Watchman came awake fully and instantly. It was still night-dark and the wind still howled; for a moment he had trouble deciding what had disturbed him but then he listened to the wind again and discovered that its tone had changed.
Its direction had shifted around and the pitch of it had dropped; the air in the lean-to had a keen cold edge but it didn’t whip at him as it had before. As near as he could judge, it was coming up from the southwest now and that meant they were on the trailing edge of the storm’s circular flow: the blizzard was moving on east.
He had to adjust his blankets and peel back several layers of sleeve cuffs to see the luminous face of his watch. Just past five o’clock in the morning.
He turned, disturbing Vickers; heard Vickers grunt in his sleep and saw a shadowy figure sitting up in the mouth of the lean-to, wreathed in blankets and looking like one of those old photographs of Plains Indians sitting outside their tepees. That was Buck Stevens, keeping watch on the pilot.
Watchman touched him on the shoulder and went past to have a look at Walker. Then he began to dig around in the snow for firewood.
It took a long time to gather enough wood. It was quite wet but he built the fire on top of a burning Sterno can and that dried it out sufficiently for it to catch. He built it close against the rock face of the cliff, under the corner of the lean-to, and the wind whipped up the flames and carried the smoke away up the cliff.
Vickers and Mrs. Lansford moved close to the fire and Watchman lifted back the flap of horsehide over Keith Walker. The hide had frozen and it cracked when he bent it back. The embryonic figure moved: blinked and muttered. Stevens brought an aluminum cup of coffee and they got it inside the pilot. Walker’s face, when they brought him to the fire, was bloodless and slack, and his jerky rictus smile flashed on and off-the nervous reaction of spasmed relief, the smile of a survivor who had met death.
Mrs. Lansford gave him a grave look. “How do you feel?”
“All,” Walker said, and had to clear his throat. “All right. Like a cheap watch somebody forgot to wind up.” He shrank back against the heated rock as if to remove his offensiveness from the rest of them: the smell of dead flesh clung to his hair and clothes. “I guess I was pretty far gone.”
Vickers said, “You’re in bad trouble, Walker.”
Mrs. Lansford’s face came around fast. “For God’s sake.” She went back to Walker and her voice changed: “Do you think you can eat?”
“I’d like to try. I don’t know if I can hold it down.” His eyes were full of fear, darting from face to face, ready to flinch.
Vickers said, “Are you ready to talk?” in a no-nonsense voice.
Mrs. Lansford was building a plate for him and Watchman said, “Let the man eat something.”
“We haven’t got a whole lot of time, Trooper.” Vickers swallowed coffee and addressed himself to the pilot. “It may make a difference to the prosecution if I can tell them you came forward voluntarily and told the whole story to the FBI. But you’re not required to make any statement in the absence of your attorney and you-”
“Never mind the recitation. I know my rights.”
“Then you’ve been through this before?”
Walker had turned sullen. “Nuts. I look at television.” Mrs. Lansford got up to take him his food and stayed there beside him, making a point of it, showing Vickers her defiance.
Walker ate slowly with the concentration of a monk attending his breviary. Watchman thought it was because Walker was in no frame of mind to take anything for granted just now: the feel and sight and taste of each morsel was reassurance that he was alive.
Vickers said, “You have information we need, Walker. There are four men up there-how are they armed? What are their plans?”
“I don’t know-I’m not sure. Things are screwed up, you know?”
“I won’t accept that for an answer.”
“You know what it’s like when you wake up and you know you’ve had a bad dream but you can’t remember the details?”
It had a counterfeit sound but Watchman thought it was probably true; you didn’t always remember clearly things that happened in panic. Walker said, “I’m just not thinking straight. It’s not that I’m trying to hide anthing.” He was no longer sullen; he wasn’t angry at all. His expression had the false serenity of withdrawal.
Vickers said, “Lansford said they’d taken some rifles. Are they all armed with rifles?”
“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”
Mrs. Lansford’s eyes flashed. “Can’t you leave him alone?”
“Don’t waste your pity on this man, Mrs. Lansford.”
“He saved my life.”
“If it hadn’t been for him and his friends your life wouldn’t have needed saving.” Vickers had a nice neat way of drawing lines and putting people on one side or the other. Watchman saw the effect it had on Walker: it closed him up and he quit talking.
