Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

“Yeah, I hear you... and you should be.” Josh’s voice, by a trick of the subterranean acoustics, sounded as if he were just beneath the lip of the cave’s opening, and startled Paul into falling back. “By the way, I’m gonna kill you when you get down here, you sonofabitch.”

Paul’s relief was so profound that tears welled in his eyes and he hastily wiped them away with his sleeve. “Where are you? I can’t see you from up here.”

“I’m about ten feet south, I think, of my ruck... and the snakes. They seemed to want to stay in the sun, which is fine by me. When the pulley snapped and the rope whipped up against the lip, it swung me clear of them... at least for now. It’s the only luck I’ve had today... the pulley broke some of the fingers on my right hand, Paul.”

Paul understood this to be bad news indeed; it meant that Josh could do very little in his own rescue. “That’s okay,” he answered, attempting to sound sure of himself. “How many feet is it, do you think, from the cave opening to the floor?”

A slight pause followed this question, as Josh calculated. “Thirty, give or take a few feet.”

Paul trusted Josh’s judgment in this matter... he was always the better climber. “All right then, we’ve got plenty of rope here. Can you unhook yourself?”

“Yeah, right, I’m gonna untie and let you pull up the rope. That would be real intelligent.”

Paul knew he deserved that, but sighed with exasperation nonetheless. “Listen, Josh, if I wanted to leave you, I’d just untie my end and drop it down the hole, dismantle the tripod, and go home.”

There was another pause as Josh digested this piece of obvious truth. “That’s what you were gonna do, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Paul replied honestly. “Yeah, it was.”

“My fingers are broke, I told you. I don’t know if I can.”

Paul could hear the pain and fear in Josh’s voice. “Josh, I won’t leave you, I promise. Just stay in your harness and send the rope up.”

After a few moments, Paul could feel vibrations in the woven fibers he held, then Josh called out, “All right! It’s free... You better not leave me, you sonofabitch. I’m still gonna kick your ass when this is all over!”

Paul began to haul the line up and coil it at his feet. Once he had Josh’s end he quickly routed it over the top crosspiece of the tripod and left several feet to dangle over the hole. The other end he secured around the bole of an old-growth oak that leaned over the shale-covered clearing. He knew their rope to be one hundred feet long, which was just enough, with a little extra, he hoped, for his purpose. Returning to the tripod, he carefully rigged the dangling line beneath his armpits, cursing himself for not having brought any of his own gear, and knelt down once more.

“Josh, what are the snakes doing?”

“Nothing much... waiting for you, probably,” he answered with a lame attempt at humor.

“No, seriously, have they moved at all? I’m thinking they might move with the sunlight.” Paul glanced up at the sun edging its way into the western sky. The day was getting on.

“Yeah,” Josh called back excitedly. “Yeah, I think they are. They’ve moved away from the pack some.”

“That’s good,” Paul said. “ ’Cause I’m going to drop a big coil of rope down there and I don’t want to rile them up too much.”

“Oh shit... wait, wait, let me get a handful of rocks or something.” Paul could hear Josh scrabbling amongst the stones with his good hand for missiles. “Okay, go ahead.”

Reaching beneath the tripod and across the two-foot aperture, Paul tugged the heavy coil to the edge and let gravity pull it in. This was followed by a muffled thump and a slight tug on his chest. Without waiting, lest his nerve fail him, Paul seized the rope that dangled opposite him and gave it a good tug, satisfying himself with the corresponding pull on his armpits, and began to lower himself into the snake hole. As he sank into the darkness, Josh began to yell. “Jesus Christ, Paul, you’ve really stirred ’em up! They’re going everywhere!”

From his lofty vantage point, Paul could now see the beam from Josh’s helmet lamp swinging wildly about the cavern floor, and just discernible beneath his friend’s wild shouts arose the dry, rasping murmur of hundreds of scaled bodies intertwining and disengaging simultaneously, in menacing petulance.

“Josh,” Paul called out. “Don’t move around! Stay where you are and throw rocks at those that come near you! They’ll settle down in a few minutes and go back to the sunlight.”

Paul could see Josh with his back against the cave wall, futilely chucking stones with his uninjured left hand, but as he was right-handed, his efforts were having little effect other than to gain the snakes’ interest. Each rock that landed amongst them received several cursory strikes. Paul, dry-mouthed and sweating profusely, continued to lower himself, hand over hand, to the floor of the cave. Now that he was much closer, he thought these reptiles to be copper-heads, but wasn’t sure... Vanda would have known at a glance; she seemed able to name every creature that crawled, swam, or flew. “Josh, settle down and try not to move your feet... they’re attracted to the vibrations in the earth... that’s how they hear you.” Vanda had taught him that, as well.

As Josh’s light whipped from side to side, Paul made out a possible solution. “Josh, there’s a big rock to your left. Just ease over and step up onto it.”

Like a small child at an adult’s command, Josh did as he was bidden, sliding his feet ever so carefully as he edged along the wall, and hooting like an owl at each movement on the ground around him. With almost comic exaggeration, he took a slow, giant step up upon reaching the rock and placed one booted foot on top; then with a final hoot, snatched the other up to join the first. Once he was sure of his balance, he aimed a sickly, frightened grin up at Paul and then froze into spelunking statuary.

As Paul hung suspended ten feet above the surface of the cavern, the serpents did, indeed, begin to lose interest in the previous commotion and began to make their way singly and in writhing knots back towards the waiting patch of late-winter sunlight — a thousand crawling exclamation marks coalescing into a rustling heap of drowsy venom. Fortunately for Paul’s plan, that saving ray of warmth steadily, if almost imperceptibly, moved further into the recesses of the cave and drew the cranky reptiles with it. Paul resumed his descent and gingerly placed his feet upon the earth. Without untying the rope, he softly walked the short distance to where Josh perched like some lonely, subterranean lighthouse.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Let’s get you the hell out of here.”

Placing a trembling hand on Paul’s shoulder to steady himself, Josh stepped carefully down and allowed himself to be led to where his backpack still lay. Once there, Paul unrigged himself and quickly and expertly tied a bowline knot in the end of the rope and clipped the carabiner on Josh’s harness through the loop.

“All right, then,” he said, giving the line a slight tug. “Josh, I’m going to haul you up, but you’re going to have to help even though you’ve got a busted paw. Here’s how it will work: Using your good hand, you pull with me each time I say ‘Heave.’ In between, release while I hold down here, and reach up for another handful for the next heave. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Josh answered uncertainly. “But what about you?”

“Once you are up top, drop your end back down to me; I’ll tie myself off and haul myself back up the same way I came down. Nothing to it.”

Josh looked dubious. “You think this is going to be easy?”