A quick tally to rule out alternatives: Scent? No—his olfactory talents were not particularly keen; he smelled nothing unusual. Sight? No—nothing. Tactile information? No—nothing remarkable except perhaps the hint of dampness in the air.

Therefore it must be something audible.

He listened again; heard nothing he hadn’t heard before.

Then the slow conscious mind informed him.

It was a shift in direction. The rooting noise was coming up to reach him—up from a level beneath him. The water was in a depression.

He put his foot forward and lowered it without taking his balance off the other leg.

Nothing there.

If he’d kept walking he’d have pitched right over. Maybe not much of a fall—ten feet—but it could have broken a bone. His ears had told him the pigs were ten feet lower than he was.

Therefore I am not yet dead.

They withdrew along the trail and emerged into marginally better light. He made out the strain on Jay’s drawn features.

“They’re digging salt down there—we’ll need it. And I’d like to try and kill one of those pigs. It’ll give us enough food for the rest of the hike. If we lose a day here we’ll make it up—we can bag quite a bit of water and stretch our marching hours. What do you say?”

“You mean lay over here all day?”

“We’d have to. To dry the meat.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“Keep going. We might get beyond Duggai’s sight by daylight.”

“You think we’d be better off if we stayed here until tomorrow night, don’t you.”

“I’m still kicking it around,” Mackenzie said, “but we’ve got to make up our minds.”

“My foot’s starting to give me hell. Another day’s rest would help a lot. But you decide. You know best.”

“Allright. We’ll stay.”

“How the hell can you kill one of those things?”

“Ambush it out here where we’ve got enough light to see by. We know the route they’re going to take.”

Mackenzie set it up as best he could and while he worked on it Jay sat nursing his foot and watching Mackenzie’s every move, waiting with doglike patience for any morsel of attention Mackenzie might toss at him: Jay’s mind hadn’t gone soft but he seemed to have settled into the new role he was trying out as devoted sidekick. Mackenzie had a feeling it would last only as long as he didn’t make a serious mistake. As soon as he damaged Jay’s desperate faith in him that would end it: Jay would feel betrayed. He might sulk or he might explode but either way he’d be hard to deal with after that. It surprised Mackenzie that Jay hadn’t already started to rail about the open pits they’d left.

To herd the pigs closer to his chosen ambush Mackenzie rolled a rock across the trail, narrowing the opening. The cliff started here, rising out of the earth; it was no more than five feet high. They would be more likely to look for danger in their path and on their flanks; less likely to look up—and the wind should carry his scent right over their heads.

He didn’t know how long it would be before they came out. He had two minutes or he had the rest of the night.

He instructed Jay and posted him across the trail in the brush; they assembled a pile of throwing rocks.

It would have been simpler to set a snare but they had no rope capable of restraining a strong forty-pound animal nor would they be able to lift a rock that would be heavy enough to stun or kill a pig from a triggered deadfall trap. Mackenzie was going to have to get close enough to kill the pig by hand.

His only weapon was the trivial brass-cartridge knife and he didn’t think that would do the job. Their hides would resist the soft metal and he couldn’t count on getting an eye.

The nearest manzanita was a good distance off the trail. He sent Jay to break off a branch; Mackenzie remained on the cliff with his knife and a stone in case the peccaries came. He kept his eye on the trail where it disappeared under the opaque shadow of the cliff and heard the rending crackle of twisting wood on the plain behind him. The stuff was not easy to break.

Jay brought him the prize. “I hope it’s all right.”

“It’ll do fine.”

Jay beamed at him and retreated to his post and Mackenzie hefted the branch: it was a strong stick with a crook in it, a little shorter than a baseball bat and considerably lighter in weight; not heavy enough to do service as a club. A twisted strand of flexible bark hung from its end where Jay had had to rip it loose. Mackenzie wondered if the bark had enough tensile strength to make a thong. Then he rejected it; he couldn’t afford to experiment and have it fail. Instead he set the food pouch beside him on top of the ledge and pulled the hide drawstring out of it. Pouch, string, breechclout and moccasins all were stiffening to an uncomfortable hardness and his shoulder was badly welted where the tough strap had chafed it. He foresaw no improvement in that situation; they’d just have to make the best of it. Even if they did manage to kill a javelina its hide would be far stiffer than the jackrabbit skins and in any case they’d need the pig hide for a water bag; it would harden up to the consistency of wood but that wouldn’t affect its usefulness as a vessel.

He pulled his mind back to the immediate problem and focused on the attempt to solve it. There was no point speculating about the use of javelina skin until you had a javelina.

Jay’s efforts to tear the club off the bush had left one end of the stick split clear through. The split ran down into the wood a few inches and one side of it had curled back. Mackenzie took the split ends in both hands and pulled with steady pressure. The split ran farther along the wood and he pulled the ends apart carefully with continuing effort until he judged it deep enough.

As an interim weapon he’d been clutching a stone; he’d picked it up from the foot of the cliff. It was a shale slab with the shape of a wedge—butt end as thick as his wrist, blade considerably thinner. It was irregular and not quite as heavy as he’d have preferred but he didn’t want to waste time hunting for a better one. He rammed it down into the split stick and used the rawhide thong to tie the wood tight around it. If he struck a bad blow the rock probably would fly right out of the wood but in the meantime it made for a rudimentary ax—stone blade, wood handle. Not as effective as his ancestors’ tomahawks but then he hadn’t had weeks to craft it.

He gripped it in his right fist and clutched the knife in his left and lay along the cliff above the game trail waiting for the pigs to finish their pleasure.

23

Time ran by—the slice of moon gave him a rough gauge—and it was midnight and Mackenzie listened to the approach of the javelina, small hoofs clicking on the rock as they came.

His muscles gathered and he saw Jay cock an arm, ready to throw if the peccaries tried the wrong side of the rock they’d rolled across the path.

The leader came into the light and paused when it came on the rock: snuffled and swung its neckless head from side to side. The pigs bunched up behind it and finally the leader came into the passage between rock and cliff: it burst through quickly and trotted under Mackenzie’s position and went on to the open where it began to run sideways, circling, making a little dance of agitation while it waited for the others to brave the pass.

Mackenzie’s scheme was artlessly direct: to fall with his club upon the last pig in line.

But the bunch herded together and he regretted having moved the rock; they knew the trail and the alteration had nerved them up—now they hesitated and finally they all tried to squeeze through at once.

The weaker ones gave way; the bunch came crowding through the neck. Mackenzie poised to spring. But the last two pigs came through abreast, hurrying to catch up.