Damn it, he had gotten Erik loose and now all they had to do was get back. But how?
He began slowly to turn over in his mind, as he prowled among the ruins, just what he knew or thought he knew. Mentally he drew a map, starting with the window in the kiva where there was an opening—an “always” opening, it was said. Possibly two miles west was the opening through which he had come with Kawasi, an opening also used by Tazzoc. The Saqua had disappeared at No Man’s Mesa across the river and about equidistant from the kiva or Tazzoc’s opening. This seemed to be the focal point, if such there was, of the anomalous area. It was too dark to make a search, even if he had had more to work with. Disappointed, he returned to the fire and got out his old canvas map. It had been copied from the map on gold, yet there were differences, added by the old man himself.
The one thing that disturbed him was the unexplained red cross marked on the map.
Obviously important, yet he could not at the moment recall anything the old man had said about it. For that matter, he had never explained the map itself.
“Johnny? You’ve prowled around this country. What do you make of that?”
After a quick glance around, Johnny leaned over his shoulder. “Ain’t far from here, not as far as a body might figure,” he muttered. “Can’t say I’ve ever been yonder.” He stepped back and looked around at the sky-lined ridges. “Used to have a time with cows,” he said. “Come wintertime, they’d try to find a place out of the wind. With snow all over everything they’d sometimes half-slide down into some canyon, and come summer, with the snow gone, they couldn’t get out.
“I’ve found beef cattle ten, twelve vear old that never seen a man, seemed like. Holed up in those canyons with no way out. If lucky they got into one where, come spring, there’d be grass as well as water.
“Left to theirselves, cows can wander a far piece, an’ that’s how come I found the Hole. I was huntin’ strays and here an’ yonder I’d rounded up a good many. I rode up to the north end of the Hole and seen all that green. I just knowed cows would find a way down. When I rode back to the outfit I told them what I’d found an’ they laughed at me.
” ‘Trees, grass, an’ water? You’re havin’ a pipe dream, Johnny.’ That’s what they said. We boys was always yarnin’, o’ course, so’s there was some reason for them to be doubtful.”
He took another long look at the map. He put a finger on a spot near the red cross. “Now that there. Looks like somethin’—”
“What I can’t understand is that we were told the opening was controlled. That it wasn’t safe, yet when Chief—that’s my dog— when he went through, he seemed to be running off into the distance, barking after something. So how could it be so controlled?”
“The Hand has ways, maybe some electronic contrivance, that lets him know when anybody comes through. Or maybe it’s some natural effect they’ve come to understand. Anyway, he does know.”
They fell silent, studying the canvas map. Erik got up and came over to them. “Sorry I’ve been so much trouble. I was weak as a cat.”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” Johnny said. “Don’t give it a thought. When that there Kawasi gets back, we got to make our try.”
Mike Raglan looked away, then back at the map, narrowing his vision in hopes something would take shape that he had not seen. He was frightened, and admitted it to himself. He wanted to get out, and he had promised he would lead them. Vaguely, there seemed to be a trail of sorts to that red cross. Why had the old cowboy put it there? Or had he? Perhaps … No, it had to have been the cowboy. There was some significance to that cross, nothing else like it on the map.
Where was Kawasi?
“This Melisande, Erik? You’ve actually seen her? Do you know her?”
“I’m in love with her. First time in my life, Mike, if you can picture that. We met and … Well, I don’t know what to say. We started to talk. She’s the last of them, Mike, the last of that crowd on the steamboat.”
“Erik, the Iron Mountain vanished in 1872!”
“Her grandfather was aboard, carrying a lot of trade goods to establish a post in Montana, on the Upper Missouri. When the transfer came, nobody knew what to do, but after a few days he accepted it as something he did not comprehend but must live with. He and six others left the boat. The others were clinging to the one thing they understood, to their one grasp of reality.
“Her grandfather scouted the country, found a little valley watered by springs, built a cabin, and moved in with all that belonged to him. There was another couple with some youngsters who came with them. Her grandfather had a son, who became the father of Melisande. Simple as that. Now she’s the only one left and she can’t handle the gardening as well as the guarding.
“Her grandfather, when he had time to think, began sorting it out.” Erik paused. “He must have been a remarkable man, with imagination beyond the ordinary. In his youth his father had kept an inn and he had grown up hearing much speculation by intelligent travelers who stopped by.
“One man who stayed for several weeks was a doctor who had formerly had charge of a hospital for the insane, and one man brought to him had been found wandering in the woods by a farmer.
“The man was dressed oddly and seemed to speak no known language, and had been put down as mildly insane. After a few conversations the doctor thought otherwise and began to spend time with the man. Then he discovered the man possessed a remarkable skill at drawing.
“Supplied with materials, the man drew an accurate pen-and-ink sketch of the farm where he had been found. Then he drew a vertical line, and on the other side drew a picture of a totally different world. In that world he drew a figure of a man. He touched that figure with his finger, then himself, indicating the man in the drawing was himself.
“Then he had drawn a second figure of himself showing him passing through the line, and then a third picture showing him standing where he was found by the farmer.
“It was obviously an attempt by the man to explain what had happened, but others ridiculed the whole idea. However, nobody objected when the doctor had the man placed in his custody. He then learned English, adapted himself to life in his new country, patented a few minor inventions (or were they memories?) and settled easily into the life.
“Stories of the supernatural had been much in vogue during Melisande’s grandfather’s time. It was the period when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. There was Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and the many stories by Poe and others of the kind.
“Melisande grew up with such tales and others told by her grandfather. He, as a matter of fact, outlived his son, her father. Realizing she would soon be alone, he explained what she must do.
“There was, he assured her, most certainly a way back. She had only to discover it and return to her own people. He had come upon some evidence to help her.
“He explained that while he did not pretend to understand the phenomena that caused the interchanges, he had learned something of the conditions surrounding them. From the instant of the arrival of the Iron Mountain in this world, he had, because of the tales he had heard, understood what must have happened. Instead of bemoaning his ill fortune he began to ask himself how it happened and how it could be reversed.
“From her earliest childhood he had instructed Melisande in what life on the Other Side was like and what she must do. She must watch for the unexpected, for unnatural phenomena, and he had found three places which he suspected were important.
“Each day he set aside time for observation or exploration, and during the periods of observation he began to notice a reflection from one spot in the rugged country that did not appear to be from a rock or from water. When he went into the desert he found the reflection came from a mesa, a mesa that proved to be the secret hideout of He Who Had Magic. The reflection was from a piece of metallic equipment.”
“Melisande told you this?”
“We were prisoners together, and I promised if I escaped I would take her back with me. But she escaped first. I do not know how.” He paused. “I think Zipacna freed her.”