A large slab of stone facing, blasted loose by the shot, slid down the wall, striking the shelf beneath which Cat crouched. Even as his feet left the ground, it descended upon him.

  Hunter! I believe—you’ve won…

  Billy fired again. This time he scorched the earth ten yards off to the right of the fall. He moved the barrel slightly to the left and triggered the weapon again. This time the top of the rubble heap exploded.

  It seemed that he could make out a single, massive forelimb projected near the front of the pile. But at that distance he could not be certain.

  Was that a twitch?

  He fired again, blasting the center of the heap.

  The canyon rang with a massive cawing note. The flapping sound began again, slowly. He looked up briefly and glimpsed the shadow moving off to his right.

  “It is over,” he sang, head rested upon his forearm, “and my thanks rise like smoke…”

  His words trailed off as his eyes moved across the canyon floor. Then his brow furrowed. He raised himself. He leaned forward to peer.

  “Why?” he said aloud.

  But nothing answered.

  The trail he had followed did not terminate at this place. Somehow he had not noticed this earlier. It ran off to his right, curving out of sight beyond the canyon wall, presumably continuing on into the farther reaches of the place.

  He slung his weapon and adjusted his pack. He did not understand, but he would go on.

  He returned to the place where he had climbed and began his descent.

  * * *

  His shoulder ached. Also, it was raining on his face and a sharp stone was poking him in the back. He was aware of these things for some time before he realized that they meant he was alive.

  Ironbear opened his eyes. Yellowcloud’s light lay upon the ground nearby, casting illumination along a gravel slope.

  He turned his head and saw Yellowcloud. The man was seated with his back against a stone, legs straight out before him. Both of his hands were gripping his left thigh.

  Ironbear raised his head, reached out a hand, levered himself upward.

  “I live,” he said, swinging into a sitting position. “How’re you?”

  “Broken leg,” Yellowcloud answered. “Above the knee.” Ironbear rose, crossed to the light and picked it up, turned back toward Yellowcloud.

  “Bad place for a break,” he said, advancing. “Can’t even hobble.”

  He squatted beside the other man.

  “I’m not sure what’s the best thing to do,” he said. “Got any suggestions?”

  “I’ve already’ called for help. My portaphone wasn’t damaged. They’ll be along with a medic. Get me out of here in a sling if they have to. Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

  “Why are we still alive?”

  “It didn’t think we were worth killing, I guess. Just an annoyance, to be brushed aside.”

  “Makes you feel real important, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m not complaining. Listen, there’s dry wood along the wall. Get me a couple of armloads, will you? I want a fire.” “Sure.” He moved to comply. “I wonder how far along that thing has gotten?”

  “Can’t you tell?”

  “I don’t want to get near it at that level. It can hurt you just with its mind.”

  “You going after it?”

  “If I can figure a way to follow it.”

  Yellowcloud smiled and turned his head, gesturing with his chin.

  “It went that way.”

  “I’m not a tracker like you.”

  “Hell, you don’t have to be. That thing’s heavy and it’s running, right out in the open. Nothing fancy. It couldn’t care less whether one of us knows where it went. You take the light. I’ll have the fire. You’ll be able to see the marks it left.”

  He carried over the first load of kindling, went back to look for more. By the time he returned with the second load, Yellowcloud had a fire going.

  “Anything else I can do for you?” he asked.

  “No. Just get moving.”

  He slung his weapon and picked up the light. When he played the beam up the canyon he saw the tracks readily enough.

  “And take this.” Yellowcloud passed him the portaphone.

  “Okay. I’ll go try again.”

  “Maybe you ought to aim for its eye.”

  “Maybe I should. See you.”

  “Good luck.”

  He turned and began walking. The water was a dark, speaking thing whose language he did not understand. The way was clear. The tracks were large.

  * * *

  The wind stirs the grasses.

  The snow glides across the earth.

  The whirlwind walks on the mountain,

  raising dust.

  The rocks are ringing

  high on the mountain, behind the fog.

  The sun’s light is running out

  like water from a cracked pitcher.

  We shall live again.

  The snowy earth

  slides out of the whirling wind.

  We shall live again.

  Around the curve of the canyon wall, walking. Gusts of wind here over stream grown wider, swirling glittering particles across watersong gone wild. Other side more sheltered but the red way lies close to the wall, here, rising now. Ripples like rushing pictographs. Pawprints of the perfidious one. Ice-rimed bones beside the trail. Rabbit. Burnt hogan, green glow within. Place of death. Shift eyes. Hurry on. Shine of crystal. Snow-streaked wall, texture of feathers. Trail winding on. As far as the eye will go. What now the quarry?

  Pause to drink at the crossing of tributary streamlet. Burning cold, flavored of rock and earth. Fog bank ahead, moving toward him, masked dancers within, about a south-blue blaze. Rhythms in the earth. He is become a smoke, drifting along his way, silent and featureless, rushing to merge with that place of flux and earthdance cadence. Yes, and be lost in it.

