canyon from the bottom while Mort stayed in the trees. I was trying to get close enough to stab him. But then you and Walt came out of the canyon and Mort dismounted and moved downhill to get you.”

  The leaves were nodding, now visible against the dying stars. Cohen closed the Buck knife and gave Claire a hand up into the saddle of Walt's horse. She rode silently beside him as he limped up through the trees to Mort's horse and mounted it. They climbed the canyon of Rock Creek toward the beaver ponds. “Wait,” he said, and rode alone into camp.

  THE CAMPFIRE and Lou's body were covered with snow. The other horses nickered with hunger from the trees. He dismounted and checked the tents. In one Link lay frozen in his bloody sleeping bag; the other tent was empty. He called Claire into camp. They dressed in warm clothes, ate quickly, and packed panniers for two horses – a tent, sleeping bags, ammunition, and all the food. They dug another rifle and two scabbards out of the snow, loaded up a pack horse, set the others free, and rode through the lightening forest to the Clear Fork.

  He turned them upstream, keeping the horses in the water. After an hour they swung westward up a tributary, and a half mile above that left the water to follow a well-worn elk trail. Crimson edged the east as they broke out on a long ridge soaring toward northern crests he had never seen before. They rested the horses in the fresh wind.

  I leave all this, Paul. I leave you and Alex and all who have died. Not with joy, not with acceptance. With sorrow and never to forget. To live each day as Isaac and never as Abraham. To ride with her, if she wants to come, deep into Mexico. To heal and think. To write the book you asked for.

  As far as he could see, mountains rippled like a forest sea flecked with snow. Orion lay on the southwest horizon, his dagger dimmed. Red grew stronger in the east, outlining individual spruce tops along the nearest crests. A family of coyotes called gregariously from the ravines below. He edged his horse close to hers. “We're like those coyotes,” he said. “We're not human, we're free.”

  “They're hunted too. Poison, traps, guns, planes…”

  “Yet hear them sing! Grateful for the blessing of life.”

  THE END