Chapter 12

BACK AT HER OWN HOUSE, ZOE LOCKED HER doors and windows, went to bed, and tried to sleep. But her eyes would not stay closed; nor would her mind. She kept seeing Jock's dead face, seeing Clitey as she undressed for Link, seeing Link's set face as he pushed the woman up the stairs toward his bedroom, and hearing him vow, "I'll slice your meat till you yell for me to stop." Was he doing that now? Was he in bed with Clitey, on top of her, forcing himself between her willing legs, filling her crotch with his great prick? Of course he was. He was-likely finished with one climax, and working on another. He would have a field day with Clitey. They were two of a kind as far as sex was concerned. And perhaps they were alike in other ways as well; in every way that mattered at all. Zoe was well rid of them both. And she hoped that, when she left here, she would never set eyes on either of them again, as long as she lived ...

She fell into a restless nap at last. But it was far too short. Before she seemed to have lost consciousness completely, she heard a smashing blow on the Window pane of her bedroom-and saw the pieces of glass that flew past her, landing on the bed, the floor, and the dresser. Then a gloved hand reached through the opening in the glass, unlocked the latch, and shoved the sash up.

Zoe shrank under the sheet that covered her, too terrified to scream.. She felt her throat drying out, forming a terrified shriek, but making no sound at all. She had never been so horror-stricken-nor so terribly defenseless. If this intruder aimed to attack her, or kill her, she could do nothing to stop him. She would try-God, yes, she would try to her last breath-but her baby would keep her too clumsy to wage any real war against this man, whoever he was.

She saw him then. He was tall and willowy, the shadow behind him making him appear to be gigantic. His face was masked, and his dark coveralls hid the rest of him so thoroughly that she had no idea who he could be.

He was dropping through the opened window now, starting for her bed ... What could she do to keep him off?

Nothing! There was no way that she could fight his strength, his height, his apparent determination to harm her. She tried to squirm away as his gloved hands caught her wrists and forced them behind her. She tried to lash out with her feet, to kick him from her, but he sat down on her legs, so hard that she could no longer stir her toes. She felt herself weakening in her growing terror, shaking too hard to struggle. She sensed the rope that was binding her hands together, behind her, and then another rope pinning her feet together. She felt cloth shoved into her mouth, gagging her gasps and possible screams.

Then the man dragged her down the porch steps and toward a car with its motor running, parked in the driveway. Brutal hands tugged at her, forcing her to the car and into the back seat of it. There she lay, like a swollen animal about to be slaughtered. And perhaps that was what she was, she thought, shivering at the specter, cringing from it.

Somebody wanted her dead, and out of his way. But who-who?

This could be anybody. In the dark of night, and in the cumbersome clothes that the man wore, he could be any one of the hundred males on the feather farm. He could be Mendez, who despised her. He could be Link, who hated all women. He could be the hireling of either or both of them ... God, what did it matter? It was what he was going to do with her that was important. What was he going to do?

In a chilling flash of memory, she heard the man at the bus station telling her, a lifetime ago, "The feather farm covers six sections of the wildest land anywheres around, the kind where you couldn't find a dead body in ten years of lookin' for it." Would her body be lost for ten years or forever, killed by this fiend and buried beyond all recovery?

She knew, by the smoothness of the ride at first, that the car was on Link's paved highway. But, after a time, she felt the vehicle swerve and take down one of the rocky lanes that led to the distant canyons. Bound though she was, Zoe could glimpse the moonlit sky through the car window, and catch scattered peeks at the trip ahead of her. Straining against her ropes, she pulled herself up a few inches and peered out. She saw a craggy cliff far away, a black hulk swept clean by the icy gale that howled across the plains ... God, oh God, did this madman mean to send her over the cliff in this car, as Jock's convertible had been sent, and kill her the way Jock had died?

On and on they went, veering recklessly from side to side, hitting great rocks as the car left all paths and tore through the underbrush, slamming her trussed body all over the back seat as the car braked against trees and other obstacles. How far was this monster taking her?

Then, at last, she felt the vehicle screech to a stop. Hands grabbed open the door, jerked her from the seat, and threw her onto the hard ground.

Her eyes were used to the half darkness, and she looked around and above her, mostly above.

Great jagged cliffs rose over her, as far as she could see in the silvered moonlight. Bleak and barren they stood, forbidding, posed to smash down upon her. Closer and closer they seemed to come to her as she stared at them; leering, drooling, dripping their slime and grime upon her steaming face, her writhing body.

Lord, oh Lord, this was a canyon she had never seen before. It must be farther than she had ever ventured, even in her longest walks.

Jock had never brought her here. It must be a place that he had not know, or else had not liked enough to show to her.

