[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Horses tend to benoisy breathers.He strained to hear, and heard nothing.A man, most likely,just standing there on the other side of the bush.Why? Someone in the planeobviously had seen his truck.Had they come, or sent someone, to check on him?Click.From just beyond the bush.Click.Click.Click.Click.A small metallicsound.Chee couldn't identify it.Metal- against metal? And then anotherexhalation of breath, and the sound of feet moving on the sand.Footstepsmoving down the arroyo toward its intersection with the wash.Toward Chee'struck.Chee rolled off the bedroll, careful not to make a sound.His rifle was on therack across the back window of the truck.His pistol was in its holster,locked in the glove box.He raised his head cautiously above the bush.Page 45 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlThe man was walking slowly away from him.He could only presume it was a man.A large shape, a little darker than the darkness surrounding it, a sense ofslow movement.Then the movement stopped.A light flashed on-a yellow beamprobing the boulders along the wall of the arroyo.The moving lightsilhouetted first the legs of whoever held the flashlight, then the right armand shoulder and the shape of a pistol held, muzzle down, in the right hand.Then the light flicked off again.In the renewed darkness Chee could see onlythe shape of the yellow light imprinted on his iris.The shape of the man waslost to him.He ducked behind the chamiso again, waiting for vision to return.When it did, the arroyo was empty.Chee waited for the first dim light before he made his move for his truck.Hisfirst impulse was to abandon it.To slip away in the darkness and make thelong walk back to the Burnt Water Trading Post and thereby avoid the risk thatthe man who had hunted him in the darkness was waiting for him at the truck.But as time ticked away, the urgency and reality of the danger diminished withit.Within an hour, what his instincts had told him of danger had faded alongwith the adrenaline it had pumped into his blood.What had happened was easyenough to read.Someone interested in recovering the drugs had rented a planeto keep an eye on the area.Chee's lights had been seen.Someone had been sentto find him and learn what he was doing.The pistol in hand was easilyexplained.The hunter was seeking the unknown in a strange and lonelydarkness.He was nervous.He would have seen Chee's rifle on its rear-windowrack but he'd have had no way of knowing Chee's pistol was locked away.Even so, Chee was cautious.He moved along the arroyo rim to a point where hecould look down at the truck.He spent a quarter of an hour sitting in theshelter of the rocks there, watching for any sign of movement.All he saw wasa burrowing owl returning from its nocturnal hunt to its hole in the bankacross from him.The owl scouted the truck and the area around it.If it sawanything dangerous, it showed no sign of it until it saw Chee.Then it shiedviolently away.That was enough for Jim Chee.He got up and walked to thetruck.With his pistol back on his belt, Chee checked the area around the arroyomouth to confirm what the burrowing owl had told him.Nothing human waswatching the area.Then he took a look at the tracks his hunter had left.Theman wore boots with worn waffle soles, the same soles he'd noticed at the siteof the crash.Someone in these same boots had placed the fatal lanterns.He'dapproached the truck from downwash, left tracks all around it, and then walkedalmost a half mile up the arroyo and back again.Finally he'd left the way hehad come.Chee spent the rest of the morning examining the two downwash arroyos whichthe map suggested might have offered hiding places for a car.Nothing thatleft tire tracks had gone up either of them.He sat in the truck cab, finishedthe last of his crackers with the last of his water, and thought it allthrough again.Then he went back to both arroyos, walked a half mile up fromtheir mouths, and made an intensive hands-and-knees spot check of likelyplaces.Nothing
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]