Duane scrabbled, like an ant trapped in an ant lions’ collapsing cone, to the highway as the serrated crack became a chasm in the center of the bridge. Under the twin forces of wind and swollen, rushing river water, it crumpled in on itself and flew to pieces. It was not until Woodard had caught his breath and turned around, expecting to see more escapees climbing to their feet, that he realized he was the only one to get out.
The speed of the catastrophe benumbed him. He looked down at his feet, his torn jacket and ungloved hands turning into frigid lumps of marble in the cold.
A final hunk of concrete gave way and tumbled down into the gorge. The bridge was not just weak. The bridge had been sabotaged.
Being a hopeless optimist, Duane was certain that somebody must have gotten out through a window after the van hit the water. He tramped around the ground, looking for a path leading into the gorge.
With a furious yapping, a ball of snow-fuzzed canine fury surged out of the wind.
“Hey, boy,” said Duane Woodard, kneeling down and coaxing the dog. “Who do you belong to?”
Feet crunched through snow off to his side. A black cloud burst out of the storm, a boulder held high above its head. Woodard did not have time to wonder why it looked like a bear or smelled so ghastly as the rock slammed down. Adrenaline triggered by the ferocity of the attack impelled him to jump sideways as the boulder socked into the snow. The figure closed long fingers over its rough edges and picked it up again.
The dog lunged at him, and Duane kicked the beast onto its back. He scrambled to his feet with a rock of his own and flung it at the thing, affecting its aim as it threw the boulder a second time. It landed clear, and Duane put away all thoughts of rescuing passengers. He ran for the road.
Another rock hit his thickly padded shoulder, and he slipped over the tarmac. The snow was up to his knees, slowing down his movements.
He heard snow crunching off the road to his left. The thing was pacing him. Thing? Why did he think that? It was some psycho local boy who liked auto accidents, wasn’t it? Big, though. Farm guy.
Duane instinctively stopped and jumped backward. Another rock made a hole in the air where his head had just been.
He was good with those rocks. He was better than Duane with a football. He had a fur coat, didn’t he? Had to. Arms and legs and everything.
Duane broke into a run, chewed up a few yards of road, and stopped to listen again. The psycho made a growling sound. Ahead of him! He had run clean past Duane and headed him off. Duane cut off the road into the crumpled, ridged meadow, where dead trees swayed and branches covered with snow humped the ground. He heard the guy coming after him.
A tree branch propellered through the air against the wind and clawed up the ground, entangling his feet and tripping him. Duane rolled over as whoever or whatever it was bounded up. He jumped to his feet and ducked past a mountain of fur and gristle back toward the road.
That was not a man!
Fear rose like smoke from Duane’s vitals up through his chest and permeated his head. He zigzagged his way back to the highway through clumps of buried grass and weed as the snow whirled around him. The ground formed ripple-shaped hummocks, their lee sides banked with deep, soft snow. That was when Duane had his idea. It was not a good idea, but ideas of any kind were hard to come by in this particular situation. That thing was a living snowplow, as unheeding of lumpy ground as a locomotive was of stopping. Duane turned back off the road, doubled around a few times, and managed to put some more yards between himself and the thing. He turned off the road one final time and body-flopped deep into a snowbank slanting up the side of a hummock.
With luck the storm would cover up his traces in seconds. He would be buried completely. If not that, at least his form would be indistinguishable from any of the branches lying around the meadow.
He felt the growing weight of snow on his back. He breathed shallowly, so as not to crack the precious mantle as it built up. Driven by the wind, the snow piled against every crevice of his body, the separation of arm and legs, the gentle rise of his back, past his ears and over his head, sending his consciousness into a limbo of unearthly frozen quiet.
It was not a bear, he thought. He wished it were a bear, so it would kill him quickly. More wind. More wind, more snow, let the storm burst open, let the heavens fall.
A foot sank down into the snow six inches in front of his head.
Jason put his fingertips together and said, “Moon? I will make you an offer. I will give you ten thousand dollars cash for the toe in your medicine bundle.”
“Sir,” Moon answered. “If you come near to me, I will cut your guts out and string them over that fireplace there.”
Helder wheeled around in his chair, a Scotch glass in his hand. “None of that, you two. Be nice. Be nice.” He sipped his Scotch, then said, “I say. What toe?”
“Moon’s got a Bigfoot toe in his medicine bundle.”
That detonated in Helder’s booze-fogged brain like a slow-burning phosphorus grenade, growing hotter and hotter until its heat broke through his drunkenness. “That leather thing?” He looked at the Indian, mouth open. “Moon, is that true?”
Moon’s jaw muscles bunched up. If looks were daggers, Jason would have been sliced to pieces.
Here we go, Martha groaned inwardly as the Indian slipped out his knife. He advanced toward Jason, flipped the knife, and caught it by the tip. Flipping it again, he pointed the blade at him. He smiled so broadly that his face cracked into hundreds of wrinkles, into which his eyes disappeared. “You’re making a mistake, mister.”
“I don’t think so,” Jason said, slipping out his pistol and holding it loosely in his hands.
“Yeah, you are. You know why? ’Cause he’s your spirit, too.”
“How do you figure that?”
“ ’Cause you’re following him, just like I am.”
“Hardly for the same reason, Moon!”
Moon shook his head, the smile stamped on his face. “It don’t matter shit what your reasons are. Everybody’s got different reasons. Every day I said to myself, that’s it. I’ve had it. One more day and if he don’t give me my name I’ll quit. But you never quit. You just keep after him, and you find out one day he’s taken over your whole life.” He pointed the knife again. “That’s what a spirit does to you. That’s what he done to you and me.”
“He’s got you there,” said Martha, wanting to defuse the tension.
“Bull,” said Jason.
“It’s no more incredible than what you suggested.”
“I am following a flesh-and-blood creature, Martha. Not a ghost. That’s all.”
“But that’s just what spirits are to the Indians, Raymond,” said Martha, walking over to the fire. “They were alive. They ate and slept and hunted and made fools of themselves. They were so real you couldn’t tell them from animals. Maybe there never was that much difference.”
Moon was wary of her. She was leading off into tracks of her own. “There were differences, ma’am.”
“Yes, but how could you tell a bad one from a good one?”
“You were taught.”
“But didn’t they sometimes work the way the devil did? The Christian devil? Didn’t the bad ones ever convince you they were really good and get you into a situation where you were trapped and didn’t know it till too late? That’s how the devil works, you know. He comes on like a saint. Or like a poor, misguided, pitiable little bird that everybody feels sorry for. Treachery, John! Didn’t the Indian spirits know treachery? Did they betray humans?”
The Indian studied Martha with profound interest as firelight flickered off his knife blade.