Nevada Barr - The Rope

“What’re you doing?” she heard Bethy call. “Are you doing something?”

No breath to spare for an answer, Anna dragged herself a few more inches and twisted. One foot, one knee, a leg, jackknifed on the tableland.

“No!” she heard Bethy yell. Anna didn’t dare pause to look up. With an effort that wrenched a scream from her as muscles in the small of her back tore, she got her other leg up on the plateau and began to belly-crawl from the edge of the ravine, her manacled hands scraping across the broken landscape. The earth, mere inches from her eyes, unrolled with agonizing slowness, inches only as Bethy’s furious shriek, guttural, then high like the war cry of a banshee, pulled the oxygen from her lungs and the blood from her heart.

At one thirty Regis realized he’d forgotten to eat lunch. He’d been on the phone interviewing a fascinating woman in Olympic National Park for the district ranger position at Dangling Rope. The woman was eminently qualified but hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the job. Three veterans were blocking the register. Vietnam had dumped an endless supply of vets into the federal system, and they got preferential treatment. If they all dropped dead, he still doubted she’d get it. He didn’t think Glen Canyon had ever had a female district ranger and doubted Andrew Madden was chomping at the bit to change that during his tenure.

At one thirty-two Regis was unrolling the top of a paper bag, soft from being reused a number of times, to see what his wife packed him for lunch.

At one thirty-four he was running from his office, ignoring startled looks from the people he passed.

At the small municipal airport on the outskirts of Page he untied his Super Cub, started the engine, and cleared for taxi, without pausing for a preflight check, a flight plan, or even to close the clamshell doors.

Folded on top of his tuna sandwich had been a note: “Hi Baby! Meet me at the head of Panther. I got a surprise for you! xxxooo Bethy.” He thought he would faint or vomit as he’d raced to the airport, but the fear solidified into a column of ice that ran from rectum to sternum.

Takeoffs and landings were a point of pride with him. An airship was most at risk when moving from one element to the other, from earth to sky and back again. The rest was easy. This time he didn’t so much take off as jerk the airplane off the runway and stagger into the sky. In the superheated air of the desert there was little lift. Fear of wrecking the Cub shoved aside the panic of Bethy’s upcoming “surprise” for a tense thirty seconds until he got enough air under the wings to stabilize the plane.

He was already late. Usually he ate lunch around twelve thirty. Bethy knew that. Bethy might have waited for him. He hung on to that thought as he climbed free of the traffic pattern and leveled off at seventy-five hundred feet on a north-by-northeasterly heading. Once across the bottom of the reservoir, he turned right, flying along the jagged northern shoreline. Winds over the lake were unpredictable. Besides, he didn’t particularly want anyone to recognize his plane and wonder what he was up to in the middle of a workday.

The Piper Cub, built in the fifties, wasn’t a fast plane. Her top speed was around seventy miles per hour, slower than most cars on the road. Push the throttle as much as he might, the flight to Hole-in-the-Rock Road, and the head of Panther Canyon, took the better part of an hour. Hot wind and engine noise buffeted Regis through the open doors, sucking the moisture from his lungs and fanning the flames of a vicious headache, but he couldn’t focus long enough to wrestle them closed.

Forcing calm, he made himself execute a neat pattern over Hole-in-the-Rock Road. The prevailing wind was from the north. He touched down near the canyon rim and slowed. Chafing, he turned and taxied back toward Glen Canyon. When he ran out of dirt road, he jumped from the Cub and chocked the wheels as best he could with rocks.

Hands on a wing strut, he ceased his frantic movement for a moment, staring at the ecru sand between his feet, trying to make room in his mind for thought.

His head jerked, and his hands fell from the aluminum wing support. Moving deliberately he opened a small baggage compartment behind the rear seat and lifted out his desert survival pack, a precaution most small-plane pilots took in rugged country.

Having ripped open the Velcro straps, he folded back the flap and removed the hunting knife in its leather sheath. He didn’t thread his belt through the loop on the sheath. He unbuttoned a shirt button and pushed the knife in where it could ride between belt and belly.

After closing and restowing the survival kit, Regis headed toward the head of the slot canyon that eventually widened out into Panther.

He did not run but walked, swift and sure.

Enraged, Bethy descended on Anna like a hoard of furies, kicking dirt in her face, kicking her head and ribs and back. Reflexively, Anna curled into a ball to protect her belly, her hands closed over her skull, forearms over her face, letting her daypack absorb the worst of the blows.

For a fraction of time the kicks ceased; then a jackhammer blow hit her shoulders. Half stunned, Anna felt herself shoved nearer the precipice. Another blow and another few inches. Until she’d hit Regis with the canteen and rolled rocks down on him, Anna had never struck out at anyone in anger, at least not since she was three and beaned Jimmy Newton with a dirt clod. The beast instinct had not atrophied. Time to fight or die.

Rolling to elbows and knees, she sustained another shattering blow that nearly knocked her back to her side. Refusing to let the shock nullify her mind, Anna forced herself out of her defensive position. The instant her head came up she could see what Bethy was doing. She’d dropped to the ground and, propped on elbows and back, was using the powerful muscles in her legs to drive Anna over the edge.

Thrusting out with her toes, Anna lunged forward, sprawling on her attacker. Bethy’s bunched legs pistoned into Anna’s midsection. Gasping for breath, Anna fell to the side, her shoulder slamming into Bethy’s. Before the other woman could recover, Anna slipped her manacled hands over Bethy’s head, trapping her in a mockery of a lover’s embrace.

“If I go over, I’m not going over alone,” she promised in a voice more akin to an animal’s growl than a human utterance.

Thrashing and bucking, Bethy tried to head-butt, tried to force her knees between their bodies. Chin tucked protectively into her shoulder, Anna hung on, hugging Bethy more tightly. Screaming, Bethy turned in Anna’s arms and tried to crawl away.

Quick as a cat, Anna was on her back, her legs wrapped around Bethy’s waist, the chain between the handcuffs jerked tightly across her throat. As Bethy ran out of oxygen, the fight went out of her. Finally, she collapsed, facedown in the dirt, Anna riding her like a demented jockey. Muscles spent, throat dry and raw, it was all Anna could do not to collapse on top of her. The battle had lasted less than sixty seconds, yet both women were utterly spent. Fleetingly, Anna thought to mention this fact to the fight choreographer.

“Uncle,” Bethy muttered, a puff of dust rising with the word.

“Uncle” was what children cried when they lost a wrestling match. Fury, smothered until now by fear and exhaustion, roared up from the paltry reserves of Anna’s strength. Tightening the chain across Bethy’s throat, she croaked, “Uncle, my ass. You tried to kill me.”

“I didn’t, though,” Bethy managed. “So you can’t strangle me to death.”

Anna wasn’t sure of the legalities of that argument and at the moment didn’t care. During the brawl they’d tumbled up against the TV-shaped boulder Bethy had looped the rope around. Grunting, Anna rolled herself and an inert but conscious Bethy Candor over and sat up. Wriggling back against the rock, Anna used her daypack—effectively locked onto her when her hands were cuffed—as a cushion. She dragged Bethy with her, squeezing until the other woman was sitting between her legs, Anna’s still locked around her middle, the cuff chain hard against her throat.