  White and soft, smothering sounds, like that place where he had hunted the garlett, so long ago…

  Dancers to the right, dancers to the left, dancers crossing his way. Do they even see him, invisible and spiritlike, passing among them, along the stillbright, stillred way written upon the ground as with fire and blood?

  One draws nearer bearing something covered by a cloth woven with an old design. He halts, for the dancer moves to bar his way, thrusting the thing before him. It is uncovered, displaying a pair of hands. He stares at them. That scar near the base of the left thumb…They are his hands.

  At the recognition they rise to hover in front of him, as if he were holding them before his face. He feels them, glovelike, at the extremity of his spirit. He had skinned game with them, fought with them, stroked Dora’s hair with them…

  He lets them fall to his sides. It is good to have them back again. The dancer moves away. Billy swirls like a whirlwind of snow and continues along his trail.

  There is no time. A cluster of gray sticks, rising from the 159 earth on the slope to his right, beside the trail…He pauses to watch as the sticks turn green, bumps appearing along their surfaces to become buds. The buds crack, leaves unwind themselves, turn, enlarge. White flowers come forth.

  He passes, swinging his hands. Another dancer with another parcel approaches from his left.

  He halts, hovering, and with his hands he accepts the gift of his feet and restores them to their places on the ground below him. The many miles we have come together…

  Walking, again walking, upon the trail. Feeling the heartbeat of the earth through the soles of his feet. There is no time. Snowflakes blow upward before him. The stream has reversed its direction. Blood flows back into the wounded deer lying still across his way. It springs to its hoofs, turns and is gone.

  Now, like curtains, a parting of the fog. Four masked dancers advance upon him, bearing the body that is his own. When he wears it again, he thanks them, but they withdraw in silence.

  He moves on along the trail. The fog is shifting. Everything is shifting but the trail.

  He hears a sound which he has not heard in a great counting of years. It begins off in the distance behind him and rises in pitch as it comes on: the whistle of a train.

  Then he hears the chugging. They no longer make engines of this sort. There is nothing here for it to run on. There is—

  He sees the rails paralleling his trail. That ledge ahead seems a platform now…

  The whistle sounds again. Nearer. He feels the throb of the thing, superimposed upon the earth rhythms. A train such as he has not beheld in years is coming. Coming, impossibly, through this impossible place. He keeps walking, as the sound of it fills the world. It should be rushing up beside him at any moment.

  The shriek of the whistle fills his hearing. He turns his head.

  Yes, it has come. An ancient, black, smoke-puffing dragon of an engine, a number of passenger cars trailing behind. He hears the screaming of its brakes begin.

  He looks back to the area of the platform, to where a single, slouched figure now stands waiting. Almost familiar…

  With a clattering and the cries of metal friction the engine draws abreast of him, slowing, slowing, and passes to halt beside the platform. He smells smoke and grease and hot metal.

  The figure on the platform moves toward the first passenger car, and he now recognizes the old dead singer who had taught him the song. Just before boarding the man turns and waves to him.

  His gaze slides back along the coach’s windows. Behind every one is a face. He recognizes all of them. They are all people he has known who are now dead—his mother, his grandmother, his uncles, his cousins, two sisters…

  Dora.

  Dora is the only one who is looking at him. The others stare past, talking with one another, regarding the landscape, the new passenger…

  Dora is looking directly at him, and her hands are working with the latches at the lower corners of the window. Almost frantically, she is pushing and lifting.

  The whistle blows again. The engine surges. He finds himself running, running toward the train, the car, the window…

  The train jerks, rattles. The wheels turn.

  Dora is still working at the latches. Suddenly the window slides upward. Her mouth is moving. She is shouting, but her words are lost among the noises of the train.

  He shouts back. Her name. She is leaning forward out of the window now, right arm extended.

  The train is picking up speed, but he is almost beside it. He reaches. Their hands are perhaps a meter apart. Her lips are still moving, but he cannot hear her words. For a moment his vision swims, and it is as if she were falling away from him.

  He increases his pace and the distance between their hands narrows—two feet, a foot, eight inches…

  Their hands clasp, and she smiles. He matches the train’s velocity for a moment before the tension begins. Then he realizes that he must let go.

  He opens his hand and watches her rush away. He falls.

  How long he lies there he does not know. When he looks again, the train is gone. There are no tracks. There is no platform. His outstretched arm lies within the icy stream. Snow is falling upon him. He rises.

  The big flakes drift by. The wind has died. The water sounds are muted. He raises his hand and stares at it like a new and unfamiliar thing within the silence.

  After a long while, he turns and seeks the trail again. He continues his journey along it.

  Trudging. Alternating elation and depression, finally all mixed together. To have caught her and then had to let her go. To ride Smohalla’s ghost-train through the snow. Another breaking apart. Would there be a putting together again?

