"You don't look like you believe it."
"I'll walk."
"And I'm stubborn?"
A foot or two wide most of the way, the ledge was just sufficient for walking, but narrow enough to be painfully tenuous, bordered as it was by a breathtaking vertical drop. Fractured rock and a dusting of snow along the ledge added to its already treacherous texture.
They moved single file, roped together so that if Jessie fell, she would get a second chance, provided Kier was surefooted enough to hold her. If he fell, they were both dead. Brooding dark clouds hung in the mountains, their tentacles reaching into the valley, portending more bad weather to come. As they walked, he tried to keep her talking in order to keep her mind from the fear. To a degree it seemed to work. Either that or she was becoming more accustomed to heights.
"The cabin is close, just under some Douglas fir down on that ridge. The way the air is warming, I'd expect these next clouds to drop buckets of rain in the valley. Melt the snow. Make it impossible for them to follow us down the mountain."
"I'm growing to hate this business of leaving footprints everywhere we go. I'd just love for the snow to melt. And food. I have this wishful vision of the cabin with plates full of spaghetti and meatballs. Does this cabin have a table and chairs? Can we get something to eat?"
"Table and chairs, it does have. Food, we will get any way we can."
"Why don't you people leave food?"
He found himself smiling. "If we left food, you might be sharing your bed with a bear. Besides, we like to keep it fresh and kicking."
"What is it that'll be kicking?" She set her foot beyond a large loose rock and reached to the wall for support.
"Beaver. Beaver tail is excellent, although I hate to kill them."
"Tail. Oh God."
"Well, there's also cattails. Use the rhizomes on the cattail for flour, young ones for something like asparagus, and the heart, which is hard to describe, maybe like a rich potato. And bulrushes. They're sweeter than the cattails. There's arrowhead there too. Like yam, sort of. Those are all things we can get quick. From the sound of it you'd like an early lunch."
"Well, at least it's food."
"The water there is the key. The creek is dammed up by the beaver, and the pond makes a lot of food for everything."
The ledge came to an end in a rushing stream that plummeted thirty feet down a chute seemingly too treacherous to walk. At the base of the near-vertical drop the stream hit a gentler slope that by the look of it could be traversed.
"I know you won't walk in the snow, so I won't remind you."
''Yes, that way we can pretend you don't think I'm an idiot."
Kier took a line, tied it around himself, then braced against a boulder. With considerable effort, she was able to keep her feet against the rock as she walked backward, going hand over hand down the rope.
Kier, in a hurry and having no good place to tie the line, opted for sliding down the rock variously on his feet and butt.
"You could have broken your leg," she said when he rose stiffly.
He shrugged and started down the watercourse. Still flowing in the middle of its bed, the water cleared the snow and made it possible to walk and leave no track. By following the stream, they could travel downhill to the cabin without leaving any sign. Their hunters might circle the entire mountain and never discover their path.
Tillman squatted alone in the gray light of early morning, studying Kier's footprints. The track led across the bottom of the chasm and disappeared into the head of the avalanche.
Having spotted the prints from the knife-edged ridge above, his men had concluded that they ought to bring in hounds to search the three-quarter-mile-long path of mountain rubble and snow in an attempt to find the bodies.
But before his men arrived, the mountain had told Tillman something was amiss. Scrutinizing the far wall of the chasm, he saw, in the blotchy pattern of white on greenish-gray rock, tiny points and ledges, some no wider than a postage stamp, that lacked the expected dusting of snow.
If Kier climbed the wall, what did he do with the woman? It was a certainty in Tillman's mind that Jessie Mayfield had not scaled the wall either before or after Kier. Not enough snow had been disturbed, even if he assumed that Kier climbed to the top and hoisted her up on a rope. Then he focused on the pine in front of the cave perhaps eighty feet over his head. It would be gutsy, but maybe Kier had strung a line and pulled her across. And if he did, they both went in the cave. Limestone mountains were notorious for caverns and the rock formation he now contemplated was geologically suitable. His research had indicated a network of caverns in this area.
If the cave above were an entrance to those caverns, the tracking would be greatly slowed. Tillman ground his teeth.
Putting men inside the cavern would only give Kier an incredible advantage. Tracking on the stone passageways would be useless. Kier probably had a map of sorts in his head, whereas neither Tillman nor his men would have a clue as to their whereabouts. The Indian would slaughter them.
Iron Mountain was a long ridge with a high spot rising as a summit. Other ridges intersected. Finding where Kier and Jessie might emerge would be time consuming. He would break the men into pairs and have them move fast, looking for any track. If Tillman were Kier, he would emerge from the caverns near a stream that could be followed downhill to avoid leaving sign in the snow. He would instruct his men accordingly.
He considered bringing Doyle up from the Donahue house, but he needed Doyle to lead the next group in. He would summon Doyle when he was closer to trapping Kier. Without further deliberation, Tillman knew to follow his instincts and halt any search of the avalanche. He radioed an alert to watch for tracks on the slopes of Iron Mountain. And he assigned no fewer than two men to search each creek.
Jessie celebrated seeing the cabin with her first smile in hours. They approached the place tentatively, as if it were too good to be true. It was small, she supposed twelve feet wide and perhaps twenty feet long. The peeled logs of its walls were caulked with a black substance in neat horizontal lines that emphasized the uniformity of the cabin's construction. The roof consisted of wooden shingles that still had the color of new straw. Through the roof at one end protruded a rock chimney shaped in a perfect rectangle.
Nestled as it was under the trees and close to a sheer drop, the cabin remained invisible from any direction unless one were within a hundred feet-except perhaps to someone with powerful binoculars on a faraway mountain. Directly in front of the cabin's covered porch, within a stone's throw, a waterfall cascaded into a small pool. Down fifty paces, the stream disappeared over another bluff. The setting was idyllic, and on a sunny, clear day, the view from the front porch would be inspiring to the point of rapture.
Suddenly it struck her that this was not an Indian design. There was nothing Indian about it.
"It's beautiful, but isn't this a white man's design?"
Kier's look told her that he was pleased with the observation. "Yes, that's right. But it's built only of natural materials found on this mountain. Except the windows… they were a real compromise. We do use other people's ideas."
Kier did not even try to open the door. Instead, he crawled under the cabin, which sat on a stone foundation. After he disappeared for a moment, she heard a clunking sound, as if he were pounding with a rock on wood. Shortly there was a clattering, as if something had been knocked loose.
"Door is fastened at the bottom, so it can't be opened unless you first release a catch."
The door was made of several layers of criss-crossed, rough-hewn boards and once released, it would not open without a hefty push. In lieu of hinges, the door was fastened to the wall by leather, which she took to be rawhide of some sort.