C. Box - Savage Run

It was essential to stay focused. He tried to trim all of his musings, memories, and daydreams into one central purpose: that of being ready to react. Joe tried to force his eyes to see better and his ears to hear more. He hoped that if Tibbs were near, he would be able to feel his presence and prepare. Staying in the heavy timber was no longer an option for them, Joe thought, which meant that Tibbs, with his deadly long-range rifle, could take out all three of them from a position with good sight lines.

Tibbs had the edge of being better prepared and equipped, and of being on horseback, so he was likely well rested, well fed, and well armed. Hunting down human beings was something Tibbs clearly had experience with. In any kind of encounter, Tibbs had the overwhelming advantage. Joe, with his.357 Magnum revolver and his history of missing whatever he aimed at, felt practically impotent.

If Charlie Tibbs suddenly bulled his way through the brush and cut them off on their trail, what would Joe do? He tried to think, tried to visualize his reaction so that it would be instinctual. He tried to envision himself drawing his pistol cleanly, raising it with both hands in a shooter’s stance, and squeezing the trigger of the double-action until every bullet was fired. He would aim at the widest point of his target. The commotion, if nothing else, would divert Tibbs from aiming and give Stewie and Britney a fighting chance to bolt into the brush and back into the trees. Even if he were unable to hit Tibbs or his horse, there was the possibility that his booming shots might spook the animal, causing it to rear and tumble into the canyon with its rider. Targeting Tibbs’s horse felt wrong to Joe, but in this situation soft sensibilities were not an option. Besides, Joe thought bitterly, that son of a bitch shot Lizzie.

“There is no way in hell that those Indians crossed this canyon,” Britney declared. Joe had to agree, because he could see no possible way to the bottom of the canyon and up the other side. Even the falcon’s nests in the rock walls seemed precarious.

“Don’t give up, Miss Steinburton,” Stewie cajoled.

“Is that your real name?” Joe asked. “Steinburton?”

“Margaret Steinburton,” Stewie offered. “Heir to the Steinburton Chemical Company of Palo Alto, California.”

“Shut up, Stewie,” she said. “He asked me, not you.”

Stewie giggled, and Joe continued on in silence.

Despite his almost constant monologues, his occasional whining, and his cocky attitude, Joe found himself warming to Stewie. He had gotten used to his freakish appearance and his face-splitting grimaces, and wasn’t as alarmed at them as he had been at first. Stewie had a cheerful optimism about him that was reassuring, and helpful. Stewie seemed to be gaining in strength the more they traveled. While Britney (or Margaret, or whoever the hell she was) descended into a prickly dark funk, Stewie kept pointing out wildlife and points of interest (to him) as if he were on a nature walk and Joe was the stoic guide.

“If you had to run for your life,” Stewie had declared happily that morning, “you just couldn’t have picked a nicer day!”

No wonder Marybeth liked him, Joe thought.

Joe realized he had once again put too much distance between Stewie and Britney so he stopped, turned, and waited for them to catch up.

Stewie was marveling at the canyon as he walked. He was not watching in front of him, and didn’t see the snout of a large rock that had pushed up through the trail. The toe of his boot thumped into the rock and tripped him, and he lost his balance.

Joe turned and lunged for Stewie but there was too much distance between them. Stewie’s arms windmilled and one of his legs crashed into the other. Stewie tried to regain his balance by stepping into a thick tangle of juniper perilously close to the edge of the canyon only to have the branches give way under his weight.

Stewie dropped so quickly that the only thing Joe could reach for was the fleeting afterimage of Stewie’s outstretched hands.

Joe approached the juniper as Britney wailed, holding her face in her hands and retreating from the place where Stewie had fallen.

“Britney!” It was Stewie. “Stop screaming! I’m all right.”

Joe kneeled and cautiously parted the stout, sticky branches. Stewie’s large hand, like an inert pink crab, was in the bush, gripping onto its base so hard that his knuckles were blueish white. Joe braced himself, grabbed Stewie’s wrist with both hands, and began pulling.

“Whoa, Joe!” Stewie said from over the rim. “Whoa, buddy! I’m okay. I’m standing on a ledge.”

Joe sighed and sat back, and watched Stewie’s hand unclench in the brush and slide down out of it.

“ Stewie! ” Britney cried in relief, leaning back against a tree trunk. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“Don’t you want me to help you up?” Joe asked.

There was a beat of silence, and something small and brown was tossed up from below the juniper. Joe caught it, releasing a puff of dust.

It was an ancient child’s doll. The head was a dried ball of rocklike leather and the arms and legs were stuffed with feathers and sewn from rough, aged fabric. The face, if there had ever been one, had washed clean over the years. The doll’s matted black hair, sewn on the leather head, looked human. The doll, no doubt, had belonged to an Indian child.

Joe scrambled forward on his belly and pushed the juniper branches aside. Stewie looked up at him with a massive, radiator-grille grin.

Stewie stood on a narrow shelf of rock no wider than a stair step. The shelf ran parallel to the ledge, then switched back, still descending. Far below Stewie, trapped against the rock ledge by an outgrowth, were gray tipi poles that had come unbundled and fallen over the edge a hundred and fifty years before.

Joe studied the opposite rock wall as he hadn’t before and now he saw it. A narrow shelf, a natural geological anomaly, barely discernible against the same yellow and gray color of the canyon wall and hidden in places by overgrowth, switchbacked up the other wall as well.

“This is the crossing,” Joe whispered. “This is where the Cheyenne crossed the canyon.”

Did I wake you up?”

“Are you kidding? I haven’t slept,” Marybeth said, as she swung out of bed, the phone tight against her ear. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet. “Did you find Joe?”

Trey Crump hesitated.

“I located his pickup in the valley. It was parked just off the road.”

The phone reception was crackling and waves of static roared through the receiver. Marybeth looked at the clock on her bed stand-it was five forty-five A.M.

“You haven’t seen Joe?”

“Negative,” Crump yelled over the static. “I had to drive back up to the top of the mountain to get any radio or telephone signal, Marybeth. I might cut out at any minute.”

“I understand,” she shouted, surprised at the loudness of her voice in the empty room. “Tell me what you found. ”

“The pickup and the horse trailer are empty. The pickup’s been shot up. ” Marybeth gasped and covered her mouth with her other hand, “and somebody disabled the engine and deflated the tires. I found two other vehicles as well; one is a Mercedes SUV with Colorado plates and the other one I just located about a half-hour ago up on the other mountain. It appears to be a black pickup with a horse trailer. There’s no one at the scene of. ”

A whoosh of static drowned out the end of his sentence. Marybeth closed her eyes tightly, trying to hear through the roar and willing it to subside.

“. The cabin was burned to the ground just last night. It’s still smoking. There was a body inside that was not Joe. I repeat, it was not Joe!”