Vickers had a veneer of competent sophistication but underneath he was clumsy, insensitive. He let arrogance take the place of understanding. It wasn’t hard to guess the kind of mistake he must have made that had got him exiled to the boondocks; it was a wonder the Bureau had kept him on at all.
Vickers said, “I had a look in your pockets. You were their pilot.”
“Aeah.”
“The name on the license isn’t Walker.”
“Is that a fact.”
“Clamming up now won’t do your case any good, friend.”
“What will?”
“I will,” Mrs. Lansford said. “I’ll testify for him.”
Vickers said, “You’re not thinking straight. Think about the police officer they murdered in your house. Think about the bank guard they shotgunned to death.”
“Walker didn’t kill them.”
“He did in the eyes of the law.” Vickers got to his feet “I can see he’s not in a mood to cooperate. That’ll go in my report. Now I suggest we saddle up and move in.”
Watchman was picking up the blankets he had slept in. He walked around the fire and draped the blankets around Walker’s shoulders. The pilot looked up at him, showing thanks, and murmured, “The Major and Baraclough. You want to look out. You’re Indian, aren’t you?”
What did that have to do with anything? “Yes.”
“Then maybe you know a little something about snares and traps and ambushes. But I’ll tell you this-Hargit maybe knows more than you do. And Baraclough. Maybe they’re better Indians than you are. You want to look out.”
Vickers, listening close, made a scoffing sound. “Don’t let them assume monolithic proportions, Trooper. They’re just soldiers gone bad.”
Walker looked up at him. “You go on thinking that way and I won’t have to worry about what you put in your report because you won’t live to write it.”
“All right, they’ve thrown a scare into you. But you’re imagining things. They’re on the run-they’re just as scared as you are.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Walker said.
Mrs. Lansford said, “He’s right.” She said it to Watchman as if she knew there was no point talking to the FBI agent. Vickers had a genius for tuning out what he didn’t want to hear.
Vickers was lifting his saddle off the lean-to. “Come on, Trooper. Your partner can stay here and watch the prisoner and look after Mrs. Lansford.”
“They can look after themselves,” Watchman said. “We’ll need Buck with us.”
“And let this man make a run for it as soon as we’re out of earshot? You know damn well Mrs. Lansford wouldn’t lift a finger to stop him. Hell she’d probably go with him.”
Mrs. Lansford’s face reddened; she didn’t speak. Walker said drily, “You could always handcuff me to a tree.”
“I thought of it,” Vickers said. “But there’s a chance we might not come back.”
“You mean a chance of getting killed.”
“Yes.” Vickers was stubborn about rules, about going by the book. It wasn’t his sense of humanity, it was his sense of reputation. It wouldn’t look good in his obituary to have it pointed out that he had left an unattended prisoner chained to a tree to die in a blizzard.
Watchman shook his head. “Trooper Stevens is under my orders, not yours. He comes with me. You can come or stay, that’s up to you.”
“I don’t like your implication, Trooper.”
“I’ll spell it out in short words then. I trust Buck not to make mistakes up here. He grew up in the Arizona hill country-he’s been hunting out here since he was ten years old. When his daddy gave him two cartridges he was supposed to bring back two cottontails and he did it.”
He caught the grin behind Stevens’ hand. Stevens didn’t make any comment but when Vickers replied, Stevens’ eyes sought inspiration from the sky: Good God.
“I’ve done my share of game hunting,” Vickers said. “I’ve told you that.”
“In New Jersey?” Watchman tried hard to keep the acid out of his voice. “You fellows have a very big crime-busting reputation and it’s probably deserved, mostly, but can you navigate these mountains in this weather? Can you make sense out of sign? Spot an ambush in the woods? You heard Walker, he knows these men. Hargit may be a better Indian than I am; he’s bound to be a lot better Indian than you are.”
Stevens drawled, “Better red than dead, Mr. Vickers.” His grin was amiable.
Vickers flashed an irritable glance toward the rookie. “Next you’re going to tell me he can smell a white man in a blizzard.”
Watchman said, “I also grunt and wear feathers and consider myself a member of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Now if we’re through with the ethnic discussions let’s get these horses saddled.”