Maybe Jock had feared this canyon, as she feared it now. Maybe every living thing that saw it, feared it.

Maybe it was a place of death. Her death. Suddenly she stopped shaking. She froze into a sheet of ice, unmoving, unfeeling. Shock had stopped her tremor and was checking her feeling, almost her breath.

Her captor had yanked a shovel from the trunk of the car and was banging it against the mass of rocks on the canyon floor, smacking the parched ground, sending sprays of sand and soil through the air, raining dust on Zoe's face.

Why was he digging a hole in these rocks?

And why, a moment later, was he stopping his digging?

Why was he tearing at the boulders, tugging them from their nests?

Why was he working so fiercely, so frantically, to make a hole big enough for ... big enough for-

God, oh God, was he going to ... to bury her alive?

The next second, she knew that that was exactly what he was going to do!

She grabbed a stunned, stabbing breath that pierced her numbness, that prodded her whole being into re-flame, re-sweat, re-terror.

She had to escape ... She had to! But how?

The hole in the rocks was big enough to hold her now. God, she hoped this maniac would kill her before he threw her into it!

As she cringed from him, he bent over her and began tearing off her clothes. First came her dress, then her shoes. The man straightened with them in his hands. Had he changed his mind? Was he not going to denude her? Was he, maybe, going to leave her ... above ground?

But, in her next breath, she knew that he wasn't.

He tied the dress into knots and flung it into the distant darkness. Then he threw the shoes after it, one behind the other, so hard that the sounds of their landing were hollow thuds, seemingly miles away.

Then the hulking figure of the man loomed above her again. In a maddened, maddening swoop, he was dragging, jerking, kicking her toward the excavation that he plainly intended for her grave. She knew now why he had ripped off her dress and shoes. If she didn't die of suffocation, he meant her to freeze to death in this norther! He was taking no chances on her ever leaving this canyon alive.

She rolled into a ball in the opening among the stones, hoping to protect her face, and her abdomen with its tender burden. She felt the rocks rolling upon her, and she steeled her shoulders against the avalanche of them.

For half a moment she held them back. If she could keep this feverish hold on herself, if she could stave off the blows, maybe she could save a foot, an inch, an Nth, for breath.

But she couldn't keep it. She was losing her hold, falling, sinking to the bottom of the hole, plunking against the rocks there.

The stones fell faster. Bigger, Louder.

She could see no moonlight any more. There was no darkness either. There was nothing.

And there seemed no foot of air. No inch. No Nth.

Then she realized that she was still breathing easily. There must be plenty of air here, at least for now. There must be crevices among the stones, enough to let in the air she had to have to exist.

She thought, I'm thankful that that ogre buried me in rocks, not dirt-so damned glad ... But why should I be happy about it? I'd be dead anyway in a few hours, no matter how I figure it. Even if I can dig myself out of this grave, which I don't see how I can. I'll never be able to get out of this canyon, not in this chilling, killing wind. I'll freeze to death before I can climb to the top of that towering cliff!

She was sure she had no chance of digging out, but she knew she had to try. She had to hold onto life as long as she could, had to make herself work at it until she died trying to live.

She kept telling herself, . 'People do superhuman things when they know it's life-or-death. They carry beds out of burning houses and walk away from their wheel chairs. If I live through this, it will be because I got some strength I never had before, a power born of terror and hatred and the will to live a few minutes longer than Whoever-He-Was intended to let me.

She rubbed her ropes against the stones closest to her, until she freed her hands. Then she started shoving on the stones with her fingers and elbows and shoulders.

When her feet were loosened, she pulled the rope from them and began to kick at the rocks. She felt her skin rubbing off, the flesh scraping away in chunks. But she hardly felt the bruises. Every time a rock moved an inch, it was a new heartbeat for her, a fresh hope of escape. She knew, as soon as she heard the first rock go tumbling further into the canyon, that she would get out of her grave if her strength held out. She'd never give up as long as there was breath in her body.

She kept tugging and shoving and prying, with only her knees and shoulders as levers, and rested a few seconds when she was too exhausted to keep at the labor any longer. At last she heard another stone loosen and crash off her makeshift tombstone, then another and another, until she felt a. rush of cold air.

She heard the whining of the wind on the ledge above her. She knew she was going to be free!

She shoved off the last stone that held her down, and crawled into the moonlight. She was raw and bleeding and aching in every muscle. But she was alive.

But, God, what good was it going to do her, being alive?

She had no dress, no coat, no shoes, no protection to keep her from freezing. And even if this blizzard wind should die down and the air should get warmer, toward morning-well, she was sure she would never be allowed to get to the highway. That madman was probably watching this canyon, ready to shoot or strangle her if she walked out of it.

