“Sure—sure.” Jay’s breath ran out of him. “When you were a kid did the other kids ever take you on a snipe hunt? That’s what I’ve been feeling like since last night. All I need’s a burlap sack and a flashlight to complete the picture.” Jay humped himself up onto the lip of the excavation. His face came into stronger light and Mackenzie saw unhealthy blisters under his eyes.

Jay had to wait to get his breath before he spoke again: “I started out with the best intentions but I’m a stinking amateur. It’s a wonder I’m still alive. Lying here all day in this grave—I couldn’t get to sleep. All that resolute ambition drained right out of me. Then I heard you coming—thought it was Duggai. I made myself as small as I could. I didn’t recognize you until you’d gone right by. Thank God you came. I’m not sure I could make it back alone.”

“We’re not going back,” Mackenzie said.

“Once in a while he takes a turn along the top of the ridge up there. He’s got field glasses. He searches the whole area. Takes his time. Two or three times I could have sworn he was looking right at me.”

“Any pattern to it? Does he show up at regular intervals?”

“Not that I could tell. Twice yesterday—maybe more than that but I saw him twice. Once tonight since sundown. For a while he had a campfire up there. I couldn’t see the fire but I saw the flicker on the hillside. It’s gone out now, or gone down.”

“He’s got to sleep sometime,” Mackenzie said.

“I wonder about that. With him anything’s possible.”

Mackenzie was thinking: if he’s using hand-held binoculars then they’re not stronger than eight-power. It was useful knowledge.

“What are we going to do, Sam?”

“Find that water hole after dark.”

“He’ll see us if we go out there.”

“Maybe. Right now I’ve got digging to do.”

“I’ll give you a hand.”

They picked a spot behind a greasewood clump. Mackenzie scraped a pit for himself while Jay dug a still.

By the time Mackenzie had gone thirty inches down it was dawn and he was worn out. He kept his attention on the hilltops waiting for Duggai to appear. They stretched the half-square of plastic across the still and weighted it with a stone. Mackenzie divided his ration of meat with Jay. “Get as much sleep as you can.”

“Hard to sleep not knowing when he may take a notion to wander down this way.”

“If he does there’s not much we can do about it.”

By noon his eyes felt sticky and the hovering glare had given him a headache. He had slept a few hours and been too keyed up to sleep any more after that. His tired lids took longer to blink as he watched the summits through the lacework of creosote branches.

Concern for Shirley and Earle rubbed against him. He hadn’t wanted to leave them behind; he’d had to face the necessity; but bitterness made him irritable. If we get out of this and they don’t.… It was something he doubted he’d be able to live with.

The inimical desert was leaching him of strength; it was a steady deterioration that no amount of primitive ingenuity could halt and what worried him was the knowledge that he was the strongest of them: if he couldn’t resist it then what chance did Shirley and Earle have? Even if he managed to drag himself and Jay beyond Duggai’s range they would still have endless miles to crawl and by the time they reached the destination it might be too late for the others.

Something moved on the summit.

The distance was perhaps a thousand yards and Duggai’s figure was tiny against the sky but the silhouette was etched in crystal-sharp outline and Mackenzie saw it when Duggai lifted the binoculars to his eyes and began to search the flats. There was no sky reflection off the lenses and that meant there were rubber antiglare hoods around them. Duggai was wearing a wide cowboy hat and his shirt and trousers were pale and loose: Mackenzie could see the shirttail flap in the breeze.

He knew logically that Duggai couldn’t see him. He was behind a thick bush; there was nothing above ground but his eyes and hairline; he was in shadow. But he understood the coppery dry fear Jay had expressed: Duggai was looking straight at him.

Duggai was only being sensible—keeping a check on his rear—but the terror couldn’t be denied. Suppose I left visible tracks last night?

It was mitigated by the fact that Duggai kept turning the glasses steadily, sweeping in slow arcs. But still it was like one of those paintings: wherever you stand in the room it stares you in the eye.

He must have seen Jay come into the hills. He didn’t see him leave. He knows Jay’s got to be around here somewhere.

He’s giving us rope, that’s all.

Then he thought: is it possible he didn’t see Jay the other night?

Had Duggai been asleep during that hour?

It would explain why Duggai hadn’t made any effort to come looking for him. It was the sort of coincidence that easily could have happened but Mackenzie was reluctant to credit it.

In any case they’d have to predicate their actions on the assumption that Duggai knew he had at least one of them behind him.

Duggai walked up to another vantage point, a fifty-yard hike to the west, and repeated his scan.

From the corner of his eye Mackenzie glanced at the plastic still. They’d heaped earth around the edges and it lay to the north of the catclaw fifteen feet from him but they had to put it out where the sun could hit it. To look at it Duggai would have to be able to see through the catclaw but the sky might make enough of a reflection on the plastic. With luck he might take it for mica or pyrites or quartz—the desert made a blinding glitter anyway.

Now Duggai put his right shoulder to Mackenzie and began to search the country to his west. It was then Mackenzie realized he’d nearly stopped breathing. He drew a long hot dry gust into his lungs.

Shortly thereafter Duggai walked back behind the ridge and Mackenzie didn’t see him again until late in the afternoon when Duggai repeated the ritual.

It was full dark before they ventured out of their cool graves. “How’s the foot?”

“A little tender, what the hell. I can walk. You name the program, I’ll follow it.” Jay regarded him eagerly but his face had a gray tired look and folds of trenchant weariness bracketed his mouth. He’d been remarkably agreeable ever since Mackenzie’s arrival—that was partly relief and gratitude but mostly it was the sense that Mackenzie had some sort of magic that was going to save his life. There was a toadying obeisance in the way Jay looked at him. Jay must have persuaded himself that he didn’t have to obey but that he would comply because if he argued or refused he’d be letting Mackenzie down.

It was a reversal of Jay’s earlier attitude and it could make matters easier for a while. Mackenzie played along: he took a tone of stern command.

“We wait until he makes his next sweep. After that we move out of here.”

“All right, fine. Whatever you say.”

They uncapped the still. Mackenzie folded the plastic with care and put it in the pouch with the remaining jerky. There was a quart of water in the plastic bag; they took a drink and Mackenzie bagged the rest of it inside the rabbit-skin sack. They made a slow hard-chewing meal of the dried meat and sat together on the lip of Jay’s trench under the big manzanita waiting for Duggai to appear.

Mackenzie said, “I was up there last night. If there’s a water hole you can’t see it from there. It’s got to be hidden down in a cutbank. Once we get that far we should be out of his view.”

“And between here and there?”

“We take a large chance.”

“On what?”

“Duggai. I’m counting on a supposition that he sleeps through the night in catnaps. Rouses himself every two or three hours to have a look around. I don’t think he sleeps in the daytime—he’d have to be worried about helicopters and planes. He knows they’re not going to fly search patterns at night so he’d feel safe sleeping then.”