“Odd how the mind can win out over the body,” Ryan said.
“How’s that?”
“Two hours ago I seriously thought that I was a candidate for the faceless guy with the black cloak. Haven’t felt as rough for a long while.”
“Now?”
“Now I still haven’t had any water. Been climbing all the time. But I know I can make it.”
Trader was sitting on a bench carved from the living rock, his long legs stretched out, admiring the view down to the bottom of the canyon and the slender white-flecked worm of blue-green that was the river.
“No sign of J.B. and Abe,” he said. “Still, we don’t know which rim of the gorge they’re on.”
During the long hours of the steep climb, neither Trader nor Ryan had mentioned the real possibility that both of their friends might have perished during the carnage of the powerful earthquake.
A PROTRUDING BLUFF had closed them off from any sight of the ruins for the past six or seven hundred feet. Now they were finally safely on the top of the trail, and the plateau was open, dotted with trees.
The old building was visible, a quarter mile away, with smoke rising from one of its chimneys.
Chapter Twenty
“Don’t fancy it,” Abe said. “Looks safe.”
“Looks to me like it’s been made from last year’s spiderweb.”
The Armorer shook his head. “We have to get across the river, Abe. Last glimpse I had of Ryan and Trader was when they were under the cliff on the other side of the canyon. If they managed to get out of there, then they’ll likely be over on the east.”
“But suppose that bridge is wrecked when we get all the way down there?”
“Then we climb back up again. Or watch out for some way of taking to the water.”
Abe laughed. “You sure got a hell of a nerve, John Dix. You can see the spray, and we’ve looked into the mouth of some of them rapids. No way anyone could have ridden the white waters. No way at all.”
“So, we take the bridge. Difficult to see, with the sun rising over that side, but I’m sure I can make out a trail up to the top there.”
Abe wiped sweat off his face. There was a livid bruise on his right cheek where he’d failed in his attempt to mount one of the fleeing terrified horses. It had been scant consolation that even the supercompetent Armorer had also been unable to stop any of the animals. They hadn’t seen any sign of any of the horses since the quake.
“But what if we get down and across? Look, there’s that side river we have to get over as well. Then you’re wrong and there’s no track at all? You saying we come all the way back up here, again?”
“If that’s what it takes. Come on.”
“HOW MANY ROUNDS you got, Abe?”
“Full load and about a dozen spares.”
“I got an extra clip for the Uzi and a few spares for the Smith amp; Wesson scattergun.”
It was a source of wonderment to the little gunner how J.B. showed so few signs of their ordeal. His own clothes were covered in sandy mud, and he was a mass of bruises and cuts, as if he’d been dragged through a hedge backward.
But the Armorer somehow managed to look much like he always did the fedora, admittedly dusty around the crown, perched solidly on his head; the glasses, admittedly a little smeared, high on the bridge of his thin nose; the coat pockets filled with all manner of esoteric tools and equipment; and the Uzi and the M-4000 shotgun, clean and oiled, immaculate as though they’d just been taken out of their original makers’ containers.
“Well,” J.B. said, interrupting Abe’s thoughts, “let’s go look at that bridge.”
The track was steep, partly broken up, leading down from the rim of the canyon toward the side channel of the river.
It took over an hour to make their way through the growing heat. The sun, almost directly overhead, was filling the canyon with its bright fire.
It was impossible to reach the main channel and the skittering bridge without first finding some way over the slower-moving tributary.