David Dun - Necessary Evil

They both fell silent. She let her gaze trail along the length of the Milky Way and pick among the stars.

"Grandfather brought me to this place."

"I must meet your grandfather."

''He was on the mountain today. Not half a mile from you."

"An old man, with a bag around his neck. A leather bag and a heavy green coat."

"That's him. Where did you see him?"

"I didn't, I dreamed him. When I was sick and passed out. I dreamed he came. He told me to crawl. Begged me, really. So I crawled to a stream and drank and drank and drank." Kier didn't stop her. "It was a dream, wasn't it?"

"There were no tracks near you. It was a dream. On my wall at the cabin I had a picture of him in that green coat. You would have seen it."

"And the bag?"

''No. It wasn't in the picture. A great-grandchild was holding the bag."

"I saw him with the bag."

"Your mind supplied the bag. It's something that used to be common for Indians."

"Do you realize you always have an explanation for everything? It sounds like you believe in nothing but molecules."

"I don't know what I believe. I just keep going."

"Since you went off to college, right? You always quote your grandfather. You don't state your own convictions."

"You felt what you felt. That's real." Kier pulled out two coiled lines, one of which he cut to make a third.

"I need to show you a knot."

"Why?"

"We're going to do some mountain climbing and you're going to need it."

She studied while he wrapped one line around the other. All the while her sense of foreboding grew. When she could do it, he nodded. Getting down on his hands and knees, with the guns still on his back, he felt around in the snow. After a while, he grunted what sounded like approval.

"Did you find something?"

"Oh, yes," he said, sounding relieved. "A piton."

She knew what that was. It wasn't good. It was a device used by people who climbed cliffs. It would be anchored to the rock and mountaineers would dangle from it.

"Do we need a piton?"

"Maybe I could offer a suggestion."

"A suggestion? Here we are in the middle of the night on a freezing precipice with one lousy piton? I just met God, and I'm still scared, and you think with a few words, you can just… " She hesitated. What was she trying to say? "Just get on with it. I'll be fine. Just fine."

It was night. Dangling at night was almost unthinkable. It seemed to Jessie that where they stood the ridge's top wasn't more than a couple feet wide. Covered with snow, it created the illusion of a knife's edge. To the left, the down slope appeared walkable, if dangerous, but to the right it fell away almost vertically for several stories. Kier reached down with the line and pulled it as if he were running it through the piton. Just next to him was a sheer drop created by a massive split in the granite right where the ridge joined the shoulder of the mountain in front of them. It was as if a giant had pulled lengthwise along the ridge neatly severing it from the mountain and leaving a straight-walled, U-shaped, vertical fracture.

"Perhaps you could go first, and I could help lower you down. What do you think?''

She was determined to show him no more of her fear, although she hadn't a clue as to how she would do what he asked. Kier wrapped the line around her thighs and waist, then passed it between her legs.

"Have you ever rappelled?"

"At the academy we did it a couple of times. But that was in broad daylight on an artificial rock wall. We had equipment. I had eaten. I hadn't been deathly sick. I had strength. I'll manage."

"Okay. Well, this will be very similar, only I will lower you. But if I slip or let go, this safety line, which you will pay out, will also be through the piton to stop your fall. You must hold the safety line and not let it slide through your fingers, except when you want to go down. Now lean back and I'll hold your weight."

She stood with her back to the sheer drop. Kier held the main line a foot from her chest. It went around his shoulder, across his back, down to the piton, then to her waistline.

"Go ahead and squat down."

Warily, she lowered on her haunches.

"Now lean back and let the rope take your weight."

She froze.

"Go ahead, just lean back."

God, dear God, she prayed. Her heart pounded and her hands shook. She felt humiliated. She was not a weak person and what was being asked of her was not extremely difficult.

She continued trembling. It was getting worse. By now a minute had passed. Kier squatted down close to her. His light illuminated their faces.

"Let's rest a minute. Just sit." He pulled her back from the cliff to sit on the pack. "I remember when I was a kid, I saw this movie on TV about Cheyenne Bodine, a man who was sent to a forest to hunt a creature that was killing people in the night. These guys would sit around the campfire and something-before it attacked-would throw dirt out of the bushes. It scared me bad… had me shaking under the covers. Turned out it was a bear."

"I'm trying-" she said.

"There's time," he continued firmly. "I'd lie in my bed, scared out of my mind. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's in your head that I was just a kid, that you're an FBI agent, and this story is demeaning because-"

"The story is about normal childhood fears,'' she interjected sharply. "This is about two adults on a mountain. If you'll shut up, somehow I'm gonna do this."

Gritting her teeth, she stood, went to the ledge, and held the rope in her left hand.

"Well, pull on the rope, give me some resistance."

He pulled firmly. She clamped her jaw, willing herself to lean back, trusting him to hold her. She took one baby step down the rock face. He played out a few inches of line, and she took another. The first few feet were not as frightening as she had expected. She was near him, and she could see. As she descended, though, the shadows deepened, and Kier became a monolith in the soft glow of the penlight that he held in his mouth. It was like descending into a well. By thinking about the smooth rock and occasional bush she passed, she did not dwell upon what might be coming.

After she'd taken perhaps fifteen downward steps, Kier stopped, and she felt the pain of the line cutting into her thighs.

"What's going on?"

His light shone over the edge.

"Look behind you." A few feet away on the other side of the chasm a snow-covered tree-some kind of needled evergreen-grew from the opposite wall. It looked gnarly, old, stunted, the base emerging from a crack in the vertical rock wall. The thick trunk made an L so that the top grew straight up, parallel to the cliff. Behind the top of the tree Kier's light shone upon the lower lip of a cave mouth in the cliff face.

"You'll need to throw your end of this line around the tree; then I'll show you how to use it to swing across."

Her heart sank as Kier dropped another line. Throwing the lariat to catch the treetop would be tough. The notion of somehow swinging her body through space, across the chasm, was terrifying. She couldn't even imagine climbing from the tree into the cave.

"I've got the end of the line. You need to get that loop at your end of the line around the top of the tree. From up here I'll work it down past one or two of the larger branches."

"Why did you get me down here and then tell me this?" Kier was silent. "Never mind, I know."

Only a vigorous throw would catch the broken top of the main trunk in the loop of the lariat. Turning sideways, she studied the tree. Maybe twelve feet away horizontally, the stubby treetop waited to be noosed some two feet above her height. From the top of the tree to its gnarled base was about twenty-five feet. The floor of the cave stood at eye level.

Jessie's first toss hit the tree's broken top. But when she tried to pull it tight, it slipped off. Three more throws were equally useless.