She sank onto a great boulder, her skinned chin in her bleeding hands. One thing was for sure: She had never sat down and let things happen to her. She could not do it now. She had to plan an escape, if there was any possible way of doing it.

Suddenly she realized that she was not as cold as she had expected to be. There was warmth and shelter in this rocky canyon that-likely wouldn't be on the cliffs above it nor the plains around it. Maybe a person could stay alive a while here, at least as long as all night, if he made himself a cover of the wild grasses and boughs from the scrub pines that grew among the rocks. Perhaps she could make enough, protection to get by until morning. And maybe the norther would be gone by then, leaving endurable warmth in its place. She might be able to study the sun by daylight, and figure out directions by it; try to decide which one led to town. Maybe, maybe, maybe ...

She tore the grasses up by their roots, until she had a mat of them big enough to carpet a room. She pulled herself onto part of them and tugged the rest over her. She took heart in the warmth they made. She fashioned a pillow of pine branches, ripping them into small bits. Then, worn past endurance, she fell asleep ...

Bright daylight was streaming into the canyon when she awoke. She stretched an arm, and fell back at once, wincing, crying out at the pain of the movement. Then she remembered. And she stared at her skinned body, the dried blood upon it, the black-and-blue splotches that marked the vicious stoning she had lived through. God, she had no right to be alive. But she was. Thank the Lord, she was!

And her baby was still with her. She felt it weighing her down. She couldn't feel it moving, but it had never moved constantly. Maybe it was as tired as she was, as weary of being beaten to near-death, as needful of rest and care and kindness as she was.

The air was warm. The norther was gone.

She wouldn't freeze to death now. She might die of starvation, or claustrophobia, before she found her way out of this rock-bound prison. But she was no longer bitter cold, even though only her slip covered her burdened body.

She made her way to the top of the cliff," pausing often, panting for every labored breath. She could see across the plains now, but there was only a vast expanse of short grass among tall rocks, on and on into forever. The sun seemed to be straight above her, bent neither toward the right nor the left. It gave her no east nor west, no north nor south.

She started stumbling forward, one slow, clumsy step at a time. It led her nowhere, except away from the canyon where she had been buried.

She shut her eyes against the glinting sun on the bright rocks, and shuffled on. Every push of every foot was sheer agony, sheer living death to her. But she had to shove on, if she could possibly muster the strength. She had to!

All at once she heard the sound of a motor!

It was roaring through the breaks, nearing this plain.

She couldn't see it yet, and perhaps she would never see it. But it was coming closer and closer ... Oh, God, let it get near enough for the driver to see her, unless he was the man who had left her for dead last night ...

She threw back her head and screamed, "Help me! Help me! Here I am, don't pass me by! For God's sake, help me!"

And then she felt her mind clouding, her body dropping away from it. She saw a sky, a swirl, a silence. She saw nothing more ...

When she came to, it was with a sense of flesh on her flesh, of water being sprinkled upon her face and washed over it. She looked up into Link's eyes, and she knew it was his arms that were about her, his hands that were bathing her swollen wrists and cheeks and shoulders.

She thought she saw a tear on his cheek, but she couldn't be sure. It might be only a splash from the water he had dashed on her to wake her up. Surely Link Tawnley wouldn't cry over anything or anybody, least of all her.

He said nothing. Nor did she.

All through the long trip into Wayside, they made no words. Her heart was crying out, and she felt that his was answering it. But there was only silence between them.

When they reached the emergency entrance of the Wayside hospital, he lifted her gently in his arms and carried her to the stretcher that two orderlies rushed toward them. She sank into the softness and felt the world swirling above her again, fading away, blacking out once more ...

When she opened her eyes, her gaze found the little white calendar on the dresser across the room. It was two days later than it had been when she fainted on the stretcher. How many things could happen to a girl in two days? She moved cautiously, uneasily, stretching one foot and then the other. Next her fingers flew down her body, fearfully, frantically. What about? What about?

God, oh God, her baby was gone!

Had it been born alive while she slept or was drugged past pain, and was it alive and well?

Or had it ... Oh, God, she couldn't stand thinking that it might have ... Oh, God, I'm praying to you, more than I ever prayed before. Let my child live. Let me hold it in my arms!

Her trembling fingers found the bell beside her bed and pressed it hard, again and again. She would soon know about her baby, about herself, about all the things she needed to know.

All the things except-why she was here. Why a madman had kidnapped her. Why he had buried her. Why he had left her to die.

Who could have done it, she asked herself for the thousandth time. Who could it have been?

And her weary heart answered, as before, that it could have been any one of many.

