As the headlights white out the sky above me, I expel all my air and let my head sink beneath the torrent. I am nothing to those above me, a ripple of water sweeping beneath them, a piece of driftwood borne on the flood.

Suddenly, the black tide swells beneath me, lifting me toward the sky like a magic carpet. Thunder roars around me, atomizing the water to mist. There is no air here, only different states of water. I am suspended long enough to hear bursts of gunfire behind me. Then a great fist slams me to the bottom of a well and holds me there, trying with all its power to bludgeon me unconscious. My lungs scream as they did the day I dragged Ruby from our burning house, but I dare not breathe. To breathe here is to join the hammering darkness.

As suddenly as before, the great hand hurls me up out of the well and onto the surface, which feels land solid after the vaporous thunder of the chute. I feel as though some great beast had sucked me into its maw, chewed me for a few moments, and, finding me distasteful, spat me out whole.

The air feels warm against my face. I probe my arms and legs, searching for broken bones. Remarkably, I seem intact. Turning back toward the thundering mist, I watch the exit of the chute, a white mouth spitting foam between two rock walls like the jet of a great hose. Surely Stone has passed through by now, though not, I fear, as invisibly as I did. The gunfire I heard must have been directed at him.

I try to tread water, but my strength is gone. I can only lie back and float, nose and mouth above the surface, waiting for some sign that Stone survived. An image of his bullet-riddled body bobbing up beside me flits through my head, but I quickly banish it. My odds of surviving the night up here without him are very low.

Stone will come. If anything, the ex-FBI man is tougher than I. He is nearly seventy, yes. And he's wounded. But it's not as though physical prowess of any degree could affect one's fate while passing through that cataract. Stone's fate is in the lap of the gods.

"Swim, goddamn it."

For a dazed moment I think I am talking to myself, but I'm not. Stone has kicked up beside me like a shipwrecked sailor, looking more dead than alive.

"Did they hit you again?"

His eyes are only half open. "Kick your feet, Cage. We've got another half mile to go."

"Why not get out here?"

"Too close… kick, damn you."

I start kicking, and soon enough the current is carrying us along as steadily as it did behind Stone's cabin, though more slowly. The river has spread out here. Shrubs and boulders sail past us in the moonlight, while smaller rocks abrade our knees and elbows. Stone grips my windbreaker and speaks as we drift along.

"Crested Butte is three miles south. We can't stay in the river without the boat… too cold. And I can't run. I'm not dying, but I can't run. There's a campground up here. When we get close, you're going to get out on the south bank. Right now they're stuck north of the river. Follow the river south, running as fast as you can, hugging the bluff for cover. When you see the lights of town, circle to your right and come in from the south, in case they're waiting for you."

"I'm not leaving you here. You-"

"We haven't got time for this! You want a bar called the Silver Bell. It's just off the main street, Elk Avenue. The bartender is a mountain of a guy called Tiny McSwain. In my drinking days we got pretty tight. Tell Tiny to take you to an airport. Any airport but the one you flew into. Still got your wallet?"

I grab my hip pocket. "Still there."

"Cash?"

I nod. I brought two thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills for just this reason, so I couldn't be traced by credit card charges.

"You may have to hide out until you get a morning flight. Denver maybe. Do whatever you have to do, but stay out of sight."

A yellow light appears from the darkness ahead, hovering in the air to my right, about fifty yards away.

"That's the campground," Stone says. "Come on."

We separate and fight our way to the south bank. As my hands collide with cold rock, I hear a screech of brakes ahead. Crawling out of the water, I realize my legs are nearly numb.

"They must have driven like banshees to get here that fast," Stone says through rattling teeth. "Tear off a piece of your shirttail."

"What?"

"Your shirttail."

In my weakened state, tearing the soaked cotton is like trying to rip a phone book in half. As I struggle with the hem, Stone jabs a stick through a stretched-taut place and rips off a long piece.

"What do you want me to do? Make a surrender flag?"

He hands me the fabric and rolls over on his stomach. "Wad up a hunk of that and jam it into my wound."

I tear off most of the shirttail and squeeze it into a tight wet tennis ball of cloth, then crouch over Stone's back. Garbled voices float to us from the direction of the campground.

"Where are you hit?"

"Left cheek of my ass. Took out a plug of muscle, I think."

I feel along his left buttock until my fingers mush into a warm opening. Stone doesn't even flinch. The hole is ragged, but it runs across the buttock at an angle, like a deep grazing wound. The swelling below it is considerable, though, and it's bound to get worse now that he's out of the cold water.

"Hurry!" he grunts.

I squeeze the cloth into a tighter ball and hold it against the opening. "Ready?"

"Do it."

In one hard stroke I depress the cloth into the hole as he tenses beneath me. It reminds me of helping my father pack a decubitus ulcer when I worked for him in high school. Now I need something to hold the packing in the wound. Removing my soaked windbreaker, I pull off what's left of my shirt and slide it under Stone's left leg, then tie it over the hole.

"That's the best I can do for now," I tell him, pulling my jacket back on.

"What's the name of the bar?" he asks, rolling over. His face is even whiter than before.

"The Silver Bell. Bartender's Tiny McSwain."

"Good. Move your ass, kid."

"What are you going to do?"

He drops one hand to his waist, where the butt of his.45 glints dully in the dark. "Slow those bastards down for you."

"I'll stay and help you, damn it."

"You can't help me. You don't have a gun. You'll help me by getting your ass back to Mississippi and nailing Portman's hide to the barn wall."

"Stone-"

The old agent grips my arm with more strength than I thought he could possibly have left. "No matter what you hear, keep running. I mean that. If it sounds like the goddamn O.K. Corral up here, you keep running until you reach that bar."

"There's only one way I'll go."

"How's that?"

"If you promise to testify."

His laughter is full of irony. "Boy, if I survive this night, wild horses couldn't stop me from testifying. Portman gave the order for these sons of bitches to kill us because he thought I was going to testify. Well, now he's right. If I'm alive, I'll get to Mississippi. I'll drag Portman's ass down from the mountaintop if I have to tear the whole mountain down with him. Marston too. Now, get your ass out of here."

I get to my knees and look through the trees to the south.

"Don't come back," Stone says quietly. "Not with Tiny or the sheriff. After you leave, everybody up here but me is a target. That's how I want it. The whole thing'll be over by the time anybody could get here, and if I don't come out on top, whoever came would die for nothing. If you come back, I'll shoot you myself."

I grab his upper arm. "The trial starts in thirty-six hours. You get your ass back to Mississippi. You owe it to Del Payton."

He nods in the dark. "That I do, Cage. That I do."

My run to the town is a benumbed nightmare of falls and slides and collisions with trees, an endless march into a killing wind, but I never consider resting. Dwight Stone is offering up his life to cover my escape.