Douglas Preston - Mount Dragon

Or free to die of thirst.

He felt the heavy cold canteen on his saddle horn. It contained four quarts of water—very little for a person crossing the Jornada del Muerto. But he realized this was only a secondary problem.

Carson halted. The Hummers had stopped at the edge of the lava flow, perhaps a mile away.

“Let’s find a low spot and hide these horses,” Carson said. “I want to make sure those Hummers keep going south.”

They led the horses down a rubble-strewn crevasse in the lava. De Vaca held the reins while Carson climbed to a high point and watched.

He wondered why his pursuers hadn’t turned off their lights. As it was, they stuck out like a cruise ship on a moonless ocean, visible for ten miles or more. Odd that Nye hadn’t thought of that.

The lights were stationary for a minute or two. Then they began moving up on to the lava flow, where they paused again. For a moment Carson worried they might somehow pick up his trail and come toward him, but instead they continued southward, at a faster clip now, the lights bouncing and sweeping over the lava.

He climbed back down.

“They’re going south,” he said.

“Thank God for that.”

Carson hesitated. “I’ve done some thinking,” he said at last. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to save this water for the horses.”

“What about us?”

“Horses require twelve gallons of water a day in desert conditions. Seven, if they ride only at night. If these horses collapse, we’re finished. It won’t matter how much water we’ve got, we wouldn’t get five miles in lava or deep sand. But if we save this for the horses, even a little bit does some good. They’ll be able to go an extra ten or twenty miles. That will give us a better chance to find water.”

In the darkness, de Vaca was silent.

“It’s going to be extremely hard to avoid drinking when we get thirsty,” Carson said. “But we must save it for the horses. If you want, I’ll take your canteen when the time comes.”

“So you can drink it yourself?” came the sarcastic remark.

“It will take great discipline when it starts to get bad. And, believe me, it’s going to get bad. So before we continue, there’s another rule about thirst you should know. Never, ever mention it. No matter how bad it gets, don’t talk about water. Don’t think about water.”

“Does this mean we’re going to have to drink our pee?” de Vaca asked. In the darkness, Carson couldn’t tell if she was serious or merely baiting him again.

“That only happens in books. What you do is this: When you feel like urinating, hold it in. As soon as your body realizes it’s getting thirsty, it will automatically reabsorb the water. And your desire to urinate will vanish. Eventually you’ll have to, of course, but by that time there will be so much salt in the urine it’ll be useless to drink, anyway.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I grew up in this kind of desert.”

“Yeah,” said de Vaca, “and I bet being part Ute helps, too.”

Carson opened his mouth to retort, then decided against it. He’d save the arguments for later.

They continued eastward through the lava for another mile, moving slowly, leading the horses by the reins and letting them pick their own way. Occasionally a horse would stumble in the lava, its shoes sending out small flashes of sparks. From time to time, Carson stopped to climb a lava formation and look south. Each time, the Hummers had receded farther into the distance. At last, the lights disappeared completely.

As he climbed down for the last time, Carson wondered if he should have told de Vaca the worst news of all. Even with the two gallons all to themselves, the horses could barely make half the distance they needed to go. They were going to have to find water at least once along the way.

Nye tightened the cinch on Muerto and checked the horse’s saddle rigging. Everything was in order. The rifle was snug in its boot, slung under his right leg where he could extract it with one smooth motion. The metal tube carrying his USGS 1:24,000 topographical maps was secure.

He tied the extra saddlebags behind the cantle and began packing ammunition into them. Then he filled two five-gallon flaxen desert water bags, tied them together, and slung them over the cantle, one on each side. It was an extra forty pounds of weight, but it was essential. Chances are it wouldn’t be necessary for him to bother tracking Carson. Carson’s having a mere two gallons of water would do the job for him. But Nye had to be sure. He wanted to see their dead, desiccated bodies, to reassure himself that the secret was once again his and his alone.

To the saddle horn, he tied a small sack containing a loaf of bread and a four-pound wax-covered wheel of cheddar cheese. He tested his halogen flashlight, then placed it in the saddlebags, along with a handful of extra batteries.

Nye worked methodically. There was no hurry. Muerto was trained as an endurance horse, and was in far better shape than the two specimens Carson had taken. Carson had probably pushed his horses in the beginning, galloping or loping to escape the Hummers. That would start them off badly. Only fools and Hollywood actors galloped their horses. If Carson and the woman expected to get across the desert, they would have to take it slow. Even so, as their horses began to suffer from the lack of water, they would start lagging. Nye figured that without water, traveling only at night, they could go perhaps forty-five miles before collapsing. If they attempted daytime travel, they’d make perhaps half that. Any animal lying motionless on the desert sands—or even one that was moving slowly or erratically—immediately attracted a spiraling column of vultures. He could find them by that alone.

But he wouldn’t need vultures to tell him where they were.

Tracking was both an art and a science, like music or nuclear physics. It required a large volume of technical knowledge and an intuitive brilliance. He had learned a great deal about it during his time in the Empty Quarter. And years of searching the Jornada del Muerto desert had honed that knowledge.

He gave his outfit a final check. Perfect. He lofted himself into the saddle and rode out of the barn, following Carson and de Vaca’s hoofprints in the glow of the fire. As he moved into the desert and away from the burning complex, the glow lessened. From time to time he switched on his flashlight, as he traced their route southward, just as he thought: they had been running their horses. Excellent. Every minute of galloping here would be a mile lost at the far end. They had left a trail that any moron could follow. A moron is following it , Nye thought with amusement, as he saw the myriad tire tracks crisscrossing in confusion as they pursued the hoofprints southward.

He paused for a moment in the darkness. A voice had suddenly murmured his name. He swiveled in his saddle, scanning the infinite desert around him for its source. Then once again he urged his horse into a slow trot.

Time, water, and the desert were all on his side.

Carson paused at the far edge of the lava flow and looked northward. The great arm of the Milky Way stretched across the sky, burying itself at last below the far horizon. They were adrift in a sea of blackness. The faintest reddish glow to the north marked Mount Dragon. The blinking lights atop the microwave tower had long since disappeared, winking out when the generators failed.

He inhaled the fragrance that surrounded them: dry grasses and chamisa, mixed with the coolness of the desert night.