It could have been Link. Evilly magnificent Link, burying her and then losing his nerve to kill her, and rushing back by daylight to take her to safety.

Or Mendez. That lousy Mexican foreman had despised her from the moment she stepped onto the feather farm.

Or the two homos. Or any of the other men on the place, men who wanted no woman among them.

Or even Tutie Bear-that muscled fatty, a female plenty big enough to rain rocks upon a pregnant girl half her size. Tutie Bear must have learned, from Mendez, that Zoe knew about their smuggling operations. And she would dare. God, yes, Tutie Bear would dare anything she needed to dare ...

There were so many of them, so bafflingly many. Which one of them could it have been? Who in seventeen hells could have tried to kill her?

The door of her room opened slowly and a nurse's cap poked through the crack. Then it bobbed out of sight again.

Another head appeared, taller, much taller. Link Tawnley came into the room. For a moment he stood looking down at Zoe, his hands clenching and unclenching. Then he dropped into a chair and hitched it up to the bed. His face was just above Zoe's.

Their eyes found each other, and clung.

She asked, "The baby?"

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Little One. Sorry as hell. But the doctors couldn't help it. You lost your baby."

He leaned down and took her into his arms as she sobbed, letting her ease her sorrow, wiping her tears when she had cried them all.

At last, too weakened to speak aloud, she whispered, "You didn't bury me. If you had, you wouldn't be here now."

His face went white. "You were buried alive?"

She nodded.

Red streaks touched the whiteness of his cheeks. "Jesus, you know I'd never do that. I'd never hurt you at all. You know I wouldn't."

She lay silently a moment. Then she asked slowly, "Is Mendez in jail?"

He nodded. "Goddamn right. I got suspicious of Tutie Bear's flying up here on the pretense of visiting him, when they couldn't have had anything more than a sack interest in each other. He didn't even like to screw her-he told me so, a dozen times. He just did it when she cornered him and he couldn't get out of it."

'Did you get him to talk?"

"No. But she talked. I caught her alone the next morning, and threatened her with arrest. She yelled that nothing she had done was her fault, and implicated Mendez right away. I kept heckling her, needling all I could, and pretty soon she told me the whole story, all the goddamned mess of their smuggling racket." His eyes seemed to shoot sparks of flinted steel. "Lord God, when I think how those two no-goods used my planes to pick up wetbacks in Mexico and at Tutie Bear's hangout, and then charge them six prices to be turned loose in this country ... Well, it's over now. He'll be tried for smuggling-and for Jock's murder. I'm sure he's guilty of both."

Zoe felt her eyes widening, her breath coming in sharp blasts that shook her through. She whispered, "You-you didn't know about the smuggling until two days ago?"

His fists went bone-white. "Damn it, of course I didn't know it! Jesus, do you think I'd have kept that rat on my payroll-or my land-a goddamn minute after I knew he was a smuggler T

She shook her head. "But when Jock died, you said you knew about the activities on the farm. And that he helped by overlooking it. Remember?

Link looked at her. "Oh, honey, did you think I was referring to smuggling?"

She nodded her head.

He looked at her amazed. "No wonder you were so bitter! No, Zoe, I was talking about the homosexuals here."

She didn't say anything. She was too relieved to put the happiness of it into words.

Link continued, "I knew that a few of the men were homos, and that sometimes some of them stole a little from me. Jock knew about it too. But he kept them anyway, because men were hard to get and those offenses were comparatively minor."

"But smuggling was big?'

"Goddamn right. It was a major crime. I couldn't shut my eyes to it."

He took one of Zoe's hands in his and smoothed it. His voice was very low. "Clitey is in jail too. If you don't want to prefer charges against her, I will."

Zoe sat up in bed, staring at him. "Charges against Clitey?"

"Goddamn right. She tried to kill you, you know."

"No, I-I didn't know. I had no idea who it was." She felt her voice coming back, just a little, and she asked hoarsely, "Why would Clitey want to-to-"

"Because she wanted me, she said. When I took her to bed, the night she got to the ranch, she knew I wasn't responding to her the way I had before. She sensed that I was in love with somebody, and when she kept asking me who it was, I told her it was you. She tore out of the house, mad as hell."

He paused, and Zoe didn't break in. She couldn't.

At last he went on. "I didn't know, until Tutie Bear told me the next morning, what Clitey had done to you. Tutie Bear had seen Clitey driving away in the night, in Mendez' car-with you along. And then she'd seen Clitey come back alone ... Oh, God, Little One, I wanted to die myself when I thought you were dead!"

Zoe let her eyes adore him. Then she raised her lips to let their love continue in their kiss. "Let's not talk any more about death, my darling. Let's talk about the life that's ahead of us-together!"