  He realized then that he was traversing an enormous sandpainting. All of the ground about him was laid out in stylized, multicolored fashion. He walked in the footprints of the rainbow, passing between Eth-hay-nah-ashi—Those-who-go-together. They were the twins created in the Second world by Begochiddy. First Man and the others had come up from the Underworld along this route. The painting itself was one used in Hozhoni, the Blessingway. His trail followed the rainbow to the cornstalk, where it changed to the yellow of corn pollen. Upward, upward along the stalk then. The sky was illuminated by a brilliant flash as he passed alongside the female rainbow and the male lightning. Passing between the figures of Big Fly, heading north to the yellow pollen footsteps.

  Emerge to take up the trail again, passing the mouth of the large canyon to the right, continuing northward. Alone, singing. There was beauty in the failing snow. Beauty all around him…

  Admire it while you may, tracker.

  Cat? You’re dead! It is over between us!

  Am I, now?

  I touched your limb at the place where you fell. It was stiff and glassy. There was no life in you.

  Have it your way.

  Nor could anything have gotten out from beneath that heap of stone.

  You’ve convinced me. I will go back and lie down.

  Billy looked backward, saw nothing but snowfall within the canyon.

  .…But I’ll find you first.

  That shouldn*t be too hard.

  I am glad to hear you say that.

  I like to finish what I start. Hurry.

  Why don’t you wait for me?

  I’ve a trail to follow.

  And that is more important than me?

  You? You are nothing now.

  That is not too flattering. But very well. If we must meet upon your trail again, we will meet upon your trail.

  Billy checked his weapons.

  You should have taken the train, he said.

  I do not understand you, but it does not matter.

  But it does, Billy said, rounding another rock and seeing the trail go on.

  A whirlwind of snow danced across the water. He heard the thump of a single drumbeat.

  .…The blue medicine lifts me in his hand.

  The pain in his shoulder had subsided to a dull throbbing. He peered into pockets of shadow as he passed them, wondering whether the beast might be waiting to spring upon him, knowing the fear to be irrational since the tracks lay clear before him—and why should it go to the trouble of doubling back to lay in wait for him when it could have taken an extra second to smash him in passing back when they had met?

  Ironbear cursed, still looking. His breath emerged as plumes of steam before him. His nose was cold and his eyes watered periodically.

  Yellowcloud had been right. There was no problem at all in following this trail. Simple and direct. Deep and clear cut.

  Was that a movement to the left?

  Yes. The wind stirring bushes.

  He cursed again. Had his ancestors really led war parties? So much for genetics…

  Jimmy. Don’t shut me out!

  I won’t, Charles. I can use the company.

  Where are you? What’s happening?

  I’m in the canyon, following the thing.

  We’re here in Arizona, at the hotel near to where the canyons start.

  Why?

  To help, if we can. You’re following the beast? Is Yellow-cloud with you?

  He was, but it broke his leg. He’s sent for help.

  You’ve met it?

  Yeah. Got a sprained shoulder out of the deal. Put a few shots into the thing, though.

  Were you unconscious?

  Yes.

  I wondered why I couldn’t reach you for a while there. Have you been in touch with Singer?

  No.

  We have. That’s one crazy Indian.

  I think he knows what he’s doing.

  Do you know what you’re doing?

  Being another crazy Indian, I guess.

  I’d say.

  Looks like we cross the water here.

  I think you ought to get out. That’s two trails you’re following, not one.

  It’s starting to snow now. God, I hope it doesn’t cover the tracks. Melting when it hits, though. That’s good.

  Sounds as if that thing almost killed you once.

  They’re changing shape.

  The tracks?

  Yeah, and moving nearer the wall. Wonder what that means?

  It means you’d better shoot at anything that moves.

  Something wet and glassy here . . . Wonder what its blood looks like?

  How far along are you, anyway?

  Don’t know. My watch is broken. Seems as if I’ve been walking forever.

  Maybe you’d better stop and rest.

  Hell, no. It’s time to try jogging for a while. I’ve got a feeling. I think I’m near and I think it’s hurt.

  I don’t want to be in your mind if it gets you.

  Don’t go yet. I’m scared.

  I’ll wait.

  For the next quarter-hour he felt Fisher’s silent presence as he ran beside the pleated wall. They did not converse again until he slowed to catch his breath near a turning place.

  It’s going slow here, sneaking. But there’s only a little of that glassy stuff he observed.

  You go slow.

  I am. I’ll just switch to the blacklight and put on the goggles. I’ll get down low and look around the corner.

  There was a long silence.

  Well?

  I don’t see anything.

  He turned the light toward the ground.

  The trail’s changing again. I’m going to follow it.

  Wait. Why don’t you probe?

  I’m afraid to touch its mind.

  I’d be a lot more afraid of the rest of it. Why not just take it very slow and easy? Just scan for its presence. Sneak up mentally. I’ll help.

  You’re right, but I’ll do it myself.

  He reached out into the pocket canyon before him. Gingerly at first. Then with increased effort.

  Not there. Nothing there, he said. I see the trail, but I don’t feel the beast. Singer either, for that matter. They must have gone on.

  It would seem…

 

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