There was a third line of black lettering, but a strip of burlap sacking had been nailed over it. Some other attraction or service that Mackey no longer offered tourists and passing motorists.
Messenger turned on to another of the unpaved tracks that passed for roads out here. Ahead, a hundred yards or so from the highway, a cluster of weathered wooden structures squatted along the edge of a shallow cut-bank gully. A line of stunted, withered tamarisk trees grew in the gully, their branches turned a shiny liquid amber by the westering sun. The same hue softened the scrub-spotted plain beyond, except where rocky hillocks and yucca trees threw long, distorted shadows; the shadows were a deep indigo-black. The sky in that direction was just beginning to take on sunset colors above the distant mountains: burnt orange and cayenne red.
As he neared the buildings they separated into three: a mobile home with drawn muslin curtains, a twenty-foot-square box with what appeared to be a series of wooden trays built across the front, and an odd high-fenced enclosure, open to the sky, that had a low, roofed shed tacked on to the near wall. The box probably housed Mackey’s collection of rocks and minerals. Messenger had no idea what the fenced enclosure was.
He parked near the trailer. Utter silence greeted him as he left the car; the freaky wind of earlier in the day had died completely. He went up and knocked on the door. There was no response, no sound from within. He called out, “Mr. Mackey?” and knocked again. Same results.
The dirty white nose of a pickup poked out from behind the trailer. He walked around to it. The body and bed were even dirtier, and half of its radio antenna had been snapped off. The cab was empty, but engine heat radiated through the hood. Mackey must be around here somewhere.
He circled the trailer to the wooden box. The trays across its front were all empty. On the door was a pair of homemade signs, not as artfully lettered as the big one at the highway junction. One was a price list of the rocks and minerals Mackey had for sale: coarse gold, fool’s gold, garnets, agates, mica quartz. The other sign said CLOSED.
Messenger moved over to the fenced enclosure. It looked to be larger than the box, about thirty feet square; the walls rose ten feet high all the way around, the boards tightly fitted, without openings of any kind. But the shed was open, at least; as he neared it he saw that its door stood partially ajar. That must be where Herb Mackey was.
The shed door also bore a sign... no, half a sign. The upper section had been torn away. The remaining half read:
He peered through the doorway into a dust-hung gloom. “Mr. Mackey?” The sound of his voice echoed emptily back to him. He pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside.
On his left was a short, bare counter; the shed was otherwise empty. Two doors had been cut into the rear wall, one behind the counter and the other ten feet away on the right. The door in back of the counter, like the outer door, stood ajar. The other was shut tight. Frowning, Messenger circled the counter. That door’s hinges made a creaking sound as he nudged it wide. Beyond he saw that there were actually two fences: a short, tunnel-like passageway separated them. Yet another half-open door let him glimpse what lay past the inner wall — some kind of open space strewn with rocks. Fading sunlight stained the rocks, gave them an odd glowing quality as if they were radioactive.
“Mr. Mackey?”
And this time there was a response, words that seemed to come from a distance above his head. “In here. Come on through.”
Three strides brought him to the inside door. This one opened inward; he dragged it back past his body and then stopped short, staring. What the hell was this? He was standing on the edge of a shallow pit, the rocky ground sloping down from the base of the inner fence on all four sides to a huge heap of rocks at the bottom. The fall-aways were steep, but the angle wasn’t sharp enough to prevent anyone from walking up or down in an upright position. Above, the inner fence ended a few feet below the outer one, and between the two a narrow catwalk with a waist-high railing ran all the way around the enclosure. He noticed one other thing in that first sweeping glance — a woven quarter-inch wire mesh had been fastened to the board along the bottom of the inner fence, from ground level to a height of about two feet.
Movement distracted him then, on the catwalk directly over his head. Mackey. He leaned out, craning to look upward.
Sliding sound behind him in the passage. Instinctively he drew back, started to turn his head the other way. A man-shape appeared at the far corner of his eye — and then something struck him across the right temple, hard and vicious, like a hammer blow. Pain erupted; his vision slid out of focus. He felt his legs giving way, tried to grab the door or the wall. A second blow jolted him, this one a thrusting force just above his kidneys, and in the next instant he was off his feet and falling.
Impact with the ground, belly down and hard on the left side, drove all the air out of his lungs. He skidded downward, skin scraping from palms and forearms. A rock smacked his shoulder, changed and slowed the direction of his slide. When he finally came to rest amid a small avalanche of pebbles and dirt he lay there panting, disoriented, his thoughts mired in confusion. The only one of his senses that seemed to work was the aural. Clear and sharp he heard a door slam shut, steps running on wood. A voice shouted something, but the words ran together unintelligibly. More sounds followed, less distinct, jumbled. After that there was nothing but his own rasping breath.
He lay there for a little time and then he was up on his knees, with no sense of having risen. He opened his eyes, but his vision was still cockeyed; everything was shadows and wavery images, like objects viewed through murky water. He blinked and blinked, and the shadows merged and formed a wall of darkness. Panic gripped him. But the blindness lasted for only a few seconds. There was a kind of flash behind his eyes and suddenly he could see again, although now rocks and fence and catwalk seemed to have vague, fuzzy halos.
He lowered his gaze to the loose earth in which he knelt, trying to focus on small objects — pebbles, a piece of wood. They began to blur, and the panic nipped at him again until he realized that his eyes were tearing. He cleared the wetness away with the back of his hand. The pebbles and the wood still had their fuzzy halos, but the aureoles were dimmer now, fading.
All at once he was aware of pain. Pulsing on the right side of his head, above the ear. Stinging along his arms and palms. He held the hands out in front of him and focused on them. Abrasions, blood. He reached up to probe the pulpy spot over his ear, recoiled from his own touch, then looked at his fingers. More blood.
Hit and shoved from behind. Two men, one on the gallery and the other hiding outside. Trap.
Why?
Dry hissing sound.
His ears picked it up, faintly at first, then more clearly. It was alien to him. He peered around for the source, but he couldn’t seem to locate it. Close... why couldn’t he find it?
Something moved — a feathery slithering.
Something rattled.
As soon as he heard the rattle he knew what it was. The panic surged; he struggled to drag one foot under him, but then he didn’t have enough strength to lift himself. Sluggish, movements and thoughts both, like reaction to terror in a nightmare. He knelt there struggling for control of his motor responses, panting again, and all that would move was his head, his still-fuzzy gaze swiveling left, right, up, down. Where was